Finding More Steadiness in Leadership

Miriam • May 26, 2026

 

Candice Hamel did not participate in the Leadership Learning Lab because she was new to leadership.

As Executive Director of the Father Fred Foundation, she brings more than two decades of experience in nonprofit human services. She has led teams, managed responsibility, and learned how to keep important work moving.

But leadership does not stop asking new things of people once they have experience. In each role, the relationships are different. The expectations are different. The questions are different. For Candice, this season invited her to think not only about what she was carrying, but how she was carrying it.

“Confidence was a lot of it,” she says, reflecting on what drew her to Leadership Learning Lab. “No matter how old you are or how many years you’ve been doing this, so much of leadership comes down to confidence.”

For Candice, confidence does not mean having every answer. It means having a clearer sense of what is normal in leadership: how governing boards function, how expectations and dynamics shift, and how to keep leading when the people around the table change. It also means learning to hold feedback and tension with more steadiness, without assuming every hard moment is a personal failure.

“I used to lose sleep over upsetting people,” she says. “I care deeply about the work and the people around it, but I was taking too much of that tension personally. I knew I couldn’t keep operating that way.”

Leadership Learning Lab gave her a place to step back from the day-to-day work and look at her leadership habits with a little more distance. The cohort offers practical tools, but also the reassurance that other people are navigating their own uncertainties, too.

“I was drawn to being around other people who are sort of in it with you,” Candice says, “and the reinforcement that we’re all doing the best we can.”

That steadiness has begun to carry back into her organization.

“I’ve learned to calm myself down,” she says. “Not everything is a crisis, and not everything needs to be perfect.”

That internal shift matters. Candice notices that she feels steadier heading into moments that once carried more pressure. She is able to show up with more confidence, not because the work becomes simple, but because she feels more settled in herself. She describes it as learning to “just be me,” to use the skills she has, and to seek support for the things she is not meant to carry alone.

That learning also becomes practical.

During one Leadership Learning Lab session, Candice was introduced to tools for clarifying roles and responsibilities on shared projects. Like many organizations, the Father Fred Foundation relies on shared effort to make major events and programs happen. Candice adapted one of those tools to help clarify roles, responsibilities, and track progress across the team.

With clearer roles, the work changes.

“It’s been a game changer,” she says. “Everyone’s more cohesive. We’re working together better.”

This is part of the deeper purpose behind Leadership Learning Lab. The program is not designed only to add information to already full plates. It creates space for leaders to pause, practice, reflect, and return to their work with something they can actually use: a new question, a clearer process, a steadier way of responding, or a relationship they did not know they needed.

Some of Candice’s most useful learning has come from the people around her.

As one of the more experienced participants in the cohort, she is learning alongside people who are in different seasons of life and leadership. That includes one cohort member whose personality and work style felt almost opposite of her own.

“She has become so important to me through this process,” Candice says. “Our ages are different and our styles are different, but we’ve really learned to value one another’s perspective. That’s not something I expected to get out of this at all.”

That experience has shaped how Candice thinks about her own staff, especially younger employees who may bring different expectations around work, flexibility, and feedback. Rather than seeing those differences as something to work around, she is learning to notice what they reveal about how work in the nonprofit sector has changed, and about what earlier generations of leaders were often expected to carry without question.

“I started to recognize that work-life balance had not been available to me in the same way,” she says. “There’s almost an envy that I didn’t get that myself.”

That kind of reflection is not always easy. It asks leaders to look at the habits that helped them succeed earlier in their careers, and then ask whether those same habits are still serving them, their teams, or the work.

For leaders considering Leadership Learning Lab, Candice does not describe the experience as a one-size-fits-all program. Part of its value, she says, is that participants may discover something they did not expect.

“You don’t always know what’s going to surface until you’re in the room,” she says.

For Candice, what surfaces is confidence, clarity, and a more grounded way of leading through pressure. It is both personal and practical. It changes how she prepares for high-pressure moments, how her team organizes major events, and how she responds to staff.

For those managing people, projects, volunteers, board relationships, or the quiet pressure of being responsible for the work, Leadership Learning Lab offers time and space to step back, learn with others, and return to the work with greater clarity. For Candice, that has meant finding new ways to share responsibility, draw on support, and lead with more steadiness.