Last year, after 13 years of running the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, I was feeling a bit burnt out. But then I joined an amazing group of 28 leaders from around Southern California to take part in five immersive retreats that focused on encouraging self-care and building trustworthy relationships in the nonprofit sector. It’s been reinvigorating.
The program, called “Courage to Lead,” was developed by Ken Saxon. “Executive directors in the nonprofit world like to take care of everybody else’s needs but subordinate their own,” explains Ken, who also runs the Emerging Leaders and Katherine Harvey Fellows programs under his Leadership from Within organization.
“When people talk about burnt-out, to me, at its core, that comes from a feeling of being alone,” continues Ken, whose retreat sessions help people like me find common threads of need amongst my unique set of colleagues. “There’s so much we can achieve in collaboration, when I see the quality of relationship that comes out of our work, when I hear of people helping each other with issues they’re dealing with. People trust each other.”