Welcome to this special summer series of the Campfire Circle podcast where we’re bringing back mini-moments from past episodes that are just as relevant today – if not more so. 

This episode is especially for you if you’re a nonprofit leader or part of a social impact executive team. We’re diving into something close to my heart—how our personal experiences shape our work in the nonprofit world. 

This episode is from a longer conversation with my friend Aila Malik, a lawyer by schooling and nonprofit executive by trade. She is the founder of Venture Leadership Consulting, a management consulting firm that partners with nonprofits to close systemic gaps of inequity. 

Many of us got into change work because of something in our past—maybe it was a personal struggle with addiction, mental health issues, or growing up in a challenging environment. These experiences often drive our passion for making a difference, but they also bring their own set of challenges as we figure out how to grow and evolve our workforces, themselves. After all, our own interpersonal experiences ripple out and create the culture of our organization. 

We’re talking about the “savior complex” that many of us in the nonprofit sector struggle with. It’s that feeling of needing to do it all, to fix everything, often at the expense of our own well-being. This mindset can lead to burnout, and it’s something we need to address head-on as we shape change as thought leaders. Enjoy the episode. 

How individual struggles and experiences affect change in social impact organizations

Tania:

You do systemic change and change management work with nonprofits. That is an experience you and I share, which is mental health, addiction, substance use disorder, and growing up as a parentified child. (Note: for more on mental health and social impact work, check out “Using Narrative Therapy to Reframe Imposter Syndrome.”) 

I think many of us who chose social impact and nonprofit work had something happen to us either in our childhood or lineage that caused us to have a savior or martyrdom energy. When we go into the workplace, we bring those patterns with us. Do you also see this happening in the nonprofit industry?

Aila:

Yes, and I don’t think this is limited to the nonprofit industry, but it’s more prevalent because we work with humans. We learn about ourselves in community with others. We don’t learn about ourselves sitting in a box, we learn through interactions with others. Whatever inner work we have not paid attention to will show up in our work and community. Our inner work that is incomplete will present itself for healing. When we feel like we have worked on it, it will show up again to present itself for mastery. 

Transforming our relationship with conflict to create positive organizational change

Aila: 

In the nonprofit community, we work with the community, staff, and a board team. Our inner work presents itself in various forms repeatedly. Many of us in social impact work also have a difficult and complicated relationship with conflict. It is the through thread I see in most difficult leadership structures. 

Leaders are typically uncomfortable with conflict. They have not yet transformed conflict into a way to deepen relationships. Because of their childhood experiences, they view conflict as destructive, irreparable, or painful. People railroad through decisions or meetings, or they become avoidant. 

I think the savior complex of our social impact work is starting to wear off. Many executives and founders have realized nobody wants their jobs because they sacrificed their health and well-being for them. Nobody is standing in line for the baton. The new question is, how do we do social impact work and not burn out? How do we do this and lean in? How do we bring our whole selves to work around conflict, engagement, and codependency, and check our ego constantly? 

A framework for creating change in social impact organizations

Tania: 

Yes, all of these stories are popping up in my brain of dear friends who still work in the nonprofit field, as well as my personal experiences. There are many stories where it’s time to leave, you’re exhausted, and then somebody needs something. If they don’t get it, something bad will happen to a human. So, of course, you stay. But if you don’t set up the structures and systems for a healthy culture to prevent burnout, it’s just going to continue. 

One of your roles in conflicted organizations is serving as an interim executive. Do you have a framework or model for dealing with situations where change is needed? 

Aila: 

Yes, we go into periods of inflection for change. It could be scale and growth, doubling down on impact, or a full-on turnaround. The framework we use, to my knowledge, has not been adapted for organizational development, but I use it all the time. We use the Miller and Rollnick framework around substance addiction. 

In the 1980s and 1990s, William Miller and Stephen Rollnick looked at how we can get substance-addicted individuals to change their habits and behavior. They came up with motivational interviewing, which is still widely practiced by therapists today. 

Organizations are made from people. At the core, changing an organization is behavioral change. We use the Miller and Rollnick framework to understand what stage of change an organization is in and what stage of change the board is showing up as—the executive bench, senior leadership teams, down to the staff. 

Assessment and Alignment: The first steps to create change in social impact organizations

Aila: 

First, we assess where people are at and find ways to align by lifting up. The motivational interviewing framework says that with folks who are pre-contemplative, you start with the lowest denominator of the organization or group. 

Pre-contemplation is the lowest denominator, which means people don’t believe there is a problem to change. They might believe everything else is the problem, but not them. They might believe they’re a victim of everybody else’s problems. That type of mentality is what we call pre-contemplative. 

Secondly, the strategy for the intervention to move that person or behavior is with high information and low intrusion. Low intrusion means communicating we’re not here to take your job. We create safety so people don’t feel intruded upon. We enter with humility, listening, and authentic relationship. 

Thirdly, high information shows the team what a clear role for a case manager looks like. It shows what high-performing sexual trafficking organizations look like, or what high-performing carceral justice organizations look like. It is sharing information people can step into and see a discrepancy between where they are today and what they could be. When they start to contemplate that, you have an invitation to then drive change in the organization. 

Tania: 

I’m familiar with the stages of change model and watching folks move from pre-contemplation to action, willpower, and maintenance. I come from the behavioral healthcare field, and that is what we used to bring someone from the depths of despair to recovery. The fact that you use this framework for organizations is brilliant. At my old organization, we had a beautiful butterfly picture on the wall with the quote, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” When you are in pre-contemplation, it can feel like the end of the world, like everything is falling apart in your organization. But transformation is on the other side, waiting and available. I know you’ve seen that time and time again. 

Motivational interviewing to create change in social impact organizations

Aila: 

What I think is beautiful about a change champion, or someone who’s guiding change, is they can see how organizations have made it on the other side. They can storytell backward and say, this can be you, too. You get to co-create the next chapter. You say, let’s honor however we got to this moment because it is all in service of this opportunity. How can we rally together for the next phase? 

Motivational interviewing involves working through the stages of change. If you research Prochaska’s Stages of Change, which came out in the 1970s well before Miller and Rollnick, you can see the stage you just mentioned. 

I came from a case management practice working with juvenile justice young people. That framework was something I started using in my practice and teaching staff. I started asking, how do we do this in a bigger sandbox? How do we do this with systems and organizations? It works. There’s not a rote way, but the framework, the concept, and how you think about architecting change work in all different sandboxes. 

The recovery phase of change in social impact organizations

Tania: 

What’s beautiful about that is, as you support the organization in recovering from dysfunctional behaviors and systems, people within the organization also heal themselves. They either heal or leave because once they’re in a healthy new family or system, there’s no space for them anymore unless they also do the work. 

Aila: 

Clarity forces action. When we go in, we have to normalize that. Not everybody is interested in doing that work, and that is okay. It’s not a judgment that you’re not enough. Wherever you are, you are in control of what strategy and effort you need to deploy in any domain of your life. If you no longer align because the organization has clarity, we need to align people to their highest and best use and prepare for the journey this mission needs. 

Serving the ultimate mission of social impact organizational change

Aila: 

What is central to our work and to any change initiative is maintaining our intention as the true north. This is what grounds the authenticity of the alignment and prevents people from feeling like the real intention is moving people in or out. It’s about asking what is going to serve the mission. We can have the best relationships with the person who brought us in, but in the face of the mission, everybody is dispensable. That includes the boss who brought us in, the CEO, and the board chair – nobody is above the mission. That’s where our loyalty is. That helps us stay very grounded and intentional and earn the trust of the staff and the leadership to let us do what we need to do.

Resources from this episode:

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Aila and Tania mention a couple of models and frameworks to help them guide and drive change. The first is William Miller and Stephen Rollnick’s Motivational Interviewing, which you can read more about here. The second is Prochaska’s Stages of Change Model and you can find more information about it here.

Other Campfire Circle podcast episodes I recommend:

Episode 12: How Marketing can Change the World with Lola Bakare

Episode 17: Practicing Inclusion on Purpose with Ruchika Tulshyan

Episode 34: Be a Change Agent – from the We Are For Good Podcast

Connect with Aila Malik: 

LinkedIn: Aila Malik

Instagram: @ailamalikauthor

Company Website: ventureleader.org

Personal Website: ailamalik.com 

Connect with Tania Bhattacharyya:

LinkedIn: Tania Bhattacharyya

Website: lumosmarketing.co