Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of tubuloreexus if you ruptured me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, with what’s going on. Hey Tony, we’ve got much more from our coverage of the 2025 nonprofit technology conference. Congrats, you’re a manager. Now what? Our panel shares advice for new managers, which can also support established leaders. They bring strategies for employee centric growth, self and team advocacy, goal setting, coaching, building trust, and more. They are Brenna Holmes from Brenna Holmes Advisory Consulting, and Carrie Linehan at Incubate Growth Consulting. Then Facing feedback, Donna James wants to make feedback a growth opportunity for both giver and receiver. She has ways to make feedback constructive for both, so you can create a culture of continuous improvement. Donna is with community centric fundraising. On Tony’s take 2. It’s National Make a Will Month. Here is, congrats, you’re a manager. Now what? Hello and welcome back to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio coverage of the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference where we are together in Baltimore, Maryland. Our 25 NTC coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. With me now are Brenna Holmes and Kerry Lenehan. Brenna Holmes is a principal at Brenna Holmes Advisory Consulting, aptly named. And Cary Linehan is the principal and founder at Incubate Growth Consulting. So welcome, Brenna, Carrie, welcome. Welcome to nonprofit Radio. Thanks, Tony. Happy to be here. Happy to be here. Thank you. Uh, your session topic is congrats. You’re a manager. Now what? Uh, let’s start with you, Brenda. What, what, why did you feel, uh, well, overview of the topic you talk about in your session? Yeah, so it was a workshop, um, which really enabled a lot of peer learning. That was a lot of what we wanted to show, uh, the community is that you don’t have to go this alone. Many managers are, uh, promoted because they’re wonderful individual contributors and they don’t get any management training when they become a manager. Uh, so they have to balance and figure out kind of on their own and feel very isolated often, uh, how to balance their old duties with their new duties and support their team to really coach them to success. OK, OK, um, so why don’t we, uh, well, let’s start with some, uh, some wisdom, Carry. uh, why don’t you start off with, uh, what, what’s. What’s your, what is your uh advice start starting off advice for uh new leaders? Oh gosh, I would say, you know, we learned in our workshop that 70% of people receive no training at their organization on how to manage their teams and so as Brenna said, you’re not alone there are plenty of great resources. Out there and people who could help, I would recommend to go to your manager, go to your HR team and ask them for some best practices and some training and their advice on on how to get started. OK, or if you’re a smaller shop, you maybe like the outsource the HR function is outsourced, you know what, what, uh, you know, get that, that consulting team or that that agency or. I don’t know. I, I feel like we’re kind of at a loss. It was 70% don’t get, don’t get any training. Like on Friday you weren’t leading managing anyone, and now on Monday you are. Now you’re in charge of, let’s say a small team, like 34 people. All right, it’s not huge, but your responsibilities are enormously different on Monday than they were on Friday. Well, give us some more help in our transition. Yeah, so I think one of the first things is to set expectations with your supervisor around what the goals are for that team, whether it’s 1 people, 1 person or 5 people, uh, if you don’t have clear expectations for the roles and responsibilities not only for yourself but each of those team members, people are just gonna make assumptions and. Fill in the gaps on their own, which is usually gonna lead to some sort of upsetness or misunderstanding misunderstanding at the very least right exactly um and and generally you wanna also do a listening tour maybe you knew those people as peers before maybe you didn’t but schedule some time one on one to have some conversations with them around how they view their day to day. What their understanding is of their job duties, their expectations are what their frustrations are, what their points of happiness are, um, and, and figure out what those or align your goals um with the team for for the team in the department with what their strengths are to the much as much as you can, right? So be that way you’re gonna get get them engaged um and not just feel like they’re widget makers in the drudgery of the day to day. What about the potential awkwardness? Suppose they were your peers on Friday, and now you’re managing them. Uh, it’s awkward. I mean, they’ve told you things as a friend, a work friend that maybe they would, they might not have shared if you, if they, if they knew you were gonna be to be their boss on Monday. Um, how do you overcome that? New relationship awkwardness. Yeah, I don’t think there’s a silver bullet. I think it really is just I don’t know I’ll jump in a huge part of leadership is building trust with your team, and I think that trust you build with people exists whether you’re a peer or whether you’re in a position of management and leadership and I think keeping people’s confidence. Um, when that’s necessary is really helpful and as Brenda said, setting expectations of what your new role is, what their role is, but really creating those clear guidelines and maintaining that trust just as you would if they were your personal friend or they were your peer before. What about the, I don’t know, I’m, I’m positioning, imagining myself in a role I’ll never take because I, I would be a terrible employee. Nobody would ever hire me. I would, I would even, I’d show up late for the interview just to prove that I could, you know, I don’t believe you. Yeah, no, I’d be, no, I would be a bad employee, um. Thankfully, I have my own business, so I don’t, I don’t need others employment, uh. So I envisioned myself in the, OK, it’s Monday morning now. Like, what’s the welcome? Like, how do you, do I, do I, do I need to give a speech to the troops, you know, my, my new team of 3 or 4? Do I, or do I I we’re all in this together, uh, and I’m, I’m gonna do my best to, you know, be vulnerable. No, I don’t, you don’t say that obviously you demonstrate you don’t say it, but you know, do I need to give a speech to the troops Monday morning? I think one of the things that comes up and you’re getting to this is communications and setting expectations and it’s Monday morning you walk into the room in your new role and you haven’t really gotten organized yet and you’re not starting yet and so I think being really honest and see where you are in the process and as Brenda said you know maybe. Talking about saying we’re gonna start with goals and setting goals together where they have agency you just said it listening is so much more important at this moment than talking and a book that I love is um is about it’s focused it’s in our notes and it’s focused on asking the right questions and so it’s about. Not necessarily advising in the beginning but just start by asking your team’s questions related to what they need, what they see the goals need to be where they might feel stuck in accomplishing, you know, the goals that were in front of them before. OK, all right, so, alright, so my General MacArthur, uh, speech to the troops moment, not, not, not appropriate on day one, morning one, all right, more, you know, like we’re gonna be meeting together. I’m gonna meet with you. individually there’s there’s a lot I have to learn, right? A little humility. I know what’s best for the team and here’s what we’re gonna do. OK, that’s a failure. I think that, yeah, um, OK, alright, um, what’s more, you know, uh, your principles of employee centric growth strategies. What are, what are some more, what are some more tactics or strategies for this new manager? Yeah, I think we’ve been speaking to. A lot of that already, right? It is putting the employee at the center letting them have agency over their own future with the company um there’s there’s no guarantee no matter the tenure of or seniority of an of an employee that they’re gonna stay, right? So it really is about helping align their goals with the team goals with the organization’s goals so that people see a mutually beneficial future. Uh, together, OK, yeah, exploring like your own professional development goals, you know, maybe someday you’d like to be in my, my role as the manager, or maybe you wouldn’t. Some people, some people don’t want to lead others and manage. They don’t want that headache. OK, um. Alright, well, what else, what other principles you wanted to share, Carrie? You know, I think touching on one thing that we spent a lot of time on in the workshop was all of a sudden as as an individual contributor you’re project managing yourself and the date you know where you’re heading for a goal and you’re doing your day to day tasks all of a sudden you’re a manager. And now you’re managing a team who has goals and are all individually doing different tasks and we spent a lot of time about the importance of managing your team to outcomes versus trying to micromanage the individual tasks that all of your team members are doing so spending a lot of time making sure everyone’s clear on goals. Clear on a general path on how to get there timelines, milestones, expectations but then stepping back and giving your team the space to do the work was a topic we spent a lot of time on that was really important to the people in the room. So let’s flush some of that out. How do you align the individual tasks with the overall team goals? So a lot of times it’s really about making sure that there’s ownership on from your team members on different parts of the tasks, right? So, so some people might be let’s say you’re in a fundraising team and you have people who are focused on acquisition versus people who are focused on retention. You might have an individual, you might have a team goal of raising say a million dollars that year. And each team member might have a part of that goal which might be revenue and a set of relationships that they’re managing so it’s making sure that they’re clear on I would say the sub goals and. Giving them some general direction but letting them really drive the tasks to achieve those goals and just checking in making sure things are on track and that you feel comfortable but not getting into like let me see that email before you send it out right? yeah yeah and we because a lot of the people in the room self identified as being promoted from within. Versus being an external management hire, uh, we spent, I noticed a lot of the groups talking about how to regulate yourself as the manager to let go of the things that you used to have ownership over and be very, very good at, right, because often we get very protective of those things because I did it great, I did it my way and maybe you should do that too. It’s not always the. Right approach, right? So that’s where you fall into a bit of a micromanagement trap. If you can’t just let that go and you know learn strategic delegation of the different tasks that even if it doesn’t happen exactly around the same course that you would have taken before, it still achieves that that outcome that everybody’s agreed to. You’re also giving a team member or members agency. What you call it strategic delegation? Yeah, you’re recognizing that, you know, I’m not the only person on this team who can do this. Um, here’s your, your authority to to proceed. OK, OK. Uh, what else, uh, I mean we only spent like 12 minutes together. Come on. You did, you did a 90 minute session, right, or an hour session session. What what did you teach folks or share with folks. Yeah, it, I mean, the beautiful thing about it is it was a workshop so there was a lot of peer learning. Carrie and I got to float around 8 different super engaged groups, um, and then listen as they reported back out, um, but one of the other topics that came up both in the quiz or like poll that we asked them to share about what they were interested in and then in organically in the conversations was the difference between coaching and correcting um Zakia who wasn’t able to join us for the radio spot today but. Uh, she shared her personal experience at Animal Legal Defense Fund and uh she had that exact, you know, I’m the direct response fundraising manager and I’m really good at that managing vendor relationships but never individual people until she had to manage individual people um and she got a person who um had been with the organization for a while and already had some. Marks against them in their performance record so she had to learn very early on how to correct um while not getting you know becoming defensive herself or causing them to become defensive and then the value of coaching to uplift um and get them to solve their own problems versus having to dictate and correct in a very um. Explicit manner and Carrie had a really great note from the IFC around like what the definition of coaching itself is. Yeah, you know, I think the word coaching today is used so broadly that it almost has no meaning in a lot of spaces and so. The International coaching Federation, one of the examples they use if you go through any of their courses on what coaching is you know you’re consulting or you’re being corrective in a space where you have the answers and people are asking you the questions that’s consulting coaching is when. You are asking questions because you recognize that the power of the team, the collective knowledge of the team or the individuals in front of you have the answers within them or are very capable of finding those answers for themselves and that’s something that as a manager and a leader you really want to do to empower your team you know one of the traps when you become a manager is people. Will look to you for approval. People will look to you. They want you to tell them what to do to some degree, but the trap in that is you create this dependency where now people feel like, oh I can’t do anything without your permission or unless you tell me it’s the email that Brendan said, you know, I can’t send this email before it’s approved exactly that that’s what it would be. Yeah, so, so I love that distinction between coaching. I’ve never thought about that. Coaching and consulting consultants have the answers and coaching is more helping the person or the team find the answers themselves exactly and and and your your job as a leader is to empower your team. It’s the collective power of the team. It is so much more capable than if you are just telling people to go do tasks all day. Also takes an incredible lot of time and puts a lot of pressure on you individually. Yeah, it sounds unsustainable and detrimental to the awesome awesome. Um, what did you learn it was a workshop so as you were patrolling the tables, not patrolling as you were surveying the various groups, what did you all both come away with? Yeah, one of the biggest ones that I did was uh people are really focused on the generational shifts that are happening right now and. Um, I, I try to actually be less focused on that and more focused on who the individual people are in my own coaching practices with my clients, uh, and so thinking having to talk with each of the different groups around making sure that we’re not projecting our own preconceived notions of a generation or a type of people right stereotyping in in so many ways which often happens subconscious. is also a big part of being a good manager because you can’t expect everyone on the team to have the same work style, the same learning style, um, to perceive and project the same level of investment. That word came up a lot is that this new generation doesn’t seem as invested in the mission they pretty much 5 o’clock, you know, my work is done. Gen Z, we were talking about Gen Zoom I learned. I didn’t know that word zoomers to boomers what we maybe I should call that panel that zoomers to boomers that’s a good one. Um, OK, um, but even within those generations, um, or people like personally I don’t. Work I don’t like my life is not just my work, right? I have many facets um to my personality and other things that I enjoy. I’m very passionate about my work um but it’s not the end all be all. I’m very conscious of boundaries. I very much protect my social life my private life and my time for that and have always with client relationships and. Um, and staff relationships made sure that I walk the walk and not just tell them to do things that I don’t do personally, right? So making sure that you’re not responding to emails in the middle of the night or sending them out at odd hours on the weekends that even if your subject line or your email signature which is becoming more common now says, you know, when I send this is not, does not dictate when you should respond. there is a subconscious. Nudge that the recipient says well my boss is working now maybe I should be too um so I’m a much bigger proponent of you know doing the scheduled send using technology to help us be take the onus off the recipient. Because we don’t know how they’re gonna react, how they’re gonna perceive our intentions, um, and be more conscious about how we make those actions. I know that’s Microsoft uh you can do it in Google, you can do it in any email tool from your phone or your desktop, yeah, it’s very simple now, yeah. And you can pick your time, so time zones also come into play, but I think it is, it’s important for the leaders and the managers themselves of people whether again it’s 11 person or 6 or 14, um, to not put the onus on those recipients. To ensure that like to assume that they’re going to read my intentions correctly. I sent it now but still you’re the boss and, and to your point. She’s working maybe I should be too. Carrie, what did you take away come away? Well, first of all I think the room was full and and there were so many people, everyone was there is really committed to being a great leader and a great manager. They care about their people, they care about the organization they work for and that’s a great starting point and I think so. People after our session came up and we’re saying, you know, where, where can I get training or I know you put some resources in the notes, but how do I do this in a way that I know I’m doing it effectively and so there was a real hunger for more information and for more training in this space on how to lead and manage effectively. OK, is that is that. You can share with listeners can, can you email that to me and I’ll yeah it’s the NTC collaborative note, so I sure they’d be willing to say that. I’ll do that. I know that’s good because I know I have your email. So if you don’t do it I know I can follow up. OK, I’m putting Brenna. I’m putting my notes right now. Brenna. OK. All right, so we’ll share that with listeners. Um, good, you know, uh, yeah, support like the managers need support. They also need to be supporting their team. You, you play a little bit of a therapy role, right? Like, um, being there as a confidant for, for both men, you know, people of similar peer group in the organization as well as your individual team members that goes to the trust that you talked about Carrie, I mean breach somebody’s confidence once and then it’ll be all over it’ll be all over the office you’re not a trustworthy person. Forget about it. You may as well change jobs. you have to have your team’s back at all times and sometimes that’s hard if there’s moments where you might not be on the same page as your team member, but you have that moment where you don’t have their back and it’s obvious and that trust goes away an opportunity where you know someone says something in confidence and and then you can say. Can I share this, you know, get their consent. Maybe maybe they came to you not wanting you to share, but if, if you can. Uh, uh, help them see, help them recognize that change is really only gonna happen if I can share it. Can I share it anonymously, maybe, you know, a team member came to me and shared this. Hopefully it’s not something that would be identifiable to that person, you know, but um if I to get their consent to share it. Anonymously or otherwise because that’s really the only way I can help make a change, but you know, at least, at least you’re offering they may say, no, no, you, I don’t want I no don’t share and then of course you don’t, but at least you’re offering that level of support like to elevate their their voice and their concern, yeah and I think I mean managers have the opportunity to. Translate that feedback um that is shared with them to level it up to their own supervisors even if they’re not sharing like the specific anecdote right and I think that is a level of responsibility that the managers have is to be that professional communicator in between the people they manage and the higher ups so depending on what level of mid-level management you are that could be the CEO suite and making sure that there are like really strong. Professional development paths for your team advocating acting as an advocate for your team um or there could be more layers between you and them right but that is a huge role of of an effective manager is making sure that you are that voice for their issues, their concerns, uh, which are yours because you know the the buck stops here with you. Um, and everything, no matter who on the team is res quote unquote responsible for each individual thing, it all rolls up to you. So, uh, that came up a lot in the conversation yesterday is around how maybe you weren’t in a communications-esque role before, you know, you’re a developer, you’re an engineer, you’re a designer, um, and having to become that communicator so that you can be the advocate for your team as well as being able to. Uh, tell the corporate policies in an appropriate way to, uh, in the other direction is, is critical. OK. All right, Carrie, why don’t you leave us with some parting thoughts about for, for new leaders encouragement, encouragement for new leaders. Uh, as we said before, you’re not alone. Find a peer group, find a few formal or informal mentors that you can bounce ideas off of, um, that you can check in with and you know, really check yourself I think. That is one thing that will help you. I will also say like taken straight from Brene Brown’s book about we don’t rise to the level of our goals we fall to the levels of our systems set up systems for yourself that make it easy to manage things like. Standing agendas for your weekly meetings, 90 day check-ins with your team members where you get to go deep with them on how they’re performing and where they need help and what’s going really well, um, those setting up those systems will make your life a lot easier and also create consistent expectations for your team members so I think those are two things that you can do as a new manager to just get off on a confident and good foot. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. They are Brenna Holmes, principal at Brenna Holmes Advisory Consulting, and Kerry Linehan, principal and founder at Incubate Growth Consulting. Cool. Kerry, I’m sorry, Brenna, Kerry, thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, pleasure and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC where our coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. It’s the August month of August, and that can only mean one thing. Everyone knows it’s National Make a Will Month. You know that wills are fundamental, foundational to the work that I do, planned giving fundraising. So how could we not be celebrating this August month. When the national fever is, is, it’s, it’s obvious in the streets. The, the revelry, the celebrations, I’m, I’m concerned that, that the, that the nation is going to peak too soon with all the revelry, with all the commotion that’s going on because we’ve got this is a 31 day month. We’re only a couple of weeks in. This is only that this, this is coming out only the 2nd week, so please, please. Pace yourself. Take your time as you’re celebrating National Make a Will Month. Actually, it might even be a good idea to have a buddy so that if you get carried away, your buddy, your designated, uh, driver, so to speak, right? They can, they can bring you back down to earth, calm you, remind you that there are weeks left of National Make a Will Month. So, I don’t want you to peak too soon. Take your time. I’ll share, uh, what I’ve been doing on LinkedIn is sharing my uh 18. The 18 reasons why wills are the way to launch your planned giving fundraising at your nonprofit. So, I certainly can’t do all 18, uh, in one show. That’s just too much and plus we have to space them out so that people do, so that you do pace yourself, pace only a couple at a time. So, like, I only give number one. The number one reason why wills are the way to launch plan giving fundraising at your nonprofit. Because they are the most popular planned gift by far. You’ll see at least 75%, maybe as much as 90% of all the gifts in your complete planned giving program are gonna be simple gifts in wills. They’re the low hanging fruit. So that’s the number one reason. Um, I’m not gonna be able to do all 18 reasons, you know, throughout the month of this show. Uh, because it’s just, you know, it gets a little laborious, but you can read them, if you follow me on LinkedIn, I’ll be doing them throughout the month, uh, there on my LinkedIn page. And um National Make a Will Month, the August month of August. Please, pace yourself. Don’t get carried away. That is Tony’s take too. Kate I was getting excited towards the beginning cause you were saying, oh, you know what this month is? And I’m like, it’s the month I get to go to my uncle’s beach house. I’m still excited for Make a Will Month, but I’m kind of excited to go to my uncle’s beach house. OK. Well, it’s, it’s those are difficult priorities to balance. Uh, we all have our cross to bear. They’re, they’re both revelatory, celebratory. You know, the, the, uh, commotion in the streets. I, I mean, I see it on my street, you know, it’s apparent, it’s a parent. So I can understand your, your conundrum about which, which is, uh, deserves more. Uh, more celebration, more. Are you celebrating? Are you like getting ready, the house ready, and yeah, I’ll be celebrating when you leave. That, that’ll be actually my celebration, so. No, I’m looking forward to you all coming down, of course, of course. I look forward to it every year. Uh, no, I actually clean the house after you leave because you bring two dogs. Now you got 2 dogs coming instead of just one. That’s so exciting twice the fur and, and, uh, make sure it’s twice the number of legs that have to be kept off my sofas. Oh yeah, we are trying to teach him, you know, down. Yes, good, off, off, down, don’t even get started, not even off. It shouldn’t even be off because off suggests that he’s already on. We don’t want, we don’t want, it’s Curtis. We don’t want Curtis on. So not just off, off is not good enough, should be no. No, yeah, that’s a big one. OK. Well, we’ve got book who but loads more time. Here is facing feedback. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, my guest loves Podfather. I do. I love it. Welcome to our 2025 nonprofit technology conference coverage. We are sponsored here by Heller Consulting Technology Services for nonprofits. The guest that loves the the podfather thing is Donna James, Systems design and engagement strategist at Community Centric fundraising. Welcome, Donna. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really pleasure. My pleasure. Absolutely. Your session topic is facing feedback. Adventures in emotional capacity. Yes, give me an overview of uh what you covered in your session. Yeah, it was wonderful, you know, I, I try to give folks some tools, some real like meat and potatoes of the meal, um, but feedback is such a, such a heavy thing sometimes I open it up with, uh, someone told me once that the four most hateful words in the English language are we need to talk. And the work spin of that is I have feedback for you so I ask people just how they feel first when they hear that um and then we walk through like there are true tried and tested frameworks there’s language that’s being shared across the sector now to really. Um, I guess like standardize is maybe a word, but I would say like ground us so that we are having the same conversation when we use these words, um, so I give folks a real overview of a solid feedback loop and those steps, um, and then I try to talk about the weight of it because to your point it, it is. Heavy to receive um but it’s also really vulnerable to give feedback and that human experience is is where the real work is and that I think I I got hip to real early in my career was like how we work together sometimes feels a lot more um the topic that we need to be having versus like what we’re doing. is that because you were a troublesome employee and I’m a lot. I have feedback for you. Did you get that a lot? I think it was because I noticed people didn’t like it. Like I’m, uh, I grew up, uh, singing. I went to Berkeley College of Music. I worked there as well, yeah, yes, in Boston, um, so I’m like oriented to this true what I think is like the artist instinct of this call and response, um, and so for me I was always that. That person who was like, can we get quarterly emails? Can we talk about it this week? Like how do you think I’m doing this week? And I, you know, to her credit, I had this wonderful boss was one of my first bosses who felt the same way and we were sort of the weirdos and um I don’t know I’ve I’ve always sort of been interested in how the audience is receiving. I’ve always been grounded in that and that’s probably because I’m used to holding the microphone and looking at their souls and hope that we’re connecting and. Um, so for me it it feels so natural, but to find that it’s something that feels so, you know, it could be anxiety ridden for so many people. It can feel like such a stopping point and. Um, I think I got very passionate about helping that because I’ve always worked with teams that like I look around and they’re so talented and I know the answers are in this room and to cease collaboration sort of stagnated or or you know my that boss called them bubble ups bubble ups are happening, but there weren’t always work flows to deal with that, right? There wasn’t always a framework or a leader in the room who was like, OK, let’s dig into this um conflict feels like a dirty word and for me, no dissonance is the story, right? That’s how. We get to resolve, we have to have that dissonance we have to have it and in it is the good juicy story that’s gonna make us inspired, make us keep going and it’s an opportunity. I can tell because part of the emotional capacity um background resonating with the audience looking to their soul. How am I being received? How is this performance being received? So how is this feedback being received? All right, um. Uh, how about we, uh, we start with the, uh, the giver of the, of the feedback. Um, this is a weight, right? I mean, for that person as well we should we need to recognize it’s not, uh, very few people I, I believe people are generally good, so I think very few people take pleasure in giving the feedback that’s critical. Um, how can we as the giver. Help I guess help ourselves and be eventually and then we’ll get to helping the recipient because, well, yeah, yeah, how can we be helping ourselves and be helping the recipient because then we’ll talk about what the recipient needs to do to help themselves. All right, so what. We do. Absolutely I think um first is like accepting that it’s gonna feel vulnerable I think sometimes especially for those of us who’ve been in management positions for a long time they’re sort of like I should be able to do this but like. For me the practice of feedback should feel vulnerable because when you are vulnerable you’re connecting, right? If you’re vulnerable you’re open to receive those signals from the other person to think about how it’s landing with them if you’re not feeling vulnerable you’re probably not doing feedback you’re probably like commenting you’re probably not connecting and if there isn’t that two way then for me that’s not the best kind of feedback, right? That’s more evaluative critique and I don’t necessarily consider it the same thing. OK, um, so. It we acknowledge that. You’re a human being, being spoiler alert. If you, if you feel vulnerable about this, if you’re feeling empathy to the person you’re about to have a conversation with, you’re in a good spot you’re in a good spot and like. There’s feedback and feedback you can ask someone how they receive feedback. I have a a lovely little um graphic that I share that actually an audience member contributed from a previous session and now I’ve incorporated it but it’s the um feedback cookies, right? Um we talk about the feedback sandwich a lot. The sandwich’s cover has been blown like we all see it coming, it’s over. The feedback sandwich is good uh they say to say something good, something affirming, and then you give the critique in the middle and then you end it with another affirming right and like that is done, but. It’s such a frame that I think people lock into so easy that like you can smell it coming you’re just like OK what are you trying to like hide in the sandwich you know what is that? Just say the thing um this this piece and I her name is Liz and I can’t remember the last name for the life of me, but. Um, there are like 9 or 10 cookies and it’s like a black and white cookie, like give me the good and the bad or like give me dough like just say it unfiltered, give me the things is it a macaron where you want like elegant wording and like some some good meaty like critical information in the middle um and just giving folks a chance to define and like advise you. On how to work with them is something that not everybody has had the experience to do but it works really well because then that person who’s receiving the feedback knows when to expect it. I feel like we have such a deep relationship with anxiety nowadays that like just allowing people to understand when like the work flow is going to happen and having it be familiar does so much to allow them to receive the feedback as well. Um, the, the, uh, the 10 cookies, can we work in some of the Christmas ones? Like, I like, I like the one that’s filled with the jam, you know, it’s got that cookie that lump or the one with the chocolate kiss in it or the the pinoli nuts, the pine nut pine pine nuts, nuts, cookies. I’m gonna need those in in I don’t know if they’re they’re not in there, but they’re one of people asked yesterday they were like sometimes. Cookie, I’m different, you know, every day I’d like to see the holiday cookie assort. I like it. Yeah, maybe when you’re in the Christmas spirit, this is how you like to this is how I like it. I have some news feedback. I did tell the bonus points for these types of cookies and the people. and then keep the cookie. That’s bonus if you wanna do that. Um, any more from the from the giver’s perspective? Well, what can we do to to uh go beyond just the empathy that we feel. So before we get to the recipient, what, what that person should be doing to take care of themselves, what can we do as the The donor, I don’t know, we’re not really we’re not really donating constructive, but we’re the giver, we’re the speaker. What can we do to help the person we’re about to have a conversation with? Yeah, yeah, I think, um, particularly like in this kind of dynamic where we’re obviously talking about somebody who either has like manager oversight over the person or the project or something like that um so in that way like really grounding it on like what is the goal, what are we working toward together here um so that that collaborative spirit and like. Knowing that this conversation is grounded in this and this only like this is an intentional conversation this is not your whole year’s evaluative right moment in context context is key, right? and and again like letting people know I do think making sure that if you are giving feedback and it’s only critical right, that’s gonna make it challenging to give feedback in the future for those of us that are managers making sure that you are giving an overwhelming amount of like affirming feedback or like. Like I appreciate when you do this or I really noticed that or I wanna celebrate you for this that can help people have a better experience and relationship to feedback in general, right? I think that’s the biggest sort of call to action that I have for all of us is like work on your relationship with feedback regardless of your preciality um regardless of how often you work with it um for me feedback can manifest in the individual relationships but it’s also about our programming, right? Everybody at this space is working on things. And hoping that the audiences and the constituents they serve are like appreciating that effort um but often we try to get things into such a perfect place that we don’t open ourselves up to allow them to have like collaborative insight and ownership in the experience um so in that way if we’re talking with groups letting people process the feedback together, share and dialogue about how they’re receiving it because the way I receive your feedback if it’s about a general thing, not me, right? Um, might be very different than the way the person next to us receives it and sees the insights in it, so really pulling it out and, and making it like a creative project like why not? It’s just relationship building we’re just calling it feedback and we’re all here for the same goal and we’re all here for the same for the same mission, yeah, I want you to like it. Right, right, um, let’s switch then to the recipient. OK, we’ve just heard the words. um, I have feedback for you. Your heart sinks. We internalize, we personalize mistakes. uh, well, internalizing, I mean, you’re gonna take, you’re gonna take responsibility, assuming the conversation is appropriately placed. Let’s assume that we got the right. Yes, let’s assume we have the the right person delivering they’ve done their work. Or what do we, how can we take care of ourselves? Yeah, one of the things I highlight for folks in this session is I believe they’re like barriers to day to day feedback practice um some of those are defensiveness, perfectionism quantity over quality, right? These are familiar things, um, but in particular our defensiveness spikes super hard, right? So what can you do and how are you working on your awareness with like what you bring to the table, right? I’m curious about what people have to offer me because there’s nothing. You can say that’s gonna take away what I know I have, you know, um, and most folks are working on something, right? I would hope that when you’re offering someone specific feedback about the way that they work it’s probably in line with the goal that they shared with you if you’re a manager, right? Maybe I say you know this year I’m really wanting to work on the relationships I have around the office so that I can be more collaborative, right? If I’m gonna get feedback about that later then that feels helpful you’re helping me with my goal and in that way we’re co-creating this like work experience. Together and it feels a little bit more intentional and a little bit more about us and our careers and our relationships and our communities and less about like the numbers and the metrics and things like that um it makes it real we are so mission aligned in the sector right? it’s personal whether or not we want it to be at some point um it it’s deeply meaningful work for us so it’s hard to separate that out so to own that there is a personal attachment and that it is really meaningful and allowing it can let us come at it from a more authentic place I think. We’re, you and I are assuming that the uh the uh giver of this information is, is, uh, doing it humanely. suppose it’s not, it’s suppose it’s more antagonistic. I don’t know, maybe, maybe even threatening or if, but if not threatening, just, you know, it’s uh it’s, it’s uh. Inhumanly, you know, being being conveyed, yeah, but it’s being done harshly, harshly, maybe condescending feedback, OK, I’m getting it the person talking to me and now is condescending and harsh. What do I, what do I do? I guess it depends on the situation right? for for those of us who are doing this with like programs if it’s like the audience right maybe our community is like I don’t know why you’re doing things like this y’all are not being helpful. I know you’re supposed to be here to be helping us you’re not being helpful. I don’t like it. I hate you right? that’s we don’t want that we don’t wanna hear that but. I believe that every engagement is a bit of feedback, right? And even if it is feelings forward there’s something underneath it so when we’re dealing with someone that like we are responsible for um you know I’m highlighting that power dynamic of like are we the org and they’re the audience they’re the community, um, it’s our responsibility to be more curious, right? People are going to have feelings not everybody’s gonna be a feedback practitioner, right? Your manager may not be a feedback practitioner this may not be something that they have really leaned into it may be an area where they could grow, um, whether or not you have the kind of relief. where you can offer feedback to your manager is something that may or may not be um realistic um obviously we would hope for that as an ideal but I think the most important thing that folks can do is remember that feedback offered it’s your prerogative and it’s your artistry to decide what feedback you’re gonna receive what is useful for you and and how you can apply it for your ultimate goals, right? Sometimes we’re getting feedback that. You know, if someone says to me like, hey, I really think that you should dress a little bit more subtle. I think that you’ll blend in a little bit better here. Well, that has never been my goal, Tony. My goal has never been to to fit in. It’s also never been realistic. um, she’s loud, she’s an artist, she loves to make a noise like it’s just not gonna jive with me, so I would say a royal blue and also watermelon fingernails which I thought. Look like Christmas trees. Uh, yeah, it could be maybe I was like you a little bit. Could be Christmas, but it’s watermelon. I knew I knew it wasn’t Christmas, but, uh, yeah, the watermelon. um, yeah, all right, so, but we also, you know, we want to, I think subsumed that what you’re saying is we want to be able to understand what’s being told to us. So, you know, if it’s not coming through because it’s, there’s, there’s this harshness and rhetoric and condescension, you know, I. I just don’t understand what you’re, I, I don’t understand what you’re, what we’re trying to get to what you’re trying to convey. I, I don’t have a full understanding of what it is I need to do differently to support the team. Yeah, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to pull out of this to to shift yeah I think a ton of us have been in that position too. I would say like that it’s it’s always gonna be curiosity, right? I’m curious about what you’re trying to get at. I’m really curious. I really wanna figure it out. And in that way we might have to get good at asking questions and managing up um and I think that’s realistic for a lot of us you know I think there was a wonderful session here not to keep shouting out all the wonderful sessions that have been happening but there was one yesterday around um things I wish I knew before I became a people manager and like. It’s a lot to be in a management position to know that these folks are impacted by the way that you navigate um even if you don’t mean it they’re reacting to the way that you model right it’s such a deep responsibility to be a a people manager and I don’t know that everyone approaches um climbing a corporate ladder or a nonprofit ladder or your consulting growth or whatever it is aware of that um. But our collaboration is such a big part of no matter how we work collaboration is there so if you don’t have a comfort with this feedback how can we build a shared culture together, call and response with them I guess um it’s gonna get in your way no matter what, no matter how you work you can’t move around the workforce in any way and get away from working with people that’s just we’re all we have Tony we’re all we have. I appreciate what you said nothing you can say is. Take away anything that I know I have, yeah, and that’s work, right? I don’t say that lightly, right? she’s still on her journey we’re all gonna do it but hopefully you have that community around you who can mirror back to you, how they see you, um, you know, we have to be developing feedback loops everywhere in our personal lives. We should have that, that sense of belonging in our life to come back to because to your point, someone’s gonna come at you sideways and. Like you get to be mad right? whether or not you blow up in the office I’m gonna say no I’m gonna say I’m gonna say no that’s not a not a tip that I’m gonna offer but like you get to have feelings you’re a person, right? You get to process it, you get to feel some way about it and then you get to come back to the table and figure out like how am I gonna get to like what’s really helpful in what was offered, how am I gonna apply it to benefit me and my growth and this these projects that I care so much about. Um, you have some, you got a story you can share? Yeah, then your, your session description said you had. I tell a little bit of um I give folks reflection around um when I pointed out the barriers to day to day feedback I always ask the audience because you know we trend this way and that way we’re in a different year. I asked them. Um, to reflect on like these barrier things, and I asked them like where do you recognize perfectionism, defensiveness, quality over quantity, either or thinking, um, because often these are the things that stop us from receiving feedback we dismiss it and we have to be really really careful who’s feedback we’re dismissing and why. Um, and so I asked them like, do you recognize these from anything else, and I wanna give super props to N10, um, because this space half the room shouted in unison, these are the tenets of white supremacy culture like they were so aware, um, and that work and that like the pattern of these popping up and realizing that they’re such human experiences is such deep work. So I always ask folks, are there any of these that you don’t um recognize and then we dive into stories of how we’ve seen these things pop up in our work and how kind of funny it can be because um it feels so obvious when we’re all sitting together in reflection mode but when you’re working right often sense of urgency pops up in nonprofit so much right because these are really um inherent needs right like. We’re doing real work, yeah, yeah, especially now, yeah, so we’ll talk about you know ways we’ve seen good intentions show up in ways that are just sometimes frankly hilarious, you know, folks showing up with items or goods thinking that this is the answer and this is what you need and now your capacity is a little bit more drained because you’ve got a piano and 7 broken guitars and. Someone at the staff has to do something with them, you know, um, there’s such a way that these things pop up and if we can for for me what I try to do is like. You know, have your little joker moment laugh a little bit you get to, you have to, um, and if you can bring humor to the ways that we are so humanly fallible, like can we all enjoy this together this sitcom’s hilarious like we’re we’re just meat sacks of emotion clanging up against each other trying to make the world better and if we can bring some of that presence to it like people are joy people are generous people are. Fascinating and and maybe that’s just kind of why I’ve ended up doing the kind of work that I do, but you know an artist is curious the musicians wanna name what’s going on under the surface and um there’s so much under the surface when we’re all really dedicated to good work it’s personal like we said. It’s a beautiful place to live. All right. Donna James, if you want to connect with Donna on LinkedIn, uh, she spells her first name D A N A. Donna James, systems design and engagement strategist at Community Centric fundraising. Thank you for sharing, Donna. Thank you Tony. Great great topic. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference. Our coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting. Next week, inclusive and engaging virtual meetings and RFP request for partnership. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out there and be great.