“I felt trapped, and I was angry a lot of the time. I worked from early morning until midnight, with no outlets for my emotional and intellectual needs other than my employees and the local women we served. Over time, I felt the need for more nourishing interactions, and I also felt guilty about wanting something more. It was very unhealthy.”—Bedriye Hülya, founder of b-fit
(Illustration by Helena Pallarés)
We’ve heard some version of this sentiment in many of our conversations with social entrepreneurs. “I was riding on adrenaline for the first five years,” said Mike Sani, founder of the UK-based civic engagement enterprise Bite the Ballot. “People only see the glamorous parts, but no one knows the depths of the lows. I blamed myself for not achieving our mission faster. I suffered from imposter syndrome. None of my family members understood what I did. I felt incredibly lonely.”
Other social entrepreneurs, particularly those working on politically or socially sensitive issues, are at heightened risk for burnout due to work loads, anxiety, and social pressure. "When you work in an oppressive system with the goal of changing that system, you are constantly aware of how little power you have and how much power the oppressors have,” said Wanja Muguongo, founding executive director of UHAI EASHRI, Africa’s first indigenous activist fund supporting LGBTI and sex-worker human rights. “I didn’t take a holiday for seven years, because it felt impossible to take a break while terrible homophobic laws were being debated and passed in African legislatures.”
The unrelenting pace and constant stress Mugauongo faced eventually triggered burnout—a reckoning she says provoked deep and sustained self-refection, and ultimately led her to step down. “I had been consumed by human rights work my entire adult life,” she said. “For the first time I asked myself, ‘Who am I when I am not doing this?’ I decided to start exit-planning, and then I resigned from my role, which I needed to do because of my burnout and fatigue.”
These were just a few of many courageous insights entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and other social change leaders shared with us over the past year. Our research, conducted in collaboration with The Wellbeing Project, included in-depth interviews with 30 different leaders to identify new insights they discovered about themselves through self-inquiry (also known as inner work, personal work, or self-care) and the changes they enacted as a result of those insights. We also inquired about the nature of those practices to understand what tools, programs, and resources have proved most effective.
As the first article in this series on well-being suggested, we found that continuous self-inquiry helped leaders manage their energy and resilience, become more effective team leaders, and develop more meaningful collaborations with other organizations to drive sustained, positive change in the way the current individuals, organizations, and governments address problems. Here, we take a closer look at some of the specific shifts leaders experienced through self-inquiry and which practices worked for them.
How Self-Inquiry Takes Shape
We define self-inquiry as a process of self-examination and reflection undertaken with an explicit goal of increasing self-awareness, reconnecting with purpose and joy, healing from past trauma, and shifting toward healthier patterns of behavior, especially in regard to interpersonal interactions. Useful skills cultivated through a self-inquiry practice include deep listening, patience, compassion, clarity, and a systems-level view of how various issues, people, and partners affect each other.
The value of self-inquiry is attracting growing recognition, both in the social sector and beyond. Psychologist Richard Schwartz, founder of The Center for Self-Leadership, a training center focused on self-inquiry, describes eight “C’s” that are outcomes of self-inquiry: calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage, and connectedness. Meanwhile, Jerry Colonna, CEO and co-founder of the leadership development firm Reboot.io, has worked with dozens of executives and entrepreneurs to help them lead with humanity, resilience, and equanimity. In his new book, Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, he writes, “Radical self-inquiry allows us to step back and see the patterns in our lives and the forces that shape who we are.” He considers self-inquiry radical in part, because it’s rare and often discouraged. “We are socialized to consider self-inquiry as self-indulgent, nothing could be farther from the truth. Self-inquiry not only makes us better leaders, but also helps us be better, happier, more resilient people.”
The causal link between self-examination and behavior change is at the core of self-inquiry. David Germano, executive director of the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia, teaches a course on “human flourishing” that trains students to lead healthier and more engaged lives. “If we want to perform better,” he said in our interview, “we need to pay attention to the practices we engage in, and assess whether those practices are producing outcomes aligned with our deepest values. You canʼt say, ‘Iʼm flourishing emotionally, but Iʼm a physical wreck.’ You need to understand the connection between your practices, and the outputs and outcomes they produce.” In his book Sacred Economics, author Charles Eisenstein also emphasizes this connection: “Ultimately, work on self is inseparable from work in the world. Each mirrors the other; each is a vehicle for the other. When we change ourselves, our values and actions change as well.”
For leaders interested in developing a self-inquiry practice but aren’t sure where to start, we recommend the following:
- Start now. Don’t wait until you burn out or your organization forces you out. If you tell yourself you’ll start self-inquiry in six months “once things calm down” or you are struggling to carve out the time, remind yourself that it is not self-indulgent. It is not a luxury. Self-inquiry is foundational to your success and resilience in work and life.
- Start small. Build a daily mindfulness practice to enhance your capacity to stay in the present. This might mean doing five minutes of deep-breathing exercises in the morning or before important interactions, using a meditation app like Headspace or Insight Timer, or spending some time each day observing sights and sounds around you during your commute or at a local park.
- Cultivate your social support system. Intentionally seek out authentic, intimate, peer-to-peer interactions. Find others working on their own practices, and have personal conversations about how your practice is going and what you are learning about yourself.
- Introduce self-inquiry into your organization. This might include short “check-ins” and “check-outs” to inquire how your colleagues are doing before and after a team meeting, or simple gestures like taking a colleague to lunch. It can also mean using facilitators and retreats to create safe spaces for candid feedback, and developing more transparent, authentic work relationships.
- Consider a coach or therapist. Professional support can help you better understand where your emotional triggers come from, change how you relate to past painful experiences, and heal from deep trauma. Or it can focus on those facets of your personality, like the inner critic or our superego, that can push you in unhealthy or self-destructive ways.
- Look into a structured program that’s right for you. There are a wide variety of programs that can help you establish and develop your own practice. The Wellbeing Project, for example, offers an 18-month inner development program that teaches self-inquiry techniques. Other programs include The Philanthropy Workshop and Tendrel.
- Go on a retreat. Most of the people we spoke to mentioned the value of periodically going on a retreat to rethink priorities and get in touch with themselves. Some are led by teachers or facilitators, but you can also just go somewhere to be alone and quiet. Retreats allow time for uninterrupted reflection and can help you emerge renewed, refreshed, and ready to return to everyday life with a new perspective.
Five Shifts Cultivated Through Self-Inquiry
All of the social change leaders we interviewed—social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and nonprofit leaders included—described self-inquiry as fundamental to their ability to deeply listen, be introspective, and maintain a healthy relationship with their ego. Our research identified five broad shifts that self-inquiry catalyzed for social change leaders: changes in self-perception; more awareness of their emotional triggers and ability to cope with “dark” emotional states like anxiety; changes in organizational practices and culture; improved ability to build authentic, trust-based partnerships with other leaders and institutions; and greater awareness of the relationships between individuals, issues, and institutions.
1. Shifts in Self-Perception
Shifts in self-perception include new perspectives on yourself and the role you can play in social change. Shifting your self-perception requires a willingness to expose yourself to others so that they can help you cultivate greater self-awareness. As Peggy Dulany, president of the Synergos Foundation, said:
Our tendency is to protect our wounds and build defenses around them. That often means putting on a mask to keep ourselves safe. The key to creating the kinds of shifts in each of us that are needed is to feel safe enough to be vulnerable. When the mind is open and the heart is open, we become less scared. Opening our hearts and letting others see our openheartenedness allows a greater sense of presence, connectedness, and love. It enables other people to feel safe enough to go through that same cycle. The outcome is a more fully engaged life.
One important kind of mindset shift is the abandonment of the self-imposed pressure to “save the world.” “I allowed myself to interrogate my sense of responsibility to others and to the world,” said UHAI EASHRI’s Muguongo. “All my life, what I wanted to do and what I did were not always the same thing. Now I am more aware of what I want. I pursue things that bring me joy. It’s still about social change, but it’s a new way for me to lead and live.”
José María Luzárraga, founder of teamwork-focused educational model Mondragon Team Academy, has also worked to overcome a self-sacrificial mindset. His Catholic upbringing taught him to love others as he loved himself. But, he said:
My mindset was to serve others at any cost to myself. I felt weighed down by a responsibility and a burden, like a heavy backpack on my shoulders. Shifting my thinking means I no longer see my mission as a burden, but as an adventure. In those moments when I feel fear or anxiety, I embrace my inner surfer and remember that I am free every day to choose which wave to surf.
For Premal Shah, founder of the crowdfunding platform Kiva and chief business officer of Branch International, shifts in self-perception centered around a personal insight into the motivational fuel that drives him. “Many of us serve from a spirit of sacrifice or ‘specialness,’ but just imagine what serving from a place of wholeness feels like,” he said. “When I feel full and connected, I shift into appreciation. It's a totally different source of motivation.”
Finally, some leaders spoke about important shifts in thought patterns resulting from healing from past trauma. “Self-inquiry helped me experience my life more fully,” said Jasmeen Patheja, founder and director of Blank Noise in India. Her organization tackles sexual harassment directed at women and girls, something she has experienced personally. “Being vulnerable and accepted for who I am has released something buried deep inside me that I didn’t even know existed. I have been able to surface layers of internalized shame, and heal from experiences that deeply affected me and my work. I feel much more settled than I’ve ever felt in my life.”
2. Shifts in Emotional Awareness
Shifts in emotional awareness include the development of skills to manage the stress, anxiety, and fear that typically come with the job. This enables leaders to embrace positive states of mind—such as curiosity, empathy, compassion, and joy—that are more conducive to success.
Unfortunately, social change leaders often lack a framework or outlet to unpack and assess their emotions, which can bleed into their work and interactions with other leaders in unhealthy ways. “There is a lack of awareness by most investors and philanthropists about burnout and the tremendous stress that social change leaders are under,” said Renee Kaplan, CEO of The Philanthropists Workshop, a global network of philanthropists. “We have to come to the table in a way thatʼs more open, and we need the right tools for deeper, values-based explorations and self-inquiry processes to be able to do that.”
One of the most common emotions social change leaders feel but rarely talk about is envy. Sasha Chanoff, executive director of RefugePoint, which supports refugees around the world, offered insight into this dynamic based on his own experience. “I continue to work on envy in myself, and I see other leaders struggle with it when another organization or founder receives a big grant, wins a prize, or gets media attention,” he said. “It’s not easy, but I try to cultivate sympathetic joy—feeling happiness for others—rather than having a self-focused reaction.” Self-inquiry programs are good at helping people develop an awareness of their tendency toward envy and the skills they need to manage it.
Many times, male leaders face norms of toxic masculinity they imbibed as children. “I grew up in a working-class community and, like most British men, I was raised to believe that expressing emotion was weak and girly,” said Sani of Bite the Ballot. “Cultivating awareness about my emotions has been an incredible journey for me. I acknowledge when I feel dark or anxious, but I don’t need short-term escapes or coping mechanisms. I sit with that emotion and donʼt feel I need to resolve it."
Greater self-awareness about one’s emotions can also lead to perceptive insights into other leaders’ behavior. “I used to feel insulted or offended by other education leaders when they protected their turf or aggrandized themselves,” said Luzárraga. “But now I see myself, and them, from a different perspective. They are fighting their own internal battle. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. Instead I try to ask myself, ‘How can I help this person?’”
3. Shifts in Organizational Practices and Culture
Leaders do not act on their own, of course. They manage teams; set the tone with board members, funders, and partners; and shape the culture at all levels of their organization. Self-inquiry helps many social sector leaders acquire a deeper understanding of how their personal leadership affects the organizational culture.
“My patterns were so ingrained that, over several years, my patterns became the companyʼs patterns,” says Hulya of b-fit, a national chain of women-only gyms that aims to empower Turkish women. “I sent constant emails to my staff, often late at night, to check in on the status of this or that.” Self-inquiry helped her recognize the impact that these patterns were having on her team. “I realized they felt overwhelmed all the time, and my behaviors were diminishing their creativity. We have totally revamped our communication policy, and now staff members are devising their own ways of doing things, which strengthens us as a company.”
Many other leaders have started modelling the forms of authentic, vulnerable leadership they’ve learned through self-inquiry in their interactions with staff members. “I’m conscious and careful about what I share in a work setting and how, but I put a priority on educating my staff about why self-inquiry is important to me as a man and a leader,” said Sani. “I am authentic and transparent about seeing a therapist, for example, and staff members give me feedback on the open-minded culture we have created here and the changes they have made in their own lives.”
Ellen Agler, CEO of The End Fund, an organization working to treat neglected tropical diseases, has had a similar experience. “My personal self-inquiry practice has helped me cultivate skills like deep listening, patience, compassion, clarity, and a holistic, systems view,” she said. “I also have intentionally introduced a number of self-inquiry tools into our organization, including self-assessment tools like StrengthsFinder and Meyers-Briggs, combined with team workshops and retreats facilitated by the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which was formerly a part of Google and now educates leadership teams on how neuroscience research findings and mindfulness can improve team dynamics and productivity.”
Unlike most of the leaders we interviewed, Agler has cultivated a self-inquiry practice over two decades, and believes it has played an important role in the effectiveness and growth of the END Fund. She told us:
I try to be open with issues I am working on or struggling with, and ask for help. We all have blind spots, and the more open and vulnerable we can be as leaders in acknowledging we don’t have all the answers, the more people around us will feel comfortable co-creating the solutions. This is key not only to building an organization, but also to building a movement. I don’t think I could be managing this without a practice of self-inquiry and mindfulness.
The people we interviewed have sought help from others to find ways to better understand themselves, and develop practices to improve their leadership skills and create healthier environments. Some bring these programs into their organizations. For example, Mark Bertolini, ex-CEO of the health-care insurance company Aetna, spearheaded the creation of an employee mindfulness program after suffering a severe skiing accident that caused him excruciating, long-term pain. He eventually found relief in meditation, yoga, and other eastern practices, which he then applied to the world of health and his own employees at Aetna.
Abby Falik, founder and CEO of the American nonprofit Global Citizen Year, showed an unusual willingness to be publicly vulnerable by writing a personal user manual on Medium. The manual, which went viral on social media, told the story of her leadership approach and her self-inquiry practice. Global Citizen Year also has an optional Monday morning team meditation and pays for staff to do silent retreats. Self-inquiry is now so embedded in the culture that it is now an explicit point of inquiry during the hiring process.
4. Shifts in the Ability to Partner With Others
Philanthropists are increasingly criticized for their failure to really understand the complex social issues their foundations and largesse attempt to address. And the gulf is sometimes so large as to create fearful or even toxic relationships between those who disburse funding and those who need to it fund their social change work. As Edgar Villanueva, board chair of Native Americans in Philanthropy, writes:
Those managing philanthropic resources, including those who determine the process for accessing those resources, all too often lack deep relationships with the communities closest to the pain of social, racial, and economic isolation. This is evident when funders tell the community what it needs, rather than listening to the community and acting on its recommendations.
Self-inquiry can help solve this problem. Every leader we spoke to reported that they were able to better connect to others because of their self-inquiry practice. “The more human I can be, [the easier it is for others] to interact from a place of vulnerability,” said Synergos Foundation’s Dulany. And Bertolini said that he makes a point of establishing deeper connections to the CEOs on whose boards he serves and the other board members, which facilitates more productive working relationships.
5. Shifts in Systemic Awareness
The growing popularity of systems-level approaches to social problems demands a different set of leadership skills than a typical founder—whose single-minded focus is organizational growth—has at hand. Rather than focusing on single-point interventions, systems-change leaders, or “systems entrepreneurs,” seek to influence other individuals and institutions involved in a particular social system so as to shift that system’s rules, resource flows, power dynamics, norms, relationships, and interconnections. These types of co-created solutions are often more effective and sustainable than linear organizational growth.
In this context, a leader’s personal insights and greater self-awareness, developed through self-inquiry, are essential. The traits associated with a managed ego—humility, empathy, and active listening—are vital for leaders who need to gain the trust of partners and allies with widely varying interests, institutional agendas, and perspectives.
Luzárraga described his awareness of the broader system he seeks to influence this way:
When you are so in love with something, you can get too close to it. When you have the capacity to step back and see the whole system, itʼs not as emotionally stressful. I donʼt feel the need to control everything. I am aware of my ego, and I am much more able to see the positive actions needed to improve the education system as a whole. Itʼs not about me. Itʼs about shifting the system to greater impact.
Self-inquiry can help you train yourself to operate at the 30,000-foot level so that you can see the whole system, and then drill down and get something done. The ability to operate at both the high-up and ground levels is important for successful leaders. RefugePoint’s Chanoff cites the dominant mental model of scarcity as the primary barrier to more collaborative and systemic approaches across organizational boundaries. “All the incentives drive nonprofit leaders to have an organization-specific focus,” he observed. To counter this tendency, he has worked with his leadership team to develop a performance evaluation system for staff members that accounts for all the ways they create value, including catalyzing new funding for other organizations that work with refugees.
By embracing systemic awareness, RefugePoint’s leadership team has created new opportunities to convene and collaborate with major players such as Women's Refugee Commission, Mercy Corps, and the State Department around a universal measurement system. Chanoff credits the fruits of his self-inquiry process—including a managed ego, strong listening skills, and a systems-level view—with enabling RefugePoint to build these partnerships.
Conclusion
Self-inquiry has assumed a vital role in the lives of many social change leaders. We know that it works from our own experience, and we are excited that the ripples of impact are growing as more leaders and the people they influence start using self-inquiry to enrich their lives and enhance their personal effectiveness. "The process of self-inquiry helped me step out of my default position, pause, and create a wider awareness,” said Shah. “My expanded curiosity enlarges my potential to truly contribute.”
While there is no “one size fits all” approach to self-inquiry, and while we don’t wish to espouse a particular methodology or approach, we are convinced that a continuous process of self-inquiry helps create more successful, resilient, managed-ego leaders who can go the distance. Social change is a marathon, not a sprint, and practicing self-inquiry increases our ability to come from a place of humility in partnering with others to address complex problems. As Dulany mused, “Only when we get past our inner obstacles and behaviors can we act out of our best selves in the work we do in the world.”
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Read more stories by Katherine Milligan & Jeffrey C. Walker.