When circumstances change quickly, leaders face pressure to make decisions and adjust plans while supporting people who may feel uncertain or overwhelmed. How can leaders keep the work moving while remaining connected to the people and purpose for doing it?
In this episode, we explore “empathetic agility,” the ability to adapt and make decisions in complex situations while remaining attentive to what others are experiencing. We talk with Bobbi Silten, Allison Kaika, and Nikhil Bumb, coauthors of the FSG article, “Building Empathetic Agility: The Leadership Muscle for Navigating Complexity with Purpose,” about how this practice can support leaders of collaboratives and cross-sector partnerships.
Drawing on their own leadership experiences and conversations with other field leaders, guests discuss:
- How building trusted relationships before a crisis can help partners better navigate uncertainty together
- How listening, acknowledging mistakes, and making room for questions can help people feel safe speaking up
- Why staying connected to shared goals and values can help leaders decide what needs attention when everything feels urgent
- How everyday practices, such as pausing to reflect and making time to process changes with others, can strengthen empathetic agility
If you are navigating change in your collaborative and looking for ways to respond with care and purpose as a way to fuel progress, we invite you to listen to the full episode.
Ways to listen: You can listen below or on your preferred podcast streaming service, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Simplecast, iHeartRadio, Amazon, and other podcast apps.
Please find a transcript of this talk further down this page.
Resources and Footnotes
More on Collective Impact
- Infographic: What is Collective Impact?
- Resource List: Getting Started in Collective Impact
Music
The Intro music, entitled “Running,” was composed by Rafael Krux, and can be found here and is licensed under CC: By 4.0.
The outro music, entitled “Deliberate Thought,” was composed by Kevin Macleod. Licensed under CC: By.
Listen to Past Episodes: You can listen and subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Simplecast, iHeartRadio, Amazon, and other podcast apps.
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the Collective Impact Forum podcast, here to share resources to support social change makers working on cross-sector collaboration.
The Collective Impact Forum is a nonprofit field-building initiative that is co-hosted in partnership by the nonprofit consulting firm FSG and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions
In this episode, we explore the concept of “empathetic agility,” the ability to adapt and make decisions in complex situations while remaining attentive to what others are experiencing.
We are joined by Bobbi Silten, Allison Kaika, and Nikhil Bumb, coauthors of the FSG article, “Building Empathetic Agility: The Leadership Muscle for Navigating Complexity with Purpose.” Together, we discuss how leaders can adapt and make decisions while remaining attentive to what others are experiencing. Our guests share how building trust, making room for questions, and pausing to reflect can help collaboratives move forward through uncertainty.
Before we begin, a brief update: Since the recording of this podcast, Allison Kaika is no longer with FSG. She continues to create social impact outside of FSG, while remaining a cherished alum and close friend of both FSG and the Collective Impact Forum.
Serving as moderator for today’s conversation is Courtney W. Robertson, Director of Programs and Partnerships at the Collective Impact Forum. Let’s tune in.
Courtney W. Robertson: Welcome to the Collective Impact Forum podcast. My name is Courtney W. Robertson, director of programs and partnerships with the Collective Impact Forum and I’m your host for this episode featuring a conversation on empathetic agility.
Imagine that you are a backbone leader for a local place-based collaboration. It’s early morning hours and your phone is buzzing nonstop with text messages and emails. Overnight the state budget changed, a line item has been removed and with it a significant piece of funding for a regional initiative your collaboration has spent nearly two years shaping. Your inboxes are filled with messages such as, “Are we still doing this?” “Should we pause the work?” “Who’s responsible for figuring this out?” On the surface the problem seems straightforward, find new funding and adjust the strategy. But the real leadership challenge is something else entirely. Partners are anxious, some even frustrated, and a few are quietly wondering whether it’s time to step back from the collaboration.
This story captures what many leaders in complex collaborations are wrestling with currently, how to remain adaptive in the face of constant change while also staying deeply connected to the people doing the work. Backbone leaders often operate in a space of ambiguity working cross-functionally across different sectors and organizations to drive shared strategy and results. Ambiguity that has only been amplified by the current sociopolitical context and challenges in the U.S. and globally.
In this conversation we’ll explore the leadership muscle, empathetic agility, the topic of a recent article, Building Empathetic Agility: The Leadership Muscle for Navigating Complexity with Purpose, written by our U.S.-based consulting colleagues here at FSG based on their conversations with and work advising and supporting corporate leaders in this moment. We will discuss what empathetic agility is and its applicability to leaders of cross-sector or place-based collaboratives, exploring what can these leaders learn from navigating complexity with empathy and agility and how they might strengthen this muscle in spaces where no one is fully in control but everyone is accountable. I’m honored to have my colleagues and co-authors of the article, Bobbi Silten, chief of people and culture, Allison Kaika, associate director of U.S. consulting, and Nikhil Bumb, managing director on the U.S. consulting team. Thank you all so much for being with me today.
So I’d love to start by having each of you share a little bit about yourself and your work here at FSG. And I would love to hear what led you to writing about this topic in particular. Bobbi, how about we start with you?
Bobbi Silten: Thanks so much, Courtney. Really happy to be here and to be in this conversation with my co-conspirators in good, Nikhil and Allison, so good to be here with you guys. So a little bit about me and then why this article. So I worked in the private sector for three and half decades and I kind of consider myself as a recovering corporate leader and also practitioner of social impact, and I come to this work having learned a lot and made a lot of mistakes and I hope to now in my post corporate encore career dedicate my time to helping other social impact leaders have more impact and to share the mistakes in my learning so that they can make new mistakes. This article and we’ll talk a little bit more about, a bit about the genesis but like you said at the opening this is a very challenging time for leaders. So much is coming at folks and so we felt that this based on conversations with other leaders was a good topic for us to explore, so really looking forward to digging in today.
Courtney W. Robertson: Thank you, Bobbi. Allison, I’ll kick it over to you next.
Allison Kaika: Thanks, Courtney. I echo Bobbi’s excitement to be here with everyone, my co-authors but also the Collective Impact Forum team. It’s such a pleasure when we get to collaborate and talk about how our ideas are cross pollinating. But for those who don’t know me, my name is Allison Kaika. I’m an associate director at FSG on our consulting team and practice where I work with both companies and foundations that are trying to translate big impact ambitions into real action in communities, particularly with a specific focus on a place or a geography. So I manage teams and help lead our strategy facilitation and advising work across those areas. And within and outside of my role at FSG I would describe myself as a student of leadership. I’m someone who has always been drawn to and fascinated by and chasing the concept of good leadership. I think this comes from my own hunger to really trust the people that I’m being asked to follow and a deep desire to become one of those people myself. So a lot of my work now involves learning from the leaders that I get to partner with especially place-based leaders, a handful of amazing backbone leaders who are navigating real challenges in communities and in their organizations and companies every day. And I’m often reflecting on how to apply those lessons that I see other folks leaning into in my own leadership and in our consulting practice at FSG. And so why this article, well, we’re talking about leadership and observing leadership and in thinking about leadership every day in my work both as an advisor but also as a team leader and manager and as Bobbi mentioned this moment feels more poignant than ever to be more explicit about the role of individual leadership in terms of making impact.
Nikhil Bumb: Awesome. And I get to round it out. So Courtney, great to be back with you all. This is my second CIF podcast appearance and how great to be here with Bobbi and Allison who anyone who knows them are both fantastic leaders in their own right and I learn something from them through every conversation we have including the various conversations we had in leading up to or during the research leading up to the article. Just by way of quick introduction, I am a managing director at FSG. I’ve been here for about 10 years and in our U.S. consulting practice I help lead our corporate consulting work. I have been both an advisor and I’ve also been in house at companies trying to lead social impact work and I’ve also had the pleasure of being with intermediary partners often in these collaborations that are really either working with companies, working with other nonprofits, working out in the field in community, trying to drive that larger systems change often at a market level, market systems level. And so, you know, when I think about that work interference has always been there. There’s always something getting in the way of trying to achieve the impact that we hope to, but as Bobbi and Allison said, it really feels sort of like an all-time high right now with all coming at us from all the directions. And so that’s really what led us to talk about this. You know, we do so much work with many of our partners around not just designing those strategies but what does it actually take to make sure they come to life. And in the past couple of years we just had so many conversations with leaders who were talking about it’s not just about them individually navigating that interference as they lead their teams but how do they really make sure they bring along their teams, their partners in a way that everyone can more systematically, consistently, and with a sense of somewhat calm guide through that complexity that we’re all feeling, that dynamic environment we’re all swimming in right now. And so that’s really where we came. You know, we are learning alongside our partners. We started the research at a very different state and we ended up through the research really learning that it really is the sort of dual nature of empathy and agility that leaders are bringing into this conversation. So excited to dive into that with you today.
Courtney W. Robertson: Thank you all so much. And it’s great of course to have you back Nikhil and Bobbi and Allison to be in conversation with the two of you, not for the first time because we’re colleagues but for the first time on this particular platform. And I appreciate that you all bring this lens around sort of multiple sectors, right? And so able to really talk about what does this look like in practice and so what some of those tricky spots might be, you know, based on what sector folks are representing or even just being in sort of that place-based space where you’re, again, bringing in folks from all walks of life across all different sectors, right, who are coming together to drive shared strategy and vision. So really appreciative of just the expertise that you all are bringing to this conversation. So let’s start with some definitions, right, because when I first read this, it was like, whoa, empathetic agility. Like, what is that, right? Let’s break that down a bit for folks. How would you describe or define empathetic agility and then why would you consider it an important leadership sort of practice or quality in this moment right now?
Allison Kaika: Let me take a pass at the first question which was around definitions, and then I’ll maybe ask one of my colleagues to take the why question. So I think it’s a great one so just in terms of how we define empathetic agility, I think we’re going to talking about it lot throughout this conversation. I’m going to give some terms in a high-level overview but I want to also preface that by saying that this is a concept that lives and breathes and is unfolding every day and I think we put some words around it and some principles of practice, but that doesn’t mean that there is one way to think about it. That being said, here’s a way to think about empathetic agility. So the way that we have been describing this term or this quality, this muscle, is an ability to keep moving forward or to make decisions in complex situations while also staying deeply aware of what people around you are experiencing. So this is the situation in which leaders are being asked to be decisive, to adapt, to move more and more quickly in terms of their context, but they’re also responsible for listening, building trust, and increasing understanding of the human side that change will have a reaction to, right? So the latter, that human side, that element of how others will react or how others will experience that change is often the first thing to drop off someone’s plate or maybe mind when you’re feeling pressure of a sense of overwhelm in a moment or in a season of work. So empathetic agility is that leadership muscle that helps leaders both hold that complexity, make movement, be able to adapt and pivot quickly while also really consider, understand, listen to the experiences that those around them are having.
Courtney W. Robertson: I appreciate that, Allison, and something that you just made me think about that I didn’t necessarily think about when I read the article and even in some of our earlier conversations. It’s almost this balance of head and heart is what it sounds like, right? I often felt too you know you’d have those folks, right, who immediately jump to like, what’s the thing? What do we need to do regardless of impact on people, right? And then you have folks who naturally sort of gravitate to like, we need to think about the people in this situation first. And it sounds like this allows leaders to sort of hold both of those things, not that one is any more important than the other but they’re equally there, right? And so I just appreciate the way you’ve explained it, right, because it made me think of head and heart in the balance of that, so I appreciate it.
Allison Kaika: I love that, Courtney.
Courtney W. Robertson: Thank you. Bobbi, I see- You have something?
Bobbi Silten: Just to kind of come in and like—we already started talking a little bit about why this is important, why now, and one of the interesting things that I think is happening that is I think unusual that’s occurring now in that experts are calling what we’re experiencing all this in a dynamic change that is happening as a polycrisis. So this is instead of experiencing disruptions in a sequential way where we have time to have shock or absorb shock and then another shock comes, but we’ve kind of steadied ourselves. Right now there’s so many things coming at us whether that’s AI disruption or political polarization, affordability issues, war, that just our ability to simultaneously absorb all these things is being challenged. And then they also, these experts, also talk of a polycrisis, there is this interdependence of these forces at play. So for example, AI. So AI doesn’t just change the economy, it also can supercharge disinformation. It can also deepen polarization. It can then weaken institutions as a result and then the same institutions we’re relying on to help govern AI. So you can kind of see how these threads pull on each other and this notion of polycrisis is maybe not articulated by leaders but we’re certainly feeling it and living it every day. And then as Allison articulated that oftentimes what happens when someone is having to pivot and move quickly and adapt then oftentimes we’re so focused on that adaptation and dealing with these crises and the things they mean to our agenda and the work that we’ve so carefully planned as your anecdote at the beginning kind of articulated that oftentimes we forget or deprioritize people and people could include your colleagues, your customers, and community and tbghhat our ability to fully realize the benefit of us being agile, of us pivoting, gets reduced when we don’t take people into consideration. And so, you know, let’s not all just move at speed and not be authentic in how we move at speed, and particularly with things like collective impact, collaboration, that people are such an important ingredient in all of this that we all need to at least try to hold hands, right, and try to understand and have empathy for what we’re all experiencing because we also experience these crises to different degrees. It’s not everybody experiencing them the same way. So just heightening that awareness that as we all confront these changes, we also need to recognize that these changes are impacting people and people are all experiencing them in their own ways and that’s, I think, part of the opportunity of empathy is how do we get in someone else’s shoes to say how can I best understand how you might be experiencing this.
Courtney W. Robertson: So many questions that I know we’re going to get to that you just sparked for me, Bobbi, but one of them is just around how it shows up and so in the article you all talk about it’s showing up in real time as relational, emotional, and cognitive, empathetic agility, and that it’s further demonstrated by building trust, creating psychological safety, and then staying focused on what’s the matter or sort of what the priorities are. So could you share just a little bit more about each of those components again that relational, emotional, and cognitive piece, and how that sort of shows up in how leaders can lean into that with purpose.
Nikhil Bumb: Yeah, absolutely, Courtney. For me this is one of the most fascinating parts of this research and this work. I think this was a big aha for me. It’s not just about this dual notion of empathy and agility, but it can really come to life and we really understood this when we spoke to so many leaders that it really can come to life in these three different ways, these three dimensions. So I’ll just briefly introduce each of them and then I’m going to try to, or I think we collectively, will try to share and bring them to life with a little bit of an anecdote, and anecdote for each of the three dimensions. So the leaders really highlighted these three pieces. One is relational and that’s about building trusted relationships even before a crisis. And that can be with your teams. As a backbone leader that’s with all the members of the collaborative of the collective impact initiative. It’s with your partners, internal, external, that’s really about building those trusted relationships before a crisis. That’s the first dimension, relational. The second dimension is this emotional piece, and as you alluded to, Courtney, that’s really about creating psychological safety, because we know that these fast-moving complex environments can easily draw each of us as humans, right, we’re all humans, into a reactionary mode and that isn’t, may not always be the most strategic move at that point in terms of what’s best for impact. And then the last dimension is this piece about cognitive, which is really about then making sure you’re narrowing in and staying focused on what truly matters. And what was interesting is it’s not really about a rigid definition of what matters, but how can you have that focus to be able to help navigate the fog or navigate the complexity and make sure that you’re coming out on the other side while processing all the information you’re collecting. So, again, that’s the relational, the emotional, and cognitive. I’ll start with a personal anecdote on the relational piece. So this is actually from a couple of years ago and it’s actually something that a leader I really admire said to me at a time when I was navigating both organizational and personal, professional complexity all at the same time together. So, folks who know FSG’s history may remember that we use to have a CEO, a great CEO by the name Dr. Lauren Smith who is still involved in many great initiatives, and at this time, you know, like I said, I won’t get into all the details but there was a lot of organizational complexity going on, there was obviously world interference going on, and then also personal and professional pieces for me. And I just felt like I was constantly swirling, couldn’t figure out what to focus on, couldn’t figure out what I was doing, and I was working with Lauren at the time on a couple of projects, and, you know, in consulting, it can sometimes feel transactional, right? You do a project and then you finish and then you move on to working with the next client and the next leader. I just remember at this time we had a conversation and Lauren said to me, she sort of heard me out and everything that I was doing and navigating and what was on my mind, and she just paused and she said, gosh, that’s a lot that you’re dealing with right now and I don’t know that I have all the answers but I’m here to listen and to help bring things where I can a little bit more clarity, but if nothing else to listen and help you process all of it together. And when I think about the relational dynamic, we see that it really starts with that first piece of genuine authentic listening and so I’ve seen that with many leaders that we work with but, you know, I always come back to that example because it really hits home to me in terms of when somebody showed up for me how it helped me get through the complexity. And so, similarly thinking about how you can do that with your partners, with your initiatives, with the collectives that you’re working with. Allison or Bobbi, do you want to share a little bit more about emotional?
Bobbi Silten: Yeah, I’ll jump in here, Nikhil. So an example I want to share is I chaired a collective impact effort for five years and it was centered in increasing the impact of volunteerism in the United States. And one of things in just creating this space, it was co-created by several people but I got the job as chair. But we tried to level the playing field, you know, that tried to say everyone’s voice mattered. It wasn’t just the people who were funding the effort, and in fact, we really downplayed the funders and tried to say everyone’s voice, whatever sector you come from is valuable and we tried to normalize asking questions to, you know, challenge power in the room. But I think one of the things that I learned through that process was we were challenged by a group that didn’t feel we involved them in this process. And the natural reaction here when someone says, you didn’t ask me, and you can feel a little defensive about that. But then once we said, oh, we are sorry. We’re sorry we didn’t include you. We want to invite you in. We want you to be a part of this conversation, just kind of the liberation that comes with saying I’m sorry or I made a mistake, we got that wrong. And I think sometimes we don’t slow down enough to kind of reflect on our own emotions and what’s happening to be able to sort it out and say, OK, I see my fingerprints on this. I see where I could have done things differently, and once you acknowledge that and say it out loud through an expression of either I got it wrong or I apologize, that it just opens up a whole different vein of conversation when you do that. And so that’s kind of what I share and one of my learnings and so I am now as a leader try to reflect before I get defensive and try to understand what’s my contribution to this and what do I own and once I own it, I hopefully create a more psychologically safe space for others to contribute.
Courtney W. Robertson: Think we’re all working on that, Bobbi, so I appreciate that, that transparency and your response. Allison.
Allison Kaika: I really appreciate that, Bobbi, in terms of the way that we’re able to be vulnerable and also reflective in our own leadership and it brings me to think a little bit more about the third element that we have kind of outlined in terms of empathetic agility, what we’re calling the cognitive kind of element, you know, the fancy way of saying the way that we think about our leadership or the muscle in which we think about how we’re driving other folks towards impact. And the kind of anecdote or story that came up for me when I was thinking about this and as you all were talking was not something that was a big moment or aha, but it’s those small moments in which either I am working with a leader or I’m working with individuals that build trust or that make, help me step back and see what’s important. So when I think about the cognitive side of empathetic agility I think about a situation where most leaders can find themselves in or relate to nowadays where you get a lot of, you know, different information coming at you. It might be in a moment at a meeting where something happens or you might be get an email or let’s say a news, something happens in the news that impacts something like your funding or your long-term impact. And it’s in those moments where a leader is able to kind of pull up maybe from that swirl or to recognize, hey, that this is happening or all of these things are happening. I feel it myself. I see that my teams are feeling it, maybe even the leaders that I look up to are feeling it as well, and in the middle of all of that noise, they can kind of reconnect to what actually matters and the impact that they’re trying to create. So, you know, I’ve seen leaders do this in moments where I’m in a meeting with them and let’s say they get an email about something that impacts the work that they’re doing, and you can see everybody in that room either just got that email too or is whispering about it and you know that it’s going to completely throw off the agenda and it’s a choice of that person who is kind of holding that space to be able to say I have enough clarity of what I’m trying to accomplish, what we’re trying to accomplish kind of in the long term, and I can see how this fits into that kind of overarching arc or vision, you know. It might be something like OK, you know, I know this is happening. I recognize that this is happening and let’s just come back for a minute to what we’re trying to accomplish or does this change kind of our direction in the next year, two years, three years from now. You know that’s a real conversation to have and those are real questions to ask, and instead of, you know, trying to react maybe immediately to the moment or maybe getting pulled inside conversations or different directions, it’s almost that permission to guide folks gently back to a path forward that’s aligned towards that intended impact. And in order to be able to do that, you need to be able to have that clarity yourself as a leader, and I think that starts with creating space and time to really remember and continue to connect to that overarching arc of what you’re trying to accomplish because you can take many paths to get to that outcome. There’s not just one path but it’s knowing you can take many paths and it’s knowing that you can, you know, that there are options and you’re working towards that long-term arc. So I see this cognitive side as the ability to hold clarity, to have clarity, prioritize that for yourself as a leader in the middle of complexity and be able to help others find their way back to that clarity too.
Nikhil Bumb: I know this is an audio format and so nobody can tell but, Allison, as you were sharing that story, Bobbi and I both laughed also because I think you’ve been in enough meetings with me to know that I am often that leader that gets distracted by emails along the way, and now I’m thinking about how I might be a little bit better about how I react to that in the moment. Courtney, can I jump in and ask Bobbi and Allison a question? As we were having this conversation, I was listening to both of you share about the cognitive and the emotional pieces, it reminded me of in the process of this we had another aha of doing this research so we did a bunch of interviews with a number of leaders and learning from their lessons of how they navigated complexity and how they continue to navigate complexity, and as I shared, you know, one of the ahas for us was these three different dimensions. There is another piece when we were writing this where we had a lot of back and forth about, OK, we’ve identified that it’s empathy and that there’s also this force of agility, and we’re thinking about the relationship between the two of them and we really spent some time debating is it empathetic agility or is it agile empathy. Which one is modifying the other? Is it an equal? It’s probably not an equal. One feels more important than the other in terms of which one’s modifying the other, and clearly, we landed on empathetic agility, and I just remember in the course of our conversations the two of you had this exchange that really unlocked it for me in terms of that nuance, and so I was hoping that you could recreate, not recreate that exact conversation but share some of that nuance with the group.
Bobbi Silten: OK, so this is based on my recollection so I remember I came back from a short break and you and Allison had been working on the idea of these two forces, agility being a concept based in speed and empathy, you know, being one that takes time, and so kind of how would these two come together, and I thought I’d be coming back to something that just talked about the importance of both of them and how they could coexist, and instead I read a draft that had empathy as a modifier to agility and I remember I spent a long time thinking about this, asking myself is empathy really the anchor or is it agility, and then we opened it up to conversation and through that I finally understood that agility is the thing that is being demanded and oftentimes out of our leaders’ control, that this is the thing that is being imposed on them whether it’s a crisis or management change, that agility is the thing that is demanded and required, and empathy is how the leader responds to this. So it’s the thing that is in their control, and once I finally understood that, I thought, yes, it is empathetic agility. Empathy is the modifier of how we show up for the thing that is being demanded of us. That’s how I recall the genesis of this but, Allison, please jump in if you recall differently.
Allison Kaika: No, Bobbi, that is exactly it. It is the idea that as leaders we have that pressure to move quickly, to have all the answers when we often don’t but especially when the pressure is high and everyone is looking towards you to say which direction do I go, what do I believe right now. But the empathetic piece which also can’t be in a vacuum either, right, which we talked about is like you said, that choice and that muscle so to be able to move quickly in an empathetic way, you know, as we talked about really does feel like a muscle, like something you have to practice and you have to discipline yourself around to say can I step back in this moment when it’s so much easier to just move forward really quickly. Can I look around and not expect, maybe not look inward when my initial reaction is just look inward and say what are the answers, let me look at this plan but to pull up and look around at the stakeholders around you at the table and consider what are they experiencing, what do they need, and use that to inform your response. And so, yeah, absolutely that was the conversation and the intention.
Courtney W. Robertson: I appreciate what each of you has shared and thank you for anchoring them in examples of how that’s shown up for you personally, and Nikhil, thank you for asking that question because I love sort of this frame of empathy as the modifier to agility, and what it reminded me of in particular, Allison, as you were talking is that this, sort of this reminder to continue bringing people along and almost slowing down to speed up in some ways, right? So even, you know, taking a crisis or, you know, whatever might be coming our way, headwinds, all of that, even removing that, just how do we show up as human beings in this work and recognize that other human beings are in this work and have those moments of pause and making sure that folks are clear about direction and when they’re not, to your point, Nikhil, having space for people to name that, right, so that they can get back on track or be recentered around whatever that shared vision is, right, we’re talking about collaborative work. What are we anchoring ourselves to, right, and it’s the common understanding of the challenge. It’s the common or shared vision that we’ve established for this work, and it’s the outcomes that we’ve set forth, right, and that continues to be our North Star, and to the points that you all have raised, when we have things coming our way, we have that to anchor to and we recognize the moment which I think is incredibly important, and, Bobbi, I appreciate you saying that like people just want to hear you say like, or even, Nikhil, the story that you shared, right, like just hearing how people are experiencing a moment or recognizing that we’re in a moment is oftentimes what people want, right, or desire from a leader. You may not have the answers but it’s recognizing and naming that and then being able to say, to your point, Allison, how does this then shift the work that we’re trying to do or not shift it, right? How do we need to show up differently in this moment but still anchoring it to like what that priority or what that thing is that matters most as you’ve talked about so I appreciate you all painting what I think is a really clear picture around what this is and how it shows up for folks. I’m going to pivot a little bit to talk, because we’ve started going down this route so this might be the appropriate time to ask but I’m curious what are some of the practices—we don’t have to give an exhaustive list but what are some of the practices that can help leaders strengthen sort of this muscle around empathetic agility and I’m—and this even in the absence maybe of this type of leadership not being present for them or in the article you all talk about sort of the environment or culture that needs to be true for this to happen so a culture that allows for people to, you know, be imaginative, for people to experiment and make mistakes, to sort of learn forward if you will even if those things aren’t true for someone, what are ways that they can be practicing sort of leaning into empathetic agility more?
Nikhil Bumb: I can start. Maybe we’ll just popcorn a little bit and each share a principle after the other. You know, Allison, as you were talking and sharing and talking a little bit more about the cognitive piece, one thing that came back to me is this idea of, you know, disruption can feel paralyzing. There’s another way to look at it which is that disruption is a source of new information, and so I think one of the practices we often recommend to leaders is treat disruption as information. That’s another datapoint for you to collect, and then in addition to that, make sure then you’re allotting time to interpret all the information that you have in front of you so all the different disruptions. Create that space, protect that space to have with yourself and with your teams or your partners, whoever is involved in the initiative that you’re working on to process mutually that information, that disruption, that data together. That’s one that I come back to. Who wants to go next?
Allison Kaika: Nikhil, does that mean more meetings?
Nikhil Bumb: Your favorite thing, Allison.
Allison Kaika: No, I love what you said about the time and I think I don’t, you know, for those folks who are doing work in hybrid settings or sometimes virtual, you know, we live in a hybrid and virtual and different world. I do think the permission to give yourself time and to give your team time to sit with information and to not have all the answers, to not be running through an agenda always, is—I just love it. I wrote it down for myself because it’s a good reminder for me as someone who can be process driven. But the other thing I was going to add in terms of strengthening empathetic agility, I think for me when I think about leadership and being somebody who has this muscle to show empathy and to move quickly and to be somebody that folks feel like they can trust to make those decisions and to create space for them like, Nikhil, you mentioned or, Bobbi, as you mentioned to be able to name when they know things and when they don’t. I think one of the things that is essential to be able to create that practice is to cultivate a sense of consistency around your values so knowing who you are as a leader and being able to be consistent in how you activate those values on a daily basis doesn’t mean that someone has to agree with you. It doesn’t mean that everybody has to think that your decisions are the perfect ones all the time or it doesn’t mean that your reactions are predictable but what it does mean is that you have been able to articulate why you do what you do, and you can do that prior to doing that, taking action, and post taking action, and so that creates a sense of trust that allows people to follow you in those hard moments or to know how you’re going to show up and to know that you are going to consider them I think. So not only doing the action of considering people or doing the action of being able to respond quickly but setting the groundwork as a leader both with yourself first to say I am going to prioritize things but then to communicate that and then to follow through on those things. So I think there’s something maybe about investing, you know, in yourself and being able to show that.
Courtney W. Robertson: Love that. Bobbi, anything you would add?
Bobbi Silten: Let me jump in here with something that is maybe not quite answering your question but is in the arena of looking for inspiration as we try to keep top of mind the importance of empathy while we’re being agile, and this is less of a story about someone being agile but someone awakening to empathy, and in this time where we’re being bombarded by so many things, I think keeping that notion that awareness of empathy, and it came along in this very interesting story that Pharrell Williams told. He has this master class on empathy and I rewatched it, and one of the things that really jumped out to me was he talked about the song Happy. He did like this little case study on Happy, and the long story short is that he wrote Happy for a movie and it was one of nine submissions and that was the one they ultimately ended up picking, and he wrote it as not as a form of his own self-expression but it’s more of like I have to write something for this movie, and everyone loved it. It was not made into a long-form video until six months later when they were launching the DVD of the movie, Despicable Me 2, and the company said, hey, we really love the song, why don’t you go make this video. The video that was made and I think we all know it because it’s very, you know, famous video of various people expressing joy, and the response that he got to that video about people saying, hey, this got me through my cancer, this got me through my depression, was a real reflective moment for him as an artist and he said that up until then, he was starting to become more aware of empathy but that was the thing that kind of pushed him over the edge of—it prompted him to write songs going forward from a place of empathy and a place of seeing other people’s experiences, to start to appreciate those more deeply, and it was just a really powerful experience for him and for me a really powerful story of just the reminder of what we can do when we are more empathetic. So not quite answering your question but it’s like let’s look for inspiration from places, whether that’s leaders or someone who has demonstrated that, whether they’re well known or the person sitting next to you, how do we use that inspiration to remind us to have this daily practice.
Courtney W. Robertson: I appreciate that story, Bobbi, and I think it actually does answer the question, right, because I think a part of it is I love your phrasing awakening to empathy. You had me thinking like when was my first sort of experience of that either like receiving it or giving it, and that’s something I’ll have to sit with probably after we wrap but I think that’s a starting point, right, because you go back to the moment, you know, how you feel, how you felt, how the other person or persons around you felt, and I think that’s a very grounding sort of reflection that we can have, right? So when we do get into moments where, going to your example, Bobbi, where you, what group was like, well, you didn’t include us in this process, you’re able to take a step back versus, you know, reacting from the emotion I’m sure you were experiencing in that moment but a part of it is just like I think this constant reminder that we have to continue to remind ourselves is almost like the why of our work. Why am I in this work, right? And every now and then, I had to revisit it this morning, why am I doing this work, right? It’s a rainy Monday morning for me. It’s storming and I really want to be in bed, right, but I enjoy the work I do and I’m in this work because of X, Y, Z, and so I think having that as a place that brings you back is incredibly powerful so thank you for sharing that. Nikhil, you look like you want to jump in.
Nikhil Bumb: Yeah, I just, I really love that, Courtney. I think you’ve—I love the example and the story that you shared, Bobbi. It’s not one that I was familiar with so I appreciate now knowing it. I’m going to think about it a lot, and I completely agree, Courtney, because there’s—we talk a lot about power in this work, right, even before we get to navigating complexity, and to your point, it’s not just about—it’s incredibly important to map the power in the room or map the power in the spaces in which we’re trying to move, the systems we’re trying to shift. It’s also important to recognize the power of our own whys and the powers of our own visions and values, and knowing then also what power we hold as a leader and using that and how we relate that to where this both formal and informal power in the work we’re trying to do so, gosh, I’m going to think about that a lot, Bobbi. I’m going to go look at that story and that case study so.
Courtney W. Robertson: Yeah, I’m going to add it to my watch list. I’m like I have to watch this now so thank you, Bobbi. So you all have touched on this but I want to be more explicit about it and I will say, one, empathetic agility is great, right? There are several things that could be happening, right, like you have people who are listening who are probably saying, oh, I have terminology for how it is that I show up or how I’ve seen other leaders show up. You might have some folks who are like I haven’t seen this practice or an example of this, you know, either in myself or in leaders who I’ve had the, you know, who I’ve served under or worked with, etc., and then again, we talk about that environment or culture piece, right? People just may not be at an organization or in a collaborative that has the type of environment that allows for this type of leadership to like show up and be—and sort of permeate so I’m curious and I just want to ask this question very explicitly, what happens when empathetic agility is absent? What would you all say are some warning signs or things that leaders can be looking out for around this?
Nikhil Bumb: There’s a story that comes to mind from some work we’re doing or we did recently, and I imagine it’s a story that will feel, to your point, you know, folks may be able to relate sometimes to the absence of this more than the presence of it, and so maybe this story will help bring that to life, and I’m going to ask Bobbi and Allison to jump in on some of the things the story might highlight in terms of the early signs. So one of the things is that in the story what happened is, you know, this was a leader who was not just thinking about working with a collaboration of different teams, different organizations in one place but actually across several places, and, you know, as simple as trying to set the agenda for the first meeting became extremely complicated because there were so many folks involved and, you know, information coming at so many different angles for this leader, and also, you know, that they were—there was constant external environment that was changing and sometimes the budget was changing, sometimes the policy landscape was changing, that every time that a new piece of information came, it really felt like they got pulled in the direction of that. Oh, now we need to go in this direction. Oh, nope, 10 minutes later we need to go in that direction. Two hours later coming out of another meeting, go in a third direction, and so you just almost felt paralyzed that you couldn’t even make a simple decision in terms of setting an agenda for a meeting. So that can often be some of the early signs of when empathetic agility is absent, right? Even though simple tasks feel very hard and you feel like you’re in a hole that you can’t stop digging.
Allison Kaika: I would just add really briefly but one thing that comes to mind actually for me is feeling isolated. If you are—I think a lot of leaders often can feel alone but if you are consistently feeling like you are needing to make decisions constantly by yourself or that you don’t have support, I would see that maybe as an opportunity to think am I trying to hold on to these things by myself, am I really turning to my teams, my stakeholders, my clients, you know, the folks that I’m trying to have impact on, to hold these problems with me or to think about how to resolve them in the best way forward. When I start to feel very alone, I start to look at myself and say, Allison, are you doing this right? Are you trying to carry the torch here when this is not your torch to carry completely, and think am I really considering the people around me?
Bobbi Silton: Yeah, Courtney, let me just add to this conversation about warning signs. One of the things that I find that’s a warning sign that you’re about to either lose or diminish your capacity to be empathetic is when you sense you’re getting emotionally hooked, and what I mean by that is that when you’re in a conversation and the conversation stops being about the topic and starts being about how you’re reacting to it. You know, Nikhil mentioned a little bit ago this notion of you’re in a hole and you can’t stop digging, that’s kind of what being emotionally hooked feels like. What happens when you’re emotionally hooked is that it’s not that you are absent of empathy, it’s just that your ability to tap into that part of you that can step into another person’s perspective and the reason that they are feeling what they’re feeling, that gets crowded out when you get emotionally hooked. It’s a conversation you start having with yourself that’s more about managing your own state and your own stake, and so instead of really genuinely listening and hearing what the person’s saying, you start listening to think about how you’re going to respond to that. So getting emotionally hooked, you know, is something to watch for as you think about being that leader who can be empathetically agile. What I do when I do this because I think we all have times where we get emotionally hooked, is I kind of think about it as I’ve entered a driveway, the emotionally hooked driveway, and I need to keep driving down this driveway or I can stop and back it up, and that’s what I try to do. I don’t say, well, next time I come to the driveway I won’t go down it. Stop there, notice it, pause, and be direct. I think that’s the healthiest way, and sometimes it might even be stepping back and saying to the person you’re talking to, hey, I just want to say I noticed that I was just doing something and I want to rewind and let’s get back into the conversation so I can really understand where you’re coming from. So that’s my thought on just kind of how to help yourself when you start to recognize that maybe empathy is slipping away.
Courtney W. Robertson: So bridging that to my next to final question is as you think about what you all have already shared, right, around how empathetic agility shows up, what are some of the practices that leaders can be leaning into and thinking about what it looks like for that muscle or that skill to be absent, what advice would you give to someone who wants to cultivate this- sort of within their teams or thinking about our audience, right, who might want to cultivate this within their place-based collaborative but they might feel overwhelmed by the complexity or the urgency or to you all’s point, right, like decisions need to be made quickly so do I really have time to like stop and show up in this way because that might detract the work or take away from the work. What advice would you give? Where should that person start in trying to cultivate this?
Allison Kaika: I can tell you what I’m learning from my own work, and how I am trying to cultivate this muscle a little bit more, and I think the first thing is—and I heard this actually on another podcast and I’m not able to give credit right now but maybe I can think about it and name it before we close but something that I heard, you know, as a first step for any kind of leadership development or personal development, human development, is first like grounding and feeling that you yourself are safe. You can’t do anything until you know as a person that, hey, I can do this in this moment or I know what I need in this moment to make sure I can show up for myself so I think that is a huge—for me a first step. A second step I think I mentioned earlier is making sure you are connected to your values, connected to your why, that, you know, in those moments where it does feel like the ground is shaking or the rug is getting pulled out from under you, you say I know why I’m here and what I’m driving toward and it is bigger than this moment. It is bigger than this thing that feels really hard or these many things that feel hard, and so reconnecting to those values that drive you, and if you have those first two things where you’re in a place where you feel grounded and safe, you’re connected to your values, and then third you’re looking up. Like I said in those moments where, you know, everything is going on, it’s so easy to get tunnel vision and to just look forward and think about process and think about moving quickly and the decisions that need to be made but to then be able to broaden your horizon and say, OK, I am not going—I’m going to turn my head, I’m going to look around me, I’m going to connect with the people that are around me and take the time and space to do that, to check in with others, to think about what’s going through and the experiences of people that are important to what you’re trying to accomplish, and if you can do those, those just three things in those moments, in those kind of hard moments or be prepared to be able to respond in that way, I think that sets you up really well. It doesn’t mean we’re going to get it all right but I think creating that foundation for when—because it’s a when, right? It’s like a when this happens—when the thing happens, when the other shoe drops, when somebody changes their mind, when the funding goes away, whatever it is, so that you have the tools you need in your toolbox to be able to respond.
Courtney W. Robertson: Allison, it sounds like, and you can correct me if I’m wrong but it sounds like what you’re saying is like in order to sort of cultivate this across your team or within your collaborative, you show up in these ways by model what it is you’re trying to sort of get other folks to do is what it sounds like.
Allison Kaika: Yeah, exactly. I think we are all watching, right? We’re creatures of habit and we mimic, and we’re watching the leaders and we’re hoping to follow and trust those leaders and vice versa. You’re going to kind of create what you see and that’s where we get culture. That’s how culture happens is that we’re recreating what we see on a daily basis so I think it’s, you know, part of it starts with yourself.
Courtney W. Robertson: Yep, and your word you used earlier, right, consistency as well. In how folks are showing up.
Nikhil Bumb: I would add to what Allison said of, you know, find your people, right? Like you don’t have to do this alone. We learn from others and, gosh, Bobbi, Allison, and I have been talking about empathetic agility for like, what, six months or more now, even before we got to the term empathetic agility, we were talking about it and we said so many times that these—like it’s clear when we talk to these leaders like how isolating the work feels, it’s all this, and still today, you know, Allison what you just shared, hey, an early warning sign is if you’re feeling alone. I never really thought about it that way either, right? So even in this conversation there’s something that you, you know, I’m learning and like that is what makes navigating complexity and applying empathetic agility and even starting to build empathetic agility easier is when you’re doing it in conversation with other people. You don’t have to have all the answers. I really like, Allison, what you shared of like you so want to protect your time and attention so that you can then create the spaces to do that with others as well, and there’s a duality of that but it’s not an either/or in terms of just doing it with others or just doing it my yourself because you don’t have to have all the answers, and you do really want to make sure that you have a set of folks that you can do this with together. The other thing that I would add, Courtney, is if you feel like you are constantly chasing the quick wins or answering to the loudest stakeholder, that’s a good moment to pause and to bring in somebody else and say, hey, I feel like I’m in this trap where I’m just looking for what’s going to solve the next thing or how do I get my loudest stakeholder to be a little less loud. Can you help me through that? Can we talk through that? This is the information I’m collecting so those are some of the things that I would say to both sort of answer warning signs but how can you just start in that path and then go much deeper.
Bobbi Silton: I love that Allison talked about when you’re feeling overwhelmed, find your why, get anchored, and Nikhil said find your people. I really love that. I’m going to come at this from a slightly different direction about going back to the cognitive principle which was about, you know, figuring out what matters, and oftentimes I think we can get overwhelmed when we haven’t examined ourselves what’s truly important, and when you’re overwhelmed everything can feel important and frankly sometimes feel urgent. One of the frameworks I’ve used over the years that I just love is Stephen Covey’s framework about urgent and important, and for those of you who don’t know Stephen Covey, he wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s a really old book but one full of nuggets, and one of them I used constantly about better discerning what is urgent and what is important, and he uses this little grid that helps you bucket those things that are urgent and important, those things that are important but not urgent, the things that are urgent but not important, and the things that are just not important and not urgent. If you can put all of the things you need to do in those buckets, it helps you better understand while these things that are overwhelming me, maybe they’re just not that urgent or maybe they’re just not that important. A key thing that he teaches us with this framework is that how do we focus our time on things that are important before they become urgent, and how do we not get distracted by the things that are urgent to take time away from the things that we should really be focusing on, the things that might help us when the world changes, when the ground underneath us shifts, that if we’re clear like going back to Allison’s understanding the why, understanding your strategy, understanding your options, that when stuff changes, having that grounding in things that are important can help you when those important things become urgent. So using a framework like this is not going to solve for all the unexpected events but I think it will help create a better buffer that will help you when those urgent things come and kind of hijack the agenda, that at least you’ll know what’s important and what’s not.
Courtney W. Robertson: It sounds like there’s no end to this, right? it’s not that I do these things and then I’m this, you know, different leader but it really is a commitment to showing up, right, as an empathetic leader and balancing that with the urgency of the moment quite frankly but being able to hold those two things.
Allison Kaika: Yeah, and that’s why we kind of call it a muscle because I think we truly think is about building a practice and it’s something that you do every day. It’s something that it takes practice and discipline in order to develop, and it’s something that there is no kind of end to it, right? It is a personal commitment to working on being a better leader, and also there is no probably end to this concept and this idea, and I think we’ve tried—you know, we’re putting together some what we call kind of like principles but truly it’s about taking kind of that goal of developing empathetic agility and in practicing it on a daily basis and that’s going to unveil and reveal so many different elements I think to each of us as individuals as well.
Courtney W. Robertson: I love that, Allison, and I feel like you all have given folks language to even think about, where my mind immediately went as you were talking, Allison, was around sort of like group norms or, you know, agreements for how we work together and I think this would be the perfect thing to put on that list, right, like we want to practice and lean into empathetic agility and you all in the article outline, to the point you raise as well, Allison, key principles around it, how it shows up and how folks can be thinking about that in their own practice and so I think this could be a great way for collaboratives, right, to build that culture around being flexible, being responsive to information, right, holding sort of the humanity of all of us at the core of this work so hopefully folks are listening and you amend your agreements to reflect this but I think this was a wonderful start, and very concrete on how folks can do it like how you can be practicing this at an individual level. Before we wrap our time together, just want to make space for any additional thoughts, reflections or recommendations you all might have.
Nikhil Bumb: No, just that we’re also learning. We would love to hear from others, you know, how have you seen this applied or not applied? What would you add to some of the principles of practice that we have shared or that are in the article? We know this applies differently in different situations and so we’re on a learning journey. I like Allison’s framing of students of leadership so how can we learn from you as well.
Bobbi Silton: I just want to double down on we’re still in learning mode. We certainly are and we do want to hear from you. We’d love to learn from others so give us your feedback. I’ll just close with as leaders leading through rapid change, integrate empathy into how you deliver your agility, how you decide, how you communicate, how you run meetings rather than thinking of empathy as something that you add on or add later. Make empathy a part of a texture of how you lead with agility.
Courtney W. Robertson: Just as a final push then, how can listeners keep up with your work? Where can they access other great articles or resources like this from you all and just generally follow the three of you all?
Allison Kaika: Yeah, I think, I mean I think our articles are posted on FSG.org. I know that they are so if you’re interested in learning more about the work we do or some of the patterns that we’re seeing across our work, that’s a great place to go. I’m sure the Collective Impact Forum teams, followers, folks who are part of that community probably know about that but just in case you don’t, that’s probably the easiest place. I think you can also follow us on LinkedIn, and our—we also are sharing some of the ideas, patterns, things we’re learning less in a structured article format maybe but some things that we’re lifting up in that way there as well, and then if you haven’t read the Empathetic Agility article, you can do that on FSG.org or I believe it might be linked In this podcast, in the podcast description, and so we encourage you to take a read and as Nikhil mentioned, develop this concept with us. Share your thoughts, your reactions, your warning signs. We truly are learning and we’re putting this out there to continue to learn, not so say that we figured it out so some ideas.
Courtney W. Robertson: Beautiful. I want to thank each of you, one, for just the thought leadership around this. It sounds like you’ve worked at this for a while in terms of thinking about the article and even, you know, the name, does agile come before empathy and that type of thinking and intentionality so I want to thank each of you for those contributions, and then just thank you for sharing with our listeners today. Lots of nuggets dropped. Even for me there are some things I’m now sitting with around my own leadership and how I’m showing up so appreciate the personal push as well for me but want to thank you all so much for your expertise, you knowledge, your time today, and we want thank our listeners for your continued support of the Collective Impact Forum podcast.
(Outro) And this closes out this episode of the Collective Impact Forum podcast. If you are interested in learning more about what was discussed, you can find links to resources in the footnotes for this episode. And if you’re enjoying all that we share at the Collective Impact Forum podcast, we encourage you to rate us on your preferred podcast platform, and share your favorite episodes with colleagues.
We would like to acknowledge that this episode was produced and edited on the unceded, traditional lands of the Coast Salish people, including the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot tribes. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the past, present, and futures of these tribes.
The Intro music for this episode was composed by Rafael Krux and our outro music is composed by Kevin Macleod.
In Forum news, we’re excited to share that registration is open for the next session of Facilitating Collaborative Meetings, one of our most popular and in-demand virtual workshops. This session will be a two-day workshop, held on December 8 through 9, 2026, and will be from 1pm – 4pm Eastern each day. To register, please visit our Events section of collectiveimpactforum.org.
This is Tracy Timmons-Gray, Associate Director here at the Collective Impact Forum, and your podcast producer. I want to say thank you so much for listening, and we look forward to connecting with you more in our next episode. Until next time, let’s keep working towards collective impact.
