Understanding Our Operating Environment
The retreat began by creating a shared understanding of the complex environment we’re all navigating. Through an interactive web-building exercise, participants mapped the interconnected challenges facing their organizations—from employee burnout and federal funding cuts to climate change impacts and demographic shifts. This visual representation revealed how internal and external pressures create a web of influence that extends far beyond any single individual or organization.

We explored the concept of BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible)—a framework that captures today’s turbulent reality. This led to examining how leaders can shift from reactive contraction to expansive wellbeing, even within chaotic circumstances. Through guided breathing and embodiment practices, participants experienced firsthand the difference between operating from stress versus operating from a resourced state.

Scenario Planning for Strategic Resilience
Each nonprofit team developed three distinct scenarios—best case, most probable, and worst case—considering impacts across four dimensions: individual (leaders, staff, volunteers), operational (services, resources, infrastructure), community (populations served), and systemic (partners, government, other nonprofits).

The scenario development process emphasized thinking systemically rather than linearly, embracing uncertainty rather than seeking the “right” answer, and creating actionable frameworks for adaptation. Teams will receive refined versions of their scenarios in the coming days, along with guidance for using them as strategic tools.

Thriving as Leadership Capacity
Participants received individual results from the Be Well Lead Well Pulse® assessment, a research-based tool measuring 19 dimensions of wellbeing across six core areas: Fuel, Flow, Wonder, Wisdom, Thriving, and Thriving Amplified. The group’s collective dashboard revealed both strengths to leverage and growth opportunities to address.

Key insights emerged about the relationship between leader wellbeing and organizational effectiveness. Wisdom Works research demonstrates that 34% of a leader’s reported impact can be explained by their personal wellbeing—their experience of being internally well-resourced for their demands. This isn’t about self-care as luxury, but about wellbeing as a foundational leadership capacity.

Through partner coaching conversations and group reflection, leaders explored how their assessment results show up in daily leadership practice and identified specific areas for development. The concept of “resourcing and evolving” became a central theme—the ongoing work of cultivating internal resources while continuously growing to meet new challenges.

Purpose, Vision, and Values Realignment
The second day focused on reconnecting with organizational purpose, vision, and values through both individual reflection and team dialogue. Leaders examined questions such as: Why did you originally join this organization? When have you felt most aligned with its purpose? How might your organization’s core identity serve you across different scenarios?

Each team shared their purpose, vision, and values with the full group, receiving appreciative feedback and engaging in meaningful dialogue about what feels alive versus what feels outdated. This process revealed both the enduring power of well-articulated organizational identity and the need for periodic realignment as external conditions shift.

The Power of Support and Connection
Throughout both days, experiential activities reinforced the theme that leadership doesn’t have to be a solo endeavor. From tree pose practices that demonstrated the stability found in mutual support to arm movement exercises showing how engagement with support yields better results with less effort, participants experienced embodied learning about the value of connection and collaboration.

A particularly meaningful aspect was the opportunity for leaders to learn alongside peers from other nonprofit organizations. Participants expressed deep gratitude for the chance to share strategies and innovations across organizational lines, discovering they are not alone in grappling with complex challenges while gaining fresh perspectives from organizations with different approaches and cultures.

Peer coaching partnerships were established, creating ongoing support relationships beyond the retreat. The group reflections created space for authentic sharing and mutual witnessing—rare gifts in the typical pace of nonprofit leadership.

• Complete your personal thriving leadership assessment, Be Well Lead Well Pulse®.
• Provide a strategic overview of your nonprofit to Wisdom Works.
• Discuss the following questions with your leadership team:
  • What shifts on the horizon might open opportunities or spark disruptions that could redefine the future of your work?
  • What changes at the national or local level are likely to most significantly affect the populations you serve, positively or negatively?
  • How well-resourced is your leadership team—in its capacity to thrive, its skills, and its bandwidth—to navigate significant external or internal changes?
  • Which of your funding sources and programs are most vulnerable or best positioned to benefit anticipated changes—and how ready are you to diversity funding or picot services if needed?
  • If demand for your services were to increase dramatically, what would that look like—and how would your organization respond?
  • What scenarios, both energizing and unsettling, keep you up at night when you think about the next 2-3 years for your organization?