A journaling prompt from Write Club asked me this. Write about a time when you felt yourself completely. What was true about that moment?
My answer came quickly. I love to travel. Not for the destination, but for the space that hangs in the air between home and arrival. It gives me permission to be anyone I want to be. I don’t change my character or my integrity. But the sense of permission that comes from stepping outside my everyday life brings so much relief.
This is why I love to run retreats: in a new space of in-between created for women seeking refuge from the Groundhog Day of their story.
In an airport, it is called airside. The passageway between landside and the plane. Secure, often quiet, full of promise. As I walked through the terribly overpriced shops, I realised something. There is a part of my story that needs to be released. The in-between of an airport passageway means I am free to think.
Where do you think the most freely?
The cost of people pleasing
People pleasing is something I have always struggled with. In the not-for-profit and church leadership world, it was incredibly difficult to reset. I want people to like me. So feedback, team conflict, and pressure often looked like me bending toward approval.
This is the opposite of thinking freely. Worry, anxiety: how can I please the opposing instructions?
As a leader, when budgets shift, when transitions come, you cannot lead from a place of wanting to make everyone happy. There is a harder conversation underneath this too. In spaces where control overtakes leadership culture, people lose the freedom to think differently from the group.
Creativity requires divergent thinking, yet I find that in these leadership spaces, there is never enough time for people to free their thinking and to emancipate oppressed voices.
The frontline care sector can be a strange and difficult place to lead. The passion that draws people to the work is real. Yet the pressure inside the culture can be brutal. Autonomy is rare. Bullying can be fierce. The ability to listen and care deeply for staff is often misunderstood or simply missing.
New Research About Burnout in the Sector
The not-for-profit sector is facing a significant and growing leadership crisis. The Centre for Effective Philanthropy’s State of Nonprofits 2026 report found that the proportion of nonprofit CEOs naming burnout as a primary concern rose from 29% in 2025 to 46% in 2026.
More than half of nonprofit leaders now describe their organisational climate as fearful and chronically stressed, with morale measurably declining. Burnout is no longer something to manage privately. It is a structural condition that the whole sector needs to face together.
One thread runs through so much of this. Control. Requiring people to seek permission for every small decision, without the trust and bandwidth to lead with courage in uncertain times. Sometimes this comes from a board. Sometimes from an executive team that has not been clear in its own strategic planning, and so cannot equip those underneath them to run with the big idea.
It is a draining and complicated part of the sector. I have recently accepted a non-executive role on a board, and it has made me think deeply about what kind of culture fosters good faith between an organisation’s strategic leadership and the operational life that brings the strategy home.
Every retreat I run, without fail, I start the retreat with this one question.
What do you need to give yourself permission to do?
The constant approval seeking I have seen in boardrooms, families and churches is its own kind of airside. A holding pattern. Neither landside nor truly flying. An environment where legalism and culture are used for coercion and control. What are you seeking approval from others to do that you know God has already given you a vision for?
What regenerative leadership asks of us
A regenerative farm does not force a harvest. It tends the soil, trusts the season, and lets growth come in its own time. I wonder if leadership, especially leadership inside ministry and mission-driven work, is being invited into the same rhythm.
Jesus led from a settled place, not an anxious one. He withdrew to quiet places before he made decisions. He trusted the twelve with real responsibility rather than controlling every step they took. He let Judas walk away rather than chase approval at the cost of his own peace. He was secure enough in who he was that he did not need everyone to like him.
Seasons change and so do friendships.
Callings deepen, and new doors open.
Leaders bring a new direction, and that doesn’t mean you are meant to follow it.
A regenerative kind of leadership trusts people, tends culture slowly, and makes room for courage even when the way ahead is unclear. Conversations are honest. People are inspired to bring their best, their voice and their reflections to the table.
An environment that looks and sounds the same, where every leader has the same clothing, speaking style, and expression, and where leadership is uniform, is not a healthy one. The size of an organisation does not mean it’s healthy. Look at the size of nations in the current season: a dictatorship may look controlled and at ease, but that doesn’t mean it is empowering its citizens toward their destined future.
Reflection:
Where in your own life or leadership are you living airside, caught in that holding pattern between control and trust?
Maybe the invitation, like mine in that terminal, is simply to notice it. To let go of the part of the story that no longer needs to be carried. And to trust that growth, like grace, was never meant to be earned in a hurry.
Seeking permission from your leader for decisions that you already know the answer to is a sign of control. The beauty of a regenerative leadership environment is the way that every person is given permission to live their own life with autonomy and freedom.
