Life & Leadership with Kim Williams

Hosted by Kim Williams

Business

Website RSS feed

Episodes

111

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

About the show

Kim Williams is a multi-faceted woman. She is an introvert who loves to write and podcast. A happy wife of 28 years to her husband and best friend, Rawleigh, and the proud mom of her three accomplished children, Rawleigh III, Brian, and Alyssa. Professionally, Kim is a nonprofit CEO and executive coach with over 30 years of leadership experience. She's raised nearly $50 million dollars to fight poverty and homelessness in Dallas as CEO of Interfaith Family Services while simultaneously running Kim Williams Consulting, an executive coaching and consulting firm that specializes in change management for nonprofits. She is a two time-finalist for CEO of the year and her organization is the local outcomes leader in its field. Kim is also a woman who has battled insecurity, self-doubt, and high levels of stress for many years. She understands what is like to be a woman whose public persona does not always match her personal struggles. She shares how she overcame insecurity and found the power and peace of authentic leadership in her book, Diary of An Insecure CEO. Kim created the Life and Leadership with Kim Williams to share her stories and strategies to help you to successfully serve others without sacrificing yourself. While anyone can listen, learn, and be inspired by this podcast, it is specifically designed for leaders who work in the nonprofit and ministry sectors. We spend our days valiantly serving others while secretly struggling not to sacrifice ourselves, our happiness, physical health, and mental health in the process. Kim believes our situation is unique and our voices deserve to be heard in a safe space that is curated especially for us. That space is Life & Leadership with Kim Williams!

Listen to episodes

60 recent

November 3, 202626 min

Episode 110 | How to Conduct an Emergency Reset

Have you ever been moving along, confident in your organization’s direction, and then discovered an issue you didn’t know was there? I did. After an unexpected two week hiatus, I’m back with Episode 110 of Life & Leadership with Kim Williams : The Emergency Reset: What to Do When a Hidden Problem Comes to Light. I share why I give myself 24 hours before addressing an issue that has deeply frustrated or disappointed me. That pause gives me time to work through my own feelings of guilt and shame, consider how I want to show up, and make sure my correction of others is seasoned with grace. I also share my five step reset strategy for leaders who need to pause, listen, recenter on the mission, make a plan, and follow through.

October 13, 202617 min

Episode 109 | 5 Quiet Steps You Need to Make Before Announcing Your Next Big Move

Here is what I know for sure. You can’t keep operating like it’s business as usual and survive the season or make it to your next level. Something has to change. But here’s where most leaders get it wrong and where I got it wrong in the past. We skip straight from deciding to change to announcing the change. I’ve learned that the success of the transition is usually based on what you do in the preparation period between the decision and the announcement. Today, I’m going to share 5 Quiet Steps You Need to Make Before Announcing Your Next Big Move.

October 6, 202620 min

Episode 108 | The Tension of Transition & 3 Ways to Deal with It

Season 4 opens with the uncomfortable middle of every call to go higher, the space between the whispered word from God and the public step of obedience. Kim walks through what she calls the tension of the transition, the season when comfort turns to discomfort, significance turns to insignificance, and God starts rattling the nest. Drawing from her own history of major leaps, leaving Girl Scouts for the CEO role at Interfaith Family Services, launching a capital campaign, and now leading a capacity building initiative, she names the three reasons leaders resist the next level and makes the case for leaning into the change anyway.

September 8, 202615 min

Episode 107 | How to Rebound After Making the Wrong Call

What do you do when you realize you made the wrong decision as a leader? You own it, learn from it, make the adjustment, and keep leading. In Episode 107, Kim shares a recent decision she had to reconsider and why admitting you made a bad call can actually strengthen your credibility as a leader. After 30 years in her career and 15 years as a CEO, she has learned that it is much easier to humbly admit fault than to firmly stand by a failure. In this episode, Kim shares: Why pride can make it difficult for leaders to admit they were wrong How changing course can strengthen rather than diminish your credibility Why criticism should not keep you from making the right adjustment The importance of recognizing when God may be leading you to slow down or change direction Why good leaders own it, learn from it, and keep leading Episode 107 also marks the close of Season Two as Kim shares why she is taking the remainder of September off and what listeners can expect when Season Three of Life & Leadership with Kim Williams launches October 6.

August 25, 202613 min

Episode 106 | Fall Campaign & Workforce Instability Q & A

Over the last three episodes, we have covered a lot of ground. How to build one connected fall campaign instead of six competing ones, how to protect your team from becoming part of the burnout statistics climbing across our sector, and why that protection has to extend past your fundraising staff to your entire organization. If you have been listening along, you have probably ended up with a question or two of your own. Today, I'm answering the three I hear most often since we started this run of episodes.

August 18, 202615 min

Episode 105 | Warning About the 2027 Nonprofit Workforce Shake-up

As you head into your busiest fundraising season of the year, you are facing a second challenge most campaign calendars do not account for. Keeping your people, not just the ones raising the money, but every role that keeps your mission running. According to the Center for Effective Philanthropy's State of Nonprofits 2026 report, one in four nonprofit CEOs now say burnout is significantly affecting their staff, up from seventeen percent the year before, and thirty percent of nonprofits have already reduced staff since last year. At the same time, the 2026 Social Impact Staff Retention Report found that seventy two percent of nonprofit professionals are actively looking for new opportunities, and only thirty five percent say they definitely plan to stay in the nonprofit sector at all. If you are heading into Giving Day, your annual campaign, and year end fundraising without a plan to protect your whole team, today's episode is your narrow window to build one.

August 11, 202617 min

Episode 104 | 5 Ways to Ensure Your Staff Survives Fall Fundraising

Nearly seven in ten nonprofit employees say they plan to look for a new job this year, according to the Social Impact Staff Retention Project's most recent survey, and turnover across our sector already sits at nineteen percent, compared to twelve percent almost everywhere else. Here's what most leaders miss. That search does not usually start in the spring. It starts after the hardest quarter of the year has already worn your team down. If you are heading into fall wondering how to keep your best people through your busiest season, today I want to walk you through the strategies that have kept my team steady, quarter after quarter, for fifteen years.

August 4, 202617 min

Episode 103 | 4 Ways to Prepare for the Fall Fundraising Push

The Blackbaud Institute found that more than one-third of all charitable giving happens in the final three months of the year, and December alone accounts for nearly one-fifth of annual giving. That's an incredible opportunity, but it's also an incredibly demanding season for development professionals. Fundraise describes today's fundraising environment as one of sustained pressure, where small teams are being asked to do more with fewer resources. That's why preparing now isn't just about raising more money. It's about protecting your team while positioning your organization for a successful year-end campaign. Today, we discuss four ways to do that.

July 28, 202618 min

Episode 102 | Your Mid-Year Reset Questions, Answered

Episode 102 — Your Mid-Year Reset Questions, Answered Mid-Year Reset Series finale. Thirty-nine percent of nonprofits ended last fiscal year with a deficit, up from twenty-two percent just three years earlier, and nearly half of nonprofit leaders now worry about possible closure. Closing out the Mid-Year Reset series, Kim answers the three questions leaders ask her most: how to approach donors about a crisis without losing their confidence, how to know when to draw on resources versus cut expenses, and how to decide who stays when downsizing becomes necessary. She also shares the story behind why she opened her consulting firm in the first place.

July 21, 202618 min

Episode 101 | Leading Change Without Losing Your Team

Episode 101 — Leading Change Without Losing Your Team One in four nonprofit CEOs now say burnout is significantly impacting their staff, up from just seventeen percent the year before, and thirty percent of nonprofits have reduced staff in the past year alone. Kim shares the one time a deficit forced her into downsizing, and the fear that came with it: would the team that stayed feel like they were next? She breaks down three strategies that turned a painful season into one that brought her team closer together instead of splintering it, and improved both retention and outcomes.