Changemakers’ Handbook with Elena Bondareva

Most people are not changemakers

Modern “change” culture may create an impression that those oriented toward continuity, care, craft, mastery, preservation, relationship, beauty, stability, or stewardship are somehow less vital — or even less committed to humanity’s future — than those oriented toward disruption and reinvention. I do not believe this for a second. In fact, the more I practice changemaking, the more reverence I feel for people whose primary contribution to the world may not be transformation at all. My last post introduced the 6 attributes of changemakers. Now, I turn to the people whose contributions let changemakers do their thing. Theirs is not secondary work. It is civilization. I am increasingly aware that my changemaking has been made possible by countless people who are probably not changemakers themselves. The teachers who honed my potential. The people who ensured my scholarships were credited correctly to my university tuition accounts. Those who made sure I ate something wholesome. The friends who tethered me back to reality when I became a hot air balloon buoyed too far upward by causes and ideas. I owe everything I have accomplished — and likely much of what I still will — to people who built the roads I travel on, ensured fresh water and air, grew my food, tended to my health, and created art that kept weaving me back into humanity while I wrestled with how it might need to change. What studying changemakers has shown me * Changemaking is real. Not merely as a buzzword or aspirational personal brand, but as a recognizable practice of transformation. * Some individuals — I refer to them as changemakers — appear uniquely predisposed toward changemaking. They persistently ask: Why is it like this? Why do we accept this? Could this work differently? What would it take to change it? Goodness knows we need people willing to question inevitability, challenge harmful systems, imagine and build alternatives, and continue long after exhaustion, cynicism, self-interest, or social pressure would convince many others to stop. For more, see my last post: https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs] * Our future equally depends on the people whose contributions take entirely different forms. I have become equally convinced that changemakers depend on people oriented toward many other equally vital forms of human contribution. * Importantly, changemakers do not have exclusive dibs on creating change. Nor does it mean that changemakers cannot care deeply about continuity, ethics, beauty, relationship, or stewardship. The more I study changemakers, the more I think of them as something like a society’s immune system. At their best, changemakers help societies detect harm, aim higher, adapt, and regenerate. At their worst, they are destabilizing, reckless, and destructive. Weak immune systems are dangerous, but so are overactive ones. Left entirely to themselves, changemakers might redesign civilization incessantly. Some of those redesigns would be extraordinary. Some would be catastrophic. All would be exhausting. Human flourishing has probably always depended on many different forms of devotion existing alongside one another. Which may be one reason changemakers need not only to hone their own strengths, but to cherish the countless contributions that keep us alive, connected, nourished, honest, safe, or sane long enough to do our thing at all. A future worth building takes both Perhaps maturity — especially for changemakers — involves finally recognizing that people who do not share our particular fixation on transformation are not necessarily barriers to the future we want. They may be part of the reason we survive long enough to build it. Are you a changemaker? I have been building a survey (stay tuned) to help explore that question, based on six recurring attributes my research increasingly points toward, to better understand one particular orientation toward change — and how it exists alongside many other equally vital forms of human contribution. _ _ _ Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing changemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. Image credit: Eleanor Smith [https://pixabay.com/users/elephantsoup-35028633/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=8608983] from Pixabay [https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=8608983] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Are you a changemaker? Signs, habits, and habitat of the people who can’t seem to leave the world alone

Have you ever wondered if something is wrong with you? If you feel responsible for problems you did not create, see possibilities others miss, and find it difficult to stay passive in the face of systemic harm, you may be a changemaker. Not in the influencer sense or as branding, but as your orientation toward transformation. And changemakers may be among society’s most important — and least supported — resources. Across more than 20 years of research and practice in transformation across six continents, I have observed that some people appear consistently drawn toward systemic change efforts regardless of sector, profession, ideology, or geography. While their personalities vary dramatically, they can be strikingly similar in how they relate to responsibility, uncertainty, systems, and action. Importantly, predispositions are not the same as competencies. Predispositions may explain why some people repeatedly engage in changemaking. Competencies determine how effective they are. My current research suggests that changemakers frequently exhibit six recurring predispositions: The signs 1. Responsibility beyond causation Changemakers often experience unresolved social, institutional, or environmental harm as psychologically difficult to ignore — even when they did not personally create the problem. Many describe that once they become aware of systemic harm, they “cannot look away.” Guilt for all that goes unresolved is the surest tell you’ve spotted a changemaker in the wild. 2. Possibility orientation Changemakers see possibilities others miss. They glimpse plausible futures where today’s impossibilities become ordinary reality. They imagine scenarios in which today’s harms, constraints, and institutional logic no longer hold — and often detect pathways others dismiss as unrealistic, premature, or impossible. 3. Expanded scope of concern Changemakers often struggle to “stay in their lane” when systemic problems affect communities, ecosystems, or future generations. Such problems feel like their responsibility regardless of institutional, professional, and social boundaries. This does not necessarily reflect rebellion. Rather, many instinctively recognize that complex problems cross such boundaries. 4. Agency orientation Passive observation rarely feels like an option. Even when risks are substantial and success uncertain, changemakers often feel compelled to intervene rather than remain spectators. 5. High tolerance for uncertainty Transformation is uncertain, nonlinear, and difficult to control. Changemakers often continue acting despite ambiguity, delayed feedback, contradiction, and incomplete information. Many also learn to navigate tensions that cannot be fully resolved: hope alongside realism, action alongside humility, strategy alongside adaptation. 6. Systems sensitivity Changemakers frequently perceive relationships that others experience as separate. They notice patterns, interdependencies, contradictions, incentives, and unintended consequences across social, technological, institutional, economic, and ecological systems. Long before formal systems thinking language enters the picture, many changemakers appear instinctively attentive to interconnectedness across problems, interventions, and outcomes. WARNING: If you — or someone you know — consistently exhibits these signs, you may be a changemaker. This makes you part of one of society’s most important — and structurally under-supported — populations. Ecological function Our work — remaking the world for the better — sure is cut out for us. For centuries, changemaking happened through improvision. Consequently, its impact has been haphazard. The unlikely upside of nearly assured self-destruction. An incidental byproduct rather than an outcome of intentional effort. Thankfully, changemakers are adaptable, creative, versatile, relentless, and many. Misunderstood, under-equipped, chronically unsupported, occasionally vilivied — and somehow still showing up. Imagine what becomes possible once we stop treating changemaking as accidental heroism and start treating it as a human capability worthy of cultivation. The dangers As changemakers, we navigate major fault lines. * Loneliness. Many changemakers — and I have asked hundreds worldwide — feel alone. When most people can’t understand why we care — why you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders — it can be isolating. * Shame. If guilt is brutal, shame is cruel. Unlike guilt, which at least picks on behavior, shame concludes that you — at your core — are no good. Dr. Brené Brown [https://brenebrown.com] is a leading social researcher on this topic, and I would be honored to apply her findings to the change-maker community. * Burnout. How do we call it a day if the world is still on fire? How can we give ourselves permission to watch Netflix if [insert entrenched systemic problem] persists? For changemakers, overwhelm is commonplace. If unchecked, it is debilitating and leads to depletion. * Anxiety and depression. Anxiety may, at times, be the only rational response to awareness. Who can blame us for despair when our efforts to shift entrenched systems so often feel painfully inadequate? Feeling “othered” only compounds the experience. * Other sacrifices. We forego expected milestones in favor of work we cannot quite justify but seem incapable of abandoning. We don’t fully understand the value changemakers create for society — or the cost many quietly pay to do so. The perks Hands down, there are easier ways to make a living and to craft a respectable life. And yet. Yes, there are upsides to being a changemaker! * Meaning. Remember all those studies correlating meaning with wellbeing. Changemakers tend to outperform on those metrics. * Impact. Changemakers are usually several existential steps ahead of those who find exercises like, What would you like people to say at your funeral? confounding.   * Community. The biggest reason I recommit, every day, to this work is the people it puts in my life. On the harder days, it is the unbearable thought of losing fellowship with other changemakers that pushes me to keep figuring out how to live — and thrive — as one. Do I get a choice whether to be a changemaker? I honestly don’t know. I doubt you ever knelt before your god and asked them to show you all the horrid, shameful things about this world — and then make you feel personally vested in making them right. And yet you do. And so do I. Twice, I tried to ignore my wiring. To “pray away the changemaker” because I would, damn it, be content charting a path that prioritized “number one” (aka, me) and maybe donate or share when I had extra. According to sources close to the experiment, I was miserable to be around. And that’s with the true torment masked as best I could. It may well be in our nature to dare to change the world. A power less ours to possess than to direct. While we may not choose changemaker predispositions, we do choose how to navigate this world. How to direct our energy. How to cultivate our capabilities. How to make the difference that is ours to make. And whether we manage to do so with joy in our hearts. That is what this Substack is about. What changemakers need Expect detailed posts and leading science on topics like: * Self-awareness. If what I’ve shared resonates, we’re going deeper. * Community. You are not alone! This community (Changemakers’ Handbook) already reaches across 44 countries. Engage. And let me know if I can help directly. * Self care. We cannot build a better world by destroying ourselves in the process. * Tools. Chemists, geneticists, architects, florists, physiotherapists, and pet groomers all begin with shared tools, competencies, and professional language. Changemakers got… well, mostly vibes. Unacceptable. Because the more time I spend in this field, the more convinced I become that changemaking should not remain dependent on improvisation alone. As we attempt to navigate civilizational-scale transformation, we should probably stop expecting changemakers to improvise their way through it unsupported. Building infrastructure for changemakers If you’ve wondered why you — or someone you’ve spotted in the wild — are the way you are… Well. Now you know a little more. * I wrote Change-maker’s Handbook [https://www.changemakershandbook.com] (2023) to distill my professional, personal, and research experience into a practical roadmap for impact. https://www.amazon.com/Change-makers-Handbook-Everything-meaningful-business/dp/B0CP8T4Z6F/ref=sr_1_1?crid=27J3JJ7GUB8J5&keywords=elena%20bondareva&qid=1701565531&sprefix=elena%20bondareva%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1 [https://www.amazon.com/Change-makers-Handbook-Everything-meaningful-business/dp/B0CP8T4Z6F/ref=sr_1_1?crid=27J3JJ7GUB8J5&keywords=elena%20bondareva&qid=1701565531&sprefix=elena%20bondareva%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1] * My current PhD research is producing what I sometimes call the “periodic table” of changemaking: a framework that defines the predispositions, roles, competencies, tensions, dynamics, and building blocks of transformation. * My consulting and coaching practice, Vivit [http://www.VivitWorldwide.com], helps changemakers and organizations launch, navigate, and scale transformational initiatives. www.Vivitworldwide.com. * I am increasingly exploring group-based support, learning, and developmental spaces. * And this publication exists to help changemakers feel recognized, less alone, better equipped, and more capable of sustaining meaningful contribution over time. https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/about [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/about] Are you actually a changemaker? I’m currently building something else: a global survey designed to answer this important question. Not aspirationally. Not professionally. Structurally. In your wiring. If this post piqued your interest, keep an eye out! * * * Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing changemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. Image credit: Pat_Photographies This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

To all who choose to mother the world

Mother’s Day (this Sunday in some countries) makes me think about one of the most powerful forces on earth: Care that is on tap without being requested. The willingness to notice before someone asks. To make space before another needs to expand beyond politeness. To ensure a soft landing before someone breaks. To create the conditions for another human being to process, heal, gather themselves, or become. A mother does this. A mother interrupts the ruthless passage of time. She cocoons, soothes, and mends. She is the magic that darns frayed threads, tends to false starts, and sees a beautiful pattern before you can. As long as we subscribe to a shared humanity, each of us can mother. This doesn’t diminish the profound labour, sacrifice, or love of biological mothers — especially those raising young ones. If anything, it reveals how extraordinary mothering truly is if we recognize and bow to it instantly. I am forever grateful to have been mothered by women, men, and non-binary people extraordinary enough to offer me unconditional care. By friends, mentors, intimate partners, colleagues, elders, and people who quietly extended such love with no guarantee of return. People who created a cocoon around possibility when the world demanded speed, performance, certainty, or resilience on command. Biological mothers deserve profound honour for the magnitude of what they carry and give. Hands down. No questions asked. Perhaps mothering is one of the few forces that consistently pushes against the brutalizing logic of the world — the insistence that worth must always be earned before one is loved. Maybe this is one of the great invisible infrastructures of human life: people choosing, over and over again, to hold open the conditions under which another person can be and become. The world survives not only because people build, compete, produce, or achieve — but because somewhere, someone keeps tending what is fragile so that it might thrive before it disappears. I am increasingly convinced that civilizations survive because somewhere, someone keeps choosing to mother the world. Happy Mothers’ Day, my darling community! Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing changemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Post-LIVE Reflection: When change requires us to face what we refuse to see

Andrew MacLeod described presenting evidence on child trafficking or systemic abuse in professional settings only to watch people’s eyes glaze over. Not in disagreement. Not in anger. But to escape the conversation. I recently spoke with Andrew — a former UN official, military officer, politician, and founder of Hear Their Cries — about changemaking on terrain that is not just difficult, but socially and psychologically unspeakable. You can listen on Substack, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. I recommend that you do. What follows is how I am holding the ideas. We are no longer in a world that lacks solutions. We are in a world that struggles to deploy them. This premise has sharpened across my work. This conversation revealed a harder limit. Some problems remain endemic not because we don’t see them — but because we do not want to. When awareness is not the bottleneck I have argued before that we overestimate the role of awareness in driving change (see my earlier post, What if I Told You That You Don’t Need To Change Minds To Create Powerful Change?) This conversation pushes that further. https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/what-if-i-told-you-that-you-dont?r=1i4aw7 [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/what-if-i-told-you-that-you-dont?r=1i4aw7] Sometimes awareness already exists. Evidence is available. Solutions are proven. And still nothing changes — because people cannot stay with the reality long enough to act on it. Unspeakable problems are not just complex. They are resisted. Especially when their existence implicates us — or threatens our identity, our institutions, or our sense of morality. Unspeakable problems are like flames: staying in them feels so unsafe that our very instincts force us to flinch and recoil. Andrew’s glazed-over audiences are not a failure of communication. They reveal a limit of what people and systems can tolerate without turning away. What this means for changemaking If this is true, the work changes. It is no longer only about creating the conditions for transformation. It is also about creating the conditions for sustained engagement — and sometimes working within, or around, the limits of what people can face. One of the most confronting ideas in this conversation is that naming the problem directly can shut down progress. So, changemakers adapt: introducing evidence indirectly, building legitimacy through institutions, shifting what is sayable over time. Not because they are avoiding truth — but because truth in its raw form is sometimes not adoptable. This leads to something I cannot resolve: if naming the full reality of a problem causes people to shut down, are we obligated to find another way? At what point does protecting people from the full weight of a problem become a form of complicity? And at what point does insisting they face it fully become a barrier to the very change we need? Both paths carry a cost. Neither is clean. And I don’t think we should be comfortable with either. A second shift: from systems to people Andrew described a change in his own work — from exposing institutions and orchestrating systems change to enabling individuals closest to the problem. Not because systems no longer matter but because change often moves through people before it moves through systems. And because, at certain moments, enabling a single person to act may be the highest leverage available. For how powerful first followers can be, see my earlier post, Want a Sure Way To Change The World? Follow Another’s Lead. https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/want-a-sure-way-to-change-the-world [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/want-a-sure-way-to-change-the-world]) What this adds to the map Some of the hardest problems are not resisted by power alone. They are resisted by our limits — of attention, tolerance, and willingness to remain present. That means changemakers are not only working against systems. They are working within human psychology, social norms, and moral thresholds — including their own. I am sharing this not because it is comfortable or resolved, but because if we are serious about how change happens, we cannot only study the problems that are easy to talk about. When you listen to the conversation, notice where your attention starts to drift — or where you feel the impulse to tune out. If you feel that, what does that tell us about what we can realistically expect of others? What happens when the biggest barrier to change is not the system — but what we are willing to see? If this resonates — or feels incomplete in important ways — I would genuinely value your perspective. This is not settled ground. Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing changemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Changemaking on unspeakable territory: Interview with Andrew MacLeod

I recently went LIVE with Andrew MacLeod — a former UN official, military officer, politician, and the founder of Hear Their Cries — to explore changemaking in its most confronting terrain: problems that are not just difficult, but socially and psychologically “unspeakable.” This conversation carries a content warning: It addresses abuse, power, rape, and systemic failure in humanitarian contexts. As I metabolize this conversation, I will publish a reflection, please stay tuned. ▶️ Watch or listen 🎥 Substack (video + audio):https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/about [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/about] 🎧 Spotify / Apple Podcasts:Search Changemakers’ Handbook The premise Across my recent work, I’ve been tracing a distinction: We do not lack solutions.We struggle to scale what works. This conversation complicates that further. Because some problems do not fail to spread due to lack of evidence or coordination. They fail because people do not want to see them. Why this matters for changemakers This conversation adds something I have not explicitly named before: Some of the hardest problems are not resisted by power alone —they are resisted by our own limits of attention, comfort, and moral tolerance. That changes the work. It means: * awareness is not enough * evidence is not enough * even alignment is not enough If you are working on change… This conversation is worth your time if you are grappling with: * why some issues never gain traction * how to work on topics others avoid * the limits of “raising awareness” * how to stay in difficult work over time * what it means to create change without recognition References & further exploration * Hear Their Cries: https://www.hearthercries.org * BBC World of Secrets (Season 12) Searching for Soldier Dad: https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0nds5d9 * ABC Four Corners: Sex Tourism – My Father’s Secret: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-04/sex-tourism-my-father-s-secret/104056506 * UK Parliamentary Reports on aid sector abuse: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/3401/sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-in-the-aid-sector-inquiry/ The question I’m left with What happens when the barrier to change is not the system —but what we are willing to see? Thank you to everyone who joined LIVE —and to Andrew for staying in work that most would turn away from. Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing changemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]