Gather At The Well: Leaving Well - Rest, Sabbaticals + Human-Centered Transitions - Lindsey Fuller and Naomi Hattaway

In this soul-nourishing conversation, Lindsey Fuller is joined by strategist, storyteller, and founder of the Leaving Well framework, Naomi Hattaway. Together, they unpack what it means to lead with intention, especially when it comes to rest, sabbaticals, and workplace transitions that truly center people.

From micro-sabbaticals to full-scale cultural shifts, Naomi shares wisdom for how organizations can operationalize rest as a core value—not just a perk. You'll hear powerful insights on how to care for your team through change, reimagine wellness in the workplace, and create brave space for transitions that honor the past and make room for what’s next.

This episode is a reminder that we don’t have to choose between humanity and productivity—we can hold both. And it starts with rest.

Affirmations: 

• You deserve a workplace that values your humanity as deeply as your contributions.
• Rest isn’t a luxury—it’s leadership.
• Every transition is an invitation to honor what was and imagine what’s possible.

Episode Highlights

• The Importance of Rest as Policy (02:40)
• Somatic #1 (02:56)
• Operationalizing Rest in Organizations (05:52)
• Deceleration and Onboarding (11:42)
• Embedding Wellness in Workplace Culture (14:28)
• Sabbaticals and Employee Retention (17:16)
• The Ripple Effect of Sabbaticals (20:19)
• Navigating Sabbaticals in Nonprofits (25:27)
• Advocating for Rest and Well-being (31:35)
• Somatic #2: Middle Path Meditation (34:42)
• The Impact of Transitions on Organizational Culture (37:17)

Resources Mentioned: 

• Individual Workplace Transition Nssessment (Naomi Hattaway)
• Organizational Workplace Transition Assessment (Naomi Hattaway)

Episode Shownotes: www.weareforgood.com/episode/leavingwellrestsabbaticalhumancenteredtransition

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Leaving Well Framework
• 5:32 Somatic Exercise: Clearing Circles
• 10:11 Operationalizing Rest Through Policy
• 17:52 Decision-Making and Wellness Integration
• 24:43 Sabbaticals for Employee Retention
• 34:40 Somatic Exercise: Middle Path Meditation
• 38:42 Thoughtful Transitions and Culture Shifts
• 48:47 Closing Thoughts and Critical Hope

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

I'm Lindsay, and it's time to gather at the well. We're on a mission to microdose wellness, create human-centered systems and retain our greatest asset our people. We believe it's time for podcasts that teach moving beyond thought leadership and towards change leadership. Join us and our friends at we Are For good as we model the way with concrete examples from the field and gain tangible tools, because it's possible to build adult work cultures. We don't need to heal from, let's get into it. Welcome welcome in fam. Today we are diving into what it truly means to leave. Well, I know you might be like wait, what happened? Lindsay, you love retention I do and also whether it's taking a sabbatical, navigating a job transition or rethinking how organizations support their people through change. This is the episode for you.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Our incredible guest, naomi Hadaway, is a strategist facilitator and founder of the Leaving Well Framework, a human-centered approach to workplace transitions that prioritizes equity, sustainability and care. So you already know we needed her here. With a background spanning community building, organizational development and global lived experience, naomi helps leaders design policies that don't just check a box but actually serve their people. So we rock. We rock tough. We met through the we Are For Good community and already we knew okay, we could get into some good trouble. We're excited to learn from her wisdom on rest sabbaticals and how organizations make transitions smoother for everyone involved. Naomi, welcome, we're so excited to have you here. Thank you, lindsay.

Speaker 2: 1:44

I'm excited also, and I think you know when I think about what we're going to talk about. The first thing that I'm hoping people will enter the space as you listen to it is to acknowledge that people leave yes, retention all day long and also people leave. It's a reality, and so how can we be better at it? I think the other thing that I want to make sure that people are ready to listen for and take away is that it's also not an individual responsibility. It's a systemic, organizational responsibility. So I'm excited to chat with you.

Speaker 1: 2:14

Folks are like oh, you retain eight out of 10 teachers, why not 100%? Because if you've ever been a school leader, if you've ever been a nonprofit leader, if you've ever led a team, retention of 100% of people isn't realistic. It's also maybe not what's desired. It may be time for someone to transition right Exactly.

Speaker 2: 2:37

And sometimes transitions happen too when things are out of our control. If you think of like a partner has a job change, or you need something different because of where your kids are at, or I mean there's a whole host of reasons where it's just environmental that you need to change and so 100% retention is actually not viable or healthy.

Speaker 1: 2:53

It's that, it's that, and so that's why we're bringing in some new ones for you all today. And to say that at the teaching, while we always honor the reality, the change is hard. It doesn't have to be traumatic. So if transition is inevitable, how do we bring in that human-centered lens? Before we jump in y'all, I'm going to offer just a quick somatic to get you oriented into this episode. You might this time want to grab something you can write with and on If you're driving. This is going to be a mental visualization exercise for you. It can be the back of a bill, a post-it note or your to-do list, and any writing utensil works, beginning just with a couple of breaths. You might adjust your spine to an alert but steady posture, breathing in three times just to clear any energy you want to move through in through the nose and out through the mouth, rotating your neck if that feels good, getting comfortable in your space.

Speaker 1: 4:06

Now for just a brief visual arts somatic. We're going to do what we call clearing circles. Your only job in this moment and for the next 30 to 60 seconds is simply to create circles. They can be large and looping, they can be tight and connected. However you express. Doodling is a way to calm the mind and steady the breath. You may be transitioning from a meeting or coming in with some jitters in anticipation of this juicy episode, but getting into your body will enable you to absorb and engage more effectively. Taking two more deep breaths here as you round out those final circles, audible exhales, yeah, bless the doodles. May our children make them and may our teachers not reprimand them. Them and may our teachers not reprimand them.

Speaker 1: 5:30

All right, let's jump on in. We kind of want to start here with this concept of rest as policy, not just a practice. So, naomi, I'd love to hear some of your thinking on small but impactful ways that organizations can operationalize rest. Right, we talk about operationalizing values at the teaching, while we also talk about microdosing wellness. This is kind of that fusion. What are small but impactful ways?

Speaker 2: 5:50

I love this and I really love how you all talk about operationalizing values, because so much of our work is kind of abstract and it's really helpful sometimes to just say like, concretely, here's something you can actually do. I also feel it's important to have something that is meaningful and manageable, because the worst thing is really deeply meaningful stuff that you actually can't implement. So my hope is to really give you some small, bite sized action steps. So one of the easiest things to do is have meeting free days or blocks of time in a day. I often find that organizations who simply state that it is okay and encouraged to have meeting free days or blocks of time. That is a huge step and it seems really, really simple. The thing that then helps you operationalize that is when you have your one-on-ones with your team or when you're having a team meeting. Be like hey, I noticed that not all of you have team, have meeting blocks. You know, is there something I can do to help you with your capacity? Is there something the other team members can help you with your capacity? But I really want to see everyone with at least one meeting block or some meeting free days. I think then, what you have to then do is also model that leadership and not actually work on the meeting free days like in the way that you would have meetings, don't schedule them. That's the worst thing you can do is say we have meeting free blocks and then schedule meetings of urgency. I think that there's also the beautiful work of being able to schedule emails is a beautiful thing. I often work on the weekends, you know. It's just part of the way that my work finds me, but I can schedule my emails so that I'm not sending emails outside of working hours.

Speaker 2: 7:27

I think the other thing that's interesting to talk about I don't know that I have an opinion on this, because it's just really up to organizations but talking about mandatory minimum PTO usage policies, a lot of organizations, especially with unlimited PTO, then don't have any conversations happening about people actually using it.

Speaker 2: 7:46

There are studies that show that people that have unlimited PTO use it less than people who have a use or lose policy, and so just think about what your organization's policies are around that and how can you bring that into something else we'll talk about, which is stay interviews. How can you bring in PTO use into your one-on-one conversations to really encourage that PTO use into your one-on-one conversations to really encourage that. I think that the other thing that I would share a little bit about is you know, in the nonprofit space social impact space, it's hard to budget things that are important, and so thinking about the concept of a REST budget alongside your project and your program budgets is really important. I think it's a beautiful thing to start talking to your funders as well about what does it look like for you to fund rest for our organization. It can be a scary conversation, but you won't get anywhere with trying to fund your rest policies, such as sabbaticals et cetera, if you aren't talking to your funders. And I think yeah, can I just-.

Speaker 1: 8:40

Yeah, before you do listen, I just want to double click on that. I mean all of what you've described we have, and it changed the game when, with our funders, we normalized three topics. The first is we have a reserve. It isn't a dirty secret, it's a part of our financial solvency and it is guaranteeing a higher return of investment on your part. You want me to have a reserve. You don't want to give a bunch of money and have us go under.

Speaker 1: 9:07

When we normalized TA support, technical assistance support we need to learn and grow. Sometimes we need to bring in a fractal expert help support that work. And the third is when we started to ask for additional wellness stipends on top of whatever the base grant was. We provide wellness stipends monthly for our team and we go on two retreats a year. That allows us to stay in the work, and so for us, and if it's helpful to any leaders or development folks out there, that small checklist is an expectation and is actually a measure of whether we've begun to achieve a trust-based, philanthropic relationship. If I can talk about those three things without feeling sweaty or anxious or like I'm doing something wrong as a leader in the social sector, I'm actually bulletproofing my org.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Well, and you're not only bulletproofing your org, but you're also, by having those conversations with funders, you are also laying the groundwork for other organizations that are going to come behind you, and so it's almost like an imperative responsibility that, if you are gutsy enough and you are grounded in these policies and wanting to talk to your funders about it, it ripples out, for you won't know the impact, but other orgs will also be able to take advantage of that, and people at foundations program officers they're just people too.

Speaker 2: 10:24

They don't know everything either you know, and so being able to bring that to them and say this is something we need to talk about. One of the things I'm doing with a lot of foundations that I have relationships with is, say, do you ask people on grant applications if they have a succession policy? A lot of grant applications have that as a checkbox. Do you have a succession plan in place? If you are asking that question, do you also fund the work to get them to the point where they have a succession plan, and are you funding sabbatical policy? So it's a great question to be having with funders for sure.

Speaker 1: 10:56

And you had one more that you wanted to yeah, the other one.

Speaker 2: 10:58

I want to just really encourage and this is not as easy to do but structure transition time between projects and programs. When we do not plan for the transition of a program either. It could just be that you finished a program and you need to do some evaluation, schedule time for your team to have a dang break, whether that's through like a formalized after action review or it's just rest time that goes a long ways. To say when we are done with this project or this program we are going to rest can look different, of course, for every organization, but that's probably my favorite.

Speaker 1: 11:35

I love that operationalize. And I think just even you know we actually we're at a step back right now as a leadership team and one of the things we do at the end of the spring is build the major events calendar for the next year and actually send calendar holds because so many of our teammates operate with scheduling links calendars that the external community can book into those days. So our well-intended design, if not operationalized, if not held through our operations calendar as an organization, makes it more challenging for people to take advantage of the structures that we've put in place. One thing we've been playing with also so if you're in a nonprofit or a school, even that is working on some innovations projects, for us that might look like creating a video for promotions or a collaborative exchange. That's kind of a big lift. We are booking three day chunks a couple of times across the year that we're holding as innovations days where we know we can book in with vendors but there's enough space around it for travel, for sustainability. That's something we're playing with now. I love that.

Speaker 2: 12:46

A lot and to that end, for folks that are listening, if you're a contractor or consultant. The other thing I've been playing with is building in rest days to my contracts. So if I'm traveling on behalf of a client, I cannot do my best work if I'm arriving the day of or even the night before, and so I'm building in and having that conversation with them of, like you will get the best of me if we also build in some rest time. So my travel looks different. I'm gone longer, but I also have a day on site where I'm not in front of the client, where I can explore their community, where I can go eat some of their good food and then really enter the space of facilitation, rested, so yeah, and then really enter the space of facilitation rested.

Speaker 1: 13:25

So yeah, well, that's pushing my thinking. I think I have mom goals, present and future, and that's a future mom goal is when my kids are older. I do want more spacious travel. If there's any of you with young kids right now I'm in that hustle of you know I will leave the day of after facilitating for eight hours or for 16 hours. I will leave that night to get home to my kids, because I count days gone as missed bedtimes and that's self-imposed right. My kids would be fine. I have an excellent partner on how we can increase rest or increase the spaciousness around our work, which I think we're alluding to this idea of moving beyond wellness as a perk and towards an embedded workplace value. I wonder if you have any thoughts about that.

Speaker 2: 14:15

I do. I think that the one thing that's always interesting to me is when I talk about things like rest and wellness and sabbaticals and succession plans, the thing that everyone tends to focus on is that feels really soft or that feels really woo and I'm like cool. Then let's talk about how data supports this. So if we are, for example, if we're going to have a sabbatical policy and we don't measure the effectiveness of it, it's good, it's great that people can go on sabbatical, but it's even better when a board, for example, or funders, for example, can understand We've had so X number of employees go on sabbatical over the last couple of years. Here's what we've noticed. Here's what we've measured. Here's what retention looks like before sabbatical and after sabbatical.

Speaker 2: 14:59

I think that there's also ways that you can look at having embedded workplace values around, things like accountability mechanisms for manager support of TeamRust Come on, I mean, if you've got more than one people manager, then you have to be intentional about making sure that every manager is on the same set of expectations and accountability. I think that one thing I think about a lot is how are we deciding? How do we make decisions at our organization? And I take a lot of my clients through a decision-making matrix process Us too.

Speaker 1: 15:33

Come on. Yeah, it's so good.

Speaker 2: 15:35

It's so good, and if we don't have that first, then none of the rest of this honestly matters, and so bringing in some accountability around decision-making even is incredible, and it's a really great way to move it from a perk to like an embedded thing we do. I think there's ways that you can incorporate rest into onboarding. Think about, as you're listening to this, the last one time or two times that you were onboarded to a new role. It is fast and furious and hectic and chaotic and you don't know what's going on. I really encourage folks to give people even every day so say it's day one of onboarding at a new job. Give them the afternoon and say just go absorb. Go to a park here's a couple of parks in the area or find a park in your area. If it's a remote team and we don't have anything on the agenda for you for the rest of the afternoon, we want you to just sit and absorb. That's a beautiful, beautiful way to incorporate wellness into your onboarding. There's also a beautiful idea that maybe after two weeks of onboarding, if they've met all the people, they've sat through all the trainings, they've gone through sexual harassment, all the stuff, give them a couple of days and then have them report back to you of, like, what's missing, what did we not hit? What do you have questions about?

Speaker 2: 16:43

You have to have time to reflect. It's like your innovation days. You have to have time to be able to think through those things, and you've talked about this before, I think on a podcast episode recently. We have to also move from bereavement policies being very, very limited policies around childcare policies, around parental leave. It needs to include IVF and adoption and our bereavement policies need to include anyone that you love instead of just immediate family. Three days also, I don't know, I mean that is not a sufficient time for me to even think about getting to and from a service in memory of someone who's passed away, let alone have any grieving time. So I think we also, you know, like to think yeah, we've got a policy for that, but is it what it should be and how can we expand that to bring truly wellness in for our people? I've got more, but I'll stop there.

Speaker 1: 17:35

But is it what it should be? That's what I'm saying, no-transcript. So I want to credit folks that are working to externalize their values and create policies and to encourage progress, monitoring and revisions and deepening. Especially as you have more abundant moments, when you have a new funder come in, when you have general operating dollars, what percentage of that needs to actually be investing back in your team?

Speaker 1: 18:18

I love what you're sharing and I think it excites me that there are others out in the field pushing this hard for people to really think about how we want to exist with work, and I really want to double click on this concept of deceleration into work for us onboarding and I remember Becky's reaction when I first shared, but I was like, yeah, when we onboard folks, their first week of work is at retreat and their first day of work they're given a massage. She was like what why? Because for us, right, being a team of 100% educators, it typically means someone's coming out of the classroom, someone's coming out of an administrative role, someone's coming out of a district role, where you literally are rewarded for abandoning self.

Speaker 1: 19:03

Yeah yeah, it is a service driven field. Educators are not always well, and so the pressure to perform and to run in and hit the ground with just like an acceleration energy is counterintuitive for us, because we're asking them to then turn around pretty quickly soon-ish and be able to hold space for others who are in their wounds.

Speaker 2: 19:25

Yeah, Well, and I think too about normalizing the discussion of how we manage our energy and our capacity has to be a full team conversation. We can't just have it at the quote unquote executive leadership level. I often recommend when I serve as an interim CEO or an executive director, when we do team meetings, we also have some kind of a thread, whether it's in a project management system or an email thread what is your current capacity, what's your temperature, where are you at and where can we help you? We don't talk about that often enough. We talk about why did the project fail or why are you beyond deadline or why are you over budget. We don't stop to go one layer deeper and say where's your capacity and your energy and how can we be helpful. Those team temp threads or check-ins end up being so freaking insightful because someone else likely has the energy or the capacity or the skillset to fill the gap, but we're not opening up the conversation to talk about it.

Speaker 2: 20:23

And there's so much shame that we have in the workplace about not being able to quote unquote do our job or be productive enough. I'm recently navigating an Alzheimer's diagnosis for my mom. Me being able to share that with the people that I'm working with helps them understand. I may be really really tired today because I spent a lot of time yesterday navigating this new reality for my mom. It allows people to then step in and step up. If I was keeping that to myself or not sharing what my energy and capacity levels are, no one's going to know. They're just going to think I'm slacking. And so there's ways that we can also build time together if we are willing to talk about it and normalize it a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 21:01

Yeah, lifting the veil on that is so powerful and yeah, thank you for sharing with us vulnerably and I feel that this invitation to others to lean in. Leaders often have a death grip on some of the responsibilities, especially during calm times. I just, I have to celebrate. My team kind of hit a new milestone. We realized three years ago that during the summer things really lighten for our program team. Right, understandably, folks are on break for schools and nonprofits. Things are a little different too, and the team actually named. We're concerned that the directors.

Speaker 1: 21:43

it feels like leadership it doesn't slow down For y'all, it actually ramps up even more. But the rest of us are chilling. So we've been on this multi-year exploration of what does it mean to visibilize org tasks that don't necessarily have to be done by leadership but that is always absorbed by leadership, or are season specific for operations teams or are a big push window, like around november, uh and december for development teammates. If you can visibilize the season for any given subset of your org and you can ask for help, you'll be shocked by what occurs. We bring forward this collective care list that's what we call it, a collective care list and we thought it was going to be like an hour, hour and a half meeting. Within 10 minutes every task had multiple names from the team and then folks went back in and kind of decided how many people are actually needed? Are we doing redundant work here? Every single task. And then our ops leader was like I'm making it a spreadsheet that's color coded and all of us on the director's team were like whoa.

Speaker 1: 22:50

And then to hear our team say I actually feel really good that we didn't even flinch Because we understand our capacity We've studied our energy stewardship really closely in this team and because we know that a balance of self and collective care is how we achieve collective liberation.

Speaker 1: 23:06

And I just sat back like I can go out, which is where I want to transition. Next, on Monday, I begin a micro sabbatical Bless the Kenneth Rainin Foundation in Oakland who is funding this experience a rest and care grant and I want to talk about this. I know this is one of the things that we geeked out on when we first connected, but how do you see sabbaticals as supporting employee retention and organizational resilience? Because it's not just about the individual Sabbaticals help everyone. How do you see that?

Speaker 2: 23:39

Yeah, this could be a topic. I mean, I love talking about this topic and I love when foundations, funders and organizational leaders are ready to talk about this in a serious way. Sabbaticals, to me, are one of the most beautiful opportunities to help break burnout cycles before they become resignation triggers.

Speaker 1: 23:59

That's a whole testimony. That's a whole testimony already.

Speaker 2: 24:05

I think that that goes back to how do we look at metrics and data to help us inform wellness practices? You know exit interviews are. I firmly believe that exit interviews are a litigation protection strategy for most organizations. They're doing an exit interview because they want to hear if there's something that you've got in your pocket that might harm the organization later. They're not for the person exiting. But if we looked at exit interview data, I firmly believe that resignation triggers are connected solely to burnout cycles and sabbaticals can help interrupt that.

Speaker 2: 24:41

I think that the thing when I think about employee retention, I think what's beautiful about sabbaticals that impact the whole org and not just the individual is that it builds the resilience through cross-training, organizational capacity. Often I don't know very many orgs that bring in an interim for a sabbatical it's usually other people in the organization that are filling those gaps. So that's beautiful leadership transfer, it's knowledge transfer, the cross-training as I mentioned. There's also a super beautiful opportunity to then really innovate around. What does reentry look like after sabbatical? How can you then pivot so that the team who just supported the sabbatical could also have some rest? So there's just some really beautiful things.

Speaker 2: 25:21

It also, I think, lends itself well to creating some succession planning opportunities. When you give someone an opportunity to step in to cover sabbatical, you're also letting them toy, play with, experiment with what does it look like if I'm in this role? They then will go back and say I've either learned a lot or I would really love that role in the future, which then is a natural fit to then. For then for you example, lindsay to be able to say, hmm, what's my succession plan here? Like, is that person who just covered, amazingly, for my sabbatical the right fit or is it not the right fit?

Speaker 2: 25:53

So I mean, I have a whole another set of topics that we won't get into around role versus name for succession planning, but I think sabbaticals are incredible. I also think that it's important for sabbaticals to be organizational wide and not just the hierarchical top of an org chart. That takes some work. I think that you have to have some really thoughtful work around your policies. The other thing that I think is important is to know how to communicate this to your board. A lot of times, board members are, you know, from the generation of workers where sabbaticals are not a thing, and so knowing how to talk about it and why it matters is also a really key, important process.

Speaker 1: 26:33

Yeah, I love that. We've been thinking a lot about, I mean, having a funder sponsor. This makes things really different, I think, with the board right, because they're like, wow, great, you're going. We have been building towards a sabbatical and very transparently right and I run my mouth about this all the time I had a set of goals around increasing well-being, benefits and experiences, the conditions around the team and the care policies around the team, and then building a reserve and then designing a sabbatical model, and I was very clear when I came in that that was the order that we would go in, because I'm so committed to not putting things in place that we can't sustain.

Speaker 1: 27:14

I don't think that's trauma-informed. So I'll just say that when I got here, the teaching well already had at the three-year mark, you get an extra week like you get an extra week retreat. Year mark, you get an extra week like you get a a an extra week retreat. Um, so now what we're playing with as a team is this idea of okay, at three years, you get a week. At five years, you get a month. I believe in micro sabbaticals. Uh, at seven years, you get two weeks. At 10 years, you get two months. I mean what I'm playing with here is this idea of how do we do realistic, financially viable sabbaticals and also in a nonprofit where we provide a ton of services right? 50% of our revenue is from earned revenue it's direct services services.

Speaker 1: 28:05

So thinking also about continuity of care and client support is something we have to manage. We're also a growing team, and so, for nonprofits that are larger in team scale, how do you do this in a sustainable way? So some folks are kind of scoffing at me as I talk about micro sabbaticals, but I've actually received what I perceive as quite a bit of judgment and expertise projection from folks who are like, oh, it's got to be six months or else and this is what you need to do Like, are you going to another country without your kids? That's a sabbatical. I'm like whoa.

Speaker 1: 28:30

A sabbatical is a deeply personal opportunity to reevaluate your relationship, to work to self, to the family system, if you're in one right, and micro sabbaticals to me are a pressure valve release and it doesn't have to be six to 12 months for it to be really valuable. And I'd rather make sure that everyone on my team, regardless of role, positional authority, hierarchy, can access this sustainably and consistently than two people get six months every seven years. And maybe I'm wrong. I'm curious what you think. I think we all have to make meaning of this on our own. That's just where we are so far as a team.

Speaker 2: 29:10

Yeah, I agree with you on all of that. I think that there becomes the all or nothing of like six months or else, or only for certain levels of leadership, kind of defeats the purpose. I know a lot of people who really find value in a learning-based sabbatical where they're going to do something that is either tied to their work or their own professional development, and so a lot of people have judgment about that too. Well, this needs to be beach time, mai Tais in hand and massages. Well, if someone wants to go on a learning experience or a lot of times, what I'm seeing really cool things happen is where vision and values aligned entities swap people. So it's almost like an embedded work study, if you will, and they are calling that a sabbatical where you have a break from your work but you're learning about something else. That's another really beautiful way. If you have your strap for resources is, consider that as an opportunity for folks. If you cannot pay someone to be out and away from work, do a swap with an aligned organization.

Speaker 2: 30:14

I think the other thing that I think about is you know you're asking someone to cover for sabbaticals, and so that's. The other big push of this is like how do we make sure that then that person, so we're not just trickling down, so that the wellness isn't just for one person, that it's for everyone. And so I'm a big believer in also talking about the re-entry and how to make that both good for you. You know in your example, lindsay, when you come back from your two months what is your re-entry going to look like, and then how does rest look for the person who's just been covering for you.

Speaker 2: 30:48

So yeah, and I think for small teams, for resource strapped teams, for direct service teams, frontline outreach workers, you have to do shorter sabbaticals or some scaled approaches to it. I also think that you can work if someone's listening and you're like I don't even have the ability to give someone two weeks, a Friday tacked on or a Thursday tacked on to a long weekend. Some people really thrive off of having a middle of the week. You know you're not reporting for duty today. There's ways that you can be creative.

Speaker 1: 31:16

It doesn't have to be a big sabbatical, that's right and I think what we're really focused on is like Right, and I think what we're really focused on is like when the millions come, we can always adjust the policy, yeah, yeah, but right now, where we are financially, if I can grandfather, grandmother, folks in who have been here for five plus years this coming June, which we're planning to do and say, be out for a month, we've got this, and four of them are out, be out for a month, we've got this and four of them are out, we can weather that storm as an org and the investment in our team always pays off, you know.

Speaker 1: 31:51

So I love, I love just how you're thinking about this and I wonder, I wonder about advocacy. I do want to just ask for a moment, because one thing that we're noticing, right, there's this classic us versus them, like a challenge or tension between teachers and administrators often, or school site folks and district leaders, or nonprofit staff and executive leadership. Right, we want to come with passion for rest, without a fire in our belly that is ostracizing the folks that are trying to pull it off. Right, there's, sometimes folks can't see what's on the other side of a leadership decision or the intricacies of policy and finances. So how do folks advocate in ways that are connective. Do you have any advice for?

Speaker 2: 32:39

the listener.

Speaker 1: 32:40

that's like I want to go to my leader or I want to go to my board and advocate for this, and I don't want to burn the bridge because we don't want rest to be the contentious thing.

Speaker 2: 32:49

Yeah, I think the best thing that I would say to that is use the example of someone who is trusted and respected to say it's. You're basically saying it's not just me, I'm not just this person who is really pushing on rest, because oftentimes for board members who might not be already bought in, they think of that as like a lack of productivity. They equate if we're pushing for rest, that must mean that they're not a productive member of this team. So if you can find an example of a similar organization, or maybe if you're going to a funder, someone else that they fund who has a sabbatical policy, and just say we want this and we also know that they have a proven way, that they're experimenting with it and we'd like to learn from them and borrow from their example. Come on pilot. Yeah, like.

Speaker 2: 33:33

The other thing you can do is talk about the kind of do the opposition research side of things, what happens when organizations don't prioritize sabbatical policy. So I think going in with someone else's story to bolster your request always is helpful so it's not just pinned on you as being kind of the troublemaker or the person who wants something extraordinary. And I really would just reiterate again do partnership models with other organizations for reciprocal coverage. Maybe there's a way that you can even share a program you know in the future. If you know that you have some people that need to be on sabbatical or need some rest, how can you partner with others? The other thing that you can also do is look for stipends, grant opportunities that might supplement. So maybe it's partially paid and borne by the organization and maybe part of it is hobbling together of some different resources and stipends. That can also help.

Speaker 1: 34:26

Yes, I love all the strategy. Yeah, I got to come. Have you come back to another episode later? Because the unlimited PTO we dropped into a whole channel around that and some of the wild ruptures that we are supporting to mend in our client work for organizations that have unlimited PTO and some of the trends we're seeing. So let's just leave that on the shelf.

Speaker 2: 34:48

It sounds good in practice. It sounds good in theory and on paper, and then folks don't actually know how to navigate through it. That's right.

Speaker 1: 34:55

Well, so much of what we've been discussing is kind of this idea of prioritizing rest, but also that there's typically a middle path. It's not all or nothing. So I'd love to just offer a quick somatic to break things up, a little middle path meditation, if you will, before we go into kind of our final segment here. Just inviting everyone who's listening to get comfortable in your seat. Or, if you're driving, feel free to stare off to the horizon. You might close your eyes or lower your gaze. Driving, feel free to stare off to the horizon. You might close your eyes or lower your gaze if that's accessible to you, even standing at a window, if you'd like the visualization to be more realistic, just taking in two deep breaths here. I love this visualization exercise for a couple of reasons. First, I want you to imagine a mountain the wide base providing stability, providing security, an expansive, expansive structure, just rooted and sturdy.

Speaker 1: 36:11

What we often find in the everyday experiences in employment is that folks are climbing either side of the mountain, we are values aligned, working to get to the top, but we're taking these different approaches and there's this polarization that pulls us apart. So I want you to actually visualize a set of stairs or an escalator if you're feeling like, girl bye, I'm not climbing the mountain Something, a path that's moving up the middle and even watching figures. You don't have to assign faces or names to your teammates, but watching them come from the sides of the mountains and progressing towards the center, linking up in arms, helping each other carry the heavy backpacks up this mountain, turning around to support one another and just traversing this incredible structure. There is going to be compromise, but there is typically a middle path through and, as I always say, we can do hard things when we choose each other. So, as you take two more deep breaths and come back to the space, I want us to kind of center that concept.

Speaker 1: 37:32

How do we bring intention and care to transitions? This is like a sensitive topic, right, but how do thoughtful transition policies impact our long-term organizational sustainability? Or how do we not completely wreck our organizational team culture when someone leaves and people want the tea but there's HR constraints on what can be shared? What do you think about when you think about those types of transitions?

Speaker 2: 38:02

Well, I think we don't have enough time for this conversation because it's it's. It goes so deep. I think that, um, one thing I'll point out is that culture shifts. Cult you know you just mentioned, like how do we not wreck the teen culture? When someone leaves, it will wreck because someone leaves. And so culture is a constantly moving thing, it's a constantly shifting thing, it's very responsive to the environment and so as someone leaves, that person's taking a piece of what they were contributing to the culture. It could be good, it could be bad, it could be neutral. It's also about how do you bring people in, letting them buy into what the culture is. You have to be very transparent about what your culture is so that you can then take your culture and shift it as it goes and then shift it again. I think a lot about the Plinko board game. Do you remember that from the Price is Right and that little thing like it can go all the way to the right, it can go all the way to the left. Sometimes it goes kind of just right down the middle when that disc is released, and I think about that a lot.

Speaker 2: 38:59

With culture, like it does shift and it pivots. It is so important. Like we talked about the top of this, call this talk. People leave and that's a reality. Change also is a reality. What we do with it is our transition experience. I think it's really important that we honor both the emotional journey of transitions as well as the procedural requirements. Yes, you have an off-boarding checklist. Yeah, you got to get the laptop back. Folks want to have an exit interview. How are we also protecting the relationships of the stayers, the people that are left behind? The thing about thoughtful transition policies is that it really impacts your reputation. So if you do transitions well, that will ripple out for the long run, even if someone's leaving under not great circumstances. You will have improved recruitment. I know that sounds weird to think about, but the better you are at saying goodbye is the better you are at onboarding, and it's the better you are at managing your reputation, which is kind of wild. There's also some beautiful things that you can do through talking about knowledge preservation. It helps reduce trauma responses among the people that stay. And then how you do transitions and how you do goodbyes is also a really good reinforcement of your org's values.

Speaker 2: 40:16

Change resilience is a big big thing. I have an assessment and I'll share the link with you. You can take it as an individual and understand what your relationship is to change and transition, and you can take it as an organization. I love when organizations take this because then they can map their team across the grid, then they know who is change resistant and where are they going to need support from the people that are like launching themselves into change. The people that launch themselves into change need the tenders and the people that are like but what are we documenting? What are we holding? What are we remembering? So it's a beautiful way to just kind of understand where's our team, where are our team dynamics and what do we need to be acknowledging while we have this transition.

Speaker 2: 40:56

The other thing I'll say is that I am a firm believer in the power and the value of stay interviews instead of just exit interviews. I love when an organization will have a stay interview and say bring your resume, let's make sure you update your resume with the project that you just kicked ass on. Let's make sure that I understand from you If you're thinking about leaving, what are you hoping for in the next job and is there anything about that that we could implement for you here? It does not, people listening are going to be like that's going to make people leave. If you start talking about stay interviews and talk about it, well, they're already thinking about leaving, like 74% of people are thinking about another job. It only serves the organization and the individuals. When you, when you have regular and I'm thinking like every other month, twice a year if you can only manage that have intentional stay interview conversations with your teams, that's all over the place, lindsay.

Speaker 1: 41:45

But no, I love it. We have a blog on stay conversations and the way that we encourage kind of a somatic based connection point.

Speaker 1: 41:54

And I'll say one of our teammates was like it's, I don't know that I will, but just the fact that I've heard a leader say we want you to stay, and just the fact that we've heard a leader say like I could retire from here, right, like that actually brings me peace and makes me want to invest even further.

Speaker 1: 42:11

We talk a lot about human-centered off-ramps with our clients and that there's a difference between folks who are being escorted out and folks who are naturally complete and there are some similarities in those two experiences. For example, we always have a meeting around the narrative arc because we're going to have to talk about this. So actually, before we bring this to the whole team, before this is made public, what in the narrative arc feels supportive, feels safe, feels secure, feels accurate and honest, from both the organizational lens and the person transitioning? We always have that conversation. We will script it out if we have to. These are approved comms and I think that some people hear that and they're like whoa, that's kind of intense. But actually we've found, and we've gotten feedback from folks who transition outside of our org, that it feels really good to know how they'll be talked about, especially if they had performance. Concerns 100%.

Speaker 2: 43:11

The other thing about that that kind of connects in a little way is people. When I talk with folks who are on their way out, their biggest concern is their legacy, their reputation. Did I do at this job what I thought I was going to do? Did I do the community proud? And I always remind people that legacy an individual burden to bear it's really on the organization to look at it and say how have we handled our transitions in the past and how can we make those easier?

Speaker 2: 43:52

A lot of times people throw a goodbye party. Not everyone wants a party. Some people might just want some sticky notes on their desk or their, you know, digital sticky notes of like what was the most meaningful thing that we worked together on? You know, I always also recommend send your people a gift card on their last day or the day before their last day and just say dinner's on us. We know you've got a lot going on. I think it's also beautiful when organizations can create an ad hoc transition committee, do it once a year and just bring a couple people together to talk about how have we done transitions in the past, what should we do better? What has it felt like when people have left. What has it felt like when you came on and how did we talk about transitions along the way? So there's just a lot of things I think that you can do, but it really starts with communicating and transparency and naming the thing and saying people leave and what can we do about it to be better? People leave.

Speaker 1: 44:44

What can we do about it? To be better, people leave. What can we do about it? And also, just my plug for leaders is if you know someone's struggling, even if they had performance concerns, they dropped the ball, they chipped at your reputation, that initiative crumbled or a relationship was severed with a client right, whatever the conditions may be. If you know that person is struggling and you chose them and you cared for them, act accordingly in the transition plan. Right, if you can cover COBRA for three to six months so that they still have their mental health therapy, if they're having a mental health break, that's not a huge cost to incur.

Speaker 1: 45:22

And I just I really deeply believe and Marisol and I share this but we treat people with dignity until the very end and that can be a tough pill to swallow and for some of you listening, you're like when I fire someone, they're out. It is a reflection of you just as much as it is a reflection of their performance, how they transition out. Help people to leave without venom in their mouth and do the right thing. You know through transitions. So we could obviously we could go so deep on this, but it sounds like you're you're talking about. There's this assessment. Is there any other homework? You know this, the podcast that teaches. Is there any other homework that you're in that you want to bring forward to the audience if they're interested in deepening around this topic?

Speaker 2: 46:06

Yeah, I think one thing I would ask folks that are listening to do is look at how you evaluate performance and look for the ways that you can account for sustainability and capacity in the way that you evaluate performance. I think that there is also some easy homework around just looking at what your meeting policies are and the assumption of constant availability. If you don't have meeting policies, put some meeting policies down on paper. I think the other thing is to make sure that your recognition systems in work don't reward unhealthy work patterns A lot. I know that's a big one.

Speaker 1: 46:40

That's a whole other episode too.

Speaker 2: 46:41

Because we want to do recognition right, we think we're doing the right thing, like unlimited PTO and then we don't actually look at the outcome of it and often those really recognition systems are almost always rewarding unhealthy work patterns. So that would be my recommendations for homework.

Speaker 1: 46:58

All right, y'all. Well, evidently you need to come to this master class with Naomi, but, naomi, we also typically offer an affirmation. Is there one or some that you want to bring forward to the?

Speaker 2: 47:09

community. I've got a couple, so the first one is that you deserve a workplace that values your humanity as much as your productivity. The other one is that rest is not a reward for exhaustion. It's a prerequisite for your excellence.

Speaker 1: 47:25

Hello, I'm about to flip this table get me revved up.

Speaker 2: 47:29

And then the last one is that meaningful transitions truly honor what was, while simultaneously creating space for what will be.

Speaker 1: 47:39

That's beautiful. So what's your critical hope? Wrap it up for us.

Speaker 2: 47:43

My critical hope is that I mean, I know this is happening. I'm seeing so much more conversation happening about this topic. So many more people are willing to talk about succession planning. So many people are like I want a sabbatical policy. How do I do it? I think that those starts of those conversations, then, are going to birth and breed emerging practices that truly are going to treat transaction, or emerging practices that truly are going to treat transactions or treat transitions as really sacred organizational opportunities. So my hope is that we are going to continue to expand language and frameworks and conversations we have to be talking to each other about this. That will start to really help us model truly sustainable work practices around leading and transitions.

Speaker 1: 48:29

I love that. I'm so grateful that you came and that you joined us. Your brilliance is helpful. We love it. How can listeners follow your work? Where do they?

Speaker 2: 48:33

find you. So my website is NaomiHadawaycom. I post the most on LinkedIn and you can find the personal individual assessment at NaomiHadawaycom forward slash quiz and if you want to take the organizational assessment for your team, that is NaomiHadawaycom. Forward slash assessment.

Speaker 1: 48:54

There we go. All right, good people. Well, my critical hope is that we find ways to navigate uncertainty and change in human-centered ways. There is a middle path. Thank you for coming to Gather at the Well. We're so excited to be deepening and learning around sensitive topics that actually fortify our organizational cultures and our workplace well-being, so we look forward to being with you again soon. Have a blessed day, all right y'all. Thanks for coming to play at Gather at the Well, the podcast that teaches. If you like this conversation, come visit us online at theteachingwellorg and hit us up on our socials. Remember to visit the podcast page to download a couple of useful tools to get your life and heal up your work.