I was sitting on a plane at the airport waiting for the flight to depart that would bring me to South Africa for a long-planned six-month sabbatical from the nonprofit organization I lead in Minneapolis. A technical problem with the plane had us waiting on the tarmac for three hours – plenty of time to engage with one of the flight attendants. There were the easy conversation starters that flight attendants must ask thousands of times in a career: “Where are you going?” “Is it work or pleasure?” “How long will you be there?”
When I explained that I was starting a sabbatical, the airline employee immediately assumed I was in academia. When I explained that I worked for a nonprofit the tone of the conversation changed slightly with the flight attendant implying that it was somehow irresponsible of a nonprofit to grant sabbaticals. What had I done to deserve such a perk, was his question. To end a conversation that was quickly going in a rather unfavorable direction I flippantly and curtly responded that I had raised a lot of money. “You must have” was his response as he returned to his duties and I sat in my coach seat wondering why I had to defend taking a sabbatical to a total stranger.
What I wanted to say to the flight attendant is that for over six years, our programs had been expanding at double-digits annually. I wanted to tell him that our budget and staff had more than doubled. That to keep pace with the growth we had launched a capital campaign to construct a new building and that halfway through an $8 million campaign the economy went south, but we still managed to raise all of the funds.
I wanted to tell him that a sabbatical will give other staff members the opportunity to take on additional responsibilities and learn new things. That it gives our board of directors, the majority of whom have only worked with me as executive director, the chance to interact with an acting executive director. I wanted to explain to the flight attendant that a sabbatical was probably the single most important thing to do in our succession planning for an eventual change of leadership at our organization. Oh, and by the way, a recent study showed that executive directors who take a sabbatical are more likely to stay at their jobs longer, and be much more productive, than those who never take a sabbatical.
I was tempted to say to the flight attendant that this sabbatical really wasn’t about me, but that isn’t true. I didn’t really want to tell this stranger just what a toll my job, and specifically the capital campaign, had taken on me. How I seemed to gain a pound for every $100,000 raised for our building. That I had endured two frozen shoulders for 18 months and sometimes could not even put my overcoat on without assistance, and that I was trying to avoid a second trip to the emergency room for dehydration, kidney stones and multiple infections.
That’s what I wanted to say to the flight attendant. But then I remembered that I was on sabbatical and I thought to myself, who needs the stress?
