Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 513. Cultivating Wellness in Leadership: How The Teaching Well's Approach Revolutionizes Nonprofit Work Environments - Lindsey Fuller

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513. Cultivating Wellness in Leadership: How The Teaching Well's Approach Revolutionizes Nonprofit Work Environments - Lindsey Fuller · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the Good Community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabbit fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Becky, our friend, is back.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting here thinking in my head I feel so lucky that we in this community get to sit in the orbit of Lindsay Fuller for the next 45 minutes because from the first 30 seconds that I met this human on Zoom, I felt transported into a different headspace, a different mental space, a different emotional space.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: The energy that she puts into the world, into people, into healing systems, is one of the most beautiful things and of course, we had to bring her back.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: She is an alum of the podcast and I really encourage you to go check out her first episode, which is episode 409, the Path to Healing Both Systems and People.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: But we got to dive into who Lindsay is because we have these two trends that were part of the 2024 Trends series.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: We're talking about how the sector needs whole leaders and we're also talking about retention as an inside job.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: And then when Lindsay came to our sort of unpacking of our trends this year, she kept dropping into the chat these wisdom bombs and it was like things like healthy people, heal systems and healthy systems, heal people and what she's doing over at the Teaching Well and the incredible team that's over there.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: We just want to dive into that, share this incredible knowledge and we want to get you on the path to feeling whole and feeling like your team can be whole.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: So here's just a little bit of background about the incredible Lindsay Fuller.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: She's the executive director of the Teaching Well, which is a nonprofit wellness collective of educators, school district leaders and healers aka the angels that walk among us and they really support schools and other professional ecosystems through this transformational evolution by fostering adult wellness.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, did you know?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: As an adult, you should be harnessing and diving into your wellness?
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: And they're doing it at personal, interpersonal and systemic levels.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: So they've spent, like the last three years, john, converting this school healing program to tailor this curriculum to service nonprofits, and they're bringing some mega impact to healing up our sector, especially around building healthy culture, staff retention and human centered leadership.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: So she's here to dive into all of that with us today.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Lindsay, my friend, my hero, welcome back.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: We're so glad you're here.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Can you tell?
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: I'm so glad to be here.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: This is like.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: It's like old friends coming back.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: It's really, it's so good and it's so exciting to see the ways that your work is evolving and also the ways that ours are, because truly, the nonprofit sector uh oh, I'm coming right out of the swinging the nonprofit sector is just as sick as schools.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: It's not broken and I think that's something we've heard a lot is that schools are broken.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: This education system is broken and it's actually doing exactly what it was intended to do by design, which was really take care of individuals, of privilege and those who are in power and to maintain the status quo.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: And I get curious about nonprofits because I'm like we're here, we're ready to be change agents, all of us have these incredible missions and visions, really dedicated staff, and yet we're again perpetuating kind of these harms against one another and our anchored under systems that aren't serving us.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: So I get excited to think about how do we heal up both.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope people understand that, as you're listening to this episode, like we're creating a space to heal, we're creating a space to talk about really hard things and we're talking about how to navigate it in a way that's healthy for everybody across the board.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: So I want to start just kind of at the beginning with you and again I want to point people back to that episode 409 for Lindsay's full stories.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: But for listeners who are new, like share a little bit about the work that you're doing right now over at the Teaching.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so we are really building adult cultures we don't need to heal from, and so, whether that be in schools and districts, at the individual level, with educators, or with nonprofit or corporate staff even unwellness is universal, so wellness should be too.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Stress is universal, so wellness should be too, and we are really trying to repattern the ways that people work together.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: A lot of the issues we're seeing in schools are adult issues.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: It's how we collaborate, it's how we communicate, it's building policies that work for us, not against us.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: And so at the Teaching Well, we're doing a lot of systems redesign work, but specifically we're doing personal and professional development for people and their teams, and that's all in service of kids getting what they need.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: But we're excited.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: We like to get into what we call no mud, no lotus.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: We do with the shadow work of really what are the things getting in the way of wellness and sustainability and building retention focused initiatives so that educators and nonprofit staff can say yes to returning to their important work year over year.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: I mean the work and the timing is just so poignant and I will get a point our listeners back today because if we're going to push this episode that Lindsay already came on if you want to hear how what it looks like to not just talk about your values but to live them out through the messy elements, through what it looks like in real terms, like I feel like you really inspired us and we knew we wanted to come back to you to get your wisdom in this topic at a deeper level.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So let's start with the nonprofit stabilization program.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I mean your team spent these years really converting your school healing program work into specifically the nonprofit space that a lot of us listening today know really well.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: So talk to us about you know what inspired that, what's the impact and what does that process really look like that we could take pieces from?
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: It was really interesting because we started to partner organically with a couple of nonprofits and realized really quickly that our curriculum didn't need to be augmented that significantly, that in fact folks in the nonprofit space need stress resilience, that they too are coming with employment trauma and would really benefit from processing that and healing both vicarious and direct traumas.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: We also know that communication across difference is really, really impacted, and so we have been working with several nonprofits.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: We're now just starting our third year with them because, again, our stabilization program is a three to five year commitment to really say let's do everything from a landscape analysis of the systems of policies and practices that are in your organization, everything from hiring to supervision.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Let's think about our communication styles and our conflict orientations and how that's playing out in the ways that we're able to enact our most important work.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: And what does it mean to have an individual wellness coach that is lifting up trends to the organizational leader?
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: That's like yo, your team, not sure if you're on track here, because folks are burning out and we need to radically disrupt and shift some of those.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: And so I think the inspiration for this branch of our work was really that we know it takes a village to support a child.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: And the same is true if we take a macro lens about what schools and districts need to thrive right, the whole community needs to wrap around them.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: When we remove ego, which is hard and realize that we aren't the magic bullet.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: We're not here to save anybody.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that there can be more than one solution and that multiple organizations can work in tandem to wrap around educators.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: That's where the magic lies.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: So we're here to link up and stand shoulder to shoulder.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Most of our programs are in educational adjacent nonprofits or philanthropic partners.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: At this point, where we're like, if we can get them, well, and there's a whole fleet of us wellness warriors wrapping around this school, this is how we're actually going to enact systemic change.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: I'm so dang proud of you and I'm sitting here thinking what you just said Seems so basic.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: It seems like we already know that, and it's making me just question what the heck are we doing with our lives?
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Why are we putting ourselves in this spin cycle that we feel completely helpless to get out of?
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: And I, I want to thank you for hitting you know I don't know if it's the stop button or the panic button and saying we are not going to live and work Like this anymore because we as human beings are falling apart.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: And I can tell you we had a mental health survey that we socialized in our community back in october, and I was prepared I was somewhat prepared for the results, but I was ill prepared for the stories that came with it.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: And when you ask those questions and you get into the human to human, you start to peel back an onion.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: That is really disgusting on the inside.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And so Thank you for talking through these frameworks.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: And I think one of the things that I really loved about the first time we met which, by the way, john, do you.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I ever told you this, but the first time I met Lindsay, like in the first 30 seconds she was like can I just like offer up a shared space of a moment to get us centered in this work and to put healing and a mantra in this?
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: And I was like, oh my gosh.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I remember you like.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: We did a somatic practice.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: I met them as incredible human today.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah and my body settled, my mind was at ease and and and that is to me how your work is walking each of us through, one to one, and I and I think there's something to that and I think this Um notion that you have, if humor, human centered leadership is so fascinating.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: So there is this element to this conversation where we're doing the internal work toward whole leadership and wellness, but there's also this responsibility from our leaders and our organizations to create spaces and cultures that allow employees to show up In a way that feels comfortable for them and to be their true selves.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Talk to us about humor centered approach to leadership and like what nonprofits can take away from that.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: And I want to name.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Just for a moment.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Teacher, speak right.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: We differentiate, that's the word.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: If you're a parent, if you're an educator, if you're just out in these streets, you've probably heard the word differentiation.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: We know that not every kid needs the same thing to learn, and so why haven't we adjusted yet to recognize that not every adult needs the same thing to heal?
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: And when we do somatic work at the mind, the body and the spirit, when we say we are human centered leaders and that we're going to build systems again that work for us, work with us, we're saying we recognize the unique gifts, we want to amplify them.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: We recognize that we're human beings, not human doings.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Right, that the capitalistic, you know energies that push us towards just producing more and more, overriding our stress and fatigue cues.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: That's not in service of us enacting our mission.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: It actually slows progress.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: It pulls us further and further away from the desired impact.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: And so Some of the ways that we think about human centered leadership is really, how do we honor the humanity and tend to some of the more challenging dynamics?
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: In social emotional learning it's often referred to as the soft skills, which I find really ironic because they're the hardest skills Self-management, responsible decision-making Right, social awareness, those things especially if you're coming out of a setting where that hasn't been cultivated and you haven't practiced having difficult conversations around race or across difference, it's going to be really difficult for you to collaborate on.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: You know your project plan, so we have really started building some Audits within our organization and then with other nonprofits and I really want to encourage folks.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: It feels like you don't have time, right, you don't can hear people thinking that.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't have time to do an audit, lindsay, like I don't want to pay for an additional service.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: Start small.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: We built a pro-black audit.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: We were looking at five different measures and we were really asking ourselves If we believe in Equity, then those who are typically on the margins should be at the center in our organization.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: We did everything from analyzing the margins around pay equity within our organization To looking at non-traditional policy accommodations that we knew would honor Black folks, like a kinship preference in our bereavement policy.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: What does that mean?
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: It means that typical bereavement and grief, which we know is non-linear right, it doesn't happen, you're not over it in one day, but often those policies don't speak to the family structures that are reflected in black culture.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: So we rewrote our bereavement policy to include folks like godparents right, to include aunties and cousins, so that you don't have to justify that you need to go and tend To a grief incident in your family system when we have these communal kind of collectivist approaches to parenting in the black community.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: We call it kinship Right, and so that's a small modification.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: We also removed the requirement to produce documentation.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: Do you know how many grief and bereavement policies require you to produce an obituary to justify taking time off Are you serious?
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: No, I did not know Almost every system that we work with nonprofits.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: I know this is a very specific conversation, but it is these small policies that actually have huge impacts and so we remove that.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: How dehumanizing that you need to produce proof that that's where you went.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: That is an example of human centered leadership to say I'm so sorry, you've gone through this transition.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: You deserve the space.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: We will make the space and you do not need to prove to us and justify your healing process and that inside work trickles out to the outside when we're able to better humanize our clients who go through grief incidences.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: I mean heart pain.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: You know hearing that and it seems so.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I think Becky lifted this earlier, just like it seems so obvious when you state it like that.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: But we all know how these structures work, that it's not centering humanity, it's centering how do we get whatever end result?
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: You know at what cost, whatever cost comes from that.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So I'm loving the practical of these policies.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Do you have other human centered policies that we could talk about?
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: How can our listeners put some of these ideas?
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I love the bereavement piece, but what are some others For leadership to be thoughtful about?
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: I have a couple of others.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Definitely follow me on LinkedIn, y'all, because I am on a journey to humanize Parents.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: I am a newly parent of three.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: Oh lord, send help.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: And we really committed even before I had gone back to the drawing board.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: Around family planning, we thought a lot about how do we build family friendly policies that are inclusive of folks in different genders, different sexual orientations, right?
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: How do we make it possible For someone to re-enter into work Safely, gradually, knowing that their hormones, their mental health, their finances, their, really every life system, is being shaken up, and so we have several policies that we've created.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Around the first year of life, for example, any mandatory travel required of me.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: I'm able to travel with my baby and a care provider, and the teaching well pays for that.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: Care providers, lodging and food.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: I do have to cover travel, but that's hugely liberatory, and so it means that at retreats, it means that work trips and those overnighters, I'm not disrupting my nursing journey, I'm not disrupting the essential bonding, and we know that my mental health, not just my baby's well-being, are impacted by our ability to connect Every culture Honestly across the globe that is retained.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: Many of its early practices around nurturing Recognize that babies want to be like glue on a parent, and so We've made that possible.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: And for folks who find it really overwhelming to travel with their baby, there are programs that we're willing to cover that will overnight your breast milk, and these are very specific to nursing parents, right, but you can literally, like stork service, send your breast milk every day back to your home for your child to have that, and that's just hugely transformative.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: Another example I'll give y'all one more A human centered policy is around our private practice work, and this is contentious.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: I know it, I've been told by it's juicy.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: I've been told by multiple other executive directors, and maybe my boss, that this is a wild idea, but let me talk to you about it.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: So we know that in nonprofits, many folks would like to be paid more right, we are abundant with ideas, but not always with salaries and to retain talent.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: We recognize that various financial dynamics are going to come into play with our employees, and when I got here, I really wanted to think differently about how do we encourage folks to have financial autonomy while still staying and honoring the work of the teaching while as their primary focus.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: I was watching as many of my friends not even just in this organization who work in nonprofits, were having to hide that they had private practices or second and third jobs.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: We know that teachers are working multiple jobs and it's a dirty secret and we should be paying everybody more, don't get me wrong.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: And in the meantime, what are folks options for pursuing?
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's not even just for finances, but alternative passions.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Right, I don't wanna lose this part of myself.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: And for many of us in the teaching, well, it is continuing to work with students because we're an adult focused organization, and so we've built a private practice policy that enables folks so long as in their evaluation they are meeting or thriving on all of their indicators for the next six months before their next performance review to pursue private practice work on the clock, and we have internal discussions and calibration moments where we say, as long as our clients' needs are being met and as long as our internal teammates are feeling supported and feeling your presence, why couldn't you schedule a training that you're doing with a different organization during your work week, during standard work hours?
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: You don't need to put in PTO for it, but we do expect that it's not in the shadows, so it should be in your calendar and it is supervisory approved, because it's not something we're sneaking around doing.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: We want everyone to be liberated and free, and so we're really trying to challenge the way that we do work so that folks can stay and be retained, and I just encourage folks to think about it, and it doesn't come without risk.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: So hit me up if you have questions, because it is in fact something that takes revision and flexibility, you know.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're leaning so much into the evolution of it and I'm one I wanna say good on your leadership, or your board or your boss, to give you this space and this agency to explore it, Cause I still remember the first conversation we had about the way that you onboard your staff, which is so human, and I just keep thinking that everybody listening, including myself, is like I wanna go work at the teaching.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Well, that feels like a safe place.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And I wanna be extremely real and I wanna share something personal here, as you are giving these examples.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I'm not kidding.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: I had a flood of visuals come back in my head that are personal to me, John, I'm sure you remember this.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Julie may remember it too.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was on maternity leave with a one month old when my CEO asked me to come back and help run a gala, and I said yes because I didn't feel like I had a choice, and I'm literally pumping in the back of the room while Bruno Mars is playing and we're raising money, and I mean it was just a wild moment and I remember not being able, not feeling like I could go to a friend's funeral a friend's parents funeral because I had a really important campaign meeting and my boss did not give me safety and I just didn't have the words and I didn't have the awareness to know that my gut was telling me something was wrong.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: But I was just kind of falling in line and so I share all of that with our audience and I'm sure everyone has stories that are very similar in nonprofit.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: To say that way does not feel good and it hasn't felt good for years.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: This is a way that feels much better and I think the way that you're coming at it from a leadership perspective and I wanna talk about that because I feel like you have such insights in your career about the differences between supervising and coaching.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: We've talked about this a little bit and I want you to break down that difference here because I think it has a massive rippling effect on how to become a whole leader.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate that and I just also wanna validate your share.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: And you're not alone.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: All of us, many of us, have vicarious or direct trauma coming from employment and that's a part of what we recognize.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: And so there's a whole nother episode on human centered evaluation systems, because just the repatterning that's required and that I witnessed when I arrived at the teaching well, but in other spaces as well a folks bracing right and coming with like five pages of data and evidence to prove their scores and how we actually need to reframe.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: We often say at the teaching well, and Marisol, our incredible deputy director, says we don't weaponize data here and we have to remind our team you're not here to prove to us, we've already hired you because we know you're incredibly talented.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: This is about learning and growth.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: And so to your question, when we think about supervision and coaching, this is one of the things I'm most passionate about when it comes to human-centered leadership.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: I hear organizations that have one or the other or have supervision inside of their organization but they contract out all of their coaching right and so they're not actually developing in their org leadership.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: But to me, supervision is about the teammate, their growth and reflecting on their impact in the organization.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: Coaching is about how they carry out that work, live the values, enact the mission with others outside of the space, and I believe to truly thrive we need both and that there should be a tiered model articulated in your organization.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: What I mean by a tiered model is if you are new to a role ie you've been promoted or if you are new to the organization.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: In the teaching world, we offer a one-year gradual release model.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: That means weekly supervision for a full hour.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: Which folks are like what?
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: I get that much time?
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Yes, a full hour dedicated to you, your growth, how you're transitioning into the organization, composting any imposter syndrome that's present, right?
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: And then also you're matched with one or sometimes more coaches inside the organization who are not your supervisor, so that you can continue to dive into your growth areas and not have that feel evaluative.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: And so we do that and are allowing folks to actually have someone to shadow, to observe them, training, to co-facilitate trainings, for the entire first year and then, after that first year, we shift to bi-monthly supervision, so twice a month.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: But it's really about saying we're investing in you.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: Your growth is important, right?
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: We want you to feel safe here and we want you to feel nourished and we want you to know that actually we see you and we're going to tailor learning to your needs so that you can show up and just amplify all of your gifts.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: It speaks to this village mentality too, and I think you kind of casually said sometimes we go outside of an organization for these things and they're even in these small organizations where it doesn't feel like there's paths, and I think that's a reason that people go outside.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: This is like an opportunity to say there is superpower, there are talents, there's people with giftings in your organization that could pour into people in this way, and learning and growth is just such a vibrant way to live and just how you show up in today's world.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: So I just feel like it all kind of feeds itself too.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Lindsay, I love the GEL model.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: That's so beautifully.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: It's really cool.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: And one of our values is collective liberation right, and that means also I'm responsible for distributed leadership.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: This isn't the Lindsay show.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: The Teaching Well is a full squad of gifted people, and when we're able to learn together and grow together across positions, across teammates, this organization and the mission will go far beyond what I can take it to.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: I deeply believe in my team, and so we do give stipends and folks do get coaching outside of our organization as well, but the moment we are not providing it in our org, I'd be worried yeah.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think this all leads to building a vibrant, healthy culture and staff retention.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: So I mean, this is like a flag we're putting in the ground to say we're forcing this topic all year around here that we believe retention is an inside job, meaning the way our organizations are wired is part of the reason people are not staying or they're not happy or fulfilled in this work.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: So I want to talk about some of the findings y'all have seen about hiring and onboarding.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: You shared a little bit on this on the last time you came through the podcast, but it's so rich that I want to hear about your work and research.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: We're seeing a lot across the nation.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: One of the best ways to increase your staff retention is to have a lot of people is to hire strong.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: We need to be bringing in folks and get crystal clear when I arrived, there weren't job descriptions for every position.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Oh, we're working with a lot of nonprofits that don't have job descriptions.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: I know you're like that's not true, or, I believe, socializing job descriptions, and then when folks take the job, that's not what you said I was going to be working on.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: Beyond that, though, we also need what we call a hiring profile.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: So when you do an analysis of the current sales that are coming through, the gifts across your current team gaps or what's causing unsustainable findings within your organization, you need to build a hiring profile, and so we go through an exercise with our clients and we do it inside of our organization as well where we articulate the non-negotiable skills and experience that are required, not just the JD.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: The JD is what folks do once they're here, but we need to make sure we get the right people inside our org.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that hiring profile then has us look at those non-negotiables and translate them and adjust our questions and our hiring tasks to make sure that we're really clear that who we're bringing in is prepared to embody our values and enact our work.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: What I'm finding as a real challenging trend in our nonprofit sector is that our hiring process is not sustainable.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: We like to think it is at the teaching.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: Well, and we've actually gotten that feedback.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: Start to finish.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: It's one month.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: What when we review the apps we do correct.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: We do one week where it is round one interviews.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: They are let know within 24, 36 hours if they're moving to the next round.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: That's next round is the following week.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: So when folks enter our process, we've asked them to hold times and then, if we can't decide because there are multiple tied candidates that are just phenomenal which happens right, that's a good problem to have.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: There's a third round where it just comes to me.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: But we are complete.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: We know who we are going to be making offers to within a month and I'm watching as organizations are spanning a six month term to hire Brutal, where there's seven rounds.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: I'm like pump the brakes y'all.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: That is a job when you're hiring process feels like a part time job to your candidates.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: You're out of balance and we are seeing incredible talent drop out of these inhumane long hiring processes and I'm inviting all of us, as executive directors, as hiring managers, to really radically consider how do we show up as human centered leaders when it comes to a sustainable hiring process.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: I'm also noticing you can see it in LinkedIn People are spilling the tea where I'm going through and I'm being asked to create an app, or I'm generating this huge learning task for this organization, and then they're keeping it and they're using it and it's free labor.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Be cautious about how you're enacting your values in the way that you are bringing folks in Lindsay.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: I love you so much.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad you are in this world, I am so glad that the grit and the moxie that is within you that I've seen within the first two minutes of meeting you, that it comes out in this expression of teaching and learning and, honestly, unlearning.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: And I want to thank you for being so generous with what you're finding and what's working and what's not working, because we're going to have to iterate this stuff, because it is so ingrained in our cultures, in these organizations, that in our systems it's in our systems, and so I just thank you for all of this.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: And you peaked our interest with something that you kind of dropped, and I don't know what this is and I can't wait to hear you explain this.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: But you talk about that.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: You all have this pre-HR intervention that you've seen in private, your intervention that you've seen in practice, and I want to know what that is and I want an example of it because I think it's going to blow our minds.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: I'm going to get there.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: Can I give a pro tip?
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: Before we do, though, please?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: You have a good pro tip.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: All right y'all.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm hearing it everywhere.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: It's gotten real sexy.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: Everyone is using the term bring your whole selves to work, because I am on a mission right now to say we need to be much more cautious about that.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: It's being weaponized, especially for folks on the margins and, in particular, what we're hearing is that a lot of black women are receiving that invitation and then are also receiving a write up or a memo or a formal conversation around professionalism, and professionalism is already racialized in this country and tends to have white supremacists undertones.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: To be clear, I don't want to mince my words on that.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: And so at the teaching well, we have coined a term professional authenticity and we spend quite a bit of time as a team articulating what that means at any given season in our organization.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: It means bringing your gifts, bringing authenticity, not feeling like you need to code switch, but also being mindful of team dynamics and professional expectations.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: So we actually talk about what does it mean and what is it not right being able to come in and there is such a thing as that's your personal business and TMI in a work meeting.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: There is such a thing right.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: And when it starts to create discomfort for others and they don't know how to address that, you're going to create tensions within the organization.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: And also, when we say we don't want a code switch, that doesn't mean we get to come through and use racial slurs, because that's what you do in your home, right, and so we need to actually tease out and this will look different for every organization, but I welcome you to consider, actually have a series of conversations with your teams what does professional authenticity mean?
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: What does that mean?
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: And break it down really go into examples, case studies, scenarios.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: We've spent quite a bit of time, as Selena May, one of our teammates, would say, quantifying what it means to self-manage, to self-express, but also to consider collective care and impact on our teammates, right?
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: So I just want to invite that concept in, and now to your pre-HR interventions here we go.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Let me just tell you that.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: So the amount of times we hear clients say, well, it's okay, we're going to bring in HR, and that as if that is like a sign of relief.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: First of all, shout out to all the HR professionals Because folks in HR are not well, they have not been well, their to-do lists are far too long, they are not here as fixers, the Olivia Popes of your organization.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: Hr is tired.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Send HR on a vacation.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: And let's also be really clear In the majority of cases that we're observing, when HR is brought in, the relationship is ruptured far beyond what a standard repair process will heal.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: In other words, once you've brought in HR, things are pretty bad.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: And if you're expecting that to be an intervention where folks are now collaborating with ease, with joy, with trust, you're mistaken.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: And so increasingly, the teaching well is creating programming that we call pre-HR interventions.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: We do restorative mediations, but we are a neutral.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: Third point that's bringing in somatic practices.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: That's bringing in human-centered communication protocols.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: We are doing healing circles, we're doing treaty work, because sometimes you're not going to heal and be friends and you don't have to be friends with everyone at work, but you do need to collaborate and you do need to have an understanding of how you'll partner.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: It might be exploring boundaries individually and then brokering those together, and so we really try and support our clients with holding those difficult conversations before the HR department is brought in, because what ensues is often disciplinary action and disempowerment and a reactivation of employment, trauma, and there may be identity markers that come into play, whether it be positionality, whether it be age, gender, race.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: That further muddies the water and impacts our ability to see clearly and move forward as a united front.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: One of my former bosses would say we don't have to agree, but we do have to align, and that's been a mantra I've really held as I've moved through my career.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: And so call us up y'all, don't just over-rely on HR.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: And let me just say this I mean we're blessed to live in this moment in time and this is a chance that we do not have to be surrounded by this echo chamber that we maybe used to be in these small circles.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Lindsay is sharing these kind of thoughts, these kind of challenging questions, these disrupting the status quo, centering humanity, available to all for free on LinkedIn.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: We can build our own personal board of directors by getting in community, whether you can sit across in the same space with Lindsay or just be able to follow her and wrestle with these topics, Because if we're gonna shift the sector, we're gonna have to each take responsibility for what we can control.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: And it comes down to these small human to human issues that are fixable, that aren't that actually difficult when we can take it a piece at a time, and so to do that in community, like I just feel grateful that you came back and just grateful that you are pushing the boundaries that are there because they need to be pushed, and so really appreciate your lens, as always, Lindsay.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean we are starting to wind down and I wanna give you space to share a story.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: You know we talk about moments of philanthropy that stay with us, that kind of rock us in our journeys.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: I wonder if you would have a story you wanna take us back to today from your journey.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was so glad to share last time and for y'all to follow up with Liz.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: Hey Liz, she's just incredible.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: I wanna, oh, yeah, hold on, let's take a minute.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Hey Liz, hi Liz.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Conty.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: We love the Margo Foundation.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: We wanna take a moment to just give thanks to many of our funders.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: We have so many incredible, loyal philanthropic partners, and one I'd love to amplify is Dana at the Reynon Foundation.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: She is a next level leader and we had crossed paths back when I was still in district work.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: She is a huge champion for the science of reading and literacy attainment and she is a rock star for Oakland, and you know I am here to serve across the nation but Oakland is my heart and so we've really linked up.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: She has since joined our board, which is phenomenal because she is such an activator.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: But two things that she's done that I think are really incredible and I wanna encourage board members everywhere and funders everywhere In this philanthropic landscape.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: You may not have the money to give at this moment, but what you have are your connections.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: Philanthropy talks, your network is strong.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: Take the time to write custom emails connecting organizations.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: When we dropped our annual report, within 24 hours Dana emailed and was like I am so inspired by your impact.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: I've got these six funders.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: Are you in communication with them?
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: And I was like only one.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: She was like give me a moment.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: And she wrote custom emails to each of those funders, connecting the teaching well with them and saying here's what I think would resonate most about their mission, their values, their vision and their impact.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: You've gotta talk to Lindsay and the way that that felt, don't get me wrong.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: She is blessing us also with funding, but she sees beyond the financial gift and is able to amplify the work, move the work forward and build this coalition around her grantees.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: That is game changing, really game changing.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: The other thing that I wanna name is that some folks are surprised that she's funding our work Because when you look at her portfolio, it's almost exclusively literacy organizations.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: And this is where we realized again this village, this collectivist approach to stabilizing a community that she is willing to fund the teaching well, because she will get a greater return of investment on the rest of her portfolio when she has retention focused initiatives.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: So she said Lindsay, I'm deeply connected to these schools.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: We are funding all of their early literacy work.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: Hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment are going into training these staff.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: But if they leave, kids aren't going to learn to read.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: We have to restart the initiative from a change management, from a training, from a coaching, even a hiring perspective.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: So we are now building this kind of movement together where she will fund the literacy work and she will fund the teaching well, and we can use her gifts to offset the cost of our programming, because when we retain the folks that we have invested in, then children are going to thrive, and this is how we do the coalition and the community village approach to funding.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: So I'm just so grateful to her.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: Shout out to Dana and really encouraging folks that think I don't know if that type of work is something I do.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: Does it enhance the rest of your portfolio?
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Does it get you closer to your funding vision and mission?
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: Link up times are tough but we can do a lot of great when we are in solidarity.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: I just thank you for these stories that matter.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: I thank you for sharing tools and I wonder, like, how are you going to tie a bow on this, lindsay?
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: What's your one good thing?
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Like pull something out.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: You're going to hit us with a phrase.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: I know it's going to go into my notes tab on my phone of things I'm going to blog about later, so hit me with it.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: This one good thing I understand For those of you I'm speaking to you directly who think I've got to leave my organization I'm not well here.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: There's too much to change and that might be your path but also cancel.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: Culture doesn't work in healthy teams.
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: The grass ain't always greener y'all, and healing is messy.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: So the moment you, your colleagues and the leadership in your organization choose each other and make time for healing, create the space in your agendas to have difficult conversations about contentious topics that you're facing, the org that you want, that you're looking to thrive in, you have to be a part of building it, and so I really am inviting us to reflect.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: Where is this magical space where we can work I mean outside of the teaching world, of course when is the magical space where everything is perfect?
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: We're looking for this instant gratification and we're exhausted, we're fatigued, we're burnt out and we have that employment trauma.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: But when you find a team that you feel values aligned, decide to choose each other and build the organization, you don't need to heal from.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: You might be where you're supposed to be.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: You just need to paradigm shift how y'all exist together.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: So, before you jump ship, really look and see?
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Can we tend this soil together?
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: Can we get this grass greener?
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: How do we plant the seeds to have a thriving garden?
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: And you can't replace great teammates, so be the leaders you need and consider staying.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Lindsey Fuller.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just truly want to create like a pause, to like sit with that.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: It literally makes me cry.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: It's so good and it's the world that I want us to live in.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: And I think thank you for holding space, for not saying give up and run, cut and run, because I do think there's an evaluation of so many different parts and it starts with you and it starts with asking brave questions.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: So, thank you, appreciate that so much.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: I mean you are a gift, my friend, to those right around you and your community and your team, but you're a gift to our entire sector and world and, like I've already mentioned, I mean being in community with Lindsey is for the taking.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: She is available and is a resource and just this heartbeat that you can connect to, and so I wanted you to share what's the best places for people to reach out, to get served and connect with the teaching.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Well, to understand how y'all could maybe partner or connect with organizations, and just your favorite place to hang out online.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: We got LinkedIn, but if there's others, let us know.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you'll also find the teaching well at our website, the teachingwellorg.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: You'll also see us on LinkedIn, facebook, instagram.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: We've got a podcast in the making, maybe coming.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: I know, I know, I know some tea.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: We'll be talking to y'all, okay so get excited about it.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: I have a lot of things to say and my team's like open your mouth and share, so you should.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: I might be coming up, but I definitely would say that if you are interested in partnering and partnering, we call really broad.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: We're not just talking about client work, we're talking about coalition building.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: You can also email us at info at the teachingwellorg and reach out.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: We're ready.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: You're worthy of feeling whole, every single one of you.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you for the warm mom hug that you just brought into this conversation.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the challenging moments and I appreciate the real talk.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Please go find Lindsay and thank you again for coming back.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: You know you're going to come back again and again and again.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: It's going to happen.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Appreciate you.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you Such honor.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Friends, and you probably hear it in our voices, but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: We'd love for you to come join our good community.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: It's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: Sign up today at weareforgoodcom.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: Backslash hello.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: And one more thing if you love what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating interview?
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: It means the world to us and your support helps more people find this community.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, friends.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Can't wait to our next conversation.