About This Resource

This session was part of the 2025 Navigating the Now, Leading the Future CE Week series

Series Overview

This Continuing Education Week is designed to support employment social enterprise leaders in building resilience, clarity, and strategic direction in a rapidly evolving world.

Over the course of 3 sessions we reflected on where we are as a community, explore tools for leading through uncertainty, and expand a vision for the future. Each session blended thoughtful reflection with practical takeaways offering grounding insights, leadership tools, and strategic planning to strengthen both your programmatic and organizational capacity.

This series is designed for employment social enterprise leaders and staff—particularly those navigating complexity, leading through change, or shaping the future of their organizations. It’s ideal for team leads, program designers, strategists, and anyone looking to strengthen their leadership practice, support their teams with greater clarity and resilience, and build capacity to anticipate and shape what comes next.

Session Description

SMALLIFY Lab-Leading Through Uncertainty: Tools for Courage, Clarity & Action

This interactive session will support ESE leaders navigating the uncertainty and complexity that often arise in times of change. Attendees will explore how to recognize and move through fear as a gateway to courage, clarity, and meaningful action. Drawing on research-informed practices and lived leadership experiences, the session introduces two practical tools: one to strengthen your mindset in the face of challenge, and another to help you prioritize what truly matters for yourself and your team. Through guided reflection and peer conversation, attendees will leave with renewed confidence and simple strategies they can bring back to their teams right away.

This session included facilitated group discussion, reflective exercises, and applied tools. It also featured testimonials from the ESE community, drawing on experience supporting leaders and teams through complexity, change, and growth.

Session Goals & Key Takeaways:
By the end of the session, you will have:

• Reflected on your personal experience with fear and uncertainty in leadership
• Learned a simple mindset tool (“Facing the Fear”) to help you pause, reflect, and act with intention
• Practiced a prioritization framework (“Keep, Start, Stop”) to clarify your next best steps
• Identified one concrete way to bring these tools into your team’s daily work

 This session is ideal for:

• Emerging and experienced ESE leaders navigating complex or high-stakes decisions
• Team leads and managers seeking simple tools to support focus, resilience, and connection
• Organizational staff who want to bring more clarity, intention, and courage into their leadership practice

Speaker:
This session was facilitated by Dave Viotti the Founder of SMALLIFY,  a global innovation methodology and community of practice. Dave has been a close partner and friend of REDF for over a decade.

Below is the session recording and accompanying materials

About SMALLIFY

SMALLIFY is a rapid innovation firm and method based in Silicon Valley, practiced around the world. We help leaders, organizations and communities break their big goals into smaller, more actionable pieces, so they can take action and get results. Fast. We do this through our SMALLIFY Labs.

SMALLIFY is built around a set of practical problem solving and rapid innovation tools. Like “Lego” pieces, SMALLIFY tools are modular and can be tapped at any time, for any duration, in situational leadership.