Psychological Safety Isn’t a Perk. It’s the Foundation of Healthy Nonprofit Teams
An interview with Zanni Miranda, Founder of Double Loop Consulting
Key Takeaways
- Psychological safety starts with the system. Burnout isn’t always an individual problem to solve. Sometimes the biggest opportunity is improving how teams communicate, collaborate, and support one another.
- Personal growth needs organizational support. Coaching one person can create awareness, but lasting change happens when the workplace evolves alongside the people in it.
- Training introduces ideas. Team coaching helps them stick. Learning something new is valuable, but making it part of everyday practice requires time, conversation, and shared commitment.
- Passion isn’t what sustains nonprofit professionals. Passion may bring people into the sector, but healthy relationships, clear expectations, and shared responsibility help them stay.
- Community is one of the sector’s greatest strengths. In times of uncertainty, spaces where nonprofit professionals feel connected, heard, and supported become just as important as the work itself.
When nonprofit teams talk about burnout, the conversation often centers on workload, funding pressures, or staffing shortages. Those challenges are real. But according to Zanni Miranda, they’re often symptoms of something deeper.
As the founder of Double Loop Consulting, Zanni works with nonprofit organizations to build psychologically safe workplaces where people can communicate honestly, navigate conflict productively, and create healthier systems together. Her work sits at the intersection of operations and organizational culture, helping teams recognize that sustainable change isn’t just about improving processes. It’s about improving how people work together.
Looking Beyond Processes to People
Zanni didn’t originally set out to specialize in psychological safety.
Her consulting work began with operations, supporting nonprofit organizations as they refined systems and processes. But over time, a pattern began to emerge.
Organizations would bring her in to solve a technical challenge, update a workflow, or improve a process. Yet beneath almost every operational issue was something much more human. Communication had broken down. Departments weren’t talking to one another. People no longer felt comfortable raising concerns.
As she reflected, “The people side of things ended up being some of the core issues that were driving the desire for change.”
While she still loves systems thinking and operational design, Zanni realized that fixing tools alone rarely solved the underlying problems. Sustainable change required creating space for honest conversations, rebuilding trust, and helping teams understand the systems they had created together.
For Zanni, that realization shifted the focus of her work. Rather than asking, How do we improve this process? she began asking, What is happening between the people using it?
She explained, “Sometimes you don’t understand what’s happening at that system level without having someone create space to have the conversation about it.”
Those conversations aren’t always comfortable, but they’re often where the most meaningful organizational change begins.
Psychological Safety Starts with the System
One of the themes that emerged throughout the conversation was how often nonprofit professionals are encouraged to focus on individual growth.
We invest in self-awareness. We strengthen our boundaries. We develop leadership skills. All of that matters.
But Zanni believes something important gets missed if the environment surrounding people never changes.
“You create awareness for the individual within a system that is broken.”
That insight has become central to how she approaches organizational change. Rather than expecting individuals to carry the responsibility for fixing unhealthy workplace dynamics on their own, she encourages organizations to examine the systems surrounding them.
“Where is it in our communication? How come we stopped having team meetings?” she asked. “There’s really little tweaks you can make, but sometimes you don’t understand what’s happening at that system level without creating space to have the conversation.”
Psychological safety isn’t about avoiding difficult conversations or making work comfortable all the time. It’s about creating an environment where people feel safe enough to ask questions, raise concerns, admit mistakes, and contribute ideas without fear of embarrassment or retaliation.
Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs begin with the smallest conversations.
Individual Coaching Matters. Team Coaching Completes the Picture.
One of the initiatives giving Zanni the most energy right now is a new collaboration with fellow Nonprofit Hive partner Joanna Lund Pops.
Together, they’re bringing individual coaching and team coaching into a single offering that helps organizations move beyond personal development and toward lasting cultural change.
The goal isn’t to replace one approach with the other. It’s to make sure personal growth has somewhere to land.
Too often, someone invests in strengthening their communication skills, leadership, or personal boundaries, only to return to a workplace that hasn’t changed around them.
By combining one-to-one coaching with team coaching, Zanni hopes organizations can move, in her words, “from awareness at the individual level to this sort of systemic culture change,” allowing teams to build healthier ways of working together instead of expecting individuals to shoulder all the responsibility.
She’s particularly excited about making these opportunities available beyond executive leadership.
While senior leaders often receive coaching support, frontline staff, middle managers, and individual contributors frequently do not. Expanding coaching throughout an organization creates shared language, stronger relationships, and a culture where more people feel seen, heard, and supported.
Training Teaches. Coaching Changes Conversations.
Professional development has long been part of nonprofit leadership, but Zanni draws an important distinction between training and coaching.
Training introduces new ideas and builds knowledge.
Team coaching helps people apply that knowledge together.
She compares it to returning from a conference full of excitement and inspiration.
“You’re jazzed up about all the things you just learned,” she laughed. “You come back and say, ‘Look what I learned.’ But getting anyone to be on that same level of excitement with you doesn’t always happen.”
The challenge isn’t enthusiasm. It’s creating enough space for teams to collectively turn new ideas into new habits.
As Zanni put it, “It really requires effort. And a lot of times we don’t have the space to make time for that effort.”
That’s where team coaching becomes different. Rather than assuming people will naturally transfer new knowledge into everyday practice, it creates intentional opportunities for teams to learn how to communicate differently together.
Passion Alone Can’t Sustain Us
Like many nonprofit professionals, Zanni sees organizations navigating enormous uncertainty.
Funding pressures. Economic instability. Staff turnover. Global challenges that ripple into local communities.
Although she now lives in the Netherlands while continuing to work closely with organizations connected to the United States, she’s seen firsthand how interconnected today’s nonprofit landscape has become. When uncertainty grows in one part of the world, nonprofit organizations everywhere often feel the effects.
That external uncertainty doesn’t stay outside the workplace. It follows people into meetings, decision-making, and relationships.
That’s one reason psychological safety becomes even more important during difficult seasons.
One of the most memorable reflections from the conversation came as Zanni connected passion with burnout.
“If you think of imagery for passion, it’s hot. It’s fiery. That’s going to fizzle out someday. Passion cannot sustain you. You have to rely on sharing the load and having better communication and really creating expectations and clarity.”
For nonprofit professionals, that distinction matters. Passion may bring people into the sector, but healthy relationships, shared responsibility, and clear communication are what help them stay.
As the outside world grows increasingly uncertain, Zanni believes our workplaces should become places of stability.
“When the external world is so crazy, we need to have our internal environments be very safe.”
Community Remains the Greatest Source of Hope
Despite the challenges facing the sector, Zanni remains optimistic.
That optimism doesn’t come from believing the work is getting easier. It comes from believing in people.
Throughout her career, community has been the constant that has sustained her.
Living in the Netherlands while continuing to build relationships across North America has only reinforced that belief.
“I’ve realized throughout my career that’s what’s sustained me,” she reflected. “Knowing that I’ve got community somewhere.”
Reflecting on the years since 2020, she also spoke about how many people are still rebuilding their sense of connection after a period that fundamentally changed how we gather, work, and support one another.
“How are we rebuilding it to actually work for us now?” she asked. “That’s the guiding star for me.”
For nonprofit professionals, those questions feel particularly relevant. We spend so much of our lives with our colleagues, and the quality of those relationships shapes not only our work but also our well-being.
When people feel safe enough to contribute honestly, support one another, and navigate challenges together, organizations become stronger from the inside out.
Perhaps that’s the real promise of psychological safety. It isn’t simply about preventing burnout or improving workplace culture. It’s about creating the conditions where people, and ultimately the missions they serve, have the opportunity to thrive together.