This article is an excerpt from Michael Prosserman’s new book, Building Unity: Leading a Non-Profit From Spark to Succession, and is reprinted with permission. In Building Unity, Prosserman breaks down the six steps to discovering “responsible impact” and building an organization that is growth-minded, values-based, and reflective of the needs of its community. Using stories of his own evolution, learning, and growth as a leader over 15 years, Prosserman parallels the creativity found in breakdancing with the innovation needed to build a sustainable nonprofit.

Among staff at Unity, there didn’t seem to be a healthy separation between work life and home life, as the passion for the work bubbled over. Work was life. This took a real toll on people’s mental and physical health, mine included. It took some deep reflection for me to understand that work is a big part of our life, but not all of our life. My failure as a leader was that I was hurting everyone who looked up to me on my team, setting a negative example by not taking care of myself.

I used to send emails as soon as an idea popped into my head. Midnight, 2:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m., it didn’t matter. I would wake up and send it. I would also send emails on evenings, weekends, and holidays. I was an email machine! In ten years at Unity I sent 426,808 emails (that averages to 116 emails per day over ten years)! Sometimes I felt the more emails I sent, the more successful Unity would be. But what this told my team was that it was okay and, maybe in some cases, might even be expected. I only realized this wasn’t okay when one of my teammates, Rajni Sharma, mentioned it. I broke myself of the habit, and it became the first step in encouraging the separation of work and home, for me personally and as a part of Unity’s culture. I set time restrictions on when I would send emails, schedule meetings, and answer phone calls. Like a crew, we looked out for one another and could call each other out when we could see someone falling into unhealthy patterns. Obviously, sometimes we had to keep working and emailing through crunch periods, but overall we tried to develop a more self-aware and self-care approach to work-life balance. It was an ongoing grind, but it was worth it.

I began dancing more and meditating during this time. As I created a culture of care for myself, I noticed that this created space for staff to develop their own self-care practices. It had always been encouraged, but actions spoke louder than words. Staff collectively began taking breaks in the middle of the workday to go to the gym. They were holding each other accountable. I look at the power of my influence anytime I am “in charge” of something as a responsibility to lead by example; so I worked on creating the best possible work environment by treating myself well while I was encouraging others to do the same for themselves. It was so simple, but not so obvious. Saying “take care of yourself” was meaningless without leadership that modelled the behaviour.

I want people to know that you don’t need to kill your minds and bodies to be successful or to feel that through your own sacrifice, someone else will benefit. I think that’s a sad story we tell ourselves. I told myself this story for nearly a decade before I decided to make a change. We need to work intelligently and efficiently. If I don’t sleep, my employees ultimately won’t sleep because I’ve normalized and enabled this behaviour. It’s not okay, and I needed to be the one who set the example by practicing what I preach.

There were times where I would break my own rules, but I would try to acknowledge it in front of others. We held each other accountable. This was hard work to turn off, and when big deadlines were in our face we needed to perform and kill it. Just acknowledging busy times could make it feel like we were in it together. It allowed people to take care of each other during the process and gave space for them to take time off afterward. Self-care became contagious.

I realized that if I want the team to have loyalty to and respect for the organization, I needed to have respect for myself. We gave our employees full-time, permanent jobs, even when the world is moving towards temporary contract work, to show we respected and valued them. Over time, we were able to provide staff with health, dental, and mental health benefits, laptops, transportation support, and phones. We even began to give annual bonuses and on-the-spot gift card bonuses as incentives for above-and-beyond performance. It required real investment in our people. People in power need to make conscious efforts rooted in real intentions to build a healthier work environment. It’s vital to the well-being of future generations of work. It’s just the right thing to do. Ultimately, taking care of our people helped all of Unity’s bottom lines, from team culture to staff retention to program impact to funds raised and beyond.

Building Unity: Leading a Non-Profit From Spark To Succession
By Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman
Get your copy at www.buildingunitybook.com
Part # 3: Trust: Crews and Cyphers, Pg # 101 to 103
Published by ECW Press
Release date September 15, 2020
Copyright Michael Prosserman, 2020

At age 16, Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman, a professional b-boy (breakdancer), completed a school project that would grow to become a hip-hop-inspired mental health charity with global reach. Through a process of continuous discovery and reflection, Prosserman and his team grew UNITY to the point where it benefited over a quarter of a million young people.