Founding Director Sabbatical: taking sustainable leadership seriously

2025 marks seven years since I co-founded Routes, during which time we have supported more than 280 women to access employment and education through our award-winning mentoring programme; researched and co-designed interventions to create systemic change in the unemployment of refugee women; and grown to a staff team of six, with many more freelancers, board members and advisors helping us to deliver our work. 

This year, I will be taking a three month sabbatical away from my role as Founding Director. I’m aware that for some this might seem unconventional, or even risky, but research shows that sabbaticals can benefit organisations. I wanted to write this blog to explain why I believe that taking a sabbatical will strengthen the foundations of the organisation, and how I hope it will be a part of creating a more sustainable leadership model at Routes. I hope more organisations can make space for senior leaders to take meaningful periods of rest, and that funders would support this too, not only in the interest of individual leaders, but in the interest of the organisations too.

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The Power of Pause

Last month, Fair Collective published findings showing that 85% of small charity leaders in England experience poor mental health due to their roles. Without adequate structures to support those in leadership to maintain positive wellbeing and do their job well, we are setting our leaders, and therefore our organisations, up to fail. Sabbaticals can be used proactively - not just when someone reaches a point of burnout - to make leadership positions more supportive and sustainable. Support for leaders needs to be improved if we are going to diversify our sector’s leadership in a sustainable way. 

Whilst sabbaticals are common in some workplaces, they remain rare in the charity sector, where urgency often overshadows self-care. Last year I joined the We Are Feminist Leaders training, and found the exploration of urgency culture particularly interesting. Whilst feelings of urgency can fuel us to take action and respond to injustice, we must safeguard against a culture of urgency creeping into the way we work together, run our organisations, and approach our day-to-day work. My sabbatical is an intentional break designed for rest, reflection, and renewal – three things that are not compatible with a culture of urgency. I strongly believe that we need to support leaders to take more time to rest, reflect and renew, bringing much-needed spaciousness to work that can often feel frantic and urgent.

Creating Space for New Voices and Growth

Part of my role as a founder is to build an organisation that thrives independently, and this requires decentralising leadership away from one person. Whilst I’ve tried to take steps to create opportunities for collaboration across the team, our community of participants, and at board level, in practice I often feel that people still default to looking at me for answers. I hope that in stepping back, there will be more space for new ideas and leadership styles to emerge. The team will have more space to make independent decisions, and to bring their own approaches to the forefront, building feelings of collective ownership of the organisation. The board have already stepped up their engagement during the planning phase, and this will continue throughout my time away. In this way, I sincerely hope that my sabbatical will be an opportunity for growth – both for individuals and the organisation as a whole.

Preparing the Organisation

Preparing Routes for this sabbatical has been a long process that has required a lot of my time. I have had the support of our team, as well as our brilliant board, including Yeri Al-Jaf who I am delighted will be stepping in as Interim CEO while I’m away. Yeri has been on Routes’ board for the past three years, most recently leading our Lived Experience Leadership Group. She has such a deep understanding of Routes’ work, and I couldn’t think of a better pair of hands to lead the organisation in my absence. 

Despite our collective conviction in this as a positive step for me and for the organisation, Routes was not in a position to offer a paid sabbatical, so taking this time off has only been possible for me due to securing a Churchill Fellowship in a personal capacity. I know that not everyone has this privilege. In order to implement practices like this, which invest in the sustainable leadership of organisations like Routes, the support of funders is essential. Organisational health relies heavily on the wellbeing of its people, and yet it is extremely difficult to find funders willing to support core costs and staff wellbeing initiatives in small organisations. I sincerely hope that we will begin to see a shift towards this kind of holistic funding in the future.

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Routes has navigated many complex challenges over the past seven years as a small organisation with tight resources and big ambitions. From the seed of an idea in 2017, I am so proud that Routes has become a thriving organisation with a small but mighty team, strong values, a track record of impact, and an expected £350k turnover next year. 

At its core, this sabbatical is about trust – trust in the team and trust in the organisation to thrive without me. In the sector we work in where the stakes are high, the work is urgent, and government policy is often changing for the worse, sustainable leadership is not just beneficial, it is essential. 

I am very happy to speak to anyone thinking about taking a sabbatical – please reach out on leyla@routescollective.com. And if you were hoping to connect with me between April and July 2025, please reach out to the rest of the team instead, you can reach them all at [their name]@routescollective.com. I look forward to returning in July!