Mission Driven, Not Superhuman

If you choose a life in service of others it doesn’t have to come at a cost to your own health and well-being. Leaders and organizations have an obligation to provide a holistic, human-centered duty of care for their staff that protects the whole human being.

Dimple Dhabalia is a writer, podcaster, facilitator, and coach with over twenty years of experience working at the intersection of leadership, mindful awareness, and storytelling. In 2021 Dimple founded Roots in the Clouds, a boutique consulting firm specializing in using the power of story to heal organizational trauma and moral injury. Dimple is the best-selling author of Tell Me My Story—Challenging the Narrative of Service Before Self and the creator and host of two podcasts, Service Without Sacrifice and What Would Ted Lasso Do? Follow her @dimpstory across all social media platforms and on Substack at dear humanitarian.

More at – https://www.rootsintheclouds.com 

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The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou
Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. This is Hugh Ballou and David Dunworth, co-hosts of this episode and every episode, nine years. Interviews have total 398 counting today, and there are no duplicates. Isn’t that amazing? History doesn’t reveal every secret to just one person, neither does leadership, neither does any of the topics that we’ve covered. And we have a very special topic, a very special guest today. So welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange, Dimple Dahablia. And she’s coming in from Virginia, the state where I am, David’s in Florida. So Dimple, please tell people a little bit about who you are and what’s your passion for doing the work that you’re doing?

Dimple Dhabalia
Well, first of all, Hugh and David, thank you so much for having me. It’s really a pleasure to be here. Yes, a little bit about me. As you said, my name is Dimple Dabalia, and I am the founder of a company called Roots in the Clouds. And I spent the last 20 years actually working in government, primarily on asylum and refugee operations and policymaking. And through that process, I experienced a lot of different things. So, you know, part of my job when I started out was actually working face-to-face with asylum seekers and refugees, so interviewing them for resettlement in the United States. And through that, I, you know, listening to stories of trauma and persecution day in, day out, ended up experiencing a lot of different things like vicarious trauma and moral injury, compassion fatigue, and even some burnout. And I stayed in that career space for all that time and continued to move up into different leadership positions. But due to some of the things that I experienced, the last probably four or five years, I kind of pivoted from within my organization and started focusing solely on advocating for workforce health and wellbeing, specifically related to the mental health kind of challenges that show up in mission-driven work, especially when we’re working in service of other human beings. I often say that being human is messy, but serving humanity is messier. And so it’s a lot of, you know, how do we take care of ourselves? And as leaders in organizations, how do we take care of our staff to ensure that they can keep showing up to do the work that, you know, I think most of us who go into serving others, we do so because you know, we have this genuine desire to give back. And so when we’re unable to, because we are struggling with the impact of trauma, it can be very, very frustrating and demoralizing. And so anything that we can do to help create spaces where people can show up and keep doing the work, I think is really important and to do so in a healthy way. So.

Hugh Ballou
Absolutely. Wow. That’s so essential. And, you know, we read the, I had to give up reading the newspaper and watching the news because of high blood pressure. But anyway, if you were, and you were reading newspapers a hundred years ago, I have a colleague that I was with last week. He said, you know, the news is the same as it was a hundred years ago. And even in the historical documents and the old Testament Bible, it’s the same stuff. So we, we, we think we’re in the worst age, but we’re not in a good age. There’s a lot of stress. And your title today is mission-driven, not superhuman. Give us some context for that, please.

Dimple Dhabalia
Yeah, of course. So, you know, I think a lot of times when we’re in these spaces, these mission-driven spaces, working for organizations that have incredible missions of serving others, there’s this expectation that the people who are doing the work can just keep showing up and keep doing it without any impact as a result of what they’re seeing and witnessing and actually doing in the name of service. And so there’s this feeling oftentimes that the people doing the work are superhuman. They can handle it. They can do it. And we’ve created these cultures where we’ve been conditioned to believe that if we don’t if we don’t feel like we can show up and show that we’re superhuman, that there’s actually something wrong with us and that we’re weak and we’re not able to do the work. And that’s not actually true. So at the end of the day, all of us are human. And so this is the part that I think is really important is in the book, I wrote a book recently and in my book, I talk a lot about this idea of putting the human back into humanitarian work. And when I talk about humanitarian, I’m actually talking about anyone that’s working to alleviate pain and suffering in this world. And so remembering that the people actually doing the work are also human, I think is really important. And it’s something that we’ve really gotten away from. And so human, not superhuman.

David Dunworth
Very good. Good, good, good. You know, talking about your book, tell us a little bit about how did what you’ve been doing and what you used to do and what you’re doing now, how did that formulate that book? Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Dimple Dhabalia
Yeah, absolutely. So, as I mentioned, in the work that I was doing, I was exposed to the trauma of other people every day for years at a time. And about six years into my work, I was actually on assignment in Zambia interviewing refugees. And it was the first time that I ever really had experienced these moments of not being able to regulate my emotions. It was the first time that I was sitting face to face. So I took a lot of pride over the years in being able to create what I called a wall of professionalism. And this is where I could sit face to face with people, take their stories, ask the questions, figure out what I needed to figure out without it impacting me, or at least I thought it wasn’t impacting me. But in that particular scenario, I really struggled. And for the first time, I was sitting in interviews actually crying as the applicants were sharing their stories. When I’d leave work, we’d all go to the bar, and so we were drinking a lot more. I couldn’t sleep at night. And if I did sleep, I was having really horrific nightmares where I was reliving the stories that I’d heard during the day. And so what was very fortunate for me was that when I started out my career out of law school, I actually worked for the Attorney General’s office in Denver. I had a wonderful boss and Our unit actually represented the State Department of Human Services on child abuse and neglect cases, specifically around the state registry that housed convicted people. And so part of that was the boss that I had at the time, he understood the impact of what the work was and how it could show up for us. And so he used to make us go through an annual vicarious trauma training And I remember as a brand new attorney thinking, like, I don’t need this. You know, I have no issue. I can, you know, I can review my cases and eat a sandwich and I’m good. And that probably should have been a red flag. But but, you know, and so there was there was just a lot of this belief that I was strong enough, I didn’t need this. And so what happened though, as a result is it planted seeds and those seeds came to fruition when I was in Zambia and I realized, oh, you know, something’s not right. And so as I started exploring like what was going on, I realized very quickly that my organization was not resourced to support me. And there was a lot of misinformation about what it meant to ask for help. especially with regard to, you know, if you’re in certain positions, you have security clearances, things like that. So it was a very isolating experience. And meanwhile, everywhere I looked, it seemed like all my colleagues were fine and that they were actually doing really well. And all the more made me feel a lot of shame and that there was something wrong with me. And so as I started kind of working through all of that, I finally had this moment of realization where I was, I thought, you know, I cannot be the only one going through this. And so that’s when I really started advocating and really started talking about it more. And so the last few years in the government, that’s what I was focused on. And I just kind of got to a point where I realized I want to be able to help more people. And so in 2021, when I left the government, I started my company Roots in the Clouds. And really with this idea of making service sustainable and really putting the human back into humanitarian work, And part of that, you know, as I kind of started thinking about what I wanted to share with people, I wanted to put it in a book. But the other thing that was really interesting is I thought, oh, I’m going to write this leadership book. And as I started writing, I realized that I had to tell my story, which actually started in my childhood. And so the book actually goes through this process, the story healing process or framework to show us how those experiences in our early years actually create the lens through which we then see and experience the world and our place in it. And then ultimately lead us to these careers and also at the same time, make us a little more susceptible to experiencing these kinds of occupational traumas. So that’s kind of how it came about.

Hugh Ballou
wow that’s quite a story that’s quite a story so we’re gonna we’re gonna show your website uh later but uh your book is on there it’s tell me my story challenging the narrative of service before self so we’ll when we uh show your website a little bit uh we’ll let you talk a little bit more about that that’s that’s quite a story wow um so you’re talking about mission-driven work Tell us what you mean by that. And then give us some examples of why that there’s some organizational traumas related to that.

Dimple Dhabalia
Yeah, absolutely. So mission driven work, you know, we have a lot of organizations, especially in the nonprofit sector and the government sector that have missions that people are really tied to that they want to carry out the mission of, you know, whatever service is involved. What I have found through this process, though, is that the ethos of care that many of these organizations have for the people that they’re serving does not get extended to the staff actually doing the work. And so when we talk about mission-driven, we know that there’s this entire sector of people who really want to serve other people, serve bigger causes, and want to be able to give back. I think it’s really important that in order for people to continue doing that, that we take care of them too. And so that’s a little bit about kind of that idea of mission driven. So in terms of the traumas, so first of all, people don’t like the word trauma. It makes us uncomfortable and especially in the workplace. The reality is that trauma, you know, when we think about trauma, we always think about what we call big T traumas. So these are things like natural disasters and, you know, major, oh gosh, I’m sorry, I’m losing my words at the moment, but they’re big things that really stick with us and create a line that delineates our life before the trauma and then after the experience, right? And it often changes us. But a lot of times what people don’t realize is there’s a lot of little t traumas as well. And so little t traumas are everyday things that we’re experiencing. And so, you know, and even witnessing sometimes we’re not experiencing it directly, but we’re witnessing it in our surroundings. So things like poverty, things like microaggressions, you know, sexism, ageism, all those kinds of things, all of these things, they start to build up over time. And so these little T traumas can actually be quite harmful, even more so than the big T trauma sometimes. So within this kind of mission-driven work, I have started to talk about what I call occupational traumas. And so occupational traumas are You know, we often hear people say, oh, people are burned out. But if we actually dig a little bit deeper, and especially for people who are working in service of others, there’s a lot of other kinds of traumas that tend to show up. And so I’ve already mentioned vicarious trauma, which goes hand in hand with something called secondary traumatic stress. They’re pretty similar. Excuse me. We also have post-traumatic stress. We have moral injury, compassion fatigue. And then of course, just the typical burnout that we talk about. But I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that just like we as individuals can be wounded, so too can our organizations. And I describe this as the water that we’re swimming in, right? So there’s this story about these two fishes swimming along and this older fish kind of passes them and says, oh, hey boys, how’s the water today? And they just kind of keep swimming. I’m so sorry. And I’m just going to drink some water. I’m really sorry.

Hugh Ballou
Not a problem.

Dimple Dhabalia
Not a problem. So the older fish says, hey boys, how’s the water? They continue swimming along. One of the fishes looks at the other and says, what the heck is water. And so we, the idea is that we’re so immersed in our, our organizational cultures and a lot of it is things that we’ve inherited that we don’t even realize after a while that what’s happening is not okay. And so it just becomes such a part of what we’re experiencing. And we’re so collectively focused on addressing the needs of the mission that we stop noticing that the organization itself is having some problems. And so over time, this cumulative impact of not addressing These issues as they arise becomes the organizational trauma and it gets woven into the fabric of the organizational culture until it just becomes the norm. Or the water that we’re swimming in. And so there’s a lot of things that contribute to organizational trauma. So things like lack of transparency in communications and decision making. A lot of times when there’s top down issues that don’t actually factor in workforce health and well-being, perceptions of actual perceptions or actual racial, social or other inequities or unfairness, outdated policies and procedures and practices, especially as they relate to things like hiring and firing and promotions and developmental opportunities. And then the lack of acknowledgement of, again, these common occupational traumas that staff face in their jobs. And so all of these things can start to create this kind of organizational trauma. And it becomes an issue with our systems. So a lot of times I hear people say, oh, you know, the system is broken, the system is broken, and the system is not broken. The system is doing exactly what it was created to do. And so when you think about each of us as human beings, we all have this lens through which we see and experience the world. And when you think about all the people in our workplace, we’re bringing all these people with different lenses into the same place and asking them to coexist and work and do all these things. It’s challenging. And so our systems are created by people who you know, created through the lens of the people who are creating them. And so it’s not surprising that they don’t work for everybody. And so that’s part of this is how do we come together to actually address this and heal these root issues so that we can then create something stronger together.

Hugh Ballou
Wow. That’s a lot of data. You actually answered two of our questions in a row. Yeah. So before David, David’s got a good one coming up. But Murray Bowen, who did his work there in Georgetown University, Bowen Family Systems, dealt with our own anxiety. And in looking at his leadership concepts, we can identify we’re leaders who are anxious. Actually, it’s contagious in the culture. So if we don’t take care of it, it spreads in a very different way. And I’m glad to hear that there’s Well, I’m not glad to hear. I’m sad to hear. There’s so many levels of anxiety and stress and, as you put it, trauma. So, there’s probably many, many more facets we could talk for hours on. So, David, you got a question brewing.

David Dunworth
Well, there’s a couple of different things that have come to mind. You know, you talk about organizations and how they become traumatized or sick or, you know, in need of care. But there’s a lot of organizations that they provide a system of care, duty of care, I think is what you call it in your book. What are people out there doing now versus what you’re proposing in your book? Do you see the big differences? And, you know, what changes do we need to become more aware of and implement?

Dimple Dhabalia
Yeah, it’s a great question. So the term duty of care actually originated in tort law. And in its simplest form, just refers to the legal obligation that we have to take reasonable steps to protect our staff from predictable harm, right. So it really focuses on like workforce safety issues. In in the kind of work I was doing, this included things like making sure that when we were traveling abroad, you know, that we were in that the locations where we were interviewing, for example, that they had been vetted and that we were going to be safe there, things like that. So the duty of care practice in a lot of mission-driven organizations is primarily focused on the physical health and safety of their staff. And so, and that’s important. And especially when we think about times like during the pandemic, that was a really important piece of this. health and safety is critical to ensuring that we’re able to do our work to meet the mission. But again, in these organizations where we’re serving other people, focus on health and safety isn’t enough. And so I really, I think that we need to create what I talk about is more of a holistic human centered duty of care. And I, there’s a framework that I created around this that actually has four key commitments that organizations can take and or make. And so the first commitment is normalizing and addressing occupational mental health challenges and trauma. And so this involves really becoming a trauma-informed organization. It involves, you know, again, looking at how we can normalize mental health in the workplace. Commitment number two is evolving from metrics driven cultures into human centered ones. And this one is always gets a little bit of an eyebrow raise because. Look, I understand metrics are important. We need metrics because they are what allow us to, you know, to kind of monitor our progress and to see if we’re meeting our goals, if we’re, you know, if we’re meeting the mission. So we need metrics, but when metrics are the sole driving factor behind our policies, that’s where it becomes a problem. So what we want to look at is how do we integrate workforce health and wellbeing into the conversations with metrics so that the two are working together and become the foundation of our policies so that things like workload isn’t solely about how many kind of boxes do we need to check off, but also how is this workload going to impact the wellbeing of the staff, right? So looking at how we bring those together. Commitment number three is supporting rest and recovery. I mean, the amount of, pride people take in wearing exhaustion as a badge of honor is amazing to me. Stress as a badge of honor, right? We want to start helping people understand that no, actually rest is our badge of honor because when we’re able to actually rest and really helping people understand the importance of things like good sleep, sleep hygiene, But being able to rest and recover is what allows us to keep showing up to do this work, because we don’t want to run ourselves into the ground. Once we’re in the ground, it’s much harder to climb back up out of that hole. So we want to actually be proactive on this front. And then commitment four is fostering shared purpose and commitment. So this is where we start looking at how do we create these spaces where You know, we’re, we’re creating a place where people actually feel invested, it’s not that they’re just coming to work and doing what they’re told but they’re actually helping to build, you know, this space that we’re in together that we spend most of our days in right most of our time in. And so we actually want to create that sense of shared purpose. together in our spaces. And so these commitments really allow leaders and organizations to address both occupational traumas and organizational trauma by creating conditions in the workplace where people just feel more seen, heard, and valued, which is really what all of us want as human beings, right? And so this is how we create human centered cultures that are grounded in connection and compassion and empathy. And this is really important because without this, it’s really challenging to build trust and psychological safety in our workplaces, which are two factors that are really critical to building a robust and healthy workplace that fosters innovation and growth and really helps to mitigate things like attrition.

Hugh Ballou
I want to speak to those people having a trauma. They can’t capture all this really helpful data. There will be a transcript on the website, thenonprivateexchange.org. There’ll be a transcript so you can find those good points. And you can listen to it on the podcast, wherever you get podcasts, and you can watch it on our website. So Diple, in our work, we work with leaders, well-meaning leaders, well-intentioned leaders, well-equipped leaders, who have what we call blind spots. And so I think a lot of this is we’re not aware of it organizationally, you know, and the people in our organization, we do it to ourselves. And we just need to be more aware. But we also need to educate others like volunteers in the system. I have a colleague that wrote a lily grant for her pastor and her church for a sabbatical, and a church member actually came to her and was angry because of that, and not understanding that there’s a huge stress load on that. It would happen at synagogue or any other religious, but there’s a lack of understanding. So the mission-driven, it could be also called philanthropy. Philanthropy means the love of humankind. And we’re outwardly focused. What you’re alerting me to is we need to do some of that inwardly focused. So how do leaders become more aware? I mean, getting your book is a start, but how can we become more aware of the journey we need to be on?

Dimple Dhabalia
That’s a great question. I developed a leadership program that is actually, it’s grounded in mindful awareness. And so when we talk about mindful, so sometimes mindfulness gets eye rolls and other things, but when I’m talking about mindfulness, it’s not about sitting on a cushion and meditating for hours, though I will say that meditation has a lot of incredible benefits. But when we’re talking about mindful awareness, we’re talking about how do we create this kind of self-awareness that I like to describe as being, you know, comparing it to going from like a regular TV to high definition or regular headphones to noise canceling. So the programming is the same, but we just have this little added level of clarity and crispness, right? So I think most leaders are great in that they are doing this work because they want to be there to lead in this capacity, but to your point, They just don’t always have all the tools and resources. So when we talk about creating awareness, we can’t effectively lead others if we don’t know ourselves first. And so part of this is we want to start noticing first and foremost, our thoughts, because our thoughts are really driving everything. We’ve got this constant chatter going in our brains that is narrating our life. you know, everything that’s going on around us. So start noticing what thoughts are coming up. Also start noticing what’s happening in the body, like we’re so disconnected from our bodies, but our minds and our bodies are incredibly connected, right? Everything. And in fact, when we have a stress response, our body knows something’s going on before our brain has actually caught up. So the more that we can start to notice how our stress shows up in our bodies, right? Do I have butterflies in my stomach? Do I have tight shoulders? Do I have a tight jaw? Start noticing those things. Start noticing how we react because as human beings, we fall into these patterns. So again, going back to, you know, our childhoods, we have had all these things happen that have created these deeply etched neural pathways in our brains. And so when we experience something similar as we get older, we default into those patterns. So the more that we can start to notice our patterns and how we react in certain situations. And another piece of this is when our stress response is activated. our sympathetic nervous system is what’s activated. And so we tend to react in one of five ways. So most of us know about fight or flight. So fight shows up as blame, it’s criticism, it’s judgment. And all of this can be directed towards ourselves or towards others. Flight is where we just wanna get out of the situation. So whether it’s physically leaving the situation or emotionally avoiding the situation, right? And in this flight areas where we see a lot of addiction. So whether it’s to things like drugs and alcohol or binge watching television. We saw that a lot during COVID. But this is also where we see that people are really struggling to connect with others because flight shows up as isolation. We isolate ourselves from others. Freeze is paralysis by analysis. We’re overthinking everything. We are stuck. We can’t move forward. And then there’s fix and fake. And so these are ones people don’t typically hear about. But fix is a lot of where we go into these conversations with ourselves, these if-then conversations, right? Well, if I could just be a little more productive, then my organizational will recognize that I’m worthy of being here. And the thing is that the fixed reaction is very grounded in stories we have around our worthiness. And we often tie worthiness to things like productivity and profit, even though they should be separate. And then fake is really where there’s no vulnerability. We’re not going to show anyone that we don’t, you know, especially as leaders, I don’t know are the three scariest words you can have, you know, say as a leader, we don’t want to show That we don’t know something or that we don’t. Yeah. And so part of this is really just, you know, where we start to hide behind this mask of perfectionism. that is not a sustainable strategy. And so we tend to react in one of five ways. We might have multiples at the same time. So we want to start to notice those as well. And so the more that we start to notice all of this, this is how we develop self-awareness. And this is how we start to notice how we react with other people. And then we can start to bring in some self-compassion so that these things together are what help us ultimately regulate our nervous systems in real time. And honestly, this what all of this is about is how do I learn to regulate my nervous system in real time when my stress response is activated so that I can not react, but actually respond with intention, which when we’re in these, you know, leadership situations, we really need to be able to do.

Hugh Ballou
And it’s all under the umbrella of management of self. So, uh, people like David and I, even though you, you passed by that old thing real quickly. Um, we, we, we, uh, have determined that and other people will too, that your knowledge and wisdom and experiences way past your linear age. So let me, uh, tell people where they can find you. Um, her website is roots in the clouds.com. Now, right on that home page is your book that we talked about already. And you can get the book on here. Tell Me My Story is your lovely picture. So there’s a, what will people find as contact? I assume if people want to find you, they can click on that and you’ll answer them. But what else will people find on rootsintheclouds.com?

Dimple Dhabalia
Oh gosh, so much stuff. So, there’s information about the podcasts I have. So, I have two podcasts right now. In the media?

Hugh Ballou
Those… No, where’s your… Oh, here’s the podcast.

Dimple Dhabalia
Well, those are the ones I’ve been on. So, those are all the kind of media appearances I’ve had. But if you go to resources… Resources right here, okay, on the top. Yeah. So you can see the two podcasts there. Um, I also have something called dear humanitarian. So it’s, uh, it’s kind of a blog, but it’s also a, um, an information hub. So that’s where I have a lot of very like short micro articles about different trauma related topics. And so also some guided meditations, things like that, so that people can find it dear humanitarian, which is on sub stack. Um, Yeah, that’s pretty much it. And then a little bit about kind of the different ways that I support individuals and organizations under services.

Hugh Ballou
Well, Temple, I’ve been blown away by your wisdom and the extent of your knowledge. My goodness gracious. So, David, we’re lucky to have intersected with this human being today.

David Dunworth
You know, I have learned more in this short chat about how much work I still need to do on myself. It’s amazing. Thank you very, very much. It’s been incredible. You know, and your work that you’re doing is far beyond the needs of clergy and nonprofits and NGOs. This is a global issue that you’re addressing. And I just think it’s spectacular. Thank you so much.

Dimple Dhabalia
Well, thank you. I really appreciate you having me. And if it’s any consolation, uh, this is work that we all have to do for forever. Right. So, yeah.

Hugh Ballou
Thank you for your encouragement and thank you for being our guest today on the nonprofit exchange.