Rest is Revolutionary: How a CEO Sabbatical Has Been Critical to ETR's Path to Growth and Resilience
By Vignetta Charles, PhD | December 17, 2024
In an era marked by unprecedented challenges and rapid changes, the importance of strategic leadership and organizational resilience cannot be overstated. Earlier this year, after a year of encouragement, the ETR Board supported me taking a CEO sabbatical.
This was the first sabbatical of this kind in our organization’s 43-year history. The ETR Board are strategic leaders from multiple industries and have been active partners in ETR’s transformation over the decades.
The current iteration of the Board recognized that this particular era of rapid transformation under my leadership was ripe for burnout and wanted to avoid phenomena like “glass cliff” or “ebony edge” (glass cliff with an intersectional lens for Black women).
This is a testament to their forward-thinking approach. The reflections and learnings from my sabbatical offered valuable insights into how such a practice can drive significant positive transformations within an organization, in addition to the personal benefits to me as a leader.
A Period of Transformation
ETR has experienced major shifts over a relatively short period, including significant revenue increases, substantial investments in infrastructure, and team diversification at all levels and across many dimensions (age, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, professional disciplines, geography).
These changes were all navigated amidst the pandemic, racial reckoning, wars across the globe, and attacks on science and equity. Moreover, personal factors such as caregiving responsibilities further complicate the landscape for my leadership.
Amidst these challenges, sabbaticals can serve as a crucial respite, promoting rejuvenation and reinvigoration. They can also facilitate succession planning, strengthen governance, and reorganize power within the organization.
Key Organizational Observations
Several organizational needs and observations precipitated the need, not just the rapid, positive growth of the organization. Given the pace of change and the building of infrastructure as we grew, I had maintained a highly involved, operationally heavy approach, often acting as the “answer ATM.”
The opportunity cost of this approach is that it limited my time to prioritize vision, external positioning, and mentorship. Additionally, as the team grew, old patterns of communication had to be unlearned. Communication in dyads sometimes created confusion and undermined the shared power—which is a leadership value I choose to integrate whenever I can. This all pointed to the need for a more transparent mapping of vision to strategy and execution.
ETR has been on a successful path for many years, so I knew the organization would continue to thrive in my absence. I had more concerns that if I was always there, we would never gain the distance and elevation to reimagine our leadership and the redistribution of tasks across the leadership team, as well as re-envisioned workflows and processes within the broader organization.
Changes Post Sabbatical
Following the sabbatical, several immediate changes were implemented. These included more shared and collaborative problem-solving approaches and a shift in approval and review. The mantra “Maybe that’s not a Vignetta question” has become a guiding principle, promoting a more distributed leadership model. The business continuity and succession plans also became clearer in case of expected or unexpected CEO absences.
My sabbatical also created the opportunity for more frequent engagement between leadership team members and the Board. As a general practice in my leadership, the leadership team are at every Board meeting with me, in addition to other team members who will make guest appearances to highlight project outcomes, new infrastructure developments, or organizational learning.
Some CEOs do not embrace this transparency at Board meetings, but it is a critical part of understanding the organization and uplifting other leaders within ETR. Although the leadership team interacted with the Board at every Board meeting, the time in between meetings was primarily with me and the Board.
My absence made room for more connections with the leadership team and the Board off cycle from the Board meetings, which underscores the very principles that guide more open Board meetings in the first place.
I also worked in partnership with my Executive Assistant to rethink my entire calendar. There was no retrofitting. We had to build a healthy calendar and healthy scheduling practices from a blank slate. This included having no more than two days/week where I have back-to-back meetings. On all days, there are mandatory breaks in between meetings.
We also changed the default timeframe for 30-minute meetings to 25-minutes and for one-hour meetings to 55 minutes. In addition, I am revisiting the cadence and necessity of any recurring meetings every six months. This is to ensure that there are no meetings that exist “because they have always existed.”
Every meeting must have intention, and every recurring meeting needs those intentions revisited regularly to ensure they are still meeting the needs that launched their existence initially.
My communication practices have also evolved. I am no longer the “answer ATM.” If appropriate, I share thoughts, observations, and pitfalls to avoid. But I allow space for more inclusive and collaborative problem-solving and decision-making, instead of quickly intervening with a solution.
I am not perfect, but I have asked everyone (the entire staff) to hold me accountable for these new communication practices with, "if you see something, say something.” A few times, I have reverted to old behaviors, reflexively trying to solve a problem when presented. If I don’t immediately recognize it, it’s been positive to experience the team holding me accountable and calling me in to correct the behavior.
“Vignetta, that’s ‘answer ATM’ behavior showing up,” is well received by me to help change my behavior. I’ve also loved having all staff show up as accountability-buddies to benefit the entire organization. It’s this collective orientation that makes it such a privilege to lead this organization.
Long-term Changes in Progress
My sabbatical has led to ETR exploring sabbaticals as a future benefit for ETR employees. We are also working to increase the transparency of our organizational mapping of vision to strategy to execution operating system (ETR-OS). The months of planning that preceded my sabbatical has also helped to create an ongoing workflow to minimize disruption during leaves and resource planning for future disruptions that occur from expected or unexpected leaves.
Developing formal mentorship plans have been brought to the forefront to ensure that people with skills across the organization have formal internal opportunities to mentor and coach others within the organization. We are lucky to have such a skilled transdisciplinary team—there is so much to learn from one another.
This mentorship plan will also ensure that mentorship and coaching does not disproportionately fall on the CEO. Even though it is one of my favorite parts of the job—the time needs to be distributed appropriately across other leaders and my time can be maximized by conducting group mentorship sessions, for example.
Personal Reflections and Behavior Changes
So, what about me personally? Sabbaticals are great for the organization, but also for me as a leader. The sabbatical led to significant personal reflections and behavior changes.
The biggest change for me was an identity shift. I have always been a hard worker and always loved working. I never attached to the term “workaholic” because I hadn’t thought of my behavior as an addiction or anything that needed treating. “I can stop working any time.” Or could I?
When I was planning for my sabbatical, I created a workplan for myself. Yes, a workplan. It’s comical now that I think about it. A big part of that behavior was driven by guilt—who am I to get this break when others are working so hard? If I’m working at “not working” during sabbatical, I can ease that guilt. And the other part was thinking, “what is life without a workplan? How will I know I’m succeeding at sabbatical?”
I started my sabbatical with a workplan to write about leadership, ETR’s transformation, and to meet with inspiring leaders to troubleshoot for what’s next for ETR at this phase of our development. So… work I also do at work, just with more time because I wouldn’t be in meetings.
Now I realize that is really unhealthy behavior—I planned to use a time designated for rest to do work that does not get done efficiently during work hours. Instead of making my work hours more efficient, I was planning on sacrificing my time set aside for rejuvenation.
I quickly called myself in and realized this was problematic. I reset my plan for my sabbatical and gave myself time to relax. I prioritized creativity, family, and friends, alongside personal well-being practices such as regular exercise and improved sleep hygiene. This was a much better use of time and honored the privilege of the opportunity.
Conclusion
The reflections and learnings from my sabbatical underscore the profound impact such breaks can have on both personal and organizational growth. By fostering a culture of resilience, strategic planning, and distributed leadership, ETR has navigated substantial challenges and emerged stronger.
As organizations worldwide grapple with similar issues, ETR's experience offers a compelling case for the power of strategic sabbaticals in driving sustained success and innovation.
Vignetta Charles, PhD (she/her) is Chief Executive Officer at ETR. Dr. Charles has served as Chief Executive Officer at ETR since 2017. Before becoming CEO, she served as Chief Science Officer at ETR, where she unified the organization's science-based approaches to training and research. Dr. Charles previously worked at AIDS United as Senior Vice President, overseeing strategic programming and resource development.
Dr. Charles has focused her career on addressing issues disproportionately affecting marginalized communities, particularly in urban sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention. She has served on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and currently sits on the boards of BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective), OCHIN, and The Well Project. Dr. Charles holds degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
