Beyond Resilience: Moral Injury, Leadership, Coaching & Mentoring

AI-generated image: Anne Kristine Arbon using ChatGPT (OpenAI), 2026. Oil-painting-style illustration of a woman facing a locked cupboard overflowing with papers in a damaged organisational setting, symbolising pain that an organisation has tried to contain rather than address.

We already talk about stress, burnout, wellbeing and resilience. Do we really need another term? Someone may not simply be exhausted by the amount of work. They may have been asked to act against their values, prevented from doing what they believe is right, or left to witness harm they could not stop? Sometimes the organisation they trusted has betrayed the very values it asked them to uphold? That is different. It may look like stress or burnout from the outside, but the damage can reach further: into conscience, identity and trust. This is where the idea of moral injury helps.

What is moral injury?

The term grew out of psychiatrist Jonathan Shay’s work with Vietnam veterans. He wrote about betrayal by someone in authority in a high-stakes situation. Litz and colleagues later widened the definition to include acts we carry out, fail to prevent, witness or learn about when they go against deeply held moral beliefs.

The research began in military settings. We now see the same questions arising in healthcare, education, emergency services, humanitarian work and ordinary organisational life.

For me, moral injury describes the lasting distress that may follow a serious violation of what a person believes to be right. The person may have acted, been unable to act, witnessed harm, or felt betrayed by a leader or institution.

Moral injury is not a diagnosis, and not every difficult ethical decision amounts to moral injury.

I want to be careful with the language. A coach should not decide that a client is morally injured. The words are useful only if they help the person see and speak about their own experience.

Stress, burnout, moral distress… or moral injury?

The edges are blurry, and people may experience more than one at the same time. Even so, the questions are different.

Stress asks: Can I cope with these demands?
Burnout asks: What has prolonged pressure depleted?
Moral distress asks: I believe I know what is right, but am I able and permitted to do it?
Moral injury asks: What has this experience done to my values, my sense of self and my trust in others?

Moral distress is particularly important here. It can arise when people know what they believe should happen but lack the authority, time, resources or support to act. If this continues, or if the consequences are particularly serious, it may develop into something deeper. But moral injury is not inevitable.

Why does the distinction matter?

Because the way we understand the problem shapes the response we offer.

Four ways moral injury can happen in the workplace

Moral injury can arise in different ways, and these experiences may overlap.

Acting: Sometimes people are instructed or pressured to do something that conflicts with what matters deeply to them. This might mean excluding, undermining or speaking disrespectfully about a colleague labelled as ‘difficult’, despite believing that they should be treated fairly and with dignity.
Being unable to act: At other times, people can see what needs to happen but do not have the authority, resources or permission to act. Someone may, for example, be unable to provide necessary support because of staffing levels, funding restrictions or a decision made higher up.
Witnessing: A person may witness a colleague being bullied or treated unfairly, or see clients and communities repeatedly denied essential support. They can see the harm, but feel unable to prevent it.
Betrayal: Moral injury may also involve a sense of betrayal. An organisation might encourage staff to speak up, for example, but then dismiss or silence them when they raise concerns.

These experiences can leave people with guilt or shame, but anger is also common. Some withdraw, become cynical or lose their sense of belonging. They may begin to question their own judgement, their trust in the organisation and what the experience means for them as a professional or leader.

Moral injury does not happen in a vacuum

We may be tempted to locate the injury in the person: their response, their coping, their recovery. But workplace moral injury often has a system around it. Policies and targets shape priorities and reward some behaviours over others. Hierarchies determine whose judgement counts, while resources and workload limit what people are able to do. Informal norms and culture also teach people whether it is safe to speak.

This does not remove personal agency. It does change where we look for responsibility. If several people are facing the same impossible choice, or if the same concerns are raised and repeatedly set aside, we should ask whether the system is continuing to produce the conditions for harm.

What looks like an individual case may be evidence about the organisation.

When resilience becomes the wrong answer

To be clear, I am not against resilience. It can help us remain flexible, stay connected and find a way through pressure.

But should the aim always be to help people keep going?

I worry when resilience becomes a way of asking people to absorb what an organisation is unwilling to address. If someone repeatedly raises an ethical concern and is ignored, another wellbeing workshop is not an adequate response. Neither is a reminder to practise self-care.

Sometimes discomfort tells us something important. It may be the conscience doing its job.

If we describe every response as stress or burnout, we may miss the role of power, betrayal and responsibility. We may start treating an organisational problem as an individual weakness.

What does this ask of leaders?

Leaders need to ask more than, ‘How can we help this person cope?’ They also need to ask, ‘What happened here, and what part did we play?’

The Theoretical Domains Framework, developed to understand what enables or prevents behaviour, offers a useful prompt.

The framework does not assume that one factor causes another. Instead, it offers a comprehensive lens for investigating the personal, relational and environmental factors that enable or constrain behaviour (Atkins et al., 2017).

We do not need all 14 domains for this conversation. Five questions are enough to start:

Do people know how to raise a moral or ethical concern?
Are they genuinely allowed to raise it?
What happens to people who speak up?
Do they have the authority, time and resources to act?
Which policies, targets or incentives make the right action easier—or harder?

These are not simply wellbeing questions. They are leadership questions.

Acknowledgement matters. So do explanation, accountability and changed behaviour.

Depending on what happened, leaders may need to restore voice, apologise, revisit a decision or make sure the same harm cannot happen again.

They may also need to look beyond one incident: at workload, reporting routes, systems and pathway, governance, incentives and who is permitted to challenge a decision.

What can coaching and mentoring offer?

The research directly linking coaching with moral injury is limited. We should say that plainly. Coaching is not a treatment for moral injury.

The emerging literature suggests that thoughtful, ethical coaching and mentoring can offer a place to pay careful attention to what happened, reflect honestly and consider where choice remains. Moral injury is increasingly recognised as something coaches and mentors may encounter in their work.

A coaching or mentoring conversation may help someone:

put words to what happened;
identify the values and loyalties involved;
work out which responsibility belongs to them, and which does not;
stay with anger, guilt or betrayal without being hurried towards a positive reframe;
see where choice and influence still remain;
consider what an honest next step might be.

Mentoring can offer something slightly different: the perspective of someone who may understand the profession and its pressures, or who has had similar experiences. That can be invaluable. It can also become judgement or advice too quickly, so the mentor still needs to listen.

My own coaching stance is to meet the person where they are and try to understand the experience as they live it, rather than fitting it too quickly into a model. That matters here. The person may not need a clever question. They may need someone who is willing to hear what the experience has cost them.

And the boundaries?

Coaching is not therapy. Moral injury may sit alongside trauma, depression, severe shame, substance misuse or suicidal thoughts. Coaches and mentors must know the limits of their competence, contract clearly and refer when clinical, occupational health or pastoral support is needed.

There is another boundary too. Coaching must not become the confidential cupboard where an organisation stores pain it does not want to face. If the system helped create the harm, the system has work to do.

Confidentiality must be protected. That does not mean the organisation learns nothing. Without identifying clients, coaches and leaders can still ask what patterns are appearing. Are people repeatedly describing the same blocked choices, silenced concerns or breaches of trust? If so, another round of individual coaching is not the whole answer.

What might repair look like?

Repair is a strong word, and I use it carefully.

It may begin with acknowledgement: someone saying clearly that what happened mattered. It may require the person to be believed. It may involve an apology, accountability, restored influence, or a change to policy and practice.

Trust does not return because a leader asks for it. It returns when leadership and the organisation become trustworthy again.

That may require more than supporting the person who was harmed. The organisation may need to examine how decisions were made, whose warnings were discounted and whether the same conditions remain in place. Repair becomes credible when policy, practice and the use of power begin to change.

Coaching and mentoring can accompany some of this, helping a person find language, reconnect with what matters and decide what they want to do. The organisation must still take responsibility for its part of the repair.

So, why name moral injury?

Because language shapes what we notice. If leaders talk only about resilience, wellbeing and stress, we may lose the language of conscience. We may overlook who held power, who made the decision and who carried the consequences.

Before asking someone to become more resilient, perhaps we should ask what they have been required to carry, and who else should be carrying responsibility for it.

30-minute briefing

I will explore these questions in my 30-minute session, Beyond Resilience: Moral Injury, Leadership, Coaching and Mentoring.

Before then, I invite you to think of a situation described in your organisation as stress, burnout or a resilience problem. What changes if you also ask:

What value has been compromised?
Where did the power to act sit?
What would an honest response require?

Join the conversation: What might become possible if leaders, coaches and mentors make room for this language, and are prepared to hear the answer?

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