Walking Ahead: Leadership Through Trust and Restraint
Few things are more frustrating than trying to get kids outside for some badly needed fresh air when the weather is bad and they really don’t want to go.
When Tasha Van Vlack posted a picture of herself walking a good half a kilometer ahead of her three kids on just such a walk on a wintry day in Ontario, it brought back all sorts of memories for me. I had been there. Not in Ontario, but in that exact parenting moment.
She described the wonder of the moment when, bundled up and trudging down the road, her kids started talking, all together, about kid stuff. She didn’t start it and didn’t mediate it; her epiphany was that in this moment her job was to let them talk, and stop trying to manage them. So she sped up and took that selfie instead.
Tasha and I spoke a couple of weeks later about parenting, leadership, and how things look different depending where you are in the journey. As we discovered, sometimes one awkward moment can mean several different things– and sometimes the best lesson is the discussion itself.
Learning about restraint — and trust.
As Tasha was trudging—alone—down that snowy road, she thought about how in nonprofit leadership, we often confuse being responsible with being in control. After all that work setting up a conversation, there is a tendency to just keep managing– jumping in at the first sign of friction, redirecting, and smoothing over all the interesting edges.
But sometimes, the most powerful thing a leader can do is bring people together, and then get out of the way.
“I see this constantly in community building,” she says. “When people are given just enough structure to feel safe, and just enough freedom to feel trusted, something shifts. Conversations deepen. Peer learning emerges. Relationships form without being forced. And leaders stop being the center of gravity.”
That walk wasn’t successful because everything was meticulously stage managed from start to finish. It was successful because the person who made it happen trusted her (ahem) people, and knew when to step back and let them do their thing.
The Awkward Work of Making Space
Looking at that snowy selfie, I took away something different. My kids are a few years older. After the tide of memories receded, I thought about how for me the key moment in the story was the effort that went into getting them outside in the first place.
I remember all too well feeling foolish and undignified, insisting that this walk needed to happen, because legitimately, everybody really does need fresh air and exercise. I’ve been guilty of bribing, of begging, and of raising my voice, and feeling really incompetent while doing so. Surely skilled parents don’t have to do these things?
But if you aren’t willing to take a step beyond what’s comfortable, the fresh air isn’t had, and that sweet sibling conversation, between kids old enough to be building their own relationships with one another, might not happen.
Of course, families aren’t the only place where you sometimes have to force conversations. In organizations of any size, in-groups can form, and collaboration can stagnate or stop altogether. And breaking through can be more difficult than getting an intransigent 12-year-old boy out of his room. After all, it’s comfortable staying in a safe, predictable space, with people who won’t challenge you too much.
But here’s the leadership tension: if you aren’t willing to be the awkward one — the one who insists on shared space, cross-team conversations, or uncomfortable collaboration — it’s likely no one else will.
So what shared spaces do you care about enough to insist on, and then step back from?
That question lives near the very heart of The Nonprofit Hive, the international nonprofit community Tasha founded a little over two years ago. As she puts it,
“This is something I’ve had to learn repeatedly in building The Nonprofit Hive. Connection doesn’t happen just because you believe in it. It happens because someone designs for it, invites people into it, and then trusts what unfolds. Weekly one-to-one conversations only work because there is intention up front — and restraint afterward.“
The magic doesn’t come from managing the conversation. It comes from believing that people, when given the chance, know how to show up for each other.
Community Is Where the Wisdom Gets Shared
Which, you may have noticed, is exactly what Tasha and I did.
In addition to the moment Tasha’s kids started talking to each other, and the moment years earlier when I hauled my kids outdoors so that they would talk to each other, there is also the moment Tasha and I decided to share our stories with one another.
There’s a real beauty to talking with someone else who has been on your journey but is at a point further along, and a comfort in learning that it really was worth the effort. And it is so sustaining, for the person for whom that moment is a more distant memory, to realize that the stress of a difficult past experience has metabolized into some sort of wisdom.
Leadership, like parenting, can be genuinely terrifying. But when we talk to each other, and learn from each other, we get more of a sense of what’s possible. We learn that maybe we’re not as alone as we thought.
As leaders and as parents, we learn that some things are not a crazy thing that only happened to us and was probably our fault, but a notable location on a road we all walk.
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Sarah Pita is Director of Development at the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York, bringing 25+ years of nonprofit experience to the role. She’s been a Nonprofit Hive member for over a year and is a speaker and trainer focused on making AI approachable for nonprofit professionals. Sarah studied Russian at Swarthmore (still fluent!) and holds an MA from The Fletcher School at Tufts. Her daughter is in college; her son is a high school senior.