Careers & opportunities at InnerSprings

Programme: Leading Without Burning Out — Managing Stress, Emotional Load and Other People’s Pain Without Losing Yourself

About InnerSprings

InnerSprings is a mental health and wellbeing company helping people in high-pressure environments build healthier and more sustainable ways of working and living. Our initial focus is on humanitarian and social-impact leaders and professionals.

We are currently developing our first pilot programme, Leading Without Burning Out, and are looking for a qualified mental health professional to provide technical input and facilitate sessions.

Our values: Stewardship · Trust

About the programme

Leading Without Burning Out is a four-week programme for humanitarian and social-impact leaders. It covers:

• Stress and burnout
• Emotional overload
• Compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress
• Boundaries and constant availability
• Responsibility, delegation and support
• Relationships and emotional wellbeing
• Rest, recovery and physical wellbeing
• Sustainable leadership

The goal is to help leaders understand what is draining their capacity and identify practical changes that allow them to lead without continually depleting themselves.

About the role

The Mental Health Technical Lead will provide professional mental health input into the programme and deliver the main technical sessions.

Programme development

• Review the four-week programme and provide mental health expertise.
• Help refine topics, learning objectives and practical exercises.
• Provide input into the participant assessment and wellbeing scorecard.
• Ensure content is appropriate and professionally sound.

Session delivery

• Prepare and deliver one 1-hour 30-minute session each week for four weeks.
• Participate in short preparation/dry-run sessions where needed.
• Respond to participant questions within your professional scope.

Physical wellbeing session

• Participate in the programme’s in-person physical wellbeing session, expected to last approximately 2–4 hours.
• Provide mental health input where appropriate. Specialist facilitators may lead activities such as movement or yoga.

Programme learning

• Provide brief feedback on participant responses and what could be improved.
• Contribute to reviewing the endline feedback and strengthening future cohorts.

The InnerSprings team will handle coordination, participant communication, scheduling, logistics and administration.

This is not a full-time role or a clinical therapy position.

Who we are looking for

We are looking for a qualified mental health professional in psychology, counselling psychology, clinical psychology, psychotherapy or a related field.

• Good knowledge of stress and burnout
• Experience facilitating groups, workshops or psychoeducation
• Ability to make psychological concepts practical and engaging
• Good understanding of professional boundaries and confidentiality
• Strong communication and collaboration skills

An advantage: experience with:

• Humanitarian settings
• Trauma
• Compassion fatigue
• Secondary traumatic stress

Time commitment

• 4 × 90-minute programme sessions — one online session each week for four weeks, usually in the afternoon.
• 1 × 2–4 hour in-person physical wellbeing session in Kampala.
• Reasonable preparation and programme review before and during the cohort.

The exact preparation and consultancy fee will be agreed with the selected candidate based on the scope and pilot budget.

Working with InnerSprings

This is our first pilot, so we are looking for someone who is comfortable working collaboratively with a small, early-stage team and helping us develop something practical that can grow over time.

Cohort 01 | Humanitarian & Social Impact Leaders

Leading Without Burning Out — Managing Stress, Emotional Load and Other People’s Pain without Losing Yourself

• Duration: 4 weeks
• Cohort size: 10–15 leaders
• Format: Weekly live sessions + one in-person physical wellbeing experience
• Target group: Leaders of humanitarian, refugee-led and social-impact organizations
• Pilot: Cohort 01

About InnerSprings

InnerSprings is a mental health and wellbeing company helping people in high-pressure environments build healthier and more sustainable ways of working and living. Our initial focus is on humanitarian and social-impact leaders and professionals.

About the program

InnerSprings is developing a practical resilience and wellbeing programme for leaders working in demanding humanitarian and social-impact environments. Running for 4 weeks, the programme includes weekly live sessions plus an in-person physical wellbeing experience.

The people leading these organizations often carry significant responsibility. They may be responsible for their teams, organizational survival, funding, programmes, communities and families, while also being the people others turn to when something goes wrong.

For some leaders, this means receiving difficult news repeatedly, supporting distressed staff, hearing stories of trauma from the communities they serve, responding to crises and carrying the emotional weight of other people’s experiences.

Over time, this can contribute to chronic stress, burnout, compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress. The challenge is therefore not simply that leaders have “too much work.”

It can also involve:

• constantly being available;
• difficulty setting boundaries;
• feeling responsible for everyone;
• difficulty trusting or delegating;
• team challenges;
• funding and organizational uncertainty;
• carrying other people’s emotional pain;
• family and relationship responsibilities;
• repeatedly solving other people’s problems;
• lack of support;
• inadequate rest and recovery; and
• feeling guilty when prioritizing themselves.

InnerSprings exists to help leaders understand what is draining their capacity, recognize the patterns contributing to stress and burnout, and begin building a healthier and more sustainable way of leading.

The central idea

“You cannot pour from an empty cup.”

For InnerSprings, we want leaders to examine the relationship between what they give and what gives back to them.

A leader may spend their days pouring into:

Their team → their organization → their community → their family → their relationships → other people’s problems

While rarely asking:

Who pours into me?

The program therefore explores:

• What am I constantly giving?
• What is constantly taking from me?
• What am I carrying?
• What actually belongs to me?
• Where do I receive support?
• Who can I call when I need help?
• What happens when I rest?
• Why might I feel guilty about taking care of myself?
• What happens when the person everyone depends on also needs support?

The goal is not to encourage leaders to care less.

It is to help them care and lead without continually depleting themselves.

Who we are targeting

The first cohort is specifically for leaders of humanitarian, refugee-led and social-impact organizations.

Potential participants include:

• Executive Directors;
• Founders and Co-founders;
• Team Leads;
• Programme Directors or Managers;
• Operations or Senior Managers; and
• Other people carrying substantial leadership responsibility.