Sabbatical as Strategy: Strengthening Teams & Driving Impact
In the Center for Sustainable Leadership’s first year, we’ve noticed a trend among leaders, teams, and boards: you’re interested in sabbatical. We’re encouraged by this. Sabbatical is a powerful (and often misunderstood) tool for both sustaining individual leaders and strengthening an organization’s long-term leadership pipeline. We’ve seen it foster real impact, and we’re pleased to be working with many organizations to help them use or plan for sabbaticals.
Today, we're excited to share some of what we've learned so far. Here you can read:
What is a sabbatical?
Why are sabbaticals powerful?
How can we make sure that sabbaticals have a significant, positive impact?
What are the pitfalls leaders should avoid in planning for a sabbatical?
1. What is a sabbatical?
Sabbaticals can be a chance to renew, re-energize, and recharge. Rest fuels impact. Often, nonprofit leaders use sabbatical for travel, education, and reflection.
Organizations adopt sabbatical as a part of their strategy for leadership development, longevity, and innovation. This is a chance for individuals across the organization to learn more about their own strengths as leaders in the absence of the executive leader.
They usually span anywhere from 3 months to a year— and often occur after seven years of service, but organizations are creative about what works for them.
A sabbatical is not a vacation. It’s a powerful tool for an organization’s longevity, leadership development, and innovation.
2. Why are sabbaticals powerful?
Sabbaticals are especially useful for leaders of nonprofits, schools, and school systems. Between long hours, tight resources, and frequent crises, nonprofit leaders lack time to “come up for air.” Leaders come back recharged, which improves both their work and the quality of life of their team and school/organization.
Sabbatical provides an opportunity for a leader’s team to learn new skills and take on new responsibility. It organically strengthens the “leadership bench” and ensures that the success of a team doesn’t rest on a single individual’s presence.
Often, when a leader returns, they’re more able to delegate tasks, which contributes to the sustainability of their role and the growth of those around them.
Sabbaticals help recruit and retain leaders in intense, demanding fields.
Sabbaticals can be a powerful way to increase retention of leaders in demanding fields with high rates of burnout.
3. How can we make sure that sabbaticals have a significant, positive impact?
Sabbaticals require planning. There are clear steps that facilitate success. Some key ones include:
Before anything else, identify the conditions that must be true in order for sabbatical to occur. For example:
Do you have a team member (or members) who can step into interim executive roles? Can your organization currently afford to pay them a stipend for their increased work?
Consider timing: Is it a stable time for your organization? (For example, COVID-19 was a crisis that warranted delaying sabbaticals).
Bring together a "planning group" that includes the team that conducts sustainability/succession planning at your organization, the interim leader(s), and the person going on sabbatical. Outline responsibilities and who will take them on.
Talk with your community about the sabbatical. Establish clear communication norms for the team on who to reach out to in case of questions or needs that come up during the sabbatical.
Strong sabbaticals require strong planning, advance communciation, and setting (and following!) clear norms.
4. What are the pitfalls leaders should avoid in planning for a sabbatical?
Insufficiently planning for the sabbatical, without setting a clear set of norms. Define the limited list of instances in which the leader will communicate with the organization.
Working during the sabbatical.
Returning to work without a clear plan, and "jumping back in" too quickly.
Missing the chance to learn from what happened in their absence. Leaders should take time to connect with and listen to team members before establishing their own plan of action following sabbatical.
Don’t expect “business as usual” right after the sabbatical. Assume you have an organization of stronger leaders—this will be an adjustment.
Interested in sabbatical? CSL can help. We believe in sabbatical, and we want to help you do it well.
Under the right conditions and with thoughtful planning, sabbaticals can help retain executive leaders and develop their entire team. They play a key role in sustainability planning by giving team members the chance to take on greater leadership and strengthening the pool of potential future executive leaders in the years to come.
CSL has supported around ten organizations in the last year in adopting sabbatical policies for their executive leaders. Beginning in the summer and fall, CSL will begin supporting organizations in the planning processes leading up to sabbatical itself. This will ensure that it yields all of the benefits—stronger leadership pipelines, rejuvenated and clear-eyed executive leadership, and a more meaningfully engaged board—that we know are possible.
We would love to discuss sabbatical with you.
If you're curious to learn more, we're happy to pass along recommended reading. We would also love to support you in planning your sabbatical.
To an ever-brighter future,
Amanda, Freddi, and Leah