We Need More Tortoises, Not Hares
Acute staffing shortages, active Covid cases, and the mounting tensions around vaccination are pushing many of the leaders we work with to the brink, or, out of their organizations altogether. Maybe it’s never been harder to survive as an education leader.
But the challenges of “surviving” are not new - just more extreme than ever. In many ways, the approach to ed reform has always been more hare than tortoise, and many schools and organizations- even before the pandemic -had built an existence of barely sustaining at the edges of people’s capacity.
There are probably countless opportunities to reset our approach and create something more healthy, nourishing and durable. But if the humans leading this movement don’t personally go through their own “reset” process, we fear that broader change will not follow, because cultural change will not happen without personal change. Nor is this limited to the ed reform movement. Here’s what human rights advocate and nonprofit CEO Tiloma Jayasinghe wrote to nonprofit leaders about “preserving movement leadership” amid endemic burnout:
You deserve happiness. Nonprofit workers deserve to be happy. No matter what social justice movement you sit in, the goals you are working toward will not be achieved by just you, or by you in your lifetime. Movement goals are generational goals. By caring for yourself, by centering abundance and happiness, you are dismantling white supremacist and dominant culture tropes that perpetuate a sense of scarcity and marginalization about what you deserve, what your value is, and what success means for you. Caring for yourself is also generational, movement work, and a social justice goal in and of itself—and should be resourced as such.
Many leaders know this to be true, but knowing it is not enough to change - especially during such a complex and harrowing time that seems to be demanding such a high level of personal sacrifice. Our belief is that people have to find a way to step back and to experience a different way. They have to know - not just that there IS a different path - but what it feels like to walk down it.
We help leaders become deeply aware of their egos, and start to separate it from their deepest selves. Our egos are constantly pumping us with thoughts about who we are supposed to be, need to be, what we need to project, protect, etc. But our deepest selves - our humanity, our very aliveness - feels before it thinks. Our feelings are their own kind of wise voice. Many leaders are in touch with the deep love they feel for their students and staff, and have suppressed or resisted their own feelings of anxiety, fear, or plain exhaustion - in favor of egoic thoughts about who they are “supposed” to be, need to be, etc. It’s as though we think we can give love and care to others without caring for ourselves… that we can support others to live life at its healthiest and fullest when we’re not fully living. We call this “resisting reality.”
Our intensives are designed to help leaders experience what it feels like to put the ego voice in the passenger seat, listen to their feelings, get curious about them, and decide what that deeply wise voice is telling them. Our Leadership and Longevity Intensive and Reset Retreat go even further. They are designed to help organizational leaders experience what it feels like to be fully alive: not just in their leadership but in their lives, being present to their own needs so that they can be present with others. Put differently, to see what kind of leader they could be as the tortoise and not the hare - and decide for themselves if it’s actually a less “productive” path.
Whether or not you can join us for our Leadership and Longevity Intensive or the in-person Reset Retreat, we hope you’re able to find your own opportunity to step back and examine whether the life you’re living is truly working for you - and what the impact is on others.
