by Mindy Sotiri, Executive Director, Justive Reform Initiative
The leadership program we are told is not therapy. But also, it is not, not therapy. And so it is, I find myself holding back tears in a workshop alongside 23 other exhausted not-for-profit CEOs, overlooking the impossibly beautiful showstopper of a harbour at Barangaroo.
The Social Impact Leadership Australia (SILA) course requires leaders to step away from the frenetic rhythms and churn of our work and take a series of very deep breaths; firstly, via leadership retreats and workshops far away from our offices (cue weeping in small groups on the water) and then later via a three-month sabbatical.
Most of us who run not-for-profits are driven by the belief that what we are doing will contribute to building a better (gentler, kinder, fairer, more just) community. But this gig is not just about wanting social change. It is about the concrete and gruelling translation of these ideas into practice. It is about managing legal risks and service delivery; supporting staff and boards; negotiating funding arrangements and endless funding shortfalls; building community and stakeholder engagement; navigating gnarly sector kerfuffles and staring down unwieldy and unfair systems – all while engaging in heated, reactive political and media cycles.
Most of us are trying to do all of this work at the same time as remembering to cook dinner for our families, care for those we love, move our bodies, and eat enough protein. It is no wonder some of us find ourselves on the floor. CEO reflection as it turns out, is no picnic.
Many leaders of not-for-profit organisations don’t possess very articulated or lofty personal leadership ambitions. Most of us are women who have chosen to work for decades in jobs that usually do not pay very well (#losersamirite??!!) Most of us have been very good at parts of our jobs in the community sector, and care a lot about the areas of social justice or change that we work in. Most of us agree to step up and manage at various moments, and at some point, all of us participating in the program have put up our hand to run the show. And quite a few of us feel like ginormous, idiotic fakers; like we tripped over and fell into leadership accidentally.
This imposter syndrome, we are told, by our very smart, very kind and annoyingly direct coaches, is a total cop-out. We need to own our own leadership, our own willingness to be there, and stop pretending we don’t belong in it. Like politicians who won’t claim their decision-making power, or people with property portfolios in Sydney who pretend they aren’t rich, there is a dishonesty in applying for a gig to lead an organisation and then getting all shy and coy about leading an organisation when you take it.
This is what we learn. Leadership, in the not-for-profit-sector as it turns out, very rarely looks like Jon Snow or Napoleon or William the goddamn conqueror. There is no brave guy on a hill with a sword decisively leading hordes of shouting men into battle, which is a shame really because honestly that would be a very good way of doing this job and getting enough steps in. But because most of us are not shouting decisively at men on horses, we feel fraudulent. And because quite often, the decisions we are trying to make do not have immediately clear answers, or obvious pathways, or people’s heads to chop off, we worry we’re not the right guy for the job.
But as it turns out, this is a wildly outdated idea of what leadership is. All of us in the not-for-profit space are working in systems and structures that present genuinely tough policy, legislative and social challenges; Family and Domestic Violence, First Nations Justice, Homelessness, Imprisonment, ending poverty, and more. These are areas that are defined by their complexity, by the absence of easy answers, by decades of good people doing good work to try and make things better, and by slow, difficult progress. These are not the areas that are going to get fixed just because some confident dude with a brilliant idea and a lot of chutzpah wants to make a difference. This work is a slog, and it requires much more than one man on a horse. This is not to say that there isn’t the need for bold new thinkers and innovative hot-shots, but this work is ultimately deeply collective. We need leaders that are good at managing the messy work of messy humans in systems that are deeply (sometimes fundamentally) flawed.
We learn good leadership is often about extremely good listening, and we learn that good listening is harder than what you might imagine, and that sometimes great leadership can look very quiet. We learn that understanding the difference between technical and adaptive challenges is critical, and that misdiagnosis is both common and tempting, because who the hell doesn’t want to be the legend who provides a quick technical fix. We learn that leading people through periods of change requires us to be honest about the experience of loss, and sensitive to the rate at which loss can be tolerated. We learn that leadership requires choosing again and again to be uncomfortable; it is both saying things that are hard to say and hearing things that are hard to hear. We learn that feeling certain or right is an emotional state that can be very hard to let go of. We learn that at the same time as embracing uncertainty and curiosity, our roles require us to find moral clarity, to make decisions, and we need to fully and unapologetically take responsibility for this.
Learning all of this, is not of course just about figuring out what good leadership is but figuring out the edges of who we are. We find out what we avoid; what comes easy; what we hold tight to; what we don’t like to hold at all; what brings us joy; and what flicks us into rage. And alongside all of this we tussle with the prospect of a three-month sabbatical. I mean you only need to take a quick look around the room of brilliant, smart, high-achieving, passionate and committed participating CEOs, to clock that most of us are also total losers when it comes to turning off our emails and taking a nap.
Through the CEO community that is created in the SILA program, we get the chance to share with our exhausted and brilliant (and useless at taking time out from work) peers, reflections on both the privilege of leadership and the (sometimes difficult to talk about) personal costs. We also get to share in the immense heart opening joy of spending time in connection and solidarity with humans who have chosen to spend their lives engaged in the work of creating social impact and change. And in this remarkable opportunity of not, not therapy, we get to engage with the work of trying to understand who we are as leaders, how we understand our selves in these roles, what our own version of leadership looks like, and also, for a few months at least, how to let go.
