Supervisor Emotional Maturity, Psychological Safety, and Traumatic Stress in College Student Affairs

Abstract

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic placed an immense amount of stress on student affairs professionals, who were exposed to numerous potentially traumatic events as a result of changing workplace environments, health and safety risks, and their emotional support of students. This study explored the impact of supervisor emotional maturity on supervisee trauma exposure response through the mediating effect of psychological safety for a sample of student affairs professionals employed at 4-year institutions. Results indicated that supervisees who felt that their supervisors were more emotionally mature felt more psychologically safe and that this psychological safety predicted lower adverse reactions to both primary and secondary traumatic stress in workplace contexts. Implications for the training and development of student affairs supervisors are explored, as well as for further research into the construct of emotional maturity as it relates to supervision.