679. Shift 9 — Trust Is The Work Now - Abby Falik

Hey, friends, we have exciting news. If you are looking to build capacity, clarity and momentum in the new year, we hope you'll join this community at our first ever We Are For Good Summit on February 12th.

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It's a free one day virtual gathering for nonprofit leaders, fundraisers, marketers, and the everyday change maker who's looking to elevate. Good.

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Yeah.

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You can expect more than 20 speakers across three tracks, plus live workshops and working sessions and roundtable conversations on building trust, partnerships, people power, and what leadership really requires in 2026.

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Save your free spot at weareforgood.com summit and let's learn together, then turn that learning into action.

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After the summit, we're returning to local by activating in local impactup meetups. So the ideas shared during the day turn into action together. If you want to host a meetup too, all the details are over@weareforgood.com summit. Let's kickstart the year in community.

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We're living through history's greatest acceleration, running on very outdated systems and structures. But our ability to learn to fly, to learn to find courage and confidence in the free fall, is an inside job.

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Hey, friends, welcome back to the 12 shift series. We're starting off 2026 bringing you some things to ch you on. There's a lot of important topics right now, but I'm gonna back in to say that this is the most important topic and we wanted to, you know, start our year leaning into it and really activating as a community around this idea because we feel like it's the bedrock for everything to follow. And so today's theme is trust is the work now. And as we sat as a team and thought about who could guide us through a conversation about this, that trust is not just a byproduct, but it's like the work. It is the work that we need to focus on in this moment when institutions are being questioned, when tech is moving faster than our ability to even process, and communities are asking for transparency and accountability, trust is the bedrock for how we can shape decisions better as a leader. And so we talked about our friend Abby Falick. She's the co founder and CEO of the Flight school. We couldn't think of somebody more poised to come in and not just bring us some wisdom, but guide us through how to think about this in a really tangible way. Because Abby spent her career building leadership pathways rooted in dignity and reciprocity and shared power. And she's helped young people and institutions reimagine how leadership is formed in a very fractured world. So in this latest chapter with the flight school, you know, she is doing that in real time. She has a front row seat to what trust really demands today through clear communication and ethical choices, pouring into community centered design and just the courage to evolve outdated systems. So this convo, we are exploring all of what it means for nonprofit leaders to be more intentional around this in building, protecting, and repairing trust in a really rapid time of change. Abby, it's always a calming moment to have you back in the house. Thanks so much for being here.

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Thank you both. I am honored and delighted, truly.

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We feel like it's our new New Year's tradition to have you on.

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I just want to make it a weird for good staple that Abby somehow comes in at the top of the year. So let's make it happen.

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Count me in.

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Okay, well, we have that recorded, which is good. So, friend, I wonder if you just start with some tone setting around what have you been reflecting on about trust lately? We'd love to just start the conversation getting your top of mind of where's it hitting you?

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Trust. We need new language, new metaphors, new practices. Everywhere around us, it has frayed. And it's the essential substrate that will help us reweave our relationships with ourselves, with each other, with our communities, with the broader world, with the natural world, with the world that's unseen, the world of spirit. So I've been sitting with these questions about trust since I got your email inviting me to talk about trust. And I'm aware that when you invited me, I immediately thought, why do they think I have anything to say about this? And then I had an experience that was, well, of course I'm going to say, yes, these are my friends and I trust them deeply. And so that next response was one of the things that I've been reflecting on about trust, which is that the speed of trust is infinite. When the trust is there and when relations are trustworthy, there's no hesitation. The answers are clear. So I think I've spent a long time. You know that phrase, the speed of trust is something we throw around. And I've often, I think, until recently, assumed that that meant go slow, go slow, go steady, take your time. But what I'm learning more and more, again, is that it's like this superhighway, in a sense, that trust is either there or it's not. And we need to be deeply discerning about it. Not to just assume it's there, but when it's there, it is such a potent force.

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I think I want to respond to you asking why we picked you first and thought about you with this TR. And I think it's because we've had almost 700 conversations on this podcast and we've met a lot of people. And when I think about someone whose entire being is wrapped around authenticity and collectivism and shared humanity and integrity at the center, I just think of you, Abby. I think that. I think of your organizations. I think of the way you lead, I think just the way you're speaking right now, in these calm tones that let us know that being human and everything we're feeling everywhere, all at once, all the time is okay, but at the very basis our integrity and who we are and going back to values is so much the work. So I just. I want to double click on these trust based models that you have implemented for years, and this is just a part of your leadership, long before it was a buzzword. So I'm curious, from your perspective, what feels fundamentally different about trust right now? And why do you think we need to treat it as core work, not the soft work, but like it is the work, especially right now?

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Well, Becky, I really appreciate your reflections back to me. I don't know if you've spoken to anybody about the Enneagram on the podcast.

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Totally.

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We have. Okay, okay, okay. I imagine you can see the three tattooed on my forehead.

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Driver achiever.

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Go, go, go. Ambitious for what? And I share it now because I've had this shift as I've worked with the Enneagram and worked with myself, really, like, dropping in this question of what am I ambitious for? And I've actually been increasingly focused on how to be ambitious around authenticity and trustworthiness. What if what I'm here to do is to become more and more worthy of my own trust and of others? Trust as a way of modeling what I hope to pass on in the world to my kids, to the students we work with at the flight school. So you ask about why trust is so foundational now. I mean, trust is always foundational to human society and human connection and human institutions. But we cannot deny that everywhere we look, everything we have trusted to be solid is coming apart at the seams. And the pace of change is accelerating in ways that we can't even wrap our minds and hearts around. And so we need to find what is steady in the spinning world, what is constant, grounded, anchoring and true, even as the places where we have put our trust are proving to be unstable in a way. I shared last time we spoke last January that the foundational invitation that Set us in motion. For the flight school was a Zen teaching that says the bad news is we are all falling. And the good news is there is no ground.

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I remember that.

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I remember that too.

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And we're living through history's greatest acceleration, running on very outdated systems and structures. But our ability to learn to fly, to learn to find courage and confidence in the free fall, is an inside job. It begins through practices that get us in touch with our inner knowing that help us bring our minds back to where our bodies are. Getting off our technology and getting quiet enough to listen for what is true inside of us. Because we can't be worthy of others trust until we feel that in ourselves as well. We need to be ready to leap from what's known to what's unknown. I think I've often taught this in the organizations I've led where, you know, there's this idea of the transition between high school and what comes next, between dependence and independence, childhood and adulthood. It's like I see it often as swinging on monkey bars, right? You need to have the courage to let go of one in order to have the momentum to swing for the other. But you don't yet know where or how that next hand is going to land. So trust is knowing that you can let go of what you've known to be true and follow the flow of what's emerging next.

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Julie, can this become like a three part series? I don't know if this is going to throw off the podcast schedule.

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I.

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Mean, Abby, I mean, you're leading me into just some deeper reflection I want to have with you because, you know, maybe some listening have also followed your personal journey because y' all chose a very unexpected path as a family to drop into communities around the world, even putting your kids in local schools and living in a very local capacity in different countries. And I'm just so curious about that experience, about letting go of control, stepping into spaces where, where you don't know anybody necessarily, but you're finding trust in those moments. You're building trust in real time. How did that experience shape your perspective of some of these things?

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It's beautiful. I think risk taking and trust and not knowing, all of these things are entwined and they're all muscles that we have to practice and befriending. Our fear of the unknown is the path to freedom ultimately. So I think about early experiences that were most formative in my own life. They always took place outside of my comfort zone, outside of what is known and familiar and comfortable. It's like when we're just in our habitual, expected lives. We rest our trust on the context and the things around us. We can sort of assume them to be steady and true. But there's something that shifts when we're out of the water we're used to. We see that we were even swimming in water. And we may not be able to communicate in the same language or express ourselves with the same shorthand. There's a way in which being outside of our comfort zones and in contexts that feel foreign creates a disorientation that turns us back toward what can I trust here? Which for me deepens a sense of what is that inner knowing and that inner voice that can discern something that may sound right but feel wrong.

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There's so much wisdom here. And this notion that I am grasping to that you're speaking about is befriending the fear, which is a really left handed move that I say that that's my therapist's way of saying doing something that feels very antithetical and awkward. But I want to make it relatable. Because when I think about little Becky in her nonprofit job early on and the amount of control that I held so tightly to, to the budget, to the strategic plan, to the messaging that's going out in this particular thing and it has to way otherwise the board this and my boss this. And so I'm thinking about organizations right now and I'm wondering, like, where are orgs most at risk right now of losing trust? And I'm talking about with their communities, with their staff, with their funders, maybe with young leaders or young people watching them. I want to know what you think is like they are most at risk of losing trust. And what are those warning signs that people are missing right now? What are you seeing?

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I love the examples you gave Becky. And I can see myself in all of them. And in kind of think, anticipating this conversation, I was thinking about what, what do I find not trustworthy right now? And a bunch of things come immediately to mind. You know, grant reports that ask me for false certainties. Five year strategic plans. Who's to say what the world will look like in five months or five days? Anything that values polish and performance over presence and authenticity.

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Wow. Yeah.

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Modernity is built to tamper and protect us from our fears. We have built schools that are fear based. Right. We motivate kids where there's a fear of failure, a fear of getting behind, where we've decided that the only things that count are the things that we can actually count and measure. A test Score a credential, and all of these things are actually proxies or shortcuts for the actual thing underlying it that's more messy, less easy to pin down, less easy to name. And so it's the same thing in an organizational dance of performing certainty and controlling what is ultimately unknowable, creating legibility where what's aching to come through is much more mysterious and emergent. And I think we're living at this moment where my AI can respond to your AI without the human even being involved. You know, it's like you send me the email in my email.

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It is so dystopian, it's crazy.

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But what if. What if. What if this is the moment of reckoning that says all these songs and dances we've done have been about performance and sort of a thin type of intelligence that is just the intellect bantering with other intellects and sort of preventing the descent into feeling and emotional grappling. What if this moment of seeing our AIs bounce off each other is our moment to turn back to what makes us human, what keeps us alive? How do we follow a completely different current and rebuild institutions around a ledger that befriends fear, it doesn't try to control it and create space for real trust to emerge?

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Yeah, Abby, I mean, I think you're getting to why this conversation felt so foundational to everything else that follows, you know, and so I love these hooks and I think the examples about nonprofit leaders grappling with this. Yes, there's all this tech available and data and information and ease that comes with that. But I think we are really curious of, like, what does it come down to? What are some actual shifts that we need to make as leaders to build trust this year, knowing that all those things are true, like, what are some habits that you would think or some next steps of just how a leader can show up more to build trust and build credibility in a world that there's so much facade.

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I think all the time about the kid's story about the emperor's new clothes and the, you know, the kid in the crowd who looks up and says, but he hasn't got anything on.

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He's the only one brave enough. Yeah.

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I think my most consistent practice and piece of learning to share is we need to call it as we see it, that we put up so many layers of performance, but we're performing for each other. There's a sticky note by my computer. It was a foundation officer, actually, who heard me talk about what we're building at the Flight school. And he reflected back and it really felt like a direct transmission. He said, you know, you can use all this language, but, Abby, I'd encourage you to align with the ultimate truth now. And there's a way in which the truth comes out eventually. But we play a lot of games and spend a lot of time and waste a lot of energy pretending things are true that aren't so. If I could say one thing that helps me build, that helps me trust myself and helps me feel worthy of other people's trust, and that feels like a piece of the leadership playbook that needs to be completely reimagined. It's about aligning with what's true and becoming more transparent to saying and doing the thing that aligns with that undercurrent of what is really trustworthy here.

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I love that so much because it brings in this modicum of courage, too. I feel the releasing, the letting go, and embracing who you truly are. I've been on a journey with that myself for about the last two years, and it is one of the most freeing things ever. And as someone who used to look at this work and used to use that derivative that we need to make it very Norman Rockwell. The mission's great. Here's all the things that are happening. I just think saying it like it is, we talked about tell the story of now. What is your organization going through right now? What is the good, the bad, and the ugly? Guess what? That level of honesty with yourself, with your community, is going to draw people in because you're talking about like minded and value alignness. And I think that hope is just this undercurrent that we're all carrying with us. And I want to know, what does it look like to you, Abby, to lead with hope without being entirely naive about the world that we're living in right now?

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I am deeply and genuinely hopeful that this moment of rupture is exactly what's needed to help us turn back, back toward what matters.

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Me too.

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We are watching a very natural progression of how change unfolds. Things need to break apart in order to break through. And what comes next is not yet determined. It's up to us, and we get to choose right now. And this is crucial. Are we going to choose to build with an engine of fear or an engine of love? At the flight school, we've organized our curriculum around what we see as three essential shifts that begin within ourselves, but then ripple out to the world. And the broader header here is, we are in a transition, and if we're deliberate we can shift from fear to flourishing in ourselves and our communities in the broader world. So these shifts require the courage that you're describing. Becky and I also just had this sense of how courage is a contagion. When the little boy says, the emperor's naked, the adults wake up and realize, oh my God. I could say the same. So there's a way in which every action we take, every courageous step, is not just in the service of our own freedom, but it's helping to set other people free. It's helping to show them the way. So these three shifts for us are anchored in, we're calling, pathways to flourishing. The first is animation. So can we make the shift from what dwindles to what kindles our inner light and practice, the things that keep us alive? The second shift is around co creation. How do we shift from alone to accompanied? Modernity has us thinking that we've got to go it alone, carry the burden of the world on our own shoulders. Me, me, me. Personal advancement, my degrees and my test scores. But what does it look like to actually move in a way that's accompanied? And so it's animation, co creation and liberation. How do we move from fearfulness to freedom? Which begins with recognizing that between any action and our response is a beat, there's a breath where we get to choose what comes next. So animation, co creation, liberation, if we can orient toward those north stars, learn the practices that help us really tune in in ourselves to what that shift feels like. And each one takes a really courageous leap. I envision what comes next looking like it emerges from the ashes, but is aligned with a deeper, truer sense of our humanity.

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Yeah, I mean, these as guideposts as north stars for the work that you put in into your life's work, but also into this chapter with flight school. It seems so kismet that this moment in time, this is what is integrated into how you're working with students who are figuring out their next step and navigating that journey with them. And I, we think a lot about the next generation. We, before we hit record, we were talking about our kids and almost dedicating this episode to them of like having these conversations. What do you think that we owe this next generation and getting right about leading with building trust and showing up authentically?

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You know, my immediate reaction to that is they're going to do what they're going to do. I am aware in working with this rising generation that they are so much less defended than we are. They're so much more sensitive to the Truth, they're so much more likely to call the emperor naked. So in a sense, I almost wonder. I don't even know what our role is. I don't know what they need from us, but I know here's what they need. They need us to meet them where they are, are to help them see that what they're sensing in what's coming apart in a world that's been built on false promises and false certainty, that they can trust themselves and that I think we need to stop the song and dance around this is the way things are done. And this pathway, this sort of narrow set of goals will lead you to success and happiness. I think we need to be willing to be honest about what we've gotten wrong and humble enough. Humble and confident enough to learn from what they're here to tell us about what comes next.

23:43

I agree with you completely. And I go back to your hearkening of co creation. I think with this next generation, I look at my children, they're 15 and 11 and daughters, and they're watching this moment right now. And I am in awe of how steady they are about who they know who they are, what they are about. And it has really called me back into my own personal values and my own courage. And so what a beautiful moment for, to your point, reinspiration, reimagination, co creation. And I just want to know, Abby, you know, we always end with the one good thing. And we're going to give you a little bit of homework because we want listeners to know, what could they do to move this value set forward? How can they work on trust this week? What kind of homework would you give them?

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Well, my one good thing is the book that's never far from anywhere I happen to be. Let's see if this can come up through here. It's.

25:50

Oh, I have that book.

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Nice.

26:01

Jeff Schuck told me to read this book. It's called Comfortable with Uncertainty. It is fabulous.

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Comfort with Uncertainty. This is the one book I have read every day for the last decade. I can't count the number of times I've read it through. I usually just open to a page at random. It is always exactly what I need to hear. But it's like instructions for the free fall. It's practices for remembering to trust what is innately good in us and in others. For it just opens the channel for me daily to remembering, yeah, what's, what's true, what's trustworthy beyond the narrow focus of everything. I'm where my attention gets sucked as soon as I turn on my phone or my computer, so, you know, you're asking for concrete things. We haven't talked too much about technology beyond the way AI is kind of creating this sense of vacant communication between are we human? Are we. It's all so confused. But the other piece of technology that is so insidious right now is the way that it's hijacking our attention and diminishing our ability to be present with each other. And so I think concretely, it's about an invitation to figure out what practices help you reconnect and bring your mind and your body to the same place. It may be a nature practice. I have a dear friend who's developed a whole framework around this, and through her encouragement, I am starting this year with an intention to watch every sunset. So wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, rather than running on kind of clock time or the to do's on my list, trying to either poke my head out the window or step outside and just remember there's a bigger picture and there's a another timeline wrapping around us. So it might be nature practice. It might be unplugging on Saturdays. It might be seated meditation. I know these things all have become buzzwords, but I think they are. I don't think they are lifelines.

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Yes, they are.

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And without them, we will be siphoned. The aliveness in us will be siphoned out and nothing and no one will be trustworthy anymore. So find the ways to keep your lights on.

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I mean, you are one of those lifelines for us too. Thank you for the way you show up for this community to us as humans. I want to connect our listeners to all the ways that you show up in the world. I know you publish on Substack, which I've got to plug that. So incredible. What are the other places to find you? Or if you want to share a little bit about what's happening at flight school, we'd love for people to get connected to Yalls work.

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Yeah.

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We're in our second year at the flight school and gearing up shortly to launch applications for the third cohort. So you can learn more on our website. And it's a fellowship that is specifically designed for the transition between high school and what comes next. So far we've had students from 25 countries join us and they spend a year honing their intuition, learning contemplative practice, learning through connection and relational practice, and then going out into the world to have formation experiences that disorient you and shift your sense of who you are and who you're becoming. And we see the flight school as a lab. Everything we're developing and experimenting with courses and the curriculum and the coaching models will ultimately be offered out freely to ever widening circles of community. So that's, that's the flight school. And I'm writing more and more. I remember when we spoke last year, I think it was the first time I mentioned that I would be launching a sub stack. And I was a little nervous that I talk about a courageous leap. I was scared to put it out in the world, but it's felt wonderful. And so I write on substack and on LinkedIn both. And I am doing my best to say the true, clear, hard thing, even when it scares me.

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I think that's all any of us can do. And you are. We're like coming up on the Olympics opening ceremony and I just see Abby, like, is this torchbearer for letting go, for leaning in for reconnection, for reimagination? And maybe this doesn't have to be the hardest moment. Whatever you are facing right now there, I'm sure whoever's listening, you are carrying something heavy and you're trying to decide which way to turn to make that decision. I hope you'll trust yourself and I hope you will trust that that knowing is already inside you and to release that and to let it go. Abby, thank you for coming in, being absolutely luminary, as you always are. Thank you. Thank you for your work and the way you work and move through this world. It is really an inspiration to us.

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Right back at you, my dear friends.

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