Build & Thrive for Impact
Mental Health-based Leadership Training for Leaders of Impact Organizations
29.09.23 – 03.12.23, fully funded by the 🇪🇺
“Mental ill-health and burnout in social change organizations and startups threaten their performance, social impact, and ultimately their survival.”
– Masawa Fund
Go from burned-out to vibrant leader
Build & Thrive for Impact is an exhilarating 8-week leadership training for leaders of impact-oriented organizations looking to turn their mental health into a key asset for their careers. The program is EU financed and thus completely free for all participants fulfilling the EU requirements for social change organizations.
The Highlights:
Gain clarity on how to align your personal well-being with your business goals to build the company of your dreams with ease.
Create a unique strategy that makes your own mental, emotional and physical health and wellness the foundation of your leadership style.
Learn how a health-oriented leadership style can transform your business to improve the well-being of your employees and company, while increasing impact and revenue.
👩💻 Online
The 8 weeks core program is entirely online. Only the kick-off and closing events must be attended in person in Berlin.
🗓 Made for the busy
The program is designed to integrate perfectly into your busy work week. Only 1 weekly after-work call, the rest is self-paced and doable in less than 3h per week.
👫Cohort-based
Learn alongside a cohort of like-minded professionals and get insights from leading experts in the impact world.
🇪🇺 EU financed
The EU and Germany are funding this project via the „REACT with impact -Förderung des Sozialunternehmertums“ initiatve.
“Organizations with a healthy organizational culture deliver up to 3x the returns.”
– McKinsey & Company
Program Curriculum
Onboarding & Kick-off Event
It all begins with trust. We will spend two exciting days in a wonderful location in Berlin to get to know and trust everyone in the cohort. We will assess our personal strengths and weaknesses as a leader, reflect on the relationship between our mental health, leadership skills and impact in the world and create our personal leadership development plan for the program.
Module 1: Mental Health
30% of organizations fail due to the emotional state of the founders alone. Mental health is the cornerstone of every social impact organization leader because it directly affects their well-being, decision-making abilities, and overall effectiveness. Leading a social impact organization can be incredibly challenging, often involving high levels of stress, pressure, and emotional intensity. Without prioritizing their mental health, leaders can quickly become overwhelmed, burnt out, and unable to effectively fulfill their role.
In this module, we’ll assess our personal mental health, identify risks and areas of improvement, and take holistic action to maximize our personal resources.
Module 2: Self-Leadership
Being a leader is not just about guiding and influencing others; it also requires an introspective journey of self-discovery and growth. This is where the concept of self-leadership becomes essential. Self-leadership is the ability to take responsibility for one's own actions, thoughts, and emotions, and to guide oneself towards personal and professional success.
In this module we’ll assess our self-leadership qualities, reflect on how they influence our lives and learn tools to become the owner of our personal experience.
Module 3: Team Leadership
Module 4: Organizational Leadership
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Closing Event
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
What to expect
-
Masterclass & Media Library
6 weeks of on-demand video content, digital exercises and meditations for overcoming everyday challenges and sustainable behavior change. We equip you with the skills you need to shape your mind, increase your performance and build your startup with ease. Work according to your pace, and your calendar.
-
Live Sessions
Interactive live workshops and hands-on projects make learning fun. Unlike lecture courses, we'll present a concept, all share our experiences, and work on it with an accountability partner or small breakout group. You learn by doing, not by watching.
-
Mastermind Groups
Surround yourself with like-minded people who want to grow alongside you. Working and helping each other with the group exercises ensures that no one gets left behind. Make new friends with people who share your interests.
-
Progress Tracking & Optimization
Track how your stress level, clarity, resilience, belonging, sleep, heart rate variability, and activity levels are impacting your startup. We focus on understanding the intersection of self care and business goals, teaching you how to stay mentally, emotionally and physically strong while you build your company.
-
Office hours
We'll hold weekly online office hours to discuss personal as well as work-related issues individually. This is the time to discuss any questions you have about the course, your founder journey, specific issues you are running into, or anything else on your mind. You can also just come hang out with us.
-
Community
We create a vulnerable and candid space to hear how founders navigate challenges and benefit from the experiences of others. Peer-to-peer and chat support are both part of the deal. We'll have a private channel for our cohort to get to know each other, post questions and answers, homework assignments, or anything else that helps us learn and grow as founders.
Sound familiar?
Do you feel isolated?
Is stress causing physical illness and emotional distress?
Are you experiencing lost productivity and approaching burnout?
Do you sometimes feel fear, shame, or doubt about your ability as a leader?
“Founders are two times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and to be hospitalized for psychiatric ailments”
– UC Berkeley
Course Overview
Awareness
It all begins with a scientific review to question conflicting beliefs between your self care as a founder, and the success of your business.
2. Assessment
Evaluate your fitness across the 4 key founder wellness areas spanning personal and professional wellbeing and identify the strengths and risks of the character traits that make you a successful entrepreneur.
3. Plan
Design your personal founder mental wellness plan based on the latest behavior science to get back to the most brilliant and productive version of yourself.
4. Build & Thrive
Learn, support and share with peers who understand the life of a founder, and who are also committed to thriving personally to build a business that has the potential to change the world.
Michael Seibel
– CEO of Y Combinator
“Most people don’t realize how the founders who they are impressed with actually take advantage of therapy, actually take advantage of medication.”
Brad Feld
– Co-Founder of Techstars
“We were very successful as a business, financially very successful. Anybody on the outside looking in would say “what’s wrong with you?”. I didn’t feel sadness or sorrow. But it was almost like there was something missing. It was almost the absence of joy.”
Famous Voices on Entrepreneurial Mental Health, Coaching and Therapy
Your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing are intimately related to the success of your company. And when you value these things for yourself, building a startup becomes easier.
Founders are different
Why do two-thirds of portfolio companies fail? Entrepreneur neurodiversity has something to do with it. It is associated with both superpowers and vulnerabilities. The same character traits that motivate and drive founder to have brilliant ideas and start a company can be a challenge in the long haul. Starting and running a company is a marathon. You need to identify the tactics, strategy and team that work for you!
“Companies who invest in mental health double their growth over three years as compared to their counterparts”
– Heidrick & Struggles
Meet the Team
We are a team of founders and professional psychologists who have experienced the chronic stress, anxiety and life-impacts of entrepreneurship first hand. Our mission is to make your journey easier.
-
Natascha started promoting health in multiple settings and levels from the very first moment in her career. Being trained in business and health psychology (M.Sc.), she supported healthy school environments, coached future executives, and worked as an advisor to improve working conditions for corporate businesses. As an active member of the Berlin based startup ecosystem with specific focus on digital health innovation, Natascha closely works together with visionary founders and ambitious change makers to drive next generation healthcare. Having struggled with challenging health conditions herself, to date Natascha continuously combines and applies the latest scientific knowledge, practical tools and interdisciplinary treatment methods. She personally experiences the huge positive impact of health promoting thoughts and behaviors on a daily level.
-
After a masters degree in corporate management and economics, Gerjet worked for NGOs, a development bank and for 5 years as a product manager and UX Designer in various health and sports tech startups in Berlin. In 2018 Gerjet founded his own startup Skill Yoga with the mission to make yoga more accessible to a masculine identifying audience. After growing it to 15 employees, more than 1mn€ revenue and raising 1.8mn€ in a seed round, he experienced firsthand the loneliness, isolation, stress, financial hardship, and burnout associated with building a startup. His empathy for the founder journey and his training in yoga, meditation, mindfulness coaching and breath work led him to create support systems around the thesis that healthy founders equal successful founders and healthy returns.
“The return on investment of workplace mental health interventions is overwhelmingly positive, with an ROI of 4:1”
– Deloitte
“Just like you would spend a lot of effort trying to retain a great programmer or sales person who’s doing really well for the company, you should invest in making yourself happy and effective at work. It’s easy to burn out.”
– Justin Kan, Co-Founder of Twitch