We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

631. Change Leadership, Critical Hope + Building Cultures We Don’t Have to Heal From - Lindsey Fuller, Jon McCoy and Becky Endicott

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Jul 9, 2025

Join Lindsey Fuller, Executive Director of The Teaching Well, as she redefines leadership with courage and intention. Discover how critical hope can transform daily practices and build resilience in organizations. Lindsay emphasizes that true leadership stems from a place of humanity, care, and essential tools like rest and sabbaticals. She challenges conventional policies to be living and responsive, advocating for shared leadership that values individual experiences. Explore how to combat compassion fatigue and create cultures that nurture rather than heal.

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INSIGHT

Critical Hope as Collective Practice

Critical hope is a deliberate practice, not just a personality trait or optimism.
It acts as a collective resource that sustains resilience and leadership strength.

INSIGHT

Policies Are Culture in Action

Policies are expressions of organizational values and culture, not just paperwork.
Human-centered policies must protect and amplify people, not merely minimize legal risk.

ADVICE

Create and Manage Policies Well

Involve those directly impacted when creating policies and get legal review to balance protection and feasibility.
Train people managers well to ensure fair, consistent policy implementation and reduce resentment.

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We’re closing out this series with a powerful conversation that redefines what leadership can look like. Lindsay Fuller of The Teaching Well joins us to explore how leading with courage starts right where you are—not with a title, but with intention.

We unpack big ideas: hope as a daily practice, resilience as a rhythm, and policies that reflect lived experience—not just words on a page.

Lindsay challenges us to rethink what tools truly sustain leadership—like rest, offboarding, and sabbaticals—and why they’re not extras, but essentials. We also name the often-unspoken reality of compassion fatigue and offer a vision of shared leadership grounded in alignment, not replication.

If you're ready to build a culture that centers humanity, care, and courage—this episode is your invitation to begin.

Learn:

Learn why human-centered leadership means choosing courage over comfort
Discover how critical hope is a practice—not a personality trait
Understand why change leadership begins right where you are—even without the title
Explore what it means for policies to be living, responsive, and rooted in lived experience
See how resilience is built through consistent, intentional rhythms
Unpack why rest, offboarding, and sabbaticals are essential leadership tools—not perks
Learn how shared leadership depends on calibration, not cloning
Recognize why compassion fatigue is a real occupational hazard—and what to do about it

Episode Highlights:

The Importance of Critical Hope (05:00)
Policies as Culture in Action (08:55)
Reframing Policies for Human-Centered Organizations (09:01)
5-Part Framework and Where People Get Stuck (15:00)
Challenges in Implementing Human-Centered Policies (14:53)
Human-Centered Leadership (25:00)
The Role of Feedback in Leadership (27:51)
Becoming the Change Leader in Your Team (30:00)
The Journey of Rest and Leadership (32:11)
Reflections from the Well (33:00)

Episode Shownotes: www.weareforgood.com/episode/631

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