EPISODE 54: LEADING WITH JOY
Mary Morten: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of “Gathering Ground.” I’m Mary Morten. And I’m wondering if you have ever thought about leadership as joyful. Akaya Windwood and Rajasvini Bhansali, the dynamic duo behind Leading with Joy, say it absolutely can be joyful, and I was fortunate enough to hear some of the secrets of their joyful-leadership revolution.
Akaya, former executive director of Rockwood Leadership Institute and current partner at WiseBridge, and Rajasvini, executive director of Solidaire Network, share their personal stories, practical tips and the heartwarming process behind their book’s creation. Get ready to be inspired and challenged, and maybe even do a little happy dance, as we explore the power of joy to transform workplaces and ourselves.
So what we like to do on “Gathering Ground” is to start with a little bit of background on both of you. Just tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to write a book. I’ve listened to the Audible version and I want our listeners to know that you can listen to this book, Leading with Joy, on Audible, and it’s an incredible experience. But want to hear from you. We’ll start with you, Akaya. How did you get to the point of writing a book, which I understand you weren’t necessarily interested in doing?
Akaya Windwood: No, I wasn’t. I was leading Rockwood Leadership Institute at the time and had been speaking at a number of conferences, and the publisher came up to me and said, hey, you know what? You should write a book. And I said no, thank you. And every about 18 months, two years he’d kind of knock on my door and say, hey, Akaya, how ’bout that book, and I said, no, thanks; I’m honored, all the things, and no. And it was after I left Rockwood and I was sitting in Rajasvini’s garden and I turned to her and I said, girl, let’s write a book, and she said OK. And then we said, well, what are we going to write a book about? And we said well, what do we know about? We knew about leadership, we knew about wanting to create conditions by which people could experience joy. We loved each other. And we said, we’ll call it In the Garden – until I realized, oh, that somebody’s going to think this is about how to prune roses, and somehow or other we got ourselves to Leading with Joy. What I realized was it wasn’t that I didn’t want to write a book; I just didn’t want to write a book alone. And I loved the fact that when I asked her, she didn’t even hesitate. There was not even a “Well, I don’t know.” It was like, yeah. And the whole process by which – we went through was just joyful. We agreed that if this wasn’t joyful we would stop. And we – obviously the book got written.
Mary Morten: Vini, why did you say yes immediately?
Rajasvini Bhansali: Well, one of the things I have learned over the years is to know when to trust and who to trust and Akaya has been one of those people in my life for the last decade that when she suggests a wild, undoable, unrealistic idea, I know it’s going to be the most fun I’ll ever have. So we met years ago when she was my trainer for Rockwood and I was a first-time executive director, and every model of executive leadership until then had dissuaded me from ever being a CEO, president, ED of anything, but somehow I got deployed into this role by many, many people who were my elders who were like, you’re ready for it; let’s go. And so I was like, OK, let me get some help and learn to be a good leader, and so I found myself in this art of leadership course that Akaya was leading. And watching her in action, watching her ask the wicked questions, challenging people, including me, to kind of not be tentative about our vision but to stand firm in it, made me realize yeah, OK, this person really means what she says about the leadership of women of color and I stand by it and I believe it and I’m here to accompany younger women doing this work. So a decade later, when she said let’s write a book, I was like, it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a wild ride! I’m going to regret not saying yes if I don’t say yes right now, so let’s go.
And the other thing I would say is over the years Akaya has experimented with many modalities of community-making and somehow I’ve always found myself in the middle of them, in the mix, having a great time. Sometimes the invitation is, hello, come to this gathering; you’ve been invited because you’re wise and you’re foolish and you’ll be with other wise and foolish people; please come. That’s it. Here are the dates. Here’s the venue. And it’s, you know, again, something in my intuition says, OK, go do this. And from those gatherings have germinated so many important ideas, initiatives, projects, collaborations that have become really a critical part of my own development as a leader.
Mary Morten: I want to focus a little bit on how you came together with really focusing on joy, because that, honestly, as someone who has led organizations, who has started organizations, that is not the word that I generally think about when I think about leadership, honestly. (Laughter.) And so how did you come to this title and to the fact that you really wanted to uplift joy throughout the book?
Rajasvini Bhansali: I’ll take a stab and then you go ahead, Akaya, after me.
So, one, this book was written during the pandemic. All around us there was a crisis of burnout. There was a crisis of very seasoned leaders dropping out of the work because they were exhausted, stressed, the world felt so uncertain and so scary, immense loss, immense grief, and we were watching people, our peers, our friends, but also both Akaya and I have had an active coaching practice, so people we were coaching as executive leaders burning out, dropping out, or getting stuck. So in confidence with each other we would often debrief what we were seeing and, you know, it’s a continuation of a conversation that started a decade ago. In our leadership it’s never just been about our own organizations but an entire ecosystem of leaders that we have both supported and lifted up. And so in our conversations we would realize, why are we still here? Because, you know, leadership for us in our journeys has also been really hard at times and challenging and it’s broken our hearts and mended our hearts. And so what is it that keeps us going? And we realized that the common theme was a set of practices that helps create joy. And these practices are hard-won. They’re not just – we’re not just born as joyful people – (laughs) – with, like, joy all around us and no pain and no suffering. We’ve had our fair share. But what we can revert back to is these set of practices that help us keep joyful in our leadership journey and so we wanted to share that with people in this time where it felt like that conversation was important and a set of tools was important that folks could use in their own day-to-day practices.
Akaya Windwood: Yeah. You know, I think that joy, in some ways, is very transgressive, that it’s hard to oppress joyful people because – and especially if you were mindful about it, right, that joy isn’t an accident. I think that in many of our social movements, when we have a joyful time people see it as an anomaly and it’s something that we’re lucky to have. And we see it as a practice, that our job as leaders is to not create joy but create the conditions whereby joy is possible, in our organizations, in our movements, in our – just every day. And as Rajasvini just said, you know, it’s not an all-day, everyday thing – there are lots of bumps in the road – but to experience those bumps and heartbreaks and know that joy is also available.
And I keep thinking, Mary, what if our social movements were led by joyful leaders? What might be possible that isn’t possible right now? There’s no disrespect here about folks who aren’t joyful. It’s a hard time right now, as we all know, right? It’s a hard time. And 2024 is not shaping up to be an easy year. So putting joy on our list of things to attend to I think is one of the ways we get through this really challenging time. And, you know, I rarely experience joy by myself. I can experience awe by myself, when I’m out in nature. (Inaudible) – right next to joy, right? But when I’m in my most joyful moments, I’m in community. And so part of it is interrupting the isolation that so many leaders are feeling right now and get up next to one another and laugh together and weep together sometimes. But I think we can weep and still be joyful.
Mary Morten: Absolutely. I was saying before you came on, Akaya, that I was just hoping – I don’t know if I said this again – I was hoping I could – (laughs) – hold it together and not start crying at some point because I have a podcast that I’ve done for, you know, four years with two other friends and at some point we end up crying during that time. It’s not planned. It’s just something has struck a nerve or, you know, something that we’ve been thinking about. And I do coaching as well and often, when I would ask – and primarily with women – I would say, what are you doing to have some fun? What are you doing to take care of yourself? Almost every time I asked that question the person would start crying, because not only were they not doing anything, but no one has asked them, no one has checked on them to see how they’re doing. And as we know, it is lonely at the top, right, or it certainly can be, and that’s why I think this book is so tremendously helpful that it really uplifts so many of the challenges that you might experience as a leader but, really, the reflecting question, so at every chapter there are questions at the end to really help you, you know, delve a little more deeply on that particular topic. And I found that the reflection questions were really questions that I could ask myself and, you know, figure out, OK, what do I need to change here and how do I also need to make this better for my team, my leadership team, which, by the way, we didn’t even have a leadership team in Morten Group until I went on sabbatical. I took a sabbatical about two years ago and it became clear that we needed to have some way for folks to, you know, make decisions without me, which is a wonderful thing. And of course, it continues. And this idea of joy? It really resonates with me because I really like to have fun and to create joy. And so one of the things that we do, which I wish I could see Vince’s face now, is that – (laughs) – we generally – I like dancing a lot, and so when we were in COVID, the first time we came together to take some photos, we also did a dance that I found on TikTok. (Laughs.) And so we’ve done that a few times and, you know, people are kind of like, oh, god, do we – you know, we can’t do it; can you make a copy of the – can you also record the dance so we can see how you’re doing it? But, as you can imagine, it’s a lot of fun and we just learn a lot about each other when we’re doing it. And so that’s how I’ve tried to create – that’s one of the ways, because, as I said, I love to dance, it makes me very happy, yet I also want to create opportunities for folks to really feel like they can be together. And on our team folks really like to get together; they like to talk to each other. It’s very different than probably any other consulting group might work and – people have said that to me, anyway. And so when you were thinking about the book, how did you decide on the types of topics you would cover? Were there things that maybe you’ve had to address as well or people have talked to you about? How did you come up with the actual chapters, if you will, and the focus of the chapters?
Akaya Windwood: You know, Mary, I wish I could say we sat down and thoughtfully put these chapters together and wrote the pieces as a result of that. That is so not what happened.
Mary Morten: (Laughs.) OK.
Akaya Windwood: (Laughs.) Some of the pieces in the book were pieces that we had written under different circumstances. Some of them were a result of conversations that Rajasvini and I had that were facilitated and we captured the essence of the conversation. And it wasn’t until late in the process that we actually put it into chapters, because it was kind of like, oh, this goes with that; this goes with this, right? So we were not – we didn’t do it the right way. In fact, when we were done, I sent a little note to Steve and said, hey, is your offer still open to write a book? And he said of course. I said, great, and I just sent it to him, right, in a Word document. And he said, well, that’s not how publishing works, and I said, oh? (Laughs.) Because neither of us had written a book before. He said, no, you need to make a book proposal. And I went, oh, man, really? I have to jump through hoops and lalala? Well, actually, the making of the proposal was fun too because then we got to refine our thinking a bit and put it into “oh, this makes more sense over here and, actually, this piece doesn’t make sense.”
I actually want to go back to your thing about dancing. At Rockwood we had a 32-hour workweek so we were off on Fridays. And Thursday afternoon we would almost inevitably have a 10-minute dance party, and whoever was in the office we would just wildly – somebody would put on some music and we would wildly dance and laugh as the last piece of the week. You know, somebody could say, well, that’s kind of silly. Yeah. More silliness. Let’s have more silliness. I don’t need to be all that all the time. It’s not good for me, it’s not good for my team, and it’s not good for the world. And I’ve been to retreats with Solidaire. Those folks dance too. Right? And there’s more laughter than there is anything else and thoughtfulness. And so that piece of creating culture where people can take off our armor, take off our, you know, here’s my badge, here’s who I am, and here’s my – you know all that, just get rid of that for a minute. That’s probably some of the healthiest things we can do as leaders.
Rajasvini Bhansali: Yeah, no, and also we are serious believers, my organization, in karaoke. There is a serious karaoke night that caps off most convenings and get-togethers. So, no, I think – you know, the thing that we forget is that culture building is on the daily. It’s the little ways in which we hold a staff meeting, the way in which leaders (tend to ?) tension with humor, not to deflect but just to kind of lighten the load; the way in which we are invitational around people bringing their full humanity into the work. You know, my colleagues at Solidaire hold these network-wide community gatherings that are cross-class, intergenerational, multiracial, multigendered, and these gatherings people are invited, especially through the pandemic, to let your child be in the room, you know, let your elderly parent be there, let your pets be in the mix. It’s actually a way to share a piece of how you live and who you are as a person and the web of your relationships, rather than just a professional singular individual. And what that does is it gives people permission to both be themselves but to also appreciate each other’s humanity. You know, we know we need that if we’re going to be able to meet the challenges of our times.
Mary Morten: One of the things that really – I mean, there are so many things, of course, that resonated in the book. And I want to make sure that our listeners understand that this is a series of vignettes, right, that really are based on your lived experiences, and I’m curious about how you decided when to use identifying information, because while the – it is said at the beginning that we may not know whose story it, there are times when it’s clear that you’ve put in something that would tell us who it is. For instance, your near-death experience in India. And when did you make the decision that OK, we’re going to come out with this particular information, it’s going to be clear that it’s one of us? You know, I think someone identifies their sweetie (Kim ?) and, you know, those kinds of things. And so how did you make that determination of when you were going to be even more personal than you were? Because that’s something that I think, you know, as a leader, you know, certainly years ago we were guided in a way that we don’t share some things, right? We keep some things inside. We are never supposed to cry in front of our – certainly women, right, aren’t supposed to cry, ever, because that’s going to totally knock you out of many things. (Laughs.) And that has changed, thankfully. But how did you decide when you were going to share a story and that it was actually personal to one of you?
Rajasvini Bhansali: Well, that’s exactly why. That’s exactly what you said just now, Mary, is the “why.” The why is that we come from a lineage – Akaya as a queer Black woman, I am the immigrant, queer South Asian woman. We’re both from lineages of being told how we should or should not be in our leadership, what is allowed, what’s going to be the recipe for success and what’s not? And you know, I will say for myself I’ve had to rebelliously carve my own path because being fragmented and being less than whole and healthy was not an option I was going to settle for. And much love and gratitude to the people who have come before me who have paved the way so that I can take those risks and not be killed and not be destroyed and not be completely put to the margin in having a professional life and career, which is a risk so many people in the generation before me faced and real material consequences for being out and for being who they were. And so that is the why. Like, if we can be courageous and honest and whole, hopefully it gives the ones reading it and the ones after us more permission to be themselves, because without that wholeness it’s hard to build organizations that are sustainable over time.
Akaya Windwood: Yeah. You know, as we were writing the book, I kept holding this image of a young person in Iowa sitting in a cafe that I will never know and who’s thinking, I want to bring something into the world; I’m not sure what it is but I want to bring it and I’m scared. And that person may or may not exist. I’ve never met them. But that person lives deep in my heart and I wanted to create the conditions by which that young one could say, OK, here I’m going to go; I’m going to take a risk; I’m not sure what’s going to happen but I’m going to take a risk. And if we reach that one, I feel like we will have done a good thing. So it wasn’t so organized for me around – again, that’s where the – we didn’t have chapters until the very end of the book, right? We’d written all the pieces and put it together. There was very little strategy, as it were, in the book. It emerged over time. And as we look back at it, we can go, oh, yeah, that was a good decision, but it wasn’t linear and it wasn’t – well, we didn’t even do it right – you know, “right,” as it were, with quotes. And I think that’s one of the ways it was most joyful because we weren’t on script, and we had nothing to – you know, neither of us think of ourselves as “Authors,” with a capital A, so there was no pressure to do anything other than create joy for us as we tried to create room for joy in the world.
Mary Morten: And I’m just curious and this is a really practical point: Did you actually write together or did you think about ideas together, go off, come back together? How did you do that piece of it?
Akaya Windwood: All of that.
Rajasvini Bhansali: All of the above. I mean, actually, the way the juiciest stories made it into the book was, like, we started to have a conversation and it would languidly, over the course of two hours, go in all kinds of directions. We’re both natural storytellers so it would start off, like, “Can you believe this thing happened this weekend? I’m processing.” Because this is, again, how we think. Like, a particular incident, a particular interaction is often a window into, like, what is happening on a macro level, but at the same time not to over-generalize. So we would be sharing a story of, like, I’m experiencing a level of irritability in myself right now and I’m wondering, you know, are you seeing that? And then I would say something and then we would just have a back-and-forth and start telling stories. And we had support. Somebody was transcribing our conversations and helping write them up. Of course, being the control freaks and the creatives that we are, we went back and there wasn’t enough poetry in the transcriptions for us, and so we actually rewrote the pieces. But it really helped to have somebody transcribe the conversations and their meanderings, because it gave us a path of the kinds of topics that kept coming up over and over and over and over again, and that’s kind of where the chapters come from.
Mary Morten: Well, we’re going to take a short break and when we come back I really want to talk about the reception to the book and how you know it’s being used and does it really line up with what you were hoping would happen once the book was released? So we’re going to take a short break. You’re listening to “Gathering Ground” and we’re back in a moment.
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So welcome back, everyone, to “Gathering Ground.” We’re going to continue our conversation about leading with joy, and I want to talk about the reception to the book in terms of just, yes, feedback you’ve received about the book and also how is the book being used, in terms of what you know about, you know, how it’s been used in various settings.
And I see you’re smiling, Vini. You want to start?
Rajasvini Bhansali: I mean, this is the part about being very innocent, driven by creativity and fun in this whole process, is that we had very low expectations. (Laughs.) We were like, if somebody who needs the book gets it, great, you know? And we prepared for sort of what are we going to say yes to and what are we going to say no to? And one of the things that we were clear about is, like, we don’t enjoy – we’ve been very blessed, both of us, to have careers where we’ve gotten to be speakers at many things and at this point in our lives, we’re not looking for the Leading with Joy brand to be on tour. What we are really, truly enlivened by and thrilled by is, like, is somebody who’s at the precipice of losing their joy, can find the book and get something good out of it? That’s what thrills us. And so I will tell you, I’ve been so moved by the reception. I’ve been so moved that we get almost weekly notes from people saying, “I’m using the book, I’m using it in between my jobs, I’m making a big life transition, I’m using the reflection practices; that one story really helped me have the courage to have a hard conversation.” And we get notes from all over the world from people who’ve been impacted by the book and it’s so moving.
I’ll also say the other thing we didn’t expect is, both Akaya and I come out of working in social justice work, Akaya for many decades more than me, and we thought that that would be the primary audience that would be excited by this, and it has been a great surprise to have a podcast of HR professionals in the U.K. bring us on a podcast, a parent association of children – parents of the children with autism is having a big burnout crisis in their movement and has invited us to speak to them, and so the surprises keep coming and they’re delightful because I know, for me, it feels like it’s expanding my heart and my container to engage with people that I didn’t consider my people until now.
Akaya Windwood: You know, I’m always surprised when people say, “I bought a dozen copies because I wanted to give them to all of my friends,” or we’ll get a note from somebody saying, “Just want to let you know how much I needed this book right now.” And to me, that’s it. That’s why, right? If this is a gift to folks and they find it useful and it helps get somebody through a challenging time, that’s enough. So, you know, the fact that it’s actually selling – (laughs) – I’m like, oh, well, how cool is that? (Laughs.) But that’s a gift as opposed to the intent, right? And so I don’t know – I think I was a little worried that we were going to be laughed at, you know, that the serious social change leaders are going to say, oh, they’re just pie in the sky. And, you know, I’m thinking having pie high in the sky is not a bad idea, but I was a little concerned that we would be perceived as naive or not serious. And the last thing we are is naive and not serious. We are very serious about this. And we didn’t get any of that. We got none of that. And that’s been satisfying. Because, you know –
Mary Morten: Oh, yes. (Laughs.)
Akaya Windwood: – social movement leaders can be really cranky.
Mary Morten: (Laughs.)
Akaya Windwood: Right? I know that comes as a shock to you, Mary. (Laughs). And, you know, we can critique. Part of the ways in which people show they’re smart is by critiquing other things, right, which I think is a really – a real problem in many movements. If we stopped critiquing each other and actually started listening and supporting and disagreeing well and showing up, even if it’s hard, as opposed to sitting over in the corner looking and pointing fingers and making judgments – so I was expecting some critique that if it’s there I haven’t heard.
Mary Morten: Well, to your point, I absolutely know –
Akaya Windwood: In fact, quite the opposite.
Mary Morten: – what it’s like to be working in social movements and to be critiqued. I came out in my activism and out as a, you know, queer person with Chicago NOW, at a time when NOW was being really hit over the head about being not welcoming for women of color and certainly not being welcoming for anyone who identified as a lesbian, and was berated by other folks of color, and I mean taken to task about that, so much so that it made me think, OK, am I doing the right thing? And I’ve always said to folks, if I can get up every morning and look myself in the mirror and really believe in what I’m doing, that’s what I have to go with. But it was a very, very difficult time. And that’s the same thing that happens in the queer community, of course, as well. And so I think part of it is the timing of the book, perhaps, that’s contributed to it, that I think people were ready for something that was different because what we’ve been doing, in some cases, is not working or it’s not leading the way.
But, you know, the chapter that I listened to again last night was the chapter about sort of leadership succession and really – you know, sort of lining up and working with someone who you think is going to – wants to take on a particular role, right, that they want to perhaps succeed you in some way or there’s a leadership role for them but they need to get ready for it, and people thinking, yes, I do, but then something happening and no, they don’t. And it was just really, really important for me to hear that chapter because I had that experience, had really poured into someone, we were making plans, and then they decided they could not do it. And, you know, we’re still friends and we’re both Aquarians; we’re going to be celebrating our birthday this month. (Laughs.) But it kind of stopped me in my tracks, if you will, in terms of what else should I be doing to help develop leaders, whether they are to succeed me or not, but just how do you help develop leaders and be prepared for the fact that they may not want to move in that direction? There’s new data out from the Movement – what is it, the Building Movement Project, where they know that folks who are interested, BIPOC folks who were interested in leadership a couple years ago are no longer interested in it, and that’s because – it’s not they need training per se; they’re worried about just having some basic support. And because of what we do at Morten Group, particularly around equity, we know that people that were hired in ’20, right, all of the DEI folks and chief equity officers, many of those folks are gone and they’re gone because they didn’t get any support, they’re gone because the organization didn’t really want to do that work – they said they did but they didn’t understand what that would mean and so they pulled out of it, and that it really means that folks have had to, you know, go in a different direction. I’m just curious, have you heard or have you worked with groups – have people asked you to come out? I know you talked about going onto some other podcasts, but are you actually going into organizations and communities and doing some hands-on work? Is that something you all are interested in or not so much?
Akaya?
Akaya Windwood: So I had a strong OD – organization development – practice and I was working all over the world for a very long time, and it’s time – OK, so this is a generational question for me, that one of the things I feel deeply about is that for people over 60, the boomers, my generation, it’s time for us to shift our role and get out from in front of the room so much and support the leadership of the next generations who are coming, right? And over the last several years I’ve been talking about it and talking with a lot of – cross-generation conversations about it, and I went, you know, I need to actually get out from in front of the room as well. I want to say I’m in the work, will be in the work for the rest of my life, hopefully, and I want to be in it differently. So, for instance, I don’t do keynotes anymore unless I’m in the room with next-generation people and we’re talking together so that the wisdom is not mine, it’s shared, right? And as a result, I’m also – and I’m cutting back on some of the intense get-in-the-room, fix-an-organization because I’m 67 and that’s not my work anymore, right? I don’t want to be that tired. (Laughs.) That’s just hard work, right? So for a number of reasons, I’m shifting my practice, which is much more about coaching and we’re cooking up some interesting things, Rajasvini and me, in terms of what we might do with this book next and that kind of stuff. So that’s where I’m sitting with that kind of work.
Rajasvini Bhansali: And I’ll just say I’ve made my kind of sphere of practice for now the network I run, which is growing in complexity, size, influence, and impact, and so that’s kind of my singular focus. That said, part of our network is also executive directors and CEOs and presidents of institutional philanthropies and family foundations and we’ve been experimenting with a leading with joy solidarity circle, peer-to-peer support circle for them, and it’s been very powerful. One of the lessons we’re reminded of is that whether it’s succession or transition, yes, folks need great consultance, and I’m glad, Mary, your group does that work because it’s really needed. And what’s also needed is a support system. Often folks are reinventing the wheel because they’re so busy being inwardly focused in their own organizations that they are not building peer relationships that could actually be really additive. And that one small thing that you’ve taken like 10, you know, days trying to figure out by yourself could have been solved with a quick conversation to a friend who’s also a leader. So just creating more connective tissue amongst people facing similar challenges, the opportunity to practice some of these things in our book, and to be in connection with each other and to build the kind of intimacy that allows you to not feel ashamed when you’re in a challenge but to actually feel like you’ve got people that have your back that are excited to hear from you and help you problem-solve. Those pieces feel really important at this moment.
Mary Morten: I want to just be clear that if someone approached you about doing that work now, that’s your response, that you would likely – because people – I think that might come of this podcast – (laughs) – that people may be wondering how they can, you know, be in contact with you, to ask you would you come out. And I appreciate how you’re thinking about doing keynotes and things of that sort, but that is work that is really somewhat on the backburner in terms of showing up in an organization right now. Is that correct?
Akaya Windwood: Well, yes and no-ish. It’s correct-ish. I mean, my sister here, she’s busy running a big-ass international organization, right? It’s not like she’s got a bunch of time to show up and, you know –
Mary Morten: Yeah. Right.
Akaya Windwood: And I want to totally honor that, right?
It would depend. Like, we love having these kinds of conversations – love, love, love them, right? It is so much fun to think together with folks. But going into a troubled organization and trying to turn their culture and their processes and all the things into a joy context, I don’t have much interest in that. But I would love, you know – we’re talking about it – having a convening of how to create conditions for joy in our organizations and movements. That’s fascinating to me, right? So it’s a “sort of” answer to your question.
Mary Morten: OK. I totally hear that, absolutely, because there’s some things I don’t want to do anymore and I don’t feel like I should have to – (laughs) – you know? I want to do the things that, to your point, bring me joy, and that’s, yeah, really – I’m trying to move my focus, that it’s really what I enjoy doing, not what I feel like I have to do.
When you are thinking about – I shouldn’t say the next iteration, but I know you said you were – you’re referencing something you’re cooking up. I don’t know what it is. I hope it’s some expansion or continuation of this idea, these ideas from the book. What resonates with you the most? If there’s one chapter, if you will, that really is like, you know, this is one of my favorite chapters or this is something that really resonates with me because of my own lived experiences? Is there one or two chapters that you would refer to for that?
Akaya Windwood: I think it might be the one you referenced where, how do we assess – like, how do we tell the truth to ourselves? Like, I tend to see the best in people, right, which is a gift because people go, oh, wow, she sees me in a wonderful way. But the challenge on that, and this is where Rajasvini really helps me, is I will overlook the things that are not so great and that I need to pay attention to because I can easily go, this person is the best person on the planet, and not see their challenge sides, right, and then that gets me into trouble because then I – something happens and I get all disappointed and Rajasvini’s like, girl, I told you, right, because she has a much more balanced way of seeing folks, right? So I often will check with her before I lose my mind and she’ll say, yeah, so look again. And I’ll go, oh, OK. So that – the pieces around telling ourselves the truth and then being thoughtful about it in how we bring a hard conversation to others in a kind and clear way, that’s the one that sits with me.
Rajasvini?
Rajasvini Bhansali: Yeah. I feel like every season I turn to the book in the same way that I hope our readers do, which is, like, what’s happening around me right now, what am I sensing into that I feel like I need some stories, vignettes, reflection exercises to help me work through, and for me, in this season, that has been the chapter on healing, forgiveness, and redemption. I feel like every structure around me, including people, have hardened into a punitive way of dealing with conflict. We have more language than ever about repair and restoration and conflict mitigation and seeing each other, and we have more resources available to us, and yet I feel like a contraction and a retraction into, like, a very judgy, defensive, hard way of dealing with challenges when they come up, and kind of like going into some kind of punishing behaviors, right? And I mean, at a global scale we see that with the conflicts and the wars around us, and at a micro-scale we see it in the amount of polarization in our work. And so I’ve been turning to that chapter a lot because I want to be mindful as a leader of when I’m contracting, when I’m becoming punitive, when I’m becoming “close-hearted” and unable to kind of do the forgiveness practice, the believing in the kind of redemptive power of the whole in this community, and then leaning into reminders that people aren’t good or bad; it’s like we’ve been trained into so many ways and it’s taking us a lot of practice to undo and – examples of that, especially when conflict arises.
Mary Morten: This, again, is very much related to a conversation I was having with a client partner just earlier in terms of succession planning and really how important it is to do succession planning and how we have to change the culture around that so that people don’t think the moment they mention it people are thinking, oh, you’re jumping ship, oh, you’re disloyal. No. It is because I care so much about this organization that I want to plan how someone will succeed me, how someone will succeed the – you know, there’s a leadership team. And we can’t have those conversations if folks feel as though, if I don’t say what you, as the staff leader, wants to hear, I’m going to be in trouble. If I don’t say that I want to take your job – you know, I was in a situation like that, unfortunately, where I was the executive vice president of an organization and it was believed by the president that I was going to succeed her, but no one had – she had never talked to me about that. And I, in fact, did not want to succeed her. I wanted to do something different, and when that became crystal clear, I hate to have to say this, but that person just stopped talking to me. And so if you can imagine being at that level, the second in command at an organization, and not having the leader of that organization continue to interact with you and to not come to my going-away party when I left and for all the other staff to see that, and then when people wonder why folks won’t be honest and say, I want to leave or I want to think about transitioning, this is why we can’t get our teams to tell us that because they’ve had some experience or they understood that you don’t do that; you just make your plans, you announce you’re leaving, and you go on about your business, as opposed to “let’s have a conversation about your hopes and dreams and where you want to go in the next several years and let’s see if we can make a plan. Let’s just make a plan.” So I think it is still very rare that people have that kind of accessibility and that kind of support to be able to talk about your hopes and dreams and for you not to be penalized. This idea of being penalized is real, right, and people have experienced it, which is why when they get to someone else who doesn’t feel that way, it’s really hard for them to believe that you mean it.
Rajasvini Bhansali: Oh, that’s a whole word. That’s a whole word right there, Mary. And what do we do (when ?) we are confronted with that kind of resistance, because it’s all around us? It’s, as Akaya would say, the water in which we swim, you know. (Laughs.) And that is the part that I think this is where having a community of peers is important and it’s important to have people that will mirror for you – I’ve had my vent fests where – I have been so virtuous and have brought my best self to support somebody and has been met with such, like, pushing away or whatever, a misunderstanding of my good intention. And I will turn to Akaya and say, you know, I can’t believe that, my feelings are so hurt, and bear witness to that, but also she’ll reflect back, so where would this person have learned to be any different? And what’s your responsibility? And so many of these things – my lens keeps getting more wider around it – is, like, shaped by class, shaped by culture, shaped by gender, by class, by race, by all of these things. How would we know that, you know?
Akaya Windwood: I want to underscore that and bring in this piece around unhealed trauma. I think – I don’t know a single human being who has had no trauma, right? And it’s in the room all the time. And we get taught to, as you said, Mary, not cry, if you’re a woman, look all that if we’re – whomever, right? So hurt people hurt people, and it shows up in our organizations and our communities. And it’s a tricky thing because if we only focus on the trauma, then it’s dire and everything is – you know, work is not therapy. And I think it’s important to recognize that when we’re at work we’re not – it’s not like it needs to be about me and my trauma, and also coming to work as a whole human with trauma in my history, right? So having – creating cultures by which we can acknowledge trauma and not get stuck in it and also see the best in each other, I think that’s really important here. And that is a cultural issue, right? I’m watching a number of women of color bring their trauma into the work and it’s not just theirs; it’s generational, right? It’s the trauma of enslavement. It’s the trauma of genocide. It’s the trauma of any number of things, right? And unhealed trauma is one of the, I think, most – one of the biggest contributors to the problems we’re having in the world, and certainly in our sector.
Mary Morten: And it is still really not recognized that when we’re working particularly in some social organizations – I was talking to another CEO and I said, I’m not sure if you really understood that many of your staff could be folks that you were serving as well.
Akaya Windwood: Absolutely.
Mary Morten: And so that we have to acknowledge that and make sure that they’re getting the support they need to do this work and understanding that in some cases what they’re doing is triggering some of their own, you know, challenges. And how do we take care of folks? And to your point, you know, that work is not therapy, yet understanding – just even understanding that, right, that the folks you are serving and the folks who are doing this work have a lot of similarities that you may not have acknowledged and that we have to do it. I mean, we’re starting, thankfully, to hear and – (inaudible) – talking to our client partners about it and we’re starting to hear more interest in having sessions that – where we can talk about trauma-informed care. So I think that’s huge, it’s really important, but as you know, everything takes a moment or two, right, for people to hear it, to understand it, and it’s not any different – I mean, the socialization that we’ve all come with, right, and trying to understand that this is also part of the equity work, the equity journey, because we’ll have folks who will say, well, we don’t really want to focus on race per se because we’re concerned that you won’t talk about any of the other systems of oppression. And then we have to talk about something called intersectionality – (laughs) – and how folks are just not showing up with one identity, whether you acknowledge that or not, right – all things that you, of course, know. But we really have to make sure that we are sharing this with our client partners in a way that they can hear it and not just automatically say no. No, don’t want to – and we often talk, you know, about this work moving at the speed of trust. If we cannot develop a relationship where we trust each other doing this work, then we’re not going to be able to move the work forward in a meaningful way. And we don’t want to go into an organization and help them do a checklist, and, in fact, we really try to –
Akaya Windwood: That’s right.
Mary Morten: I mean, just as organizations are interviewing and checking us out, we’re doing the same. And I think that’s something that it took me awhile to say it’s OK for us to do that, not to just, “Oh, I’m just so happy we’re getting this interest, we’re getting this opportunity.” No, we need to make sure that we’re going to be able to move forward in a particular way, and is the CEO involved? Are they coming to the meetings or are we just hearing about them? Because, as you know, if the CEO is not down with it – (laughs) – we’re not going anywhere.
Akaya Windwood: You’re exactly right.
Mary Morten: So let’s just be – (inaudible) – about that.
Akaya Windwood: I will often look at what I call the shadow side of an organization’s mission, right, or purpose, that the thing we think we’re here to do or what we want to do in the world often shows up internally in ways that are very debilitating, right, and it’s important to pay attention to that, right? At Rockwood I had to – I paid attention a lot to how are we being with each other internally? Because we’re talking about, you know, caring for one another, courageous conversations – that’s what we’re advocating out there. We’re, you know, talking about really showing up out there. How are we either doing that or not doing what we – values out there internally? I was vigilant about it. And particularly in service organizations, in thinking about an organization I worked with years ago – it was an anti-violence against women organization and they were fierce advocates out there and horrifyingly terrible to each other internally, because it was – they just weren’t paying attention to it internally, and it was really hard. So looking at, oh, we can be very aspirational externally and we need to be equally aspirational internally. I mean, I really appreciate Solidaire Network because I watch as they very intentionally attend to their collective well-being and, as a result of that, are having phenomenal impact out in the world, and it’s because Rajasvini is one of the best leaders I’ve ever known. I mean, that’s just true. I’m not blowing smoke here. But she takes care and I think that’s part of our job as leaders is that we don’t – we take care. It’s a delicate job we’re doing and we take care to both pay attention to the trauma and to create the conditions whereby joy is possible.
Mary Morten: So, with that opening, can you give us some examples of how you’re doing that work, Vini?
Rajasvini Bhansali: Well, I will tell you, it has been a lifelong journey to understand. There’s a chapter in our book called learning to care for ourselves so that we can care for our communities, right? We don’t just mean the self-care kind of indulgence industrial complex; like, it’s not just about that. We are talking about, like, really a mandate as a leader to not be a mess in your own life because if you are, then you are treating other people from that lens. And you know, I will just say, every time I’ve been exhausted, I’ve demanded more of myself and therefore of people around me. Every time I’ve been fried, I’ve not been able to access imagination or creativity and I’ve shut down other people’s creativity. There’s a direct co-relationship between what’s going on inside me and my sense of depletion and how I treat the people around me, and so it’s a big responsibility to care for ourselves, right? And I feel like so many women, women of color, gender queer people are in care-giving roles all the time. We are not just caring for our families. We are literally often the corner store of caring for extended families of choice, communities, all of that. And I think in a very simple way, along with our people in culture team at Solidaire and our amazing staff, we’re paying attention to what’s happening and taking a structural look at that. You know, what’s happening in people’s lives that affect not only their performance at work but their capacity to be in interpersonal relationship, and how do we create conditions inside our workplace so that people can take time to tend to their families so that they can be caregivers? You know, the basic, like, do we have decent benefits? Do we pay people well? Do we make sure that their health care is covered, that they have good match retirement savings, you know? One of my colleagues brought a great innovation by saying, you know, many nonprofit workers, this may be the first time they have a good salary. And we don’t get financial planning advice; we just, like, wing it, and so now we, in addition to of course wellness support, we also provide financial planning support for our team so that people can be planful about saving money and using their money for long-term goals and all of that.
I’m a big fan of ongoing feedback and thoughtful evaluation, self-evaluation, having transparent conversations not only with your supervisor but with your peers about the impact you’re having. You know, we have practices around that. And then one really fun thing we do, which I love, is that we don’t just take bank holidays because that’s what you’re supposed to do; we also include cultural holidays. So I’m Jain and my significant day in the year is Samvatsari but we as a whole team observe Samvatsari, you know. I have Jewish colleagues who observe Hanukkah or Passover and the whole team observes that with them. So it also builds a kind of cultural fluency and respect for each other’s particular ways of being and learn about each other’s kind of cultural ways that then build greater connective tissue. The one thing I’m really excited about that’s going to be Solidaire’s contribution to the movement as a whole is some deep work my colleague Malachi is going to be leading on transformative grievance: how do we transform the grievances and complaints and the “irritances” and the annoyances that can blow right up into big conflicts within organizations into something transformative that can be channeled toward social good? And that’s a piece of work that we feel like is important not just for us as an organization but actually as a social sector. So many small, untended-to grievances escalate and, you know, we are now learning that underneath those grievances is grief, is hurt, is things that if we can tend to in a collectivist way can actually be transformative. So running those kinds of experiments, making room for that cultural work is a deep part of our social transformation work.
Mary Morten: And where did you come to understand that that was important to do?
Rajasvini Bhansali: Experience! (Laughter.)
Mary Morten: OK.
Rajasvini Bhansali: Experience and a lot of lessons from – I’ve been very fortunate to be a student of social movements in the global south. I ran an international public foundation before this work, for 10 years, and learned so much from movement leaders in the global south about how to build durable, sustainable, power-building work through how we are with each other, how we build a sense of collective consciousness, not just, you know, somewhat the lore of the hyper-individual, the superhuman, the charismatic singular leader, you know, but more (kind leader/full movements ?) where people see their place in it, that they feel like they are being developed and that they’re here to develop others and that we are working together. You know, that has – I’ve seen so many successful models at scale of how, by building a sense of agency and a sense of empowerment, you can change things.
Akaya Windwood: I think it’s important that we understand that what she’s – what Rajasvini just said, in terms of what they attend to at Solidaire Network, is the work. It’s part of the work, right? It’s not – I know a lot of organizations think, oh, if we do this internal stuff, then we won’t be doing the work. And that’s actually not true, that the work has to be whole, right? So if – it’s not a waste of time; it’s some of the most useful time you can spend is that, attending to it. And so I’m excited about what you’re going to learn in this grievance process because I’m like, mm, I don’t know if I’d want to take that on, but I think it’s so important, right, because how much time gets wasted in organizations just because people didn’t pay attention to the small things, right? And if we paid attention when it’s just a seedling, it doesn’t grow into a huge tree, right?
Mary Morten: I will also be interested in hearing about that. And just a couple points with regard to some of your points, in terms of people thinking that this is extra work. You know, when there’s an organization – it doesn’t really matter what the organization is. You should always be thinking about equity and some folks will say, is this going to be more work that I have to do? And you are doing – I don’t know, maybe you’re doing HIV and AIDS work in the community. You don’t think this is part of your work? We have to start there – (laughs) – to make sure you understand why this is not extra. This is not extra. This is part of your work. And I just think that is what we have to really work with some of our client partners on and what we’ll say is that, we’ll know that there’s been some impact when this work is not held out as some appendage, you know, some committee. That’s the only time that you’re thinking about these particular topics, right, that it really is woven into the very nature of how you provide services and how you deliver your support.
One of things that I sometimes say, when I’m talking to folks I’m working with, you know, coaching is that there’s a reason why they tell you on the airplane to put on your oxygen mask first, right? You have got to take care of yourself, and the term self-care has become a little commodified so that it really, you know, does not necessarily mean what I guess, certainly for myself, what I’m hoping that people will take from that and to know that it is OK to take time off and that it’s OK to give folks time off.
I had someone on my team, probably in ’21, give me a gift certificate to – and I can’t remember her name, but the rest ministry (sic). Do you know who I’m talking about? The person who’s – and I thought, oh, this is lovely, I really appreciate this; I’m never going to use this. But I did. Nap Ministry. Thank you very much. Nap Ministry. And I did use it and I fell asleep in the session. I actually rested in the session, which is huge for me. (Laughs.) Huge, huge, huge. And I’m just so thankful for someone saying, you know, Mary, you could probably use this, and that I – you know, I don’t have time. I’m going to make time for it. And if we’re going to make time for it, then we want other folks to make time for it as well.
Akaya Windwood: This piece around rest is so important. I couldn’t rest either because, you know, I hate the old sweet and honey in the rock song that says, we who believe in freedom cannot rest. And I’ve been changing those lyrics to we who believe in freedom must rest, right?
Mary Morten: Love it.
Akaya Windwood: And the way I allow myself to rest is I, at one point, told myself, I’m resting for all of those who cannot. For all of my ancestors who never rested, I’m resting. And it gave me permission to put my own rest in the context of my people, my community, right? And so that’s – when we talk about self-care, we’re caring for ourselves not as an “Oh, I just need a massage today”; it’s in the context of our ancestors, those who will come after us, and I want to care for myself in the way that I wish my ancestors had been cared for.
Mary Morten: Absolutely. And that reminds me of something a dear friend of mine said who grew up, had the, you know, advantage of going to Martha’s Vineyard and Oak Bluffs during the summer and the reason why she said it was important for her to bring her daughter there was, she said, “I wanted her to see Black people at leisure.”
Akaya Windwood: Come on.
Mary Morten: (Laughs.)
Akaya Windwood: Come on.
Mary Morten: “I wanted her to know that that is something that we can do.” And I thought, OK, that makes so much sense because, you know, living in an urban environment, going day by day, doing all these things, that does not necessarily happen unless – as you know, we have to be intentional about it.
Akaya Windwood: That’s right.
Mary Morten: And we, of course, talk about intention over impact, but we really must be intentional about saying it is OK to rest, it is OK to just take care of yourself, in whatever way that looks like. So yes, rest is important and we have to keep talking about it because people don’t think that they should rest. I mean, that’s very clear.
So, when you think about your future work and doing what you really want to do, how do you see those ideas and the book, as you move forward? What are some of your hopes and dreams for this book? Do you have some things that haven’t happened with the book yet in terms of the reception or the kinds of work that has sprung from the book? Are there things that you’re hoping still happen or you’re looking forward to?
Vini?
Rajasvini Bhansali: So I most, most, most want to defeat authoritarianism, and that is the direction of my work and my life for the next decade. I think we are living in very difficult, dangerous times. We have a resurgence of right-wing power in a way that is going to – has already rolled back our fundamental human rights. And this is the time in the next 10 years for leaders of movements, of leaders of social justice organizations, leaders of intersectional work, business leaders, governmental leaders, for us to be at our collaborative, strategic, coordinated best. And so we must not only be rejuvenated, well-rested, and well-energized, we must also make our work so irresistible, so joyful, so fun, so delicious that masses of people want to be part of it. That’s how we get to winning. And I’m very committed to it and I’m very committed to practicing what’s in the book, experimenting with what’s in the book, trying out things, saying yes to new invitations. I’m currently in an experimental space pulled together by a group of coaches to bring very hard-working leaders together to have a week of what they’re calling radical sabbatical, a time of rest and reconnection. And it’s been amazing, including being humbled by seeing that there’s some of my sisters in the struggle here who have not taken a vacation in 10-plus years because the work they do in immigrant justice and workers’ rights has been so diminished. It’s not that they don’t want to. They want to. But the conditions have been increasingly harsher, and so many people’s lives are on the line. So it feels to me more and more important that I really practice and continue to collaborate with other people towards that.
Akaya Windwood: I want to spend the rest of my days supporting the incredible, visionary leaders in the next generations. I feel like that’s the best I – the best thing for me to be doing is to let folks know that I stand firmly with them and they can lean on me, because the conversations that are being had in Gen Z are conversations – I’m having some conversations with people of Gen Z and I’m going what? They’re thinking so differently than I have and they’re using different language and they’re using points of reference that I don’t have. And they’re the ones – and I’m talking Gen X, Millennials, Zs – they’re the ones who need to bring the world into being. It’s not my generation’s time. We can support – we must support, we must engage but in a different way, and so I want to joyfully stand right next to my girl here, Rajasvini Bhansali, and say go, go. If you need something, holler. I am right here, ain’t going anywhere, so that she can make sure that we don’t have authoritarianism in the world. That’s my job.
Mary Morten: OK. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you for all the work that you’ve done. Thank you for this extraordinary book that really does connect people and centers compassion and joy. It really – it’s something that I needed and I think the world needs and I’m just excited to share this with so many more folks. So thank you so much for joining us today on “Gathering Ground.” And I just – I hope that our paths are going to continue to be in alignment.
Rajasvini Bhansali: Well, you’re stuck with us now, Mary.
Mary Morten: I am thrilled. I’m thrilled.
Rajasvini Bhansali: You’re stuck with us. Thank you for your real warm and gracious, loving support of the book. And one thing we didn’t say but we would love to hear from folks how this landed for you, the book lands for you. We want to know.
Akaya Windwood: Yeah.
Mary Morten: Absolutely, yes. And I will be sending in all kinds of comments. And again, this will be a book that I’m giving away as gifts.
Akaya Windwood: (Laughs.)
Mary Morten: I mean, it’s a book (that people ?) really need to have. And I know so many people who need, I can’t even tell you, so it’s going to be a little spike in sales, I think, very, very soon. And of course, as I’m being reminded, we will be using it with our own leadership team.
I am sincerely grateful to Akaya and Vini for sharing their wisdom and the concept of leading with joy and the transformative power it holds. Their book, Leading with Joy, is available in paperback at your local, independently owned bookstore and online as an audiobook. Let’s carry forward the inspiration to infuse joy into our leadership practices, foster well-being in our workplaces, and prioritize the collective growth of our teams. Remember, like equity, joy isn’t just a destination; it’s a journey we embark on together. So stay joyful, stay connected, and keep gathering ground. I’m Mary Morten, until next time.