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Nonprofit Radio for April 7, 2025: Nonprofit Leadership For Current & Aspiring

Nick Grono: Nonprofit Leadership For Current & Aspiring

There’s a new compassionate, inspiring and valuable guidebook on nonprofit leadership. It’s aptly named, “How To Lead Nonprofits.” The author, Nick Grono, shares his thinking on the role of the CEO, your team and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), because the success of the people leading throughout your nonprofit, now and in the future, is essential to your mission success. Nick is CEO of Freedom Fund.

 

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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, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be thrown into dysteiasis if I saw that you doubled down on 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 Nonprofit leadership for current and aspiring. There’s a new compassionate, inspiring, and valuable guidebook on nonprofit leadership. It’s aptly named How to Lead Nonprofits. The author, Nick Grono shares his thinking on the role of the CEO, your team, and diversity, equity and inclusion, because the success of the people leading throughout your nonprofit now and in the future is essential to your mission success. Nick is CEO of Freedom Fund. On Tony’s take 2. Gratitudes. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is nonprofit leadership for current and aspiring. It’s my pleasure to welcome Nick Groo to nonprofit Radio. Nick has decades of experience leading and chairing nonprofits. He is CEO of Freedom Fund. A charity dedicated to ending modern slavery around the world. His book, which brings him to the show is How to Lead nonprofits Turning Purpose into Impact to Change the World. You’ll find Nick on LinkedIn. Nick Roo, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Tony, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on. The pleasure. Thank you for joining. Congratulations on your book published, uh, just last year, very recently last year, right? Yeah, published mid last year, so still kind of reasonably fresh off the presses. Good, congratulations again. Uh, leading nonprofits, why do you feel the, the how to lead nonprofits? Why do you feel the book is essential? Uh, you kind of, you say you’re filling a void between sort of business and nonprofit leadership. Please fill in that gap. Why, why this book now? Well, there are thousands of books on business leadership, right, you see new books every day, if you go to the airport, you see books on the shelf from prominent leaders, etc. Um, but, um, there’s not a lot on non-profit leadership. Um, so, you know, I kind of, when I was thinking about this, there were, there were 3 things that kind of were playing in my mind. The first is that leadership is different, and I’ve worked in the for-profit world. I’ve worked in the past for Goldman Sachs and as a corporate lawyer and I worked for government. And it really struck me that there are quite significant differences in many ways between kind of leadership in the, the business world and the government world, and, and, and that in a non-profit world, so that was one issue. um, another was there just wasn’t a lot of stuff out there, um, to my mind, uh, and had a look around. Um, and the third is that there is a real, um, desire for it, right? Whenever you get to a group of non-profit leaders together, we’re always talking about the challenges we face and the particular issues, and I’m sure on your podcast, you know, there’s kind of endless cycle of people saying, well, these are some of the real challenges and the hard things about leading non-profits. So kind of felt to me like there was, there was a, there was a gap to fill. You, uh, you said you, you’ve had a background in, uh, in law, in government, uh, in nonprofits. How did you find your way to, uh, to Freedom Fund? You fill in a little of the gaps of your, your, your history. It was a it was a it was a general path, you know, I started my, my professional career as a corporate lawyer in Australia, um, and then, um, at that time I’d done a bit of volunteering for a, a non-profit, a sail training non-profit, you know, one of these big old sailing ships that take, um, underprivileged youth out, so I had some non-profit experience, but I certainly wasn’t thinking of non-profits as a career. Um, but I, I was fortunate enough in my first couple of years as a lawyer to have something I think was a transformational experience, and that was my law firm offered to send one young lawyer to go work for the Legal aid commission for 6 months, so that was their pro bono efforts, right? We’ll, we’ll, we’ll offer you one of our young inexperienced lawyers. We’ll offload the pro bono on one, exactly, yeah, yeah. And so I applied for that and we had a big law firm. I thought lots and lots of people would be fighting for this position because you know, it’s a fascinating experience and I was the only one. Um, so I went off to work for Legal aid where you’re representing, you know, clients who can’t afford legal advice, um, so the, the some of the most, the least privileged in our society, um, often facing horrendous charges and, um, and it was just a real eye-opener to me about um how the system can really discriminate against people who are vulnerable and don’t have access to, Money, lawyers, etc. so that was quite interesting, after that, even though I continued as a corporate lawyer, I started volunteering commercial legal centers and, and my career went on for a little while, but um, I went to government. It was a kind of general progression, right, from corporate law into policy. I worked for the Attorney General, uh, the, the Federal Attorney General in Australia ended up being his chief of staff, so lots of interesting engagement on legal issues and legal policy, and I decided then that I wanted to kind of change my career, so I came to the US, I did a master’s degree in the US in public policy. And got my first job coming out of that, working for a, an amazing nonprofit based in Brussels called the International Crisis Group, which worked on conflicts around the world, like Afghanistan and Syria and Sudan and all those kinds of things. So that was the, the general path it took, took a little while, but I got there in the end. Interesting that, uh, at, at the big law firm, you were the only person to apply for the, for the 6 month pro bono position. That that’s kind of eye-opening about where you were versus what your real interests were. It, it probably tells you a few things about the incentives in these firms, right, you know, as in you’re on a track and, and the perception is that you need to kind of do certain things. Um, I, I had a slightly unusual upbringing, and maybe that made me more open to, um, to kind of jumping over to pro bono. My, my dad was a ship’s captain, so we spent 3 years while I was growing up on a 100 year old sailing ship sailing around the world. Um, so I kind of, Was more exposed to my parents taking risks, leaving their jobs, changing careers and all the rest of it, not that I’m saying this is the same thing, but I, I don’t know if that was, it’s always hard, I don’t know how it is with with the other guests that you get on, but you’re often in the non-profit space, you’re often, You want to tell a nice neat story, and there isn’t a nice neat story, there’s a whole lot of things going on here, isn’t there, but, but it was certainly one of the most influential decisions of my professional career, cos it just did open my eyes to different pathways and. And now I spend my whole time working on an issue of, you know, human trafficking one slavery, where, where it’s an issue where that’s illegal everywhere in the world, but the law doesn’t work. The rule of law is failing tens of millions of vulnerable people, so there’s still a connection with law, rule of law and all the rest of it. It’s just, uh, it’s just much more, um, it’s much more powerful. So your dad was a ship captain and, and your first nonprofit experience was volunteering on the three-masted 180 ft tall sailing ship uh for uh vulnerable under with training, training kids to work together, who came from underserved populations. So that, there, there’s a, there’s a little bit of a through line from your dad’s work to your first volunteer experience. Say a little more about the, was it pronounced the the Lewin was the name of the the the as in like Leeward is that Leeward versus win in um no, it’s actually Dutch for lion and, and it was named after Kate Leeuwin which was named by some of the early Dutch sailors who came out and they, I don’t know where it was, the 1700s and got blown off course, so yeah, so the Leeuw. Oh, OK. I didn’t have to do with Leeward and Winward. But now, interesting through line from your dad’s professional work to your first volunteer experience. Yeah, it, well, so he um so he was a, a ship’s captain, uh, you know, he worked for the merchant navy and all the rest of it, then did this job sailing the ship around, and then he became um the captain of this sail training ship. So I came over during my holidays and volunteered during my holidays because there was opportunities, so there was a very direct connection, um, and it was something that, you know, I found, um, really um powerful and moving and enjoyed it immensely, so. I was fortunate to have that opportunity. And your career has uh culminated in uh uh leadership of nonprofits. Yeah Uh, so the, the book focuses on, um, on, on three areas of, of leadership and organizational development, I guess, uh, organizational structure. And the purpose of your three P’s, the purpose of the people and the partners, um, why don’t you give an overview. I’d, I’d like to focus on the people, but give the overview of, of all three, the, the, how essential they are. Sure. I mean, so the, the, the, the central point of my book is that non-profits have this really powerful motivating cause, their purpose, right, to change the world in big ways or small, and by changing the world it could be changing your community, changing your, your, your country or working globally, but you’re there to make positive change, um, and your 662 and so is your impact, right? Um, and you need both, you need a powerful cause, and then you need to deliver on it, cos I think there are lots of non-profits that kind of have, The best of intentions, but may not be as good as delivering delivering on those intentions. So, so the central thesis is, purpose, turn it into effective impact, and then the framework I set up, which is um a pretty straightforward one is, is around purpose, people and partners, purpose is your um direction of travel. Uh, and I talked there about the mission of your organization and the impact and how you measure it, and the strategy being the connection between your um your mission and your impact. People is looking inwards, that’s looking at first and foremost, the CEOs, what are the priorities for the CEO? It’s looking at your team, um, and culture and all the things that go with team, it’s looking at your board. And then the third PE partners is looking outwards, you know, it’s, it’s your. If we use the lingo, it’s it’s your external stakeholders, but that, you know, that’s kind of jargon, isn’t it? So for me, it’s the communities you serve, first and foremost, right? Why do you exist? You, you’re serving a population, a community, um, they should be at the center of your work. Uh, it’s about your funders, about your funders, then it’s very hard to do the work. And also, I think a really important areas around peers and networks and those that are in the space with you and how you mobilize them. So, so those are the three Ps. That’s the quick, quick, quick gallop through the. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you. Um. So you’re the uh the section on, on people uh in the middle of the book starts with the CEO and the only thing I’d like to read is just uh uh uh this, this quote really struck me about leadership, uh, opens the, the, the, uh, the CEO chapter. Uh, from Mary Parker Follett, uh, uh, a 1924 book, Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power. But by the capacity to increase the sense of power among those led. The most essential work of the leader is to create more leaders. It’s inspirational. I, I, I, I, it’s aspirational and inspirational at the same time, um. Give us your, your, you know, I have some specific things I want to ask you about, but give us your overview of, of your, your role. You are the, you are the CEO of Freedom Fund. Um, give us your, um, give us your overview of what, what you’re supposed to be about. Sure, um, and I’ve, I’ve had the, I think it’s the benefit of being the CEO from day one of the organization. So we set up the organization 11 years ago, I was the first employee. Um, and there are advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is I, I, I had a fair say in what was gonna happen. Um, um, and then we build out the team and now we have, um, about 80 staff, um, so, um, some 10 years later, um. It’s How do I describe the role? I mean, there, there are many things going on, you know, I think there are many priorities and the priorities that I say for the CEO are the priorities I think for myself, you know, it’s about holding the vision for the organization, and the CEO, I think, I think what I would say to a lot of people is the CEO is often the only person in the organization that is looking over the horizon. And everyone else is kind of focused on specific tasks, you know, you’re running programs or you’re running your finance or dealing with HR, uh, working with volunteers, whereas CEO is always looking what comes next. Uh, I think of that particularly right now with everything that’s going on with kind of international finance and aid and all the rest of it, it’s a really turbulent time, so looking over there, um, it’s about motivating staff, it’s about kind of leading on strategy. Um, it’s, it’s making sure you focus on the stuff that really matters, not the stuff that you want to do or the stuff that you’re comfortable with, but the stuff that no one else can do, because I often feel like, if you run your team well, then the only decisions that come up to you are the really hard decisions because everyone else deals with the decisions that are easier to, to make, right? Um, so. That’s the way it should run, uh, and, and then finally the, the point is, if you’re fortunate enough to have a team, a leadership team, and so on, then, then it’s just really key as a leader to, to support that team and make sure it’s powerful and engaged and, and that you’re a a a a a really effective member of that team. And there’s lots to unpack on all of that, but, Um, they, yeah, that’s a quick run through of that. Yeah, we’re gonna get to a good bit of it. You, you, you, you devote a chapter to the team, which we, which we’ll talk about, uh, but, uh, just focused on the CEO and holding the vision. You, you said it, it was something I wanted to ask you about, expand on that a little more about hold the vision. So, I, I, I keep on talking about purpose being the central point of the organization. I mean, non-profits have lots of challenges, right? And we can talk a little about that with fundraising and the fact that you don’t earn income, people give you money and all the rest of it, and it’s really complicated. They have this superpower. Of purpose. It’s really powerful, right? I am deeply moved and inspired by the work we do to support some of the most vulnerable people that are being exploited, uh, you know, for, or at risk of sex trafficking or forced labor, or bonded labor or forced marriage. And, and so the vision that we have is about how do we have the biggest impact on those communities that we’re serving. And, and I think if you harness that, it’s really powerful for the team and the work, and particularly when things are challenging or difficult, I kind of keep on reminding people of the power of what we do and the importance and the privilege of what we do, um. They’re difficult times, or or when COVID hit, right, and when COVID hit and the organization’s reeling and there’s a lot of uncertainty, it was really powerful to say to the team, but look at the communities we serve, they are hit so much harder than we are, and we have such an important role to play in supporting them during this completely uncertain time and it was a really good. Way of mobilizing the team and get everyone focused at a difficult time, and I think it can be really powerful. So, so that to me is the vision. What are we always about? Bring it back to that. Always, if you have problems at work or if there are staffing issues or internal discord, you start with, what are we here for? And then we’ll work on everything else. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s DonorBox, a comprehensive suite of tools, services, and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs, helping you, help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to Nonprofit leadership for current and aspiring. Are you, uh, facing a lot of that, uh, a lot of challenge now with the, the, uh, USAID funding cuts and uncertainties and I imagine a lot of the organizations you fund are also funded by USAID. So this is all you’re living through this again, it’s COVID 5 years ago to the month actually, um, now 5 years later, you know, this, this funding uncertainty and, and turmoil. Yeah, there’s a huge amount of uncertainty, and it’s not just US government funding, you know, the Brits have announced that they’re cutting their foreign aid funding, the um the Dutch have cut their foreign aid funding, the Swiss have announced cuts to there, so there’s a, there’s a, um, we, we get um some funding from, it wasn’t USAID, it’s from the State Department, which was frozen for about 3 weeks but has been unfrozen. Um, and that we use to fund some 30 organizations on the ground, so we’re, we’re very fortunate compared to many, um, and historically trafficking has been largely a bipartisan, anti-trafficking work’s been largely bipartisan, so, so we hope that that will continue to be the case. Um, um, but it creates massive uncertainty, particularly on the ground where we don’t work in isolation, we work with local partners, so we fund some 150 local partners, but if, if, Um, aid is cut from any government that supports frontline organizations. Everyone becomes a bit more vulnerable, right? So, and for work on trafficking and slavery, vulnerability is the proxy for slavery. It’s vulnerable populations that are preyed upon, so if communities become more vulnerable because aid has been cut from various quarters, um, then the risk of trafficking and slavery grows, so even if we’re not directly impacted on the aid cuts, The demand for what we do is only going to grow because there is going to be increasing vulnerability um as, Rich countries withdraw somewhat from the aid space, at least temporarily. Are you finding yourself having to reassure your own staff of 80 some, again, you know, holding the vision for them? Yeah, absolutely, and, and, and reminding them, you know, one where we’re, we’re in a solid financial position, um, and so we’ve been able to continue supporting partners and the work will continue. Um, but, um, talking to staff about these scenarios, and it’s not so much just reassuring them, it’s, it’s giving them renewed purpose, right, because everyone struggles when they see what’s happening on the ground and greater vulnerability and you know, this work is emotionally very, very draining, and when you see um, Groups of people that are even more vulnerable to trafficking, it can be really tough, so it’s getting everyone aligned around the purpose and saying right, here’s our chance to have even greater impact, uh, doing the stuff that we care about. It kind of leads to, uh, leading on strategy, which, uh, you, you, you have several interviews through the book which I, I appreciate they, they add, they add color and, and, and depth and, uh, you one of your interviews is with, uh, uh, a man named LeFevre who says that, uh, leading uh they sort of expressing strategy is more of an inspirational sketch than a blueprint. So please uh say more about the, the CEO’s role in, in, you know, take from holding the vision to execution, to leading on strategy. Yeah, sure, so strategy, I kind of see strategy as the, the pathway, the route, the, the map that you set out that gets you from your, your vision, your purpose to the impact that you want to achieve, right? You kind of say, well, we’re here to end modern slavery or make a big measurable difference to modern slavery in the regions we work, and we can kind of say what that means in terms of percentage reductions and all the rest of it. So how do we get there? Um, and I think, I think in our space, there’s often a lot of overthinking of strategy, and I, I’m still trying to articulate this more clearly. I think, I think one of the big things that non-profits struggle with is that we don’t have the feedback mechanisms and the price signals that you have if you’re a business. Uh, if you’re a business and you’ve got a plan. And it’s not working, you know, pretty quickly because your customers are leaving you or your income is falling, and you have very strong price signals and feedback mechanisms that non-profits don’t really have, right? Um, because you’re doing a program and you think it might achieve something and it may or may not be, but it’s often very messy, and so, so, um, so strategy is important because you’ve gotta be really thoughtful about the plan that you have. And you’ve got to find ways of, of reflecting on it and changing or adapting as, as, as things progress, and so that’s what Matthew means about, You know, kind of sketching out a way of challenging, and I, I have another quote in there about a guy who kind of talks about, you know, it’s more of strategy is more a kind of a GPS sat-nav, you know, than map, because you have to adjust as you move along. um, and I think nonprofits too often can kind of think, OK, there’s a magic in a strategy and we’ll spend a year and um investing in a strategy and we’ll come up with a really detailed plan. And we’ll stick to that plan because we’ve all signed off on it, even if the world changes, uh, and I, I talk in the book about, you know, imagine, imagine you’re working on, Mental health issues, um before COVID, and you’ve got a nice plan and your income’s been going up each year for the last 4 or 5 years and you’ve got a good strategy to engage companies to become sponsors and partners. And then COVID hits. And two things happen, right? One is, the demand for your services just skyrockets, right, if you’re involved in mental health during COVID and all. And the other is your funders are probably initially at least running 100 miles an hour because, you know, the companies are really worried about their own financial bottom line, so often we’re drawing back from, from funding commitments and so on. So demand goes up, your income goes down, your strategy is out the door, right, and not every component of it, but I mean any detailed year by year plan is out the door. Now hopefully, And, and I talk about one of the things that I think is really key in the strategy is your theory of change. And, and theory of change often sounds very jargonistic, and I don’t like jargon, but theory of change is your insight. It’s like, what is special about what we do that is going to translate into the change that we want to see. And, and I, I think it’s really important because often, The work that we do doesn’t directly deliver the results that we want to see. Um, and I think one example might be working for a think tank, right, now if you work for a think tank and you’re producing research reports, Your objective is not to publish reports, usually, right, that’s a, that’s a, that’s an output, that’s a tool to achieve. Usually your objective is to change policy or to change behavior in some way. And so your theory of change is not our think tank exists to publish 100 reports a year and to get 20 opinion pieces and papers. It’s our theory of change is that the most effective way to change policy is to produce thoughtfully well reduced, uh, well, well researched reports and go and advocate on those reports to policy makers and influence them to change what they do. And, and because that’s your theory of change, while you may not be able to guarantee all of the results, you can at least try and track whether or not it’s working. Are your reports influential? Are people referring to them? Are they being covered in the press? Do policymakers refer to them? Do they change policy? And so, so for me, strategy is kind of trying to get the fundamentals in place. What is your purpose, what is your, what is your, your insight that will get you to your objective and what is your objective? And then keep on, keep on looking at that and thinking about that as times and things change. You also spend time talking about the CEO’s role in in fundraising. Which can, ah, can be fraught with, with some, some founders especially who, uh, may have a lot of passion. And zeal about the work that they’re doing, but not really have a solid plan for how to fund it. So, share your thinking on the, the CEO’s role and, and need to embrace fundraising. Yeah, well, the thing about nonprofits is. For most nonprofits, You, your income comes from people giving you money, you know, you raise it from individuals or grants or governments. I mean sometimes you provide services and have a contract with government, but leaving that aside, you know, most of it is raising money from people who are giving to you, um, and, and that can be really tricky. Um, again, I kind of, you know, an example I use is, imagine if you’re a business, And you have a really good strategy and you execute really well and you’ve worked out your niche and you’re operating much more effectively than your competitors, you probably have people coming and wanting to invest, right, because it’s like, wow, this is a great business and it’s doing really well and we can make lots of money and all the rest of it where, I imagine you’re in a nonprofit and you’re doing really well on your strategy and, Um, you’re kind of more effective than your peers and your competitors. Well, you’ll often have donors, particularly foundations, say, mate, you’re doing just fine, you don’t need our support anymore, we can go fund others because look, you’ve done such a good job. And so it’s almost as if your success can be a, a contribute to reduced income. I know these are particular circumstances, but in my world, this is very real. Um, and so I think it’s part of one of the interviews where someone says that it’s easy to find funding in the first few years because there’s excitement and you have a, you have a, a new plan, a new model, but, but it becomes difficult after like year 5 and on. Yeah. And, and that’s often the case, you know what I mean, and it, and it kind of varies in various ways, but certainly, you know, when we started the Freedom Fund 10 years ago, initial enthusiasm and great interest, uh, and lots of people, and it’s new and it’s interesting, and, and it certainly helped us mobilize great funders, most of whom have stayed with us. So full credit to them. Um, so, but the way I look at it from the CEO is, you know, your organization can’t do anything without funding. And so it is an absolute priority for the CEO to make sure that you are getting the funding that you need, um, and increasing it over time if that’s what you want. Now, it doesn’t mean you have to do it yourself personally, but to be honest, usually the best spokesperson for an organization, a non-profit is the CEO. Um, and again, particularly if you’re raising grants from, from high net worth funders or from foundations, um, people want to hear from the CEO. Uh, and there are some CEOs who kind of think, well this is beneath me, right? I’m really interested in the, the programs and, and the, the, the real nitty gritty of the work. Well, sure, if you’ve built a team and you’re managing to raise the funding, great, but you won’t have programs if you don’t bring the funding in. So to my mind, the role of the CEO is to make sure all of the relevant bits are working and if fundraising is key. Then that’s where you spend your effort, and I would spend over 50% of my time doing fundraising and outreach because that’s where I can add the most value to my organization. I’ve got amazing program people. I’ve got people who know much more about modern slavery and human trafficking than I do, who’ve spent their lives working on these issues. I’ve got, you know, wonderful, Kind of finance teams and HR teams and all the rest of it, where I can add is selling the vision, building relationships, explaining to people why they should give us a chunk of funding, and for this issue, rather than to either a peer organization or a completely different issue. Um, so I think, um, it doesn’t always mean the CEO has to do it all, but the CEO is responsible. Uh, cos there’s nothing worse than being all virtuous about, well, I’m gonna focus on this work and find that you’ve got less and less money and you’re doing less and less work. So you devote, you think it’s more than half your time to, to fundraising? Fundraising, talking about the work, selling the message, it’s not all you know, it’s not all meetings, meetings with donors, right, it’s, it’s, it’s talking about the power of the issue, going to conferences where, where it’s appropriate, um, yeah, yeah. By the way, you, you, uh, mentioned your disdain for jargon, uh, here on nonprofit radio, we have jargon jail. You’re not likely to be, uh, you’re not likely to be subject to because if we’re, uh, we’re we’re, we’re simpatico on not liking it. It’s time for Tony’s steak too. Thank you, Kate. Gratitudes. I’ve been doing more of this gratitude practice. Well I’m actually saying out loud things that I am grateful for in my life. I do it usually in the mornings when I’m waking up, and not every morning, but A bunch of mornings and occasionally at night. Uh, and I just, I, I’m sharing that I do it because I’m encouraging you to do the same. It’s kind of especially with all the anxiety and chaos and turmoil and. The storm around us, not only in the nonprofit community, but just in our country. I think it helps to ground, at least it helps me ground myself, that there are things to be enormously grateful for. So I Say out loud, I’m grateful for my family. Except the the part where Kate lives in New Jersey, that that there’s an exception, but uh other other family, all, all, all other fam, no, no, of course, all my family, um, my wife Amy. The beautiful place that I’m privileged to live in uh on the beach, my clients, uh, friends, you know, and I name friends that are that are on my mind when you start doing this. The list grows long, and you realize that there’s so much in your life to be grateful for. I guess, again, I, I should say that’s what happens to me. I, I hope that that will happen for you also, that you start naming people and the names just keep coming and the uh the other, the other folks and and maybe even companies, you know, whatever it is that you’re grateful for, uh, just keep coming and coming and and that’s what I find so. It’s really valuable to me. I encourage you to try it. It’s quite simple, just saying out loud the things that you’re grateful for. And that is Tony’s take too. Kate I think that’s a great way to start your day and even end it. Do it both in the morning and the evening, cause then you’re starting on good thoughts and then you’re also ending on good thoughts. Excellent. I, I agree. All right. You could do both. Absolutely. The more, the more gratitude that you recognize, uh, the better. You could, sure, book into your day with gratitude. And, yeah. We’ve got Boou but loads more time. Here’s the rest of nonprofit leadership for Current and aspiring with Nick Groo. You spent some time on leadership styles, and I’d like you to share what your uh what your advice is around soft power. Yeah, so there are lots of different styles of leadership as anyone who has worked for anyone or anyone who has led will understand, um, and, and certainly I’ve been on a journey with my own leadership style, um, and I think often lots of new non-profit leaders are. Um, you know, I, I’m sometimes asked what’s the, what’s, what’s the one of the best pieces of leadership advice that you could give someone, and, you know, one of my pieces of advice will be the, the skills and the behaviors that get you into leadership positions aren’t often the skills and behaviors that make you a really good leader. Uh, and in my case, you know, I was very happy to make decisions, and when I was a #2, my boss kind of loved it because she would throw things to me and I’d sort them out and kind of barrel through. But if you bring that approach when you’re the CEO you’re not building a team, you’re not bringing people along with you, you’re not, you’re not giving people the space to kind of be their best selves, um, and so my learning over time has been, and it’s still an ongoing process, you know, the kind of approach that I think for them, in most cases, not always, that’s really effective as a leader is bringing a coaching approach to leadership. Uh, kind of giving people the space to work out how they can do the job most effectively, asking questions, listening, providing some guidance, but not just charging in and making decisions. Um, and with new non-profit leaders in particular, you know, particularly if you’re a bit insecure, it’s your first time in a CEO job, you’ve, you’ve maybe been recruited from, from the organization internally and so you’ve moved a step above your peers and, you know, you can, it can be really tough, and you’re kind of, and again, speaking from experience, you sometimes respond by like micromanaging everything and, you know, kind of making sure that you’re on top of everything and, Second guessing everyone’s decisions, that’s not good leadership. Uh, if you, if you start jumping in and making decisions for everyone, you know what happens very quickly, no one makes decisions, because it’s like, well, Nick’s gonna decide this, so why should I spend all this time working out the very best approach on this issue, be it how to approach a fun a funder or, How to design a program if Nick’s just gonna jump in and make up his own mind, and then everything ends up being elevated to Nick. Yeah, and then suddenly you say, well, I’m the only person that can do this, because look, it’s all coming up to me, you know, it’s a kind of self reinforcing cycle of, of, uh, narcissism. Um, you share a good story, uh, uh, one that was revealing to you, uh, also from, uh, from the pandemic about when you were at uh International Crisis Group. Why don’t you share that little story, yeah. So that was, it wasn’t um it wasn’t the pandemic, it was the financial crisis, so another great recession, sorry, yeah, yeah, so, so, but, but, but similar, similar and you know, what happened was that basically we knew that our income was going down by at least 10%. Um, and I worked with it, so I was number 2 there, and I worked with the CEO and we went to the board and said we need to cut by at least 10%. The board said, yep, off you go. And we, um, we were heading, so we had about 120 staff then maybe, uh, spread all around the world, you know, Crisis Group’s are an amazing organization. And once a year we’d bring the top 30 staff or so together at a senior staff retreat, and this just happened to be about a week after the board meeting. And so my boss said, OK, well, we need to now work out how to deliver on these cuts, and, and I, um, and he gave me a lot of responsibility for this, and I thought, well, there’s a couple of things we wanna do. One is we need to move fairly quickly with cuts because the quicker we make cuts, the quicker we’ll enjoy the savings, right? If you take a year to implement your cuts, well, there’s a year you’ve spent the money that you could otherwise save. And then the other thing I thought was, you know, instead of just squeezing everywhere and making, we should, Use this opportunity to cut a couple of areas deeply that are just perhaps less effective or not the same priority, and both of those acceptable propositions, you know, in and around, but, so I then just decided where this was gonna happen and I kind of briefed my boss and then I kind of went up to the division heads and said, hey, you know, we had to the cut, so here’s what we’re gonna do. And surprise, surprise, they, they, they weren’t very happy about the process, um, and you’ve got this convening now, everybody gets together and they start to conspire. So, so I managed to, I, I, I did achieve one thing which they managed to unite pretty well everyone against me, you, um, you know, so it was great morale building because there was a coherence, um, and, and they actually called a meeting that night that me and the CFO weren’t invited to and the um, And the next morning, we, we had our staff rebellion, and they said, well look, we, we don’t want you, the CEO to run this process because obviously it’s not being run very well, and my boss, who’s a former Foreign Minister of Australia, who wasn’t not noted for his patience, handled this remarkably well, and he was smart enough to understand, OK, well let’s just play this cool, and so he said fine, let’s do this, and, and the staff said right, we wanna do this properly and we wanna workshop, you know, we’ll sit down and program teams and, We’ll sit down with Nick and we’ll sit down with the CFO and see if, if there are better ways of making savings. And so it was somewhat humiliating, um, and but it was also really informative in a number of ways. And first of all, everyone accepted the need to make cuts, so it wasn’t like saying we don’t need to make cuts, you’re, you know. And then of course, the wisdom of the group between them could identify areas where we could make easy savings. That had very little impact. I mean, to take one example, we used to publish about 100 reports a year and we used to send them out to, you know, each report to targeted audience, maybe 2000, 3000 copies. We didn’t need to send that many out, but we’d just been doing it for years, and that cost $400,000 a year. And by cutting it down to maybe 20 copies per to absolutely essential and putting a bit of more work, we saved $350,000 right? I hadn’t thought of it. I haven’t thought of it. Um, um, and so we did some other things, I mean, the organization did get squeezed because people offered up salary and all the rest of it, but perhaps the most striking thing about it was, OK, we came out with a plan, and we ended up cutting by 15% because people had offered up instead of the kind of 10, 11% that we’d we’d targeted, which served us very well at that time. Um, and 2 years later, our income was significantly higher than when we’d gone then pre-cuts. So we cut deeply, um, we rallied around together, and then over the next 18 months or so, we managed to raise significant additional funding, so we ended up being in a better position than we had been at the time when we, when we were worried about the funding cuts. So, I learned, I mean, you learn from your mistakes, don’t you, more than you, you learn from your successes, ah. And I just learned that um you know, powers of teams need to proper process, need to consult, and, and, and don’t mistake these things, you know, consultation doesn’t mean surrendering necessarily uh decision making authority to the crowd, unless you handle it really badly. It just means giving people an opportunity to provide input and feel heard and and often, and usually they have really good things to say. That story of what not to do just uh sort of exemplifies why I, I admire the book. There’s a lot of introspection in the book. You, you routinely say, you know, you’re still learning, you’re a work in progress, uh particularly uh with the, the chapter I want to talk about with, uh, diversity, equity and inclusion. But throughout, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re honest, you’re open. You’re vulnerable. Uh, uh, I admire that. Uh, uh, uh, a lot of folks see vulnerability as a weakness, and I’ve always thought it, it, it’s a, a sign of, uh, a strong leader. Well it’s very kind of you and it, it, it also, you know, on the feedback, and I’ve got lots of lovely feedback on the book and and probably the feedback that resonates most and the most consistent feedback is, well, we really appreciate it because you know, you’re not saying that CEO has to be this perfect, you know, infallible model, right, because we know it’s really hard and hearing other people say that they struggle with this is a real gift. Uh, and again, for, for young or new non-profit leaders, I think that’s often the thing they’re struggling with the most. It’s like damn, I’m in charge of this organization, it’s really hard and I don’t have anyone to turn to and I’m terrified I’m gonna make mistakes, and I can’t admit that I get anything wrong because everyone will judge me, um, so. You spend time on, uh, self-care too for the CEO, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s funny you, uh, you open that section, and you talk about, uh, overwork, micromanagement, your loneliness, and I’m thinking this, why would I keep, why, why would I aspire to leadership? This sounds like a suicide path to, or a path to self-destruction. Um, so, so, but there are way, you know, of course, methods of overcoming strategies for overcoming. The the negatives like, like mentoring and peer, peer groups and coaching, um, and your own mental health. So say, say something about the, the, the essential self-care uh uh uh uh for a CEO to before you can care for others. Uh, well, the starting point is. It’s a tough and lonely job. I mean, it’s a wonderful job. I love my job, right, and I love being in charge, and I love working with a team, but it is tough and lonely, and I, I thought about it, uh, particularly when crises happen, right? And so COVID was an obvious one, but even now with kind of turmoil with financial assistance all around the world and all the rest of it. And there’s this, and, and, and you feel a sense, an intense sense of responsibility. Like if I get this wrong, and if I do badly, It impacts on the lives, first and foremost of the 80 or so staff that we have, very directly, right, who’s, it’s their jobs and their livelihoods and all around. I feel a huge sense of responsibility, but then it, it packs on the 150 grassroots organizations that we work with, and then the millions and millions of people that are served by those. So, you, if you sit back and think about this, it can, can be somewhat overwhelming, um, and, And then also there are these drivers, so one is, Leadership can be lonely in any organization, not just non-profits and business, uh, because, The buck stops with you and so you’ve got to make the final decision and um and even if you don’t make decisions, that’s a decision, so you know, you, you, you’ve you’ve got the responsibility, um, um, you often don’t have people that you feel comfortable turning to and but that’s something we, we can talk about, um, and so, so it can just be really, really challenging. Um, and then, again, particularly working with non-profits, there’s always this sense of, well, we exist for a, for a bigger purpose and so if I just work harder, we can achieve more. I mean, how, how do you stand by, I think of people working, In Humanitarian disaster zones in Sudan or where we’re just seeing, you know, horrendous things happen right now. And malnutrition, babies dying and all the rest of it, and how, how do you um, How do you not kind of think, well, if I just work a bit harder, um, we can do more. So, so lots of reasons why it can be overwhelming, and I think the starting point is for CEOs to think, OK, well, I do no one any favors if I burn out, right, so stop trying to prove yourself when it’s not being effective, right, if you’re working 80, 90 hours, weeks consistently, you’re not gonna do anyone any good, you’re not doing your job properly, you just aren’t, because you’re not effective. Um, so stop making yourself into a martyr, work out how you can support your own mental health, wellbeing so that you are just a better leader. Um, and then there are strategies for it, right? You can establish, I think one of the best things that’s happened in my non-profit career is kind of small peer groups. Uh, I have a wonderful friend, she was, she was #2. At a um at an organization, um, and she kind of said, why don’t a few of us come together once every 9 months or so and just share some of the challenges that were going on. And, and we just got, initially we set these kind of days and we’d kind of have a tight program of what we were gonna talk through and all the rest of it. In the end it just became a sharing opportunity and we’d go out for dinner and we’d just be sharing all of the challenges and, you know, these are the challenges we’re all kind of around the number 2 level, so often it was like these are the challenges we had with my boss, right, um, but also, you know, have you had this problem with funders or impact or whatever, and it’s just a huge relief to be able to share, um. And then personally, I also, you know, I try and meditate, I try and stay fit and healthy, I try and exercise, um, all as a way of just dealing with, with the pressures and, and stresses of running an organization. You spend time, uh, you have a chapter devoted to the team as part of the, the, the people, there’s the CEO and then the team, uh, you, I think a lot of insightful advice around culture and so talk about culture, psychological safety, how important that is as a part of culture for the, for the team that uh that that you’ve built that you invested in. Please share there. Sure, so, I think one of the things with teams that, Some non-profit leaders don’t, some leaders don’t understand is. Teams are an amazing resource. It’s not that teams exist for you to issue commands and then just to execute, right, because if that’s what, if that’s how you see your team and that’s how you’re doing it, you’re missing out on the real richness and power of a team. And to me, the best thing about a team is that I get access to really smart ideas from smart engaged people and can pick and choose these ideas and work together, but you know, and come up with better decisions. And, and it is so helpful for me when I say, hey, I was thinking about this, and, you know, I’m gonna do this. Now if, if the team wasn’t engaged, they say, Sure, Nick, great, whatever, off you go. Whereas, in fact, they’ll say, oh, that’s interesting, but what about this or what about this? And then I can step back and say, well, actually that’s a really good idea, let’s explore that. And, and as a leader, it’s just a huge benefit because I’ve got other people’s wisdom, and then we’ll work together. Uh, and I just don’t understand why people don’t understand the value of being able to draw on all of this expertise if you run your team well and build an effective team. But that won’t happen unless you build an effective team. So if you run it in a hierarchical way and you just, as we said earlier, make all the decisions, and no one’s gonna offer up any ideas because Nick’s gonna say, uh, you know. Um, so that’s one point, but it’s not enough just to kind of not, not listen to people’s ideas. You actually got to actively create a space for ideas to come up because you may say you’re really, you may say to your team, give me your ideas, I really want to hear them, and we’re gonna, but if you can’t. poo poo a couple of those ideas. Nice try, but really, you know, they’re not going to offer up their ideas in the future. So this is the idea of psychological safety, right? Fancy word, jargons, but, but the idea is pretty straightforward. It’s you, you show that you are actually willing to hear ideas and be contradicted. Right? So you start off a conversation by saying, well, I got this wrong last time we did this. Anyone got any idea, you know, so you’re admitting, you’re admitting that you don’t get it right all the time, it creates space. Someone puts up an idea and you say, this is really, you don’t have to say it’s brilliant and all the rest of it, but say I really appreciate that. And let’s draw in some more ideas. You don’t have to grab everyone’s ideas. You create a, so, and this is all about culture as well. So, you know, a culture of psychological safety means the leader signaling very clearly that they are open to people expressing views and a range of views. And I thought, I referred to it in the book, a study that this all comes, well, it it it it’s all demonstrated very powerfully in a, in a research um study that Google did when it was trying to work out what are the most effective functioning teams, and it, Google has more information on its staff than anyone ever has on their staff, right? It’s a data company. And so he was trying to work out, OK, we’ve got these really high performing teams, we know they’re really high performing, what makes them distinct from other teams, and now we’re trying to work it out, is it where all the team members are are alike, are homogeneous, or is it where all the team members are really diverse and different, or is it where the team members like hanging out, not just at work, but after work, or is it where the team members are all acutely focused. And none of these really predicted the effective teams, it was the teams that had psychological safety. Um, that, and so they kind of helped popularize this concept of basically just giving people space to input and contribute and be thoughtful and drawing on the wisdom of the group. Um, so, so that’s what I see as a really important part of culture, and I think if you’re going to be intentional about it and culture across the organization, you know, as a leader you have to think about culture all the time. Uh, and to me, culture for companies is like character for individuals, um, and it just doesn’t happen, it’s developed, right, and I think one of the ways you develop culture, and it can’t just be the leader, but the leader obviously sets the tone, uh, is there are values that you, as an organ that the organization cares about. Um, for individuals, their virtues, they’re good values, right? Values that advance the purpose of the organization, it’s not just enough to say we care about these things, you have to turn them into habits or into norms. And so it’s turning values into norms, and you do that by identifying things that matter and then consistently implementing or behaving accordingly, and that becomes a norm or a habit, and, and it’s values and norms that make up culture. Um, and so our staff. You you say behaving accordingly. And you, you talked, uh, throughout the book about modeling the behaviors that you know are important in, in yourself doing, as you said, you know, being open, for instance, being not, not uh negating ideas when you ask for people’s ideas, but you know, throughout, you talk about modeling behaviors. Everyone watches the CEO, right, and it always surprises me how much they watch the CEO, right, and I shouldn’t be surprised, I’ve been a CEO now for 12 years, but it’s still, everyone watches the CEO, so everything you do, and it’s pointless saying this is what kind of organization we are and we’re, I have an open door policy when in fact you’re slamming a door on everyone, uh, and people work it out pretty quickly, right, uh, I treat people well when I don’t, or whatever, um, and so, you know, I mean one thing that I do, That I think is quite useful um for us in building culture. I used to do quarterly CEO calls where I’d just have an all-staff call and I’d update everyone, and I’d be pretty open about what happened at the board, and I thought, OK, well this is a good way of keeping people informed. And then I’d ask for questions at the end and I’d get no questions, right, no one was gonna put up their hand virtually in front of 70, 80 people and ask questions and, and, And so I thought we’re not using this as effectively as possible, so then we changed the system where one staff member gets to interview me on these calls. And they’re allowed to ask anything they want, and they know they are because they’ve seen other people have been allowed to ask me anything that they want, and I will ask the questions. And more importantly, they can solicit questions from any of the staff that come into them, so I don’t know where the questions are coming from. That’s the part that I love, that you don’t know the questions in advance. It’s, it’s total vulnerability. Yeah, and, but, but people generally, one they respect it and even if they, you know, I mean I I just did one a couple of weeks ago, and, you know, there were questions about, um, Impact of the financial crisis and are, are we gonna be making people redundant, what impact does it make on partners? There are questions about my mental health and how is, how is I managing the stress and all the rest of it. Um, and these are great questions, because then I can, I can then share my thoughts, and it’s not me just kind of delivering from on top what I think people want to hear, it’s being responsive to questions. There are questions about, um, you know, our culture or learning and development within the organization. And I think it’s just super helpful to have that conversation, uh, and hopefully contributing to a culture where people feel like, OK, well we can ask these questions. Time. The DEI work. You, uh, you say you were initially, uh, nervous about. And, uh, and you make the point here, as I said, said earlier, it’s it’s, it’s a work in progress and, and we’ve had a good number of uh guests through the years, um, you know, emphasizing that it’s a journey, it’s not a check box, um, but, you know, talk a little about your own, uh, again, some introspection, some vulnerability, which again, I admire, uh, your own initial, uh, anxiety about You know, embarking on a, on a, on a process to, to be more diverse, equitable, inclusive. Yeah, so, Freedom Fund started 11 years ago, so, um, you know, when we started and we were recruiting, and we were based in London, initially, even though we work in countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, and Bangladesh and Brazil, um, and recruiting really talented staff, and it turned out at the end of year one or so, we had half a dozen staff and they were all white. I think all were university graduates, all deeply expert and knowledgeable. Um, and, and, you know, hugely talented, but it wasn’t a particularly diverse, um, kind of group of people, um, and particularly given that, as I said, we’re working with and partnering with organizations in Ethiopia, and Brazil and elsewhere, uh, and raising money and getting it to frontline partners and, um, and, This is before Black Lives Matter and before a lot of the debates happened, and in fact my initial kind of focus on DEI was more on my board, where we had a board of 8 and there were 2 women and 6 men. And so I thought, well, you know, we need a, a more balanced gender breakdown on a board. So I was trying to recruit the board, and the board is much more diverse, um, in various ways, and the organization was always diverse on gender, but, you know, often, often gender was a, and still is an aspect of diversity that seems to be overlooked these days when we’re looking at other characteristics. Um, and then, um, when, uh, there was a lot more focus on, On issues around, um, race and ethnicity and so on, particularly after George Floyd and, you know, the Freedom Fund works on slavery and, and there’s arguments about structural racism and being a legacy of slavery, and staff were just saying, well, what are we doing about this? And so my nervousness was in part because I could see that, um, some of these debates, Were being badly handled internally around um how, what does diversity, equity inclusion, or what does it mean to be more diverse and more inclusive as an organization. Some of them were being really badly handled and were tearing organizations apart. Um, and, and that was happening for a lot of reasons, and, and it could happen for the best of intentions, right, that people care about these issues and just can’t converse. But often, you know, leadership people might say, well, you know, we’re doing amazing work, so why are you looking internally, right? Look at what we do, we’re serving all of these underserved populations, stop, you know, it’s not about being internally focused, it’s about doing the work, and then, Staff could legitimately say well hold it, you know, we’re not representative and we don’t, and we’re not particularly inclusive and so I think, but, But also, and this is, OK, this is, we, we can have this discussion, I think, you know, it’s not just about leadership failing. I think, I think there were aspects of the way this was handled where staff who didn’t have a lot of power thought that they could use this as a very powerful tool to engage on issues that they wouldn’t otherwise do. And, and that can be really destructive, like if you kind of insist that, I don’t know, we have to change all of our policies because this is what we think. You should be doing in terms of pay policy or recruitment policy and you’ve got no responsibility for running the organization as a whole, and if you don’t manage this debate well, it can just be extremely destructive. We um, we had a a long internal discussion about this, uh, and so lots of working groups because I thought we’ve got to live our values and talk it all through and um and it wasn’t easy, um. But, but through the process, I, you know, I, I started doing my own reading and, and, and a few things were pretty obvious. One is, um, yeah, I keep on talking about teams and drawing on a pair of teams, well, if your team isn’t, if you’re drawing your team from a fairly narrow pool or not a broad enough pool, you are not accessing the best talent, right? You are not accessing the people who might know the most about the issues and when you’re working on slavery, people who know most about what is the living experience of exploitation are those that have, Been through it or come from the communities that are hugely vulnerable to it. And so if you’re just talking about a position, a situation of expertise, then you have to be drawing from the communities you serve more effectively, and you have to be drawing from the regions that you work that are closest to, uh, the places you serve, and that was just a no-brainer, so, um, and, and then again, there’s an issue of being reflective of, Um, the community you live in. Um, so we went through a process, I think that we ended up in a very good place where it was just clear that we could do better in drawing from all of the people who could help us be a better organization and be more effective, um, and be more knowledgeable about the partners we’re working with, the communities we’re working with, the issues that we’re working with. Um, and so I’m quite happy where we’ve gone, but I think, I think it’s really, Tragic that people have turned DEI into a punching bag, and they’ve turned it into a, an identity issue in a way that is not helpful, and this is people on all sides of the debate where your starting point should be, Who’s expert, how do we have the best possible team, how do we have the greatest impact by bringing in the people who know the most about the issue, uh, without being pro forma about identity one way or another. Um, so I don’t know if that’s clear and, you know, as you can see it’s something I still kind of, yeah, working my way through, but what do you see as the CEO’s role in this? how do you best facilitate? Well, it took me a while to work this out, but the way you facilitate it is exactly the way I started this whole conversation. How does this advance our purpose? Right, how, how do we, how do we become a more it doesn’t advance our purpose to say we must recruit from certain populations or other just for the sake of it. How do we get better or we’re an anti-slavery organization, right? How are we better at our anti-slavery work? Well, by having people who are deeply knowledgeable about what that means. Now, that means a whole bunch of things, right, it can mean people from the communities or the countries that we’re working, but it also can mean the best anti-slavery experts who may or may not come from particular regions, but it’s bringing a whole team together, not just kind of having a single lens of what it means. How does that advance? So, and and framing the discussions when they get heated. How does this advance, you know, it’s not about your ideology or your views. Tell me how this advances what we’re trying to do. And then let’s work backwards from that. Um, and so that’s, that would be my biggest learning was like, start with purpose, always. Tell us how this gets us there. Tell us why this will make us a better organization and a more effective organization. You say it’s the right thing to do, well, obviously, if it’s the right thing to do, it advances our purpose, how does it advance our purpose? Nick, that’s a beautiful 360 from where we began, purpose and, and holding the vision. Thank you. Thank you. So folks, the, the book is how to lead nonprofits, turning purpose into impact to change the world. Um, I think it’s a, it’s a very compassionate, uh, introspective guidebook for, for leaders and aspiring leaders. So check, check the book, please. Uh, Nick Grono, you’ll find him on LinkedIn. Nick, thank you so much for sharing all your thinking, your wisdom over uh over all these years. Very grateful. Thank you. Tony, thanks for having me on, thanks for a really wonderful rich discussion. It’s my pleasure. Next week, your improved messaging. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. 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 and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 14, 2024: Tech Policies To Reduce Toxic Productivity

 

Marina Martinez-Bateman: Tech Policies To Reduce Toxic Productivity

First, what is toxic productivity? Then, as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people who work with you? Finally, what are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez-Bateman, at New Coyote Consulting. (This originally aired August 1, 2022.)

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. We did promise you Veronica La Finna this week, but I couldn’t record with her because I had a family emergency. So we have one from the archive and we’ll get Veronica on within a month. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of BRAC ignatia if I had to speak the words you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s going on this week? Hey, Tony, this week it’s tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. First. What is toxic productivity? Then as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people who work with you? Finally? What are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez Bateman at New Coyote consulting. This originally aired August 1st 2022 on Tony’s take two tales from the plane. The civility of deplaning were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. It’s all covered by Marina Martinez Bateman at New Coyote consulting. If you start buying shoes instead of food, buying shoes, instead of paying the rent, then you have a real problem, right? And productivity is like that, you know, it’s just like any other thing that we engage in, we can do it so hard that it hurts us toxic productivity is when we will choose work over things that we need, like taking lunch breaks or moving our body or um engaging with family and community things that sort of are essential to our mental and physical health. And then, you know, what happens is as we engage more and more with this toxic level of productivity, our actual real true product or output diminishes and then we see our output diminish, we get really upset about that and then we double down on being more and more productive and, and then our output diminishes because we’re exhausted and we’re not getting filled up in other places and we double down again and it can lead to, you know, you can create uh you know, really unhealthy spaces. You can um you know, make yourself ill, you can hurt yourself, you can get hurt, you know, how many people have fallen asleep while driving um because they’re working too many hours. Um You know, how many times do we make really silly mistakes when we’re exhausted. Um Those things sort of creep in and creep in and then your identity starts to change into being someone who can’t get things right, who isn’t able to perform when that was never a part of your reality, you’re just engaging way too hard in work thinking that that’s the answer to your, your problem when really it’s the cause. And before we go further and toxic productivity, let’s remind folks in case there’s any question, uh You said, you know, it replaces being filled up by other spaces like community, family friends. Let’s remind folks of the, the joys that and, and maybe there’s even research that shows the physiological changes when we’re engaging in things that are not work. Yeah. Yeah. So you get different parts of your brain activated when you’re engaging in hobbies that are different from your work, um your creative life, you know, if you have a creative job um sometimes doing something that’s not so creative or doesn’t require a lot of like big innovative leaps um can be nice like, you know, tidying up or taking a walk or um doing something physical, like hiking or going out into the outdoors, going fishing and camping, et cetera, or even going shopping or going to the movies, like those things when they’re safe. Of course, because it’s still COVID right now um are important to engage in because they activate other spots of your brain and also just your body moves differently on a hike than it does in the office or at a desk it moves. First of all, first of all, it moves your standing desk, even if you attach a treadmill to it or something can never really replicate going outside. Um And then, you know, we’re people even introverted people need other people. We just do, we’re not, um, we cannot exist completely alone. Um We have to be able to engage in the people that we have in our personal bubble. However big that bubble is we have to be able to sort of like activate um that empathetic drive that we all have as humans or that, you know, the vast majority of us do. Um And we, we just have to be in, in concert, you know, how many of us have been at work, especially in the nonprofit sphere and things are sort of looking gloomy and we’re thinking, oh, the world is filled with bad people, everyone’s making terrible choices. This is the worst, you know, and then you go to dinner with a friend and you’re like, wait, the world is wonderful. This is great. Everyone’s making great choices. I bet all these people are just trying to figure it out because that human connection needs to exist for us to be people in the world, which is, you know, why we’re here is to be people. Thank you for that reminder, right. We are, we are communal. We are social, even the most introverted to some degree. Still, as you said, you know, with however, however, however many or few it may be uh uh contact community. All right. All right. So what are nonprofits doing that uh is leading us to toxic productivity? And we’ll, we’ll certainly get to the solutions. But what are we doing to? Uh, I don’t wanna, I certainly don’t want to say, improve it uh to induce it, induce it. Yeah, I mean, part of it is that we have these and these are, it’s great that we all want to end hunger and that we, you know, no one’s being like, oh, but it’s hard when you have 16 people and they’re all making 20 to 50 to 100% less than they could make in the free market trying to end hunger from a small office with broken chairs and a raccoon that won’t leave the trash alone. You know, like we are so severely under-resourced in nonprofit and that’s not our individual fault by any means. It’s the culture and the structures of the culture that we live in. Um where uh poor people are, the people that build this country and their labor is so exploited that they are um kept poor so that the rich can stay rich. Um And then we at the nonprofits and generally those are the people we serve are the poor or people who are missing something from their, their experience or their needs. And uh and we’re under resource too. I mean, it’s a whole, it’s a whole culture, right? It’s a whole structure. It’s a whole system that’s made to make it so that we have these incredibly vast missions and we have a broken pencil and our own gumption to make it happen. And um and it is, you know, we, we as individuals cannot solve that entire problem by ourselves. One, we can’t solve the problem that we’re working on by ourselves. We can’t end hunger alone. Um Even the most vast and well resourced organization would have to work with others in order to make that happen. Um And part of that, so we have this, like we have these vast resources, we are severely under-resourced or we have these vast missions. Yeah, and we’re severely under resourced. And then um what we as organizations do on the, on the organization to organization level is that we compete with one another. We don’t coordinate with our organizations in our same sphere or it’s hard, we find it hard to coordinate. Um We also don’t recognize that we’re under-resourced. Um Frequently we will sort of like, you know, when you get a bunch of nonprofit workers together in a room, we’ll joke about, you know, how we don’t have a chair that works and our computer is 15 years old and all these things. Um But we don’t talk about how that makes the mission harder to do and nor do we talk about how we’re still hitting goalposts. We’re still crossing finish lines. We’re still making things work and where do those resources come from? In general? They come from the individual workers. Um And some of us have vast resources to put to this and some of us don’t. Um But there’s no adjustment, a, there’s no adjustment of expectation based on how much resource we’re individually putting into the, the work to make it cross the finish line. And there’s also no, um it’s seen as an individual failing if we can’t do this impossible work with very little resource in the, in, in, in terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of support, in terms of whatever. We’re all fighting an uphill battle. And um and our organizations frequently lean into that martyrdom and lean into that, you know, while I was working 17 hours yesterday, while I was up at two o’clock in the morning, finishing with this grant while I was, you know, and um and it doesn’t have to be like that. I mean, if we live in a world where we think that our clients deserve education, food, um a healthy ecology to, to Roman community, art, all of these things, you know, medicine and um recovery and all these things that we provide to people. If we think that our clients deserve that, how come we’re not getting that for ourselves? Like how many of us are pushing off things like doctors appointments, how many of us have skipped um significant times in our family members lives because there was some campaign or something that had to go on. And then also how much of that um happens because of expectation. You know, when we start a nonprofit, we’re working with nothing, we work our way up, we become leaders in the, in the sector. And then it doesn’t seem weird to us that the people, the workers that are coming behind us are experiencing the same hardships that we experienced because it’s normal for us to struggle in this way. A lot of what you’re saying is that it’s, it’s culture and, and mindset. So I guess you’d like to change the culture and change the mindset and change the investments. Um So please, let’s uh let’s start talking about what, what we can do differently. I think what we can do differently is it starts with the leadership in nonprofits. People who are lower on the York chart do not have as much power. Although a lot of people, especially right now with the great resignation. Um A lot of people who are lower on the art chart are as asserting their power by leaving um environments that are toxic or don’t work for um what their vision is for the future. I think Gen Z is a great motivator for us to all take a look at how we’ve been working in the past and how it has harmed us and how, if we don’t get right and start cycle breaking, we are going to be perpetuating the same harm that was done to us, which while it’s not fair that we were harmed, it’s also not fair to, to sort of slough that off onto others. Um, but in the leadership of the nonprofits, we have to stop thinking that because it happened to us, it’s ok for it to happen to other workers, especially younger workers coming sort of, you know, rite of passage, you pay your dues and then you’ll, then you’ll emerge a better leader in the, in the sector. You know, that’s, that’s silly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And punishing to be, you don’t have to be punished to be successful. Exactly. Can we be like, can we be the nonprofit executives and CEO S that we needed when we were younger and that we didn’t get, can we do the things that, that would have helped us to heal or would have helped us to be safe or be properly resourced or succeed even if that’s not something that we experienced when we were younger in career? All right. Um Do you have specific, like, uh are there specific things that leaders can, can encourage? Like, you must take time off or something? You know, I, I don’t want to see anybody not using their vacation time. And you know, the these folks who say, hey, I haven’t had a vacation in four years. I’m so proud of myself and I’m thinking, like, don’t blame me. That’s your own fault. Yeah, if it’s been that long, it’s your own fault for not taking it, you know. So what, what, what can leaders do, you know, specifically to avoid this? The, the, the toxic productivity is? Yeah, that, that sort of thing where it’s like, well, it’s not my fault that Sharon hasn’t taken a vacation in seven years saying that is, is a thing we can put to bed. And we can say actually, if I’m in charge of this organization and of course, we work together with our boards and advisory councils, sometimes with governmental agencies, whoever we’re helping to steward this change with. Um but if I am the CEO here, I am the executive here, then if someone hasn’t taken a vacation in four years, that’s, that’s on me. Um This is the, this is the container I’m building for workers. Um I see my view my duties as a CEO very explicitly to keep the people in my, you know, in my organization safe. That’s one of the things that, that I have, you know, task been tasked with is to keep people safe. Um If I can tell people what kind of work we’re doing and where we’re going and what our goals are, then I have to take responsibility for their safety during that journey because I’m the one taking them that, that place. I’m the one on that journey with them. Um And so asking, you know, why is it, why is it that Sharon feels like she can’t take a vacation? Um Is there something going on internally that is making that happen? Does she not have anyone who’s trained on the thing that she does? Does she, um, has she not gotten a, a performance review in four years? And she, so she doesn’t feel like she can take a vacation because she doesn’t even know how well she’s doing her job. You know, there’s just a bunch of little things that we can look at and it takes time which most of us don’t have. And I advise leaders to look at our plate and find out where we’re being performative productive. How many of the things do we do every day? That looks like we’re doing something. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t actually cons it doesn’t actually contribute to the mission. We can spend three hours on something. And um, and not only are no more Children fed, they’re not going to be on that labor that we just did, but it looks really good. It looks like we’re doing a lot. How can we cut that out and then focus on, let’s get somebody cross trained on Sharon’s job so that she can finally take a vacation. Let’s let’s make this a safe space for our workers to make healthy decisions. And the truth is that because a lot of our sector has for so long leaned into this under resourcing of workers. There becomes a pathology around being under resource. There becomes a sort of like um system wide martyrdom. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers. Just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit Donor box.org to learn more. Now back to tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. There’s something called a brotherhood of suffering. Exactly. It’s, it’s, I’ve read about it in prison populations where I mean, the phrase says it, the brotherhood, sisterhood. Um They would of suffering the uh the, the shared experience among all folks of being in something that’s, you know, ritualistic, punishing suffering, difficult. And then, and it ends up being a source of almost pride that we’re, we’re suffering this way together. I’m sure you want to turn that on its head and, and disabuse us of that. It’s, and it’s hard, it’s entrenched, there are people for whom for whatever reason. And then this does become an individual problem once you’ve done all of the systematic things around alleviating that suffering around creating um you know, the concept of abundance, even as we’re in these systems where we’re under-resourced. And part of that is acknowledging how we’re under-resourced and, and, and speaking its name out loud, um which is capitalism and racism and colonialism. Um Once we sort of do that in our organizations, there are still going to be people for whom it is necessary, they need that they feel for whatever reason that, that this is what they have to do, this is how they have to work. Um And, and in general, what I find um in the times when I’ve managed to create this package, which is really hard to do, well, we have all these other external forces sort of like working for us to have this hero complex to keep in the savior mindset. Um When I’ve been able to make this abundance package with the sort of container where we can all work in abundance towards our common goals. There are a couple of people who will leave and sometimes it’s messy, sometimes it’s not thankfully, but sometimes it is messy. Um But it’s because they need to be in an environment that feels like home to them and that toxicity is going to feel like home until they make the choice to step out of it. And, and recognize that this is this is a choice that, that they’ve made. There’s systemic issues at hand and then there’s individual issues at hand and we as CEO S can do a lot to solve the systemic issues and also we can never make someone heal themselves. Yeah. What’s some of that uh performative work that you uh that you mentioned just if you could tick off two or three things that are performative but lacking in value and, and, and benefit. Um Staying in the office on a day when there’s no reason to, you know, if, uh something like something tragic frequently happens, if there’s something terribly tragic in our community requiring, you’re requiring everyone to keep their butts in their seats is just ridiculous. No one’s working, that’s not gonna happen. Um, even sort of staying in the office when there are things going on that are, are wonderful. Um, for example, uh, if it’s, you know, if we are living in a beach town and it’s a great surf day and we are a surf, you know, protect the surf nonprofit, everybody goes surf, like, come on, this is our whole thing. Like, it doesn’t make any sense if we are. Um, say we’re, uh, you know, very into free media and we have a free media conference in town. Nobody should be expected to come to work. We should get tickets to the free media conference and we should go to that. Um, you know, there are a lot of things I think, um, you know, if we’re a big sports town and our team is winning. Nobody’s going to pay attention to work and there’s no reason to be here. All of these things, you know, they’re all individual to the nonprofit. Then there’s also things like, you know, some of us and I’m one of these people, I admit it love to see a meeting room packed with people. We love it. But half those people do, they need to be there. Do they really, does this really important to, to the running of the nonprofit that, that, you know, so many people are there for an hour doing nothing and, or, you know, getting information that could have been in an email or, you know, et cetera. Um, yeah, I think there’s, uh, some people have gone into the, um, oh, I can’t remember what they call it but they do 15 minutes stand ups every morning and they’re never 15 minutes long. They always run over the morning huddle. I mean, if the morning huddle makes you guys productive and it helps your, your nonprofit do the thing you, you’re put here to do. Great. But a lot of times these huddles are just performative and it’s awful and everyone’s so tired because it’s the first thing in the morning and there’s no reason for them. Um, I think also there’s a lot of like email checking that happens throughout the day for me is one of the ways that I am performative, productive and, and my uh my only employee is remote. We are all remote here. So no one’s watching me. No one can see me in here. But I will sit here and check email because I want to quote unquote, feel productive. And so then I spent 2.5 hours moving emails around the digital space doing nothing and I leave and then I leave, you know, I have to go to lunch or it’s the end of the day or something and I didn’t need to be there and do that. There was, there was no reason its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. Uh starting a new series because I’ve been traveling a lot. So starting the Tales from the plane series and uh starting optimistic and positive deplaning the deplaning process which I, I don’t know why they just don’t call it. You’re leaving the plane. They gotta have a word for plane deplaning, but it’s just done so civilly. Everybody is so friendly as they’re getting off the plane. Uh People wait for each other. Very thoughtful. They let, they let uh the all the rows, you know, go just in line orderly before them. You know, we’re, we’re not, it could be imagine the worst of humanity. It could be just everybody rushing, pushing, tripping over each other’s bags, tripping over people who are, who are smaller or weaker, you know, just stampeding. It could be that but it’s not, it never is. It’s nowhere near that. It’s all very civil and thoughtful. Um, when bags are, when, when somebody stuck with their bag, you know, a few rows back, they point to it and people offer to get the bag and then it gets passed up to the person and we all wait until that person leaves and then we take our turn. I just think it’s so admirable, you know, uh, it, in the current, you know, in the, during the presidential campaign, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a mega hat on or a Harris walls. T-shirt. People are all very thoughtful civil as we’re getting off the plane and it’s admirable. We help each other people offer. Can I get that bag for you? A man? Would you like some help, sir? You know, you look a little, you know, not, you don’t say you look a little short but you know, short gentlemen, would you like help? Can I help you? It’s all very polite, civil, thoughtful humane. I admire it and I think it, I don’t know if it has promise for a bigger lesson for all of us. Uh I mean, we can be civil. That’s clear. Uh but I’m not getting carried away. I just, I admire the civility of our deplaning process in the process. Why is it, why does it have to be a process or when they’re boarding? It’s the boarding process? Why are we starting a process? We’re just getting on the plane to me. Uh, a process is, you know, cooking dinner or putting out a fire. Um, you know, those are, those are processes. Digestion. Digestion is a process. But getting on a plane we’re just, we’re just boarding, we just start the boarding, start the boarding, boarding period. I don’t know why there has to be a boarding process. But anyway, that was a little, that’s a little sidebar. The point is the civility of the deplaning period. The deplaning, I admire it. Thank you. Thank you, everyone for being all so civil to each other. And that is Tonys take two. Ok. I wish ann track was more civil. I mean, I’ve never been on a plane but I’ve been on a train and it’s not very, uh, welcoming. You mean getting on or getting off, I think both for both. Yeah, I mean, I started, I used to take coach, you know, free for all. You find a seat, you sit down kind of thing. But then I could never find seats where people were just like putting their bags on like the second seat, you know, and saying like, oh, someone’s sitting here and then so I started like getting um, business class. So I actually had an assigned seat because people just weren’t, they weren’t thoughtful. Yeah. No, that is true on Amtrak you have to say, you know, excuse me? Uh, I mean, and then if they say somebody’s sitting there, I mean, I’m taking them at their word. I don’t need, I don’t need to see the person’s ID or anything but, but uh you do have to be a little assertive and say, excuse me, you know, like to sit down. Alright. Anyway, we’ve got just about a butt load more time. Here’s the rest of tech policies to reduce toxic productivity with Marina Martinez Bateman. Is there more that, that we can um ask of our, of our leaders, you um not that you haven’t given uh given, given a lot of uh uh uh a lot of advice but uh is is there any more that, that we can expect from our leaders to help us make the right choices? Yeah. And part of that is so we are in a unique space as leaders where we are suffering from the exact same ailments that our people are suffering from and we are suffering from the exact same structures of oppression that our people are something. I mean, not the exact same ones, but we’re here, we’re in it, right? So all of that um you know, all the systems that are set up to make it so that personal health and art and the environment and food and how like um communities and all these other things that we fight for, right? In the nonprofit sector, all these things are devalued. We’re, we’re in the same boat. Um And also we do have power within the walls of our our organization, sometimes it’s limited, sometimes there’s other factors at play, but we have more power than anyone else in the building almost. Um, with very few exceptions. And so part of it is that we have to make certain sacrifices as leaders, which I think all of us know, but those sacrifices are probably not going to be the ones, the ones I recommend are not going to be the ones that we expect. So, um we need to protect our own time. We need to be seen eating lunch, we need to be seen taking time to move our bodies. Um A lot of the things that we do as leaders are are um the second we get to work, the second we log on whenever our day starts, we are being seen by everyone at the organization, even if it’s a small organization, even if it’s a remote organization, we don’t realize how visible we are. Um And so when we model these behaviors for people taking vacation, telling people about how wonderful and restorative the vacation was reassuring people um that it’s ok to take vacation for themselves, leaning into abundance even though we know what the budget is and we know scarcity very intimately um making those choices um that are, that are on mission, um that are values driven because that’s what we’re called to do. Um And then having to make tough calls uh as a leader is, it’s why we’re here. It’s why we got put in this seat. Um It’s why we sought the seat we wanted this position most of us. And um and so it’s time to sort of like what we sacrifice when we have this uh out. Like when we are modeling this good behavior is we sacrifice any delusions that we might have had towards the productivity nature of, of, you know, performative productivity, right? So those big meetings that have a ton of people in them that are really kind of just ego strokes for us, we can get rid of those. That’s a sacrifice that, that is a good sacrifice to make. Um a lot of times we do things like we have those big meetings because we’re not feeling very productive, but we want to see everybody’s face, you know, working. Um And really what we needed to do is take lunch and start taking lunch probably three months, three or four months ago, or years ago or 10 or 1520 years ago. Um And then we would feel productive and filled up and we would need a big meeting of 15 people that doesn’t do anything. Um So, so modeling the behavior ourselves is very, very important and um and specifically in a way that is seen, um it can be very hard because as leaders, we want to say, well, I’m gonna take, I’m modeling the behavior I’m gonna take off early, I’m gonna go home and um that is valid. And if we need to do that, we should do that. And also say, ok, everybody, we’re going home early this day is just whatever happened this day is in the pits, let’s go home early. If we can, of course, some of us can’t do that because we have certain service obligations. Um, but we can do things like look around the room, take the temperature of the room and say, all right, everybody, we’re getting, you know, pizzas delivered or whatever. Uh We’re just gonna sit down and hang out together and blow off some steam. I can feel it. We just, we’re not doing productive work right now. You know, be thoughtful, be intentional um about creating uh about the culture you’re creating and that culture starts with leadership, whether whether you might be the CEO or you might be a mid-level leader, you might be uh uh lower on the org chart, a lower level leader, but you’re still leading two or three people, right? I mean, it applies. This is not only for the CEO, you’re a CEO, but this is not only for CEO S. Yeah, the people like your choices are going to be dependent on what’s up with the people and focus them and then model the behavior that you because you know that a lot of us don’t realize how seen we are in our organizations. We’re very, very visible if we’re in a leadership position. Yeah, you made the point, you know, even even in a virtual organization like yours virtual company. Um Well, uh so flush that out. Well, how, how do you feel like folks know when you start logging in when you’re reading email, et cetera? How is that seen? How is it seen? How am I checking in? You know, if we have a digital chat platform? How am I checking in? Am I showing up? Am I saying? Hey, I’m here. Am I asking questions? Um Am I, you know, am I asking for feedback? You know, am I, am I visible enough for you? Am I you know, am I bugging you too much like um and listening to people and trusting people when they tell you what’s going on with them. Um and also trying to remember it’s very hard, it can be very hard with everything going on that you have to do as a leader. But when someone says, hey, I’m gonna be out for the afternoon, put it in your own calendar and make sure that you don’t reach out to them during that time. Yeah. Right. Those, those uh slacks or texts or emails, whatever it is that start sorry to bother you on your day off. But, but of course, the universal and the gator cancels everything before it, but I need, you know, blah, blah. Exactly. And that, you know, so much of that it could just wait until the day off is over. So the week off is it? You know, and, and, and you, you said earlier, you know, cross training so that people feel they can take time. And so the organization doesn’t suffer when they do. Exactly. If so, and so doesn’t have the thing. I’ve cross trained this other person which, of course, you know, i, it’s easy for me to sit here in my office and say cross training when a person listening is looking at me like what with what resources with what people? But that’s where the sacrifices come in. You have to say, OK, well, this vanity project of mine doesn’t happen because cross training is happening instead or this. And somebody bristled when I said Vanity Project, I know it. But we all have them, they exist. We’ve got to accept that, that they exist. So instead of the thing I want, we do cross training because that’s, that’s, and eventually I’ll get the thing I want probably, especially if it’s mission aligned and it makes sense. But we have to prioritize workers needs and comfort because we have a lot of options here. The people that we employ, have less options than us have fewer options than us. And so we need to, to, to honor that. What about some uh questions that you got questions or comments you got uh in your session? Uh What uh what do you, what do you, what, what stuck out for you? I always get this question in all, every time I teach his training, I get this question and it’s some version of the, you know, my coworker, my direct report, my boss, my board member is very into toxic productivity. They’re very into this. They’re, they’re the ones that are always, you know, I was answering emails from the hospital when I was in labor with my second daughter or, you know, all of this stuff. Um, it’s very badge of honor. You know, we wear these sort of like wounds like medals and nonprofit. Um, that’s the, the person who would have suffered. I said the person who of suffering it is a bad, they do become a badge of honor. I’m, I’m always the last person to leave the office. Yes. Yes, exactly. And, uh, and, and, and this person is that their, their toxic productivity is harming people. They’re pushing, uh, the culture, you know, more and more to work more and more. Um, they have unrealistic expectations of people that work nearer with them, et cetera, et cetera. It’s harmful. And what I always tell people is, you know, you can do this. Uh, first of all, your proximity to this person is not a coincidence. At some point, you guys probably saw eye to eye on this or we’re working together in tandem to create something that really worked for you. Um, you know, I look back on my nonprofit career and one of the, my best times, one of my favorite times in my career was on as deeply into toxic productivity. And so was everyone else around me and it was wonderful because we were all on the same page. We felt like such a good team. We were so unified in the way we thought about things and the way we thought about things was deeply unhealthy. Um But uh I tell them, you know, you can tell this person, especially if you really care about them outside of work. Um You can say, I think we’re in a toxic relationship. I think we are operating in a way that is making each other less healthy, that’s not, not helping us thrive. I want to try and heal from this. I think that healing is gonna bring about a really incredibly positive change, not only for me, but for the work that we’re doing here, will you, will you heal with me? Will you come in this on this journey with me? And you can ask them with sincerity and the truth is that you can’t do anything else other than that, just ask them. And if they say no, you can’t keep asking them. You have to, you have to respect that and everyone has the has, has their own path, you know, and not everyone is going to heal at the rate that you are going to heal at, not everyone is going to heal the way you think you should or they should. Um Some people just have other journeys. And so if you are that person’s boss, you can make decisions about. Ok, well, we’re going in a different direction. We need competencies around healthy productivity. You don’t have the competencies around healthy productivity that we need. Therefore, we’re no longer a good fit and that hurts. It’s hard to say those things. But if I had, you know, if I said, you know, we’re gonna go, uh we’re gonna move towards gap accounting everyone. You know, we’ve got to do things, uh best practices, ways and, and not have, you know, our accounting all Willy nilly and our accountant at the time was like, nope, I do my accounting on post its and I will never not do that. You can’t make me change, then we would have to get a new accountant, wouldn’t we? So it’s the same thing when we’re trying to create this healthier productivity. If someone doesn’t want to learn or become competent in this, in this new work way, we can’t keep them on just because we like them or because of what they did in the past that was helpful. Um We can honor them and say that, that, you know, thank you very much and we can also release them to continue on their own journey. Whatever that is. What have we not talked about that? Uh You want to um, good question. Uh And I do my best to uh channel our listeners, but you’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I’m just coming to it. So maybe the, the stuff that we, I haven’t raised. Yeah, let’s talk about perfectionism. Perfectionism is, is a, we know for a fact we know that perfectionism is a, is a um feature of white supremacy. Perfectionism is um pervasive and insidious in our culture as a whole, but also in nonprofit culture. And so when we are practicing uh healthy productivity, when we’re trying to learn how to do things differently, the fact that we’re doing things in a way that we haven’t done them before means that we’re not gonna be as good, effortlessly good at them. Um As we were before, even if we were doing something that ultimately harmed ourselves and our organization and our mission, we were really good at it for a long time. We had a high level of proficiency. So when you sort of like decide to go home at five o’clock and uh walk around the block and then take a bubble bath or whatever, that’s not gonna feel super good because you’re not gonna be super good at it. Um I can’t tell you how many times I used to buy coloring books because I was like, I need to be less, you know, work centric and I need to do creative things. I miss being creative. And so I would buy those adult coloring books and I would hurt my fingers from coloring. So hard because it had to be perfect. Um, and then I would think, ok. No, I can’t do this. It’s too, it’s too physical. This coloring is too physical. I’ll go get in a bath. That’ll relax me and I’ll, I would sit in this bath just, uh, tense because I’m supposed to be relaxing and I’m, and I’m not doing damn bath over yet. Right. Exactly. That’s not working either. Right. And, but it’s not working because you’re not familiar with it. It’s hard. The first time you did anything, it was just kind of a little bit difficult and a little bit unwieldy and overwhelming. And, you know, for those of us who have been neglecting our other, the other parts of our lives for however long because of work, it is daunting to go into a place we feel very new at, especially when we’ve been in a place where we feel extremely, um, you know, experienced and comfortable. Exactly. Yeah. So, the, the perfectionism of like, if you are going to engage with your community and if you are going to engage your creativity and you’re going to go on a hike and you’re going to, you know, reclaim the other part of your life that isn’t at work, be willing to do it badly because it’s that important. You have to be able to do it badly because you have to get through that sort of like new unwieldy part. Um, and it’s ok to say, like I’m really new at this, I’m only going to hike for 15 minutes or I’m only going to sit at the trailhead and look at the hiking place and then I’m gonna go get back in my car and go home there. There’s no level of engaging with your non work life that is not gonna be beneficial. There’s no, it’s not like you have to hike to the top of the mountain. I mean, this is part of the toxic productivity that’s been, you know, making this, this bad scene this whole time, right? Is that we feel like we have to, um, do everything the best the most, regardless of what else is going on. You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna start your physical fitness journey with AAA Triathlon. You know, you’re gonna run around the block and in a week you’ll be able to run around the block twice or maybe just walk to the end of the block, pardon me? Or maybe just walk to the end of the block or whatever it is. Yeah. However, you start, right. But, but starting and, and you’re saying, you know, you’re eee embrace the discomfort because it’ll become comfortable and you’ll get better at it. You know, you’re in a pattern now where you’re, uh, you know, you’re like you said, highly efficient, uh you know, highly efficient at toxic behaviors. You’re really good at this and you can be really good at something else too. I mean, I remember, uh there was an interview with Terry Crews who’s an actor and he’s very muscly. And um people always ask him, how do you get so buff? Like you’re always, and he said, look, the gym is my happy place. And so I can’t tell you a person who doesn’t really like the gym how to get like me. I look like this because I hang out at the gym all the time. It’s my favorite place. But he also says, you know, go take a, if you really like something, take it to the gym with you. So if you really like romance novels or mysteries or something, go and go and take your mystery novel to the gym and just sit there, read your mystery novel and then go home and then, you know, you don’t have to pick up a weight, you don’t have to do a single thing. Just hang out there because it’s for a lot of people like the weight room at the gym even especially is like a very new place. It’s pretty foreign. There’s a lot of traditions, there’s rules, you don’t really know what they are. Um, so ali acclimatizing yourself to a new place, you know? Interesting. Yeah. All right. All right. Leave us with, uh, with something inspirational. Please. Marina, there’s been a lot of inspiration. Sum it up, sum up 40 minutes as best you can. Well, when we think about how much we as nonprofit workers on an individual level, on an organizational level and on a sector wide level have been able to achieve and, and move the needle on with. So with how little we’re given, if we made sure that we ourselves were properly resourced, in order to do this transformative work, imagine how much more could be accomplished by people who are showing up fully in their power to this mission work. I mean, it’s incredible. And then also the thing I like to remind everyone in my training is that this is generational work. I have generations of people behind me, you know, relatives and ancestors who have done their own mission work. And I will have generations of people in front of me doing the mission work that they’re called to do. And all I have to do is show up for my part, my link in that chain. Marina Martinez Bateman, Ceo, New Coyote consulting. Oh, I have to ask, why is it New Coyote consulting? What is that? It’s New Coyote because I wanted a name that spoke to my ancestry, which is Mesoamerican and uh and which spoke to my sort of like presence and the way I show up. And uh the Aztec, there’s an Aztec God, uh Weiwei Coyote, which means very old coyote. And um I thought he’s um frequently gendered as a, as a male, but very also frequently gendered as non-binary or female. So I’m non-binary. It felt very like I felt a lot of kinship with, with that. And then, um, old, very old coyote is a storyteller and he teaches through storytelling. So that felt very appropriate to me as well. You know, he’s not didactic, he’s not teaching humans lessons or if he is ever teaching humans lessons, it’s in this very jokey sort of way. Um, he brings people along with him on journeys rather than sort of like telling them to go places. Um And I uh I also feel like in the context that I’m in, which is a very white context and a very colonizer context. Frequently, a lot of people will call my work new. They’ll say that the things I’m doing are new, these new ideas, they’re new concepts. And for me, they’re not new, they’re very, very old. Um But also new coyote is a transformer. He’s a trickster. So he, he becomes the thing that you need in the moment. And I thought, well, then we’re a new coyote. We’re not a very old coyote. We’re a, we’re a brand new one. So that’s why I named us New Coyote. Lots of levels. Yeah. Again, Marina Martinez Bateman Ceo at New Coyote consulting. Marina. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me on. You’re welcome too. Next week, Tony will pick one from the archive. It won’t be the fermentation show with Sandor Kraut. If you missed any part of this weeks show I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide 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 and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 23, 2023: The Surprising Gift Of Doubt

 

Marc PitmanThe Surprising Gift Of Doubt

That’s Marc Pitman’s book. It’s stuffed with strategies to help leaders—and future leaders—lead better. Marc is founder of Concord Leadership Group. (This originally aired on August 2, 2021.)

 

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[00:00:11.68] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit

[00:00:46.62] spk_1:
radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. I’m traveling this week so I may not sound up to my usual. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of coccidioidomycosis if I had to breathe in the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with the highlights.

[00:01:13.59] spk_2:
Hey, tony, it’s the surprising gift of doubt. That’s Mark Pittman’s book. It’s Stuffed with strategies to help leaders and future leaders lead. Better. Mark is founder of Concord Leadership group. This originally aired on August 2nd 2021 on Tony’s Take two.

[00:01:16.36] spk_1:
Goodbye. Marian

[00:01:52.67] spk_2:
were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits, donor box dot org and buy Kila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers, CRM visit, Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kela to exceed their goals. Here is the surprising gift of doubt.

[00:02:44.96] spk_0:
It’s my pleasure to welcome Mark Pittman to the show. He is founder of Concord Leadership Group. He helps leaders lead their teams with more effectiveness and less stress. His latest book is the surprising gift of doubt, use uncertainty to become the exceptional leader you are meant to be. You may know him. Also as the bow tie guy, Mark has caught the attention of media organizations as diverse as the chronicle of philanthropy, Al Jazeera Fox News Success Magazine and real simple. The book and the company are at Concord leadership group dot com and he’s at Mark a Pitman, Mark Pittman, an overdue. Welcome to non profit radio.

[00:02:48.81] spk_3:
It is an honor to be here. Thanks tony

[00:02:51.09] spk_0:
and I’m not sure why you haven’t been on years ago and, and many times before. So I uh I feel bad about that because you’re a smart guy and you have lots of good, you have lots of good content, lots of good ideas. And uh that’s why I say long overdue.

[00:03:03.92] spk_3:
Well, thank you. And my head may not fit out of the office after this kind of word. Don’t get carried away,

[00:03:27.54] spk_0:
but you do. You do have a lot of good ideas, including the uh the ideas that are in your new book. And I want to start with having you explain how agonizing doubt can be a gift. Please help us understand that.

[00:04:48.45] spk_3:
Um It’s I’ve been an executive coach for 18 years now and it’s one of the things that really surprises people the most is the fact that high performers, first of all, don’t tend to know how to ask for help and then they get derailed when they start feeling down because they start feeling like they’re, they’re faking it. The that they’re the, you know, the wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain, they don’t look at him um because they’re, they’re producing results, but they’re not sure how. Um and that doubt can be very destabilizing, but the gift is it can force us to look internally for our own cues. Uh Look to look, to look in areas where we’ve been told they’re soft or, you know, they’re, they’re woo woo. Um look at things that make us unique and it actually clarifies our, our leadership because it’s very much about the, the grain of our wood, the way that we put a spin on things as opposed to just doing all the best benchmarked activities that are out there. Um Yeah. So the surprising gift of that is it, it can make it to me what I’ve seen it do is instead of having that inner critic saying I must be broken, I must be just, I must, I probably shouldn’t even be in this position. It shifts the conversation to why might I be perfect for this role? Why might my organization be exactly the voice that the sector needs to have right now?

[00:05:00.90] spk_0:
And there is a lot of introspection involved in the I guess the overall work that you’re describing and we’ll go into some detail about, about. But uh you, you, you need to be reflective,

[00:05:58.28] spk_3:
introspective, right? Which often is something that a lot of leaders don’t. There’s not a lot of, there’s so much need in, in organizations that there’s not often a lot of time given for professional development or leadership growth. And so people don’t think of the time as, as doing reflection as legit leadership work. They feel like um when we’re in early in careers, we’re, or even in school, we get graded on what we accomplish, we take tests, we do tasks, we complete tasks and that becomes how we are promoted as we move into management and leadership. It’s taking that time to reflect uh is so incredibly important, but we haven’t seen it modeled that much. Um So there is, you’re right. Absolutely right. There’s a lot of introspection, but there’s also, that’s what leaders do. They no longer, they provide, they, they no longer are just making sure things get done. But they’re also looking forward to see where should we be going? Where, where should we skating to where the puck is? I guess even though I’m not a sports guy, I grew up in Maine, so there’s a lot of hockey there.

[00:06:12.61] spk_0:
Uh Thank you. Yeah. Any, any sports analogy will be largely lost on me, sports

[00:06:18.01] spk_3:
ball. So I, I’m

[00:06:26.47] spk_0:
not familiar with basketball. So I wouldn’t know that skating in the park uh uh metaphor now. And I want to reassure folks that this is not only material for current leaders but future emerging leaders.

[00:07:22.91] spk_3:
Absolutely. When part of what um what we, when we’re going through our leaders journey, if we can identify the earlier, we can identify what makes us different, what makes us unique. Where are our limits? Where, where are we really good? Um Where do, where can we excel? It can help us position our leadership roles so that we’re not being squeezed into somebody else’s box, uh as much as possible, the organizations are clear are artificial. They’re, they’re not um they’re not perfect. So we’re always gonna have to do things that we don’t enjoy or we don’t like, but we can definitely, there are things we can do in our environment and in our, our schedules and the people that are around us that can help us or can really hinder us. So the earlier we know, even as, as people are going through their own personal growth journey, uh the more that they can identify these, these uniqueness is uh that they, that they bring to the table, the better thinking somebody was asking in a previous podcast, can’t you throw these conversations? Can’t you throw some of the, you know, if you’re being interviewed for something, can’t you just answer the questions the way that you think they want them to be answered and you could, but you may get the job that you don’t want.

[00:07:50.98] spk_0:
Right. That may not be in your, your, your best self interest, your own self interest. Um, you know, I can see how, uh, you would, you, you’d be soothing as a coach, just your voice. I have that. I have that in New York. I grew up in New Jersey, but close enough to New York City, Stone’s throw. I got that, uh, east coast. But you have a, I mean, you’re northern. You said you grew up in Maine now. You’re in South Carolina. You have a, you have a soothing way about your

[00:08:11.83] spk_3:
voice. Well, thank you, Mark after dark was gonna be my, uh, my DJ handle Mark

[00:08:19.61] spk_0:
after dark. You and Alison Steele the Night

[00:08:21.44] spk_3:
Bird, then it turns out there was already a mark after dark. So I’d have to spell dark with AC. Ok. So we do it. Here

[00:08:27.68] spk_0:
we go. All right. Claim it. Yeah, you just, your voice has a, uh, a softening calming quality

[00:09:00.51] spk_3:
to it. I’ve been told that I’ve had some people come to me and want, um, they kind of want me to be their boss, uh, some business owners and some nonprofit executives or, well, I want a coach that’s gonna tell me exactly what to do and make it, you know, make it hurt to not do it and that’s not who I am. I’m sure there are those coaches out there that are drill sergeants but um I believe most leaders are really hard pressed and doing the best they can. And so I like to be able to encourage them and, and kind of blow on the coals that are the fire that’s almost going out and rekindle their, their passion to do it themselves. Coaching with compassion. Nice. Wow dot com. I’ll get that coaching

[00:09:31.50] spk_0:
with compassion, the compassionate coach, the bow tie guy and the compassionate coach. Um I wanna dive into something that uh very interesting to me but you have it buried, it’s buried on page 98. Ok. It’s the Pittman family homework that you used to do. Tell me about that you uh you, you covered in just a couple of sentences. I to me it was a little bit of a gloss over because I’m very interested in what got you to where you are and what informs your coaching and, and I got to believe that the Pittman Family homework is, is integral

[00:11:11.48] spk_3:
in, in here. Absolutely. As I look at my bookshelf, they all, many of the books are things that I, I grew up reading. So in my family, we had uh school work because we were students at school. But my sister and I also had uh homework for being pitman’s. So we were had to read positive mental attitude books and to listen to motivational speakers. Um and we had to go to events, seminars, rallies, the sort of things where people were talking about goal setting and, and uh living your dream and, and all, um, my parents were just amazed that they hadn’t been taught this. They were learning it with us and they were shocked that they’ve never been taught goal setting or dreaming or leadership or people skills and they didn’t want us to, to be inflicted with missing that before we left the house. So, um, I didn’t know other people might, I thought everybody had homework because they’re in their family. But I was started to read is I, I had been reading Dale Carnegie how to win friends and influence people. Uh, Frank Beers’s how I raised myself from failure to success in selling Charlie tremendous Jones. Life is tremendous. Listening to Zig Zigler Florence Let Tour, uh, Les Brown growing up that part of the part of the way, one of our kind of traditions too was having a motivational speaker on while we were in the shower. So we would always have a stack of tapes next to the, next to a, uh, a kind of boom box. And, uh, we would just put them on while we’re doing our thing. And then, you know, the person’s done when the tape goes off.

[00:11:18.65] spk_0:
That’s when you know your shower is done. Wow. So, yeah, I mean, this was the days before, uh, waterproof, uh, uh, phones and, and I ipods.

[00:11:45.86] spk_3:
So my wife knew that she said, she said she knew she was when we were dating, she knew she was dating an entrepreneur because I had a whole bunch of tapes. She had to clear off for the passenger seat of the car. I was just so used to listening to different tape series and uh you know, Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, poor dad. And yeah, all sorts of different, always learning. Trying to, always

[00:11:47.65] spk_0:
after Kawa, what did you say,

[00:12:33.18] spk_3:
Kyi? Uh Robert Kiyosaki wrote a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad in a series after that poor dad. Yeah, just different ways. People keep different uh mindsets, people have about money and um security and, and it’s really helpful and going into fundraising was really helpful to have this kind of being able to speak the language of your donors is one of the most important things um in fundraising and having been exposed to this literature that the other leaders were being exposed to, made it a lot easier to, to talk to them. In fact, my first talks in um first professional talks were translating marketing things in sales for fundraisers cause sales was the s word 25 years ago. And um so I would take like Seth Seth Godin’s idea, virus information, marketing and make it. So I’d fully attribute it, but I’d make it so that it was understandable to how this could work in a non profit.

[00:13:28.39] spk_2:
It’s time for a break. Are you looking to maximize your fundraising efforts and impact this giving season? Donor box’s online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals from customizable donation forms too far reaching easy share, crowdfunding and peer to peer options. Plus seamless in-person giving with donor box, live kiosk. Donor box makes giving simple and fast for your donors and moves the needle on your mission, visit donor box dot org and let donor box help you help others. Now back to the surprising gift of doubt.

[00:13:47.56] spk_0:
So this Pittman family homework, which obviously, as you’re describing, you know, evolved through the, through the decades, you’re continually, continually learning to even today, you say that in the book a couple of places. Um But this was like elementary school. You were, I mean, they were, they were probably considered this indoctrination.

[00:14:34.22] spk_3:
Oh Absolutely. Yeah. Looking back on it, it totally was. And when Charlie, totally, well, my uh my Charlie tremendous Jones became a mentor of mine, which he’d been a hero of my universe cause I, I love his book. Um and he said, when I was looking with our kids, he said, oh, I would never do it that way with, as your parents said, I would teach, have them do stories, I’d have them. Uh have your kids read biographies and be inspired by, by stories as opposed to reading the how to literature. But um I probably because of my upbringing, I love, I love nonfiction. I love reading a good how to book on, on leadership or in goal setting or vision casting storytelling. Yeah. Credit to credit the

[00:14:35.26] spk_0:
pitman parents. Well,

[00:15:05.88] spk_3:
one time Sandy Reese was in interviewing me and she, uh, years ago and she came up with a, she cataloged all the books that I referenced in the talk. Uh, and my, just in a conversationally because I still read 50 to 75 books a year. Um, to, and, and I had to set a goal years ago to read nonfiction because that’ll make me a better storyteller. But I had to set it as a goal. Now. I can fully enjoy reading nonfiction. I mean, reading fiction. Sorry, reading, sorry. Yeah, reading the fiction books. Um, that are enjoyable. I always thought I was cheating but now it’s a goal. So I’m ok. I said a certain number of goals for fiction books I want to read in a year and 50 to 70

[00:15:14.91] spk_0:
five a year. Do you still

[00:15:34.33] spk_3:
read? Yeah. I, I’m cranking through books this year too. I don’t know why. But I love, well, part of it is, there’s just, I want to keep fresh when I’m writing a book. I try to not to not read in the genre that I’m writing it. So I didn’t read a lot of leadership books. So I was doing surprising gift of doubt because I didn’t want to, um, mistakenly, like I take, take over somebody else’s thought that should be attributed to them because I really do think crediting the source is really important. Um which this book even get more, more to the point. The editors were even more insistent that I, I double and triple checked my, my references, which I thought was wonderful. Yes, there’s a bunch of end notes. Yeah, I haven’t been pushed this hard in a while. So I’m really, really pleased with the team that helped me with this one,

[00:16:05.77] spk_0:
something you say early on is that the motivation is within you expand on that for us.

[00:16:11.89] spk_3:
Well, the um part the, I don’t remember exactly. I know that was part of the chapter. Sorry, you have to flip through the pages, you know, you write a book and then it’s a quiz

[00:16:19.84] spk_0:
on page 16 or something, but you talk about the motivation, the motivation for leadership and, and good and just good intentions is is within you.

[00:17:31.76] spk_3:
Yeah, I think part of what we um we spent so much of our life and another part of the book, I do this map of the leader’s journey where it’s a four quadrant section uh where we start off on the confidence scale, which is the vertical scale and we go down to unsure, we’re gonna talk about the leader’s journey. OK. Well, that’s part of it is that we are so used to looking externally for our cues that the, we forget to look internally and find out what, what are, what, what do we value? What are we passionate about what are two things we forget, we forget to, to actually give them air. And often we don’t really permit ourselves to, to define what we value or what we hold on to because we’re looking for others in uh for cues, either the culture or systems. But the other thing that we somehow don’t do is we don’t credit them as being unique traits. We think everybody must be like us. Uh, you and I both wear glasses and it’s almost like we forget that we’re wearing glasses at times. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of trying to find your glasses and they’re right there on your face. They’re not even on your head, on your face. You, um, I get fingerprints all over my glasses when I do that. But we often, the stuff that’s within us is often the stuff that makes us unique, makes us, um, a, a valued part of the team and we just kind of write it off as a weird quirk of our own. Not something that’s worth giving attention to.

[00:17:54.92] spk_0:
It’s, it’s some of it’s among those natural strengths you talk about natural strengths versus learned skills.

[00:18:02.28] spk_3:
Well, yeah, some of our

[00:18:03.78] spk_0:
natural strengths. You, you’re right. We, I guess we, we, uh, we minimize them thinking everybody, everybody’s that smart or everybody

[00:19:48.77] spk_3:
thinks about that or if I can do it quickly, then it must not be work. Um, I remember being in a early job. I, I loved, I was fundraising for prep school and I loved it. I just loved the traveling. I loved the, you know, when I was home at the boarding school, being at the table with the 10 other students, the 10 students and my, my wife and I were the faculty parents. And um I love the kind of matching school’s mission with donors values and trying to see if there was a fit and being ok if there wasn’t but being excited if there were that all excited me, but I didn’t think I could enjoy work that much. So I was talking with a, with a faculty colleague and I tried to make it sound really hard, you know, because there’s a lot of stuff that is hard. The travel isn’t that in inspiring, there’s delays and all. So I tried to really accentuate the bad stuff and he looked over at me and he said, you love your work, don’t you? And I felt so guilty because I totally did. And then I found out he didn’t, he would never want to do what I was doing because every day was different. Every day I had to come up on the spot with different answers. And um and I didn’t know what I had no idea who’s gonna call what I was gonna, who I was gonna see what opportunities are gonna arise. He liked being in his classroom and knowing this is the curriculum and this is where I can adjust if we go too long on one area or if we go too fast on another. He, he loved that stability. Uh, and that’s where I started realizing that the stuff that I thought was just kind of everybody would want to do this. And I, you know, I kind of got lucky is, no, not everybody wants to do this and any fundraisers listening to this knows that because we’re usually the oddballs out the non profit. We’re the ones that are outward focused in ways that others aren’t. Why don’t we talk about

[00:19:49.68] spk_0:
the, the four quadrants of the leader’s journey. Um You have some self assessments that folks are just gonna have to buy the book to do. We’re not going to be able to talk through the details of self assessments, but, but the leader’s journey through the four through the four quadrants, I think that’s valuable and especially moving from quadrant 2 to 3.

[00:22:23.96] spk_3:
Sure. So the uh what I loved about creating part of, I’ve been trying for 18 years to explain what I do with, with as a coach. And this was the first time when I created this four quadrant methodology. It was the first time it, people repeated it back to me and they understood it. And my wife looked at it and said, well, this is me as learning, this isn’t just leadership, but the axes again are confidence uh vertically and then inputs horizontally quadrant one is where you’re high confidence and you’re looking externally. So we most leaders only get half the map. We don’t get the whole map, we only get the external half. So we, we start in a quadrant where we’ve seen other people lead and so we start copying them, somebody gives us the ability to run a project or to, to lead a team, um some sort of leadership and either we’re super excited because we’ve known we’re a leader and finally somebody else sees it or we’re scared, but we have the confidence from the other people that they’re gonna do it. That’s, and that’s where we just try to do what they’ve done. Um Some of the people that I listened to growing up, some of the motivational speakers would say if, if you’re leading a team and you turn around and there’s no one behind you, you’re just out for a walk and that’s when your confidence starts going down, which I dipping into the quadrant two, which is the experiment quadrant where you start trying to figure out, OK, what worked for tony didn’t work for me like tony has his own way of doing things and it’s not clearly not working for me. When I say jump, people don’t say how high, what do I need, where are the deficiencies and how do I fix them? And that’s where you start taking courses. You start getting cer certifications, reading books going to seminars, going to conferences, listening to podcasts. So it’s people skills or um closing uh on sales or fundraising. Um Anything. And me, most leaders kind of stay in quadrant too lurching from success to success. They have so much success that the people around them feel like. Oh yeah, this is they’re gonna pull the rabbit out of the hat again. We know that whatever she does, she’s an amazing leader. Um but she, the leader herself is, is wondering, is seeing all the deficits, all the deficiencies, all the stuff that they don’t have measured up. And that’s where the doubt builds up inside them to think. Well, maybe I’m not the right person. If they have the opportunity, sometimes it’s just through strain and stress, sometimes it’s through coaching to see that there’s a whole map. And the other half of the map is all the internal cues. So the external cues are great because it tells us how we learn. And there are good systems that we can learn from. But when we move

[00:23:10.83] spk_0:
before you, I want to just make sure folks are clear about what the, what the horizontal and these are labeled. So the, so the the the vertical is confident and unsure. So confidence is on top, unsure at the bottom and then the horizontal is external and internal. So when you’re in quadrant, when you’re in quadrant one, you’re uh observing and you’re, you’re confident and that’s the confident external quadrant, quadrant two, that’s the unsure external

[00:23:14.55] spk_3:
and you’re trying to fix this wrong.

[00:23:15.92] spk_0:
That’s what we’re talking about right now. I just wanna make sure

[00:23:35.59] spk_3:
everybody’s clear and that’s the cusp. So I find the magic happens at the, when people are moved from quadrant two to quadrant three, which is the, they’re still in the unsure half of the map, but you’re moving internally to figure out. So let me illustrate like this. Have you heard getting things done by David Allen? Uh No, I haven’t. Ok. Well, it’s 13,000 listeners. They’ve heard of it.

[00:23:40.71] spk_0:
The audience is better read than the host.

[00:24:57.94] spk_3:
So the uh if you, if you read a book, like getting things done is all in time management and you only implement 10% of it in quadrant two, you’re gonna think. Wow, I failed at another thing. I can only get 10% of this. The book says it changed people’s lives. It’s not changing my lives. I just write lists. That’s all I get out of this. Quarter three is where you shift the question to. Huh? I wonder why either. I wonder why that didn’t work for me. What is it, uh What is it about the book or it’s shifting the focus to? Wow, I got 10% that 10% is really helpful. This writing list things with the next action item really actually is, is really helpful. And as one of my mentors said, years ago, eat the chicken, spit out the bones. All right, the chicken for me in getting things done is writing lists. I don’t have to do the whole reviews and the files cabinets and all this other stuff that has helped other people. It’s not gonna help me. And as you start building in quadrant three were looking at your hard wiring, looking at your stories. You tell yourself, looking at your goal, setting your mission, your vision, your values, your personal style, it starts building up your confidence again because we in quadrant two, you’re just seeing all your, what you lack in that. You’re afraid somebody’s gonna figure out that you’re really just faking it. In quadrant three, you start seeing why some of the things work the way they do for you. Um Why your organization doesn’t necessarily do whatever all the other organizations are doing, but you don’t have it just a, it’s not just a whim or a feeling, it’s, you start being able to have the language to be able to express what, why you do what you do. And that builds your confidence back up to Quad four, which is a focused leader. Quadrant. OK?

[00:25:26.40] spk_0:
Before you go to four. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people get stuck in in the second quadrant and the transition from 2 to 3, you find a lot of people in your practice and generalize beyond that stuck in that second quadrant, what we working with, working with external systems that are not not being rewarded

[00:25:35.40] spk_3:
or not looking for the next guru looking for the next framework.

[00:25:38.37] spk_0:
Why is it, why is, why are so many people stuck into looking for this external help? That’s it’s routinely not not fulfilling for them.

[00:26:38.23] spk_3:
I think part of it is because we are, we were raised that way. We look for parents for cues, we look for coaches, for cues, we look for, we look to externally to teachers uh to grade our work uh bosses to give us um you know, performance reviews. And I think we’re taught probably at least in the cultures that I work in to not really trust ourselves to not trust the inner voice, the nudges that we’re getting because those are soft. We should look for hard data, we should look for benchmarking, we should, we should see what others are doing. Um There, there are good things with looking at others, but it’s just not the complete picture. I think it really needs, it’s like an introvert that is trying to copy an extrovert boss. So the extrovert uh mentor walks around the office, talks to people gets energized by doing that has a high level of energy with the personal relationships. Um an introvert boss, this introvert that’s trying to be, you know, an emerging leader maybe will get drained from that. It’s not that they can’t be social and be engaging, but it’s that it’s not energizing for them. So they’ll need to take a lot of time to recharge their batteries but they won’t necessarily give them the, if they don’t look internally to realize. 00, I wire differently. They’ll try to keep forcing themselves into somebody else’s mold. Um, you know, the, the, the proverbial square peg in a round hole.

[00:27:01.64] spk_0:
Ok. Somebody else’s mold being based on the way we grew up, like you’re

[00:27:05.48] spk_3:
saying, the external. Yeah,

[00:27:06.71] spk_0:
teachers, parents, bosses you’re trying to fit into, we’re accustomed to trying to fit their molds

[00:27:40.92] spk_3:
and think about it nonprofits too. Yeah. Boards, every board member seems to come in with their own kind of mold for how a nonprofit should work or how a leader should work or how something should get done. And what is incumbent on us as, as nonprofits to help with the boards is to on board them, to train them to. This is how our, our nonprofit works. These are our values as a nonprofit. This is how we do things. This is the communication styles we’ll have, we will not go back behind each other’s back and gossip. That is not how we operate here. Um But that often that on boarding and, and board uh board orientation of often doesn’t happen. So you’re stuck with a bunch of people that have these external moles that they want to try to force the leaders and the staff and the nonprofit into that aren’t necessarily helpful or in line with what the nonprofits there for

[00:27:58.12] spk_0:
or even worse than not helpful.

[00:28:00.05] spk_3:
Yeah. Thank you.

[00:28:05.47] spk_0:
Detrimental, hazardous, toxic, you know. So then moving from 2 to 3, I know you, I know you, you already did this but because you were ready to go from 3 to 4, but I

[00:28:11.95] spk_3:
go for it. This is great. You’re suffering a lackluster

[00:28:27.57] spk_0:
host. So I, I’m, I’m, I’m just processing it. You’ve been thinking about this for decades, but I’m still, I’m still processing. So the movie from 2 to 3, I I kind of saw that as, as a synthesis of all these different systems that you don’t call it synthesis.

[00:28:32.18] spk_3:
I don’t, that’s me

[00:28:56.84] spk_0:
doing all your work. You’ve been thinking about it for decades, you call it analyze, I call it synthesis. I like it. You, you, you’re free to call it analyze. Of course, I, I thought of it as a synthesis of all the things that you attempted in, in these external systems, the books, the webinars, the, the, the week long leadership conferences, whatever they were that were only partially or maybe not at all helping you, you, but you extract out what does, what does have values you and, and you make sense of it and you emerge in a better place. And that’s to me that was the synthesis of I

[00:29:51.51] spk_3:
like that. And the next quadrant and you also learn some of the um some of the patterns that you fall, fall into. You start reflecting enough to say, oh, wait, I’m doing that again. Does that mean I’m stressed or? Um, there’s one of the assessments of he’s ability battery, um, which tests you on how you actually perform on things. It’s not, how do you feel about, would you rather read a book or go to a movie? It’s not questions like that, but it’s do this task under time pressure and it shows what comes quickly to you. One of the things that came out for me early in my career was rhythm memory, which is a kinesthetic type of learning. Um It’s a and it’s also tied to a desire to move around. So I’ve always looked for jobs that involve moving around because I knew that that would be more life giving and energizing for me. What that meant was that I never work at the, at the

[00:29:53.51] spk_0:
prep school.

[00:30:59.38] spk_3:
Right. Absolutely. Right. But that also changed my career trajectory because I realized many of the major gift fundraisers that I’d seen that went into management became very frustrated because they had to manage other people that were doing the work and they actually wanted to do the work. So I, I took some ownership of my own career path and moved into positions that um allowed me to still have that kind of external, I mean, extrovert um you know, movement. So that kind of synthesis is also the internal synthesis of this is my way of operating in the world and I want to try to put myself as much as possible in ways that work with that. Um Not that I don’t wanna grow, not that I don’t wanna be stretched or, or challenged, but I also don’t wanna put myself in a position where I’m just gonna languish. Although that’s sometimes what the right career path should be when the head hunters call, they, they want to see, you know, a paper, career path of associate to the manager, to director to senior VP or something, which may not be the way that is realistic for, for people talking from experience.

[00:31:50.54] spk_2:
It’s time for a break. Kela increase donations and foster collaborative teamwork with Kela. The fundraisers, Crm maximize your team’s productivity and spend more time building strong connections with donors through features that were built specifically for fundraisers. A fundraiser. CRM goes beyond a data management platform. It’s designed with the unique needs of fundraisers in mind and aims to unify fundraising, communications and donor management tools into one single source of truth visit. Kila dot co to sign up for a coming group demo and explore how to exceed your fundraising goals. Like never before. It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:31:53.76] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate.

[00:34:27.70] spk_1:
The downside of doing planned giving fundraising is that you working with older donors. Most most typically folks in their eighties nineties and these folks often die while you’re working with them. And that happened. I had the oldest donor that I’ve ever worked with. Her name is Marian. Uh, I met her when she was just 96. She was young. Um, and she just died a few weeks ago, right on her 1/100 birthday. The actual birthday where she turned 100. That’s the day that she died. Of course, you know, that is sad. Uh, but there’s a lesson that I’m taking away from my four years with Marion. Lots of times when I would ask her how she’s doing, she would say I’m content, I’m content. And I, I always thought about that, not just now since she’s died, but that contentment was just what she was looking for and was very content with, was very satisfied with, you know, she had her opera recordings on records, of course, with her phonograph. Uh she had her daily newspaper, she had WQXR, the public radio, classical music station. Uh She had her memories, she had her lovely one bedroom apartment with a view of the Hudson River and always well kept, I mean neat, very neatly kept. She was very, very capable of taking care of herself. So contentment, you know, she had these things and she was just content. And II, I feel like that’s something that I am striving for contentment, contentment. So, so uh Marian, I, I salute you, I admire your contentment and, and I thank you for passing on something very, very valuable for me that is Tony’s take two Kate

[00:34:29.83] spk_2:
she seems like a wonderful woman. And that story is very touching and the words that you said were very touching. And so she lives on in your memories, which is

[00:34:38.59] spk_1:
wonderful. She absolutely does. And, and the idea of striving to be content will always stay with me from her.

[00:34:51.82] spk_2:
We’ve got Buku, but loads more time. Let’s go back to the surprising gift of doubt

[00:35:15.75] spk_0:
you at least would, would be, uh would look good on paper and do look good on paper. I, I would, I would never be, I, I can’t be an employee. I, I would, I would fail the, I would, I would fail the screening interview with the, with the, with the headhunter, uh, assistant assistant. I, I wouldn’t even get to the associate level.

[00:35:18.81] spk_3:
I remember the managing director. I don’t know how I get the head hunter.

[00:35:22.43] spk_0:
I’d be 20 minutes late just because I, I felt like why should I be on time for you? And then if I ever made it to the, if I ever made it to the interview, which I never would. But if I met, if I met a principal in the organization, I’d be showing, I’d show up late. I’d be in sneakers. No, I just, I

[00:35:38.50] spk_3:
do everything

[00:35:43.91] spk_0:
I could because I know I’d be, I would be a shitty employee. I just don’t fit them up. So I, I would, I’d be doing them a favor by wasting their time.

[00:35:50.62] spk_3:
That’s awesome.

[00:35:52.31] spk_0:
So move us into the fourth for those uh for those who are, are more suited to uh work in an organization, you’re moving to a level of you mentioned at one point, grace you’re leading with grace and finesse, I think you say

[00:37:37.78] spk_3:
right? And, and there’s a the, it’s because you’ve got the kind of confidence and the peace of mind of knowing why you’re doing things differently. So instead of just thinking about, I must be so bad because I can’t get energized. I don’t like going to all those social events night after night. Um You start realizing why, what fills you up and what fills your organization, your team, your, whatever your organization is. Uh And that grows your confidence to that fourth quadrant which I, I called focus. Um But I don’t want to make it sound like it’s Nirvana. Uh It’s not all blissful because we’re still dealing with human beings and we’re one ourselves. Leadership is still a challenge. And yeah, but you now have a much, you have the full map you can look at and look at. Do I need to find somebody to copy? Do I need to learn skills from people? Do I need to uh go to a class or get a podcast or read a book or do I need to actually figure out what, what the synthesizing do I need to analyze what I’ve consumed already? Or our organizations consumed to figure out why are we doing it differently. Um, one of the things I also want to be clear on is that the data can be helpful. So, I don’t want to discredit external stuff with fundraising, in particular, uh, when fundraising letters, we know if they’re chat and they use you, they get better response than if they’re, uh, boring things. Essays that would get a, uh, high school, a grade a, from a high school teacher. Um, and we know that we know that and there are some nonprofits that might be tempted to say, ah, we don’t, we want to be more business like, um, and so it’s not just throwing out all the data that’s out there, but uh synthesizing it, I’m really stuck on that word. Thank you for that tony. Oh,

[00:38:14.13] spk_0:
the third quadrant synthesis. Yeah, that’s the way I, I’m one reader, just one reader that, that’s the way I conceived of it. Um All right. So, all right. So we got these quadrants that sort of progression. The four quadrants sounds like something out of the Matrix. But, um I didn’t watch much of that series, so I can’t go beyond that. Uh That. So let’s leave it there. That analogy. Um You talk about ST and you mentioned early earlier storytelling and you talk a good bit about different stories, stories that we tell ourselves, stories about the organization, talk, talk some about uh the stories we tell

[00:39:47.79] spk_3:
ourselves. That’s one of the things that I, I think a lot of us don’t reflect on is the kind of the self talk that’s going on in our head all the time. Um, the two that I talk about in that are the, I call them stock stories. They’re either the ones that you tell people when you’re meeting them for the first time. So we often have kind of go to stories where it helps position, helps people position us in their mind. Um, so maybe some people like Laline, some people like, uh, you know what their education history is or their career history, there are certain things we go to as we start paying attention to those, we can start seeing if they really reflect what we’re trying to do. Often we get stuck in these from a different time in our life and we just kind of tell the same stories because we think we’re gonna get the same response. The one that the other type of stock story that that happens is, um, with Jessica Sharp here in Greenville is really cat, has her clients just catalog the self talk going through and just for a day or a couple of days listing all the different things that enter your head and that takes some discipline, especially to do it non judgmentally. But things like, ah, I always fail, I always mess that up, but I can’t, I’m never good at that. Um, writing them down on a piece of paper. And then after your time holding that paper up and just asking, well, reviewing them and then she asks her clients to say, would you talk to a friend like this? And oftentimes our thoughts are so toxic, we’re, we’re actually filling, we’re polluting our heads because we’re so hard on ourselves. We’re saying to

[00:39:55.86] spk_0:
ourselves that we wouldn’t even say to others, right

[00:40:11.52] spk_3:
ourselves with them. Right. Exactly. So her, her invitation is, why don’t you become a better friend to yourself? Um, which I, I think it’s really, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this today but it’s very hard sometimes when, when you’re used to being hard on yourself to loosen up, lighten up because it feels like you might just go. I, I feel like I might just go off the rails if I’m too kind to myself, I need to be really hard, you know, and, and

[00:40:23.52] spk_0:
be a discipline like you need to be a little stricter. Otherwise I’m gonna get

[00:40:28.08] spk_3:
reckless. Right.

[00:40:29.74] spk_0:
You know, if I, if I, if I loosen up and, you know, something, something, something careless, I’ll do something careless or, you know, something

[00:40:36.46] spk_3:
along those lines, I’m self employed. But I often joke that my boss is kind of a jerk.

[00:40:42.45] spk_0:
Well, I am too, but I, I don’t have a good joke like that. My wife, the

[00:40:46.32] spk_3:
lackluster host. There you go. My wife, my wife reminds me that I am the boss so I can, you know, you listen,

[00:41:40.64] spk_0:
as a coach, you listen to a lot of, a lot of people who are stuck in quadrant two, beating themselves up and whatever they are and they might even be in, they might even be in the gray and finesse quadrant quadrant four, but they’re still, they’re still hard on themselves or the, or the work is hard on them. How, how does it, how do you not generalize all coaches? How do you as a coach keep, uh stay positive, like go from one coaching session to the next to the next to the next in a day or even if there’s a couple of days, I mean, how do you continue to relate as a positive human being when you’re hearing tough story after tough story after, you know, maybe insurmountable challenge. Uh

[00:43:51.53] spk_3:
I find people incredibly fa that’s a great question. I find people incredibly fascinating and um I, I’m a glass is always full kind of guy, not half full or half empty, it’s always full of water or air. So, um there’s a strong, strong sense of optimism that II I bring to the table and resiliency, I guess because um even people that are going through hard things, it’s one of one of the postcards I carry in my bag when I, when I used to travel, hopefully I’ll start again. Uh So just when the caterpillar thought his life was over, he became a beautiful butterfly. Um And so there’s that sense of even the ends are often beginnings for people. Um, uh, there’s definitely times where I have to do some of my, some of my own stuff like, um, center, you know, some meditation practices and other things just to exercise to keep the headset. But, um, I’ve seen so many people can transform themselves into people that they’ve wanted to be but they, they weren’t really sure they could be. That, that gives me the hope as I keep going from call to call and sometimes it does seem like the calls gang up one toxicity to another toxicity. Um I mean, you need your own, you need self care. Yeah. And I also one of the things the privilege of being a coach is that you get to not be in the hiring and firing space with these people. So you get to be with them and it’s, it’s almost, I’ve heard this, I haven’t experienced this, but I’ve heard in the Midwest, they, they used to have blizzards where you couldn’t back in the day when you needed to walk to the barn and milk the cows that you could get lost on the way back to the house because the blizzard was so, so um so, you know, covering or severe, maybe. Ok, great. So you needed a rope between the two buildings. And sometimes I feel like as a coach, I’m the one that’s either the rope or I’m able to connect between calls saying hey, but remember just three calls ago, you, you already talked about that and this is what you were gonna do. Oh, that’s right. I forget, I forgot I did that. That’s super. Ok. And just kind of get pointing the way, pointing some of the rocks uh and the path for people to take. And that’s, that’s incredibly uh life giving for sure.

[00:43:54.03] spk_0:
Blinding, blinding. The blizzard was blinding. Thank you. That’s what we wanted. We’re both, we’re both 50 plus so blind. That’s what you want. Um Yeah, the rope. I said, you’re uh you’re the, you’re the the rope back. That’s I like that quite a metaphor. Good one. And so

[00:45:14.04] spk_3:
because yeah, the demands of life can really be blinding to this. Uh people we are, they’re so the center for creative leadership tried to figure out what the one thing was for business leaders. That would be the most stressful. And it turns out there were four and they were all as one as somebody else pointed out to me. They’re all people, peers, colleagues, customers and supervisors or bosses. And in the non profit, it’s often boards, donors, uh staff and, and um and the and the clients, those are all pulling people apart. So it’s really easy to lose our way and to have somebody that’s, that’s sole job is there to be there to help you be better. Um That I became a coach because in my experience, I grew more through talking to coaches, uh than I did. Consultants are great. They have a, they have a blueprint that they were hired them to, to put on to the organization. But talking to a coach that didn’t even know my work helped me to grow as an individual. And I could figure out how to do be a better individual in my job when I understood a little bit more about myself. And

[00:45:14.99] spk_0:
you also have the voice

[00:45:16.30] spk_3:
so well. There we go because it is mostly by phone, so compassionate voice.

[00:45:35.87] spk_0:
You were destined some more, a little more about stories. Maybe you digress a little bit, but uh you talk about the future eulogy. This is so this is other stories that other people would say would tell about you. How do you, you know, influence your future history and talk about the future eulogy and that kind of storytelling?

[00:47:38.86] spk_3:
Sure. Well, and stories because our phones may have an Android or I OS operating system. Some people may sell blackberry. I don’t know. But our human as human beings, it’s uh story is our operating system and one of the ways we can program that is by figuring out what’s the story we want to be living uh for me and for many people, because if you google your eulogy, you’ll find this as a coaching practice that’s been well used is to think about at your funeral. What will people say about you as what will your closest people, maybe your family, uh community members, colleagues, what are they gonna say? Um And some of us that’s a little bit too hypothetical. So it’s the other way to look at it is if you were to die today, what would they say about you today? And writing it down, even in bullet points doesn’t have to be complete sentences can bring some clarity to how they perceive you or how you think you’re being perceived versus how you want to be had one leader. That was we before the pandemic had uh quarter, three leadership days where we do, people would fly into Greenville and we’d hold the whole day and we’d kind of work together as a group through some of these exercises. And when, um the kind of the story that she wanted for her apartment and she realized profi that her staff would never know that she wanted it to be a joyful place because she was so focused on policies and procedures and tightening, you know, um, routines that had been really lax and not non-existent. Um But she said now I have an opportunity to, to live into this story that I’ve written and it was sort of like for her, it was a history of the future. It wasn’t a eulogy, but thinking about that kind of final beginning with the end in mind, uh Franklin Covey’s uh habit too can be very helpful for us. Uh My example was when I did this in my twenties, I realized I want my kids to know I love them. But going away to work didn’t necessarily communicate that love. So it allowed me to be, I wasn’t gonna stop going away to work cause that providing for my family was something that was pretty important to me. But um I was able to then figure out what are other ways that we can, I can communicate that love so that they know that I love them. Um, despite my going away,

[00:47:59.35] spk_0:
you just buy them things when you go away.

[00:48:01.41] spk_3:
That could definitely be part of it. Yeah, until my wife said palpable items. No more stuffed animals. I used to get one in every place I was going and she’s like that’s enough. They have enough stuffed animals.

[00:48:13.41] spk_0:
I would just, I just reduce it to the tangible goods. Just, just send, just send presents. We know love is equivalent to tangible tangible items. The more

[00:48:22.41] spk_3:
and the shot glasses in the airport stores were a little bit confusing to kids. Like what, why is this a doll cop? What is this

[00:48:30.39] spk_0:
shot glasses? The I I heart New York shot glasses. Great. Just send things, sending things that’s equivalent to love if you’re gonna be away re replace yourself with items with

[00:48:40.22] spk_3:
items. I would,

[00:48:43.68] spk_0:
um, I, so that I thought that was very interesting. The future eulogy. Uh,

[00:48:48.44] spk_3:
have you ever done an exercise like that? No,

[00:48:52.97] spk_0:
no, I haven’t. Or, or what even, even making it simpler, what, what folks would say about you now?

[00:49:00.56] spk_3:
Yeah, it’s, it’s very clarifying and a little chilling for some people.

[00:49:52.46] spk_0:
Let’s talk a little bit. See, uh So just the listeners know, see, we’re bouncing around on different things that, that I think are interesting because, you know, we can’t really do the self assessments that are, that are part of Mark’s book. You just gotta, you gotta get the damn book, surprising gift of doubt. Mark a pitman, you got to get the book to do the self assessments to move yourself from the quadrant two. You may be stuck in or to yourself from whatever quadrant you’re in to advance your, your, your current leadership effectiveness or your future leadership. We’re all potentially future leaders, even those of us who don’t work in an organization, we’re still leading, I lead, I lead folks, I, I just, they’re not on my payroll but an organization payroll that I, that I am leading, but I’m leading them. So leadership still applies. Even if you’re an entrepreneur, Solone, however you want to call yourself.

[00:49:58.77] spk_3:
Well, I’m really glad you said that because I think a lot of people think leaders uh is, is a title which that is a form of leadership, like you’re saying, it’s influencing others and as human beings, we’re always influencing other people and that is a form of leadership. And so I try to take the broadest view a absolutely.

[00:51:05.50] spk_0:
And I find it, you know. All right, I’m doing, my synesthesia is kicked in. I just got to chill because I’m thinking about times when I’ve been able to influence someone, I’m not gonna, I can divulge any details but influence someone to a way of thinking that I’m, that I’m, that I saw that they didn’t and I’ve moved there. I, you can move people’s thinking and it’s not, it’s not, uh, conniving or anything. It’s just, it’s moving, it’s just consensus building and I’m not saying I’m successful at it every time, you know, but, but when you, when you, when you’re successful at helping people see things in a different way, you know, whether it’s, uh, I don’t know, it’s a concept or it’s money or it’s a, it’s a path forward to, in a relationship to bring it to fundraising. Um, it’s, it’s very, very gratifying. I mean, like I said, it’s giving me a couple of instances where, uh, where it’s happened. So that’s all to me. That’s all

[00:51:14.18] spk_3:
leadership. Yes, absolutely. I firmly agree. Yes.

[00:51:19.00] spk_0:
OK. Otherwise we’re shutting you off, you know, got 46 minutes. That’s the end,

[00:51:23.54] spk_3:
that’s the end of the show.

[00:51:26.20] spk_0:
I, I figured you would, of course. Um, so, you know, we’re moving around to different things that we can help you, help, you understand, the self assessments, help you move your leadership forward. And another one that Mark talks about in the book is, is goal setting, different types of goals, very important goal setting, talk about

[00:52:21.43] spk_3:
that. Well, so one of the things that we do with goal, there’s a lot of books written on goal setting. So this is the, the third of the three major areas that I focused on. But what I did was I took about 18 years ago, 17 years ago, I took all the different goal setting things. Uh not only did I study as a kid growing up in my family, but I also was in a program in college that actually required me to get a lower grade because I was supposed to take leadership and, and learn goal setting as a extracurricular, not just as part of my course of study, but I also my master’s in organizational leadership. So I had these all sorts of formal education on goal setting as well as you just said

[00:52:24.43] spk_0:
something, a course required you to get a lower grade.

[00:52:45.61] spk_3:
Yeah, there was a, there was a scholarship at the undergrad college. I went to that required me to get, I, I had a lower not required. I shouldn’t say that that there was a lower grade expectation because there was an expectation that you were gonna be all in on leadership and student activities. And part of that was having a mentor with a staff member and having regular meetings with them, teaching you goal setting and teaching you how to do mission statements and how to create strategic plans and that sort of thing. And that was all sort of extracurricular

[00:52:59.71] spk_0:
and you got too high a grade. Is that what happened?

[00:53:01.61] spk_3:
No, no, no. Fortunately they let my high grades still stand. But, but there are other, some of my other friends who had a different scholarship had to keep a higher GPA, I didn’t have the pressure of having to keep a GPA to keep the scholarship I had. So I see.

[00:53:14.82] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:53:40.76] spk_3:
All right. So, goal setting anyway. So, so what I did was I tried to take a bunch of the parts that I didn’t realize I was doing quarter three work at the time. But I tried to take a bunch of the different parts that I liked and this, this system that I use, um I submit to it, it’s in the book and I use my clients. Uh It isn’t the end, all, be all, but it’s a good one to try. Uh The first step you do is write a list of 100 things to accomplish in the next year or in your life. Um It’s, uh and, and why 100 for me is because it forces you to get silly and it forces you to think creatively because at some point you’re just trying to fill lines. Um What most people that I’ve got done this with, they get 10 pretty quickly because it’s job related. Probably things that are going to be on the performance

[00:53:58.64] spk_0:
review 10 goals in a lifetime or even in a

[00:56:19.53] spk_3:
year. That’s not. No, but then the next 10 become really hard. And when we were doing these uh intensives here in Greenville, people would call me over to the table and say, Mark. Um Can I uh this, can I put this, this goal on my list? Uh It’s like planting a garden. I want to plant a garden. Can I put that on my list? Chuck? Of course, you can, it’s your list and that’s the point. Um It gets the personal and the professional together. And what I have found with so many leaders is that they get so fragmented in their life. They have their professional side, they have their family side, they have different sides that when they’re looking at their goals comprehensively and they’re listing out 100 forces you to do that in some way. Um It, the amount of um centering that, that brings to human beings, the energy in the room invariably goes up because people see themselves, their full cells represented there. And it’s not like you’re gonna necessarily share your board or your boss that you’re doing a garden goal, but it’s your life. So you get to set the goals for that you wanna have. Um So the first step is that is writing the 100 the second step is then the history of the future, which is you read through all of them and it will take days usually to do the 100 read through the, uh, read through them and then just project forward. What does it look like? 12 months from now? If you’ve accomplished everything on that list, even the most far out crazy ones. What are people saying about you? What awards you have? What degrees you have? What do you, how are you feeling about yourself and then let that sit. Um If you did nothing else, you’d be shocked in 12 months. How many of those things you can accomplish? I’ve tested this with groups and it’s fascinating. Uh but then you, then you can map them out. You, you go back over the list and um look for two different types of goals. Either the ones that make sense, like planting a garden that if you’ve also to fill in 100 lines, you also plant carrots, plant cabbage, plant potatoes, planting a garden will kind of scoop up a bunch of those others, other goals, the smaller goals in it. So you could use, that’s one type of magnet goal. The other ones are some that just kind of pop off this the the page or you kind of get a little kind of jolt of joy. There’s, there’s, it’s not really rational why some of those are there but paying attention to those and, and trying to call the list down to about 3 to 5 of the rational goals. And the irrational goals. Um, and then plotting those out and focusing on those. Um, some people get it done in a quarter. I usually have to take the full year for each of those goals. But

[00:56:31.61] spk_0:
on one of your books shelves behind you, you have a license plate that says go guy.

[00:57:26.65] spk_3:
And that’s because of this process to basketball again. No, it’s not. It was my, my first ever training was with the equine vet and my second training was because of his referral was with a physical therapy practice who was owned, they were owned by physicians and they wanted to prove that they needed an admin help to do the billing so they could keep doing more care of patients. So we set up, uh, we broke down their goals, uh over the course of a year, what their revenue had to be, what, how they’re gonna communicate it to the people that own the practice, all the different things. 12 months of them, uh We worked also how they can operate, operationalize their, their strengths. So the people, what did the people like doing? What didn’t they like doing? They’d never asked them, they just did the work that was in front of them. They found out one person really loves knees, somebody else loved ankles. So they started shifting the workload so they could do better at a higher quality. Um Within four months of that training, they’d hit their annual goals within the twelvemonth goals they had accomplished in four months. And so I saw this, uh, Pippy, uh, I saw her at a store and she said that’s the goal guy. That’s the guy I was telling you about pointing at me. So I got a license plate to say, go guy. I thought that was pretty cool.

[00:57:45.93] spk_0:
The equine veterinary practice, you could have been the full guy

[00:57:50.42] spk_3:
that’s

[00:57:51.95] spk_0:
ps are always the worst. Unless you think of them first.

[00:57:55.72] spk_3:
I’m trying to get in there. But, um, guy,

[00:58:09.90] spk_0:
all right. All right, Mark. Leave us with, uh, some, some, uh, Mark a pittman, surprising gift of doubt, wisdom and, uh, and, and we’ll leave it there,

[00:59:00.53] spk_3:
please. Well, thanks so much for having me on the show and it’s my pleasure. One of the things that I think is really important. Well, there’s two things I’d like to end with. One is that we’ve hinted at assessments if you’re doing assessments as part of your teamwork, um, part of your own personal growth. I love them. Don’t let them confine you. They’re not, they’re meant to help you grow and grace and understanding of other people not to slap labels on people and pigeonhole them. So I’ll just, that’s one thing that’s a big, big ax. I like to grind. But I think going forward just people leaving, you know, listening to this, um, as you work through the, whatever the days are ahead of you and you find yourself asking, you know, criticizing yourself being really hard on yourself, try to pause and just say, well, what if this is exactly the gift that I have for the sector? What if, what if this limitation is actually the strength and the, the unique bend that I give? Because I feel like when you’re feel like you’re broken, you may be but you could be on the verge of greatness.

[00:59:17.66] spk_0:
The old guy, the book is the surprising gift of doubt, use uncertainty to become the exceptional leader. You are meant to be, get the book do the assessments. Don’t let them pigeonhole you, Mark Pitman, you’ll find him and his company at Concord leadership group dot com and he’s at Mark a pitman. Thank you again. Mark real pleasure.

[00:59:42.14] spk_3:
Thank you

[00:59:51.58] spk_2:
next week and we won’t let you down if you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:59:54.63] spk_1:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com

[01:00:44.39] spk_2:
were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box dot org and by Kela grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers crm visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[01:01:10.21] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and the beach brand.

Nonprofit Radio for October 9, 2023: Performance Improvement

 

Heather BurrightPerformance Improvement

Do you want to get the best out of your teams? That means getting the best from each player. Heather Burright recommends 360 Degree Feedback and she takes you full circle. She’s CEO of Skill Masters Market. (This originally aired on August 9, 2021.)

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:00:40.71] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. And I am feeling better about 95% to normal. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer with leishmaniasis if you infected me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming?

[00:01:10.30] spk_1:
Hey, tony, this week it’s performance improvement. Do you want to get the best out of your teams? That means getting the best from each player. Heather Burright recommends 3 60 degree feedback and she takes you full circle. She’s CEO of skill masters market. This originally aired on August 9th, 2021. On Tony’s take two,

[00:01:12.64] spk_0:
one from the

[00:01:46.44] spk_1:
archive were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box dot org. And by Kela grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers crm visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. Here is performance improvement.

[00:02:13.66] spk_0:
It’s my pleasure to welcome Heather Bur Wright, she is founder and CEO of Skill Masters Market, creating dynamic people centric solutions that drive business goals. She has 15 years of experience identifying core competencies that are needed to see real results and creating the learning strategies needed to develop them. The company is at skill masters market dot com and Heather is at Heather Burright. Heather. Welcome to nonprofit radio.

[00:02:22.80] spk_2:
Hey, tony, thanks for having me. It’s a

[00:02:37.38] spk_0:
pleasure. Absolute pleasure we’re talking about, we’re talking about performance improvement and you use this tool called 360 degree feedback. So we’re gonna start with the basics. What’s an overview of 360 degree

[00:03:07.78] spk_2:
feedback? Yeah, absolutely. Um So 360 degree feedback, a 3 60 assessment is a great way to get feedback. It’s exactly what it sounds like to get feedback with that 360 degree view. So you can invite people like your supervisor, your peers, your direct reports, um other colleagues or partners and you can get anonymous feedback all in one place and then you have some good comparison data. So you can see how you’re being perceived. Uh There’s also a self uh survey as part of that. So you can compare how you’re being perceived to how you’re perceiving yourself and it just gives you really rich information. So that as you start to think about, what do I want to work on? Where do I want to invest my time, my energy, my resources, you have some really good data to work with, to help inform that. So you can prioritize your professional development a little better.

[00:03:32.26] spk_0:
It sounds very interesting to uh compare what you think of yourself to what others think of you do. You uh have you, you’ve been doing this for many years, you see a lot of um disparities, uh a lot of incongruent between self assessment and the assessment that others have provided.

[00:03:54.63] spk_2:
There. There can be for sure. Um I actually, with 3 60 assessments, I feel like you’re

[00:03:59.79] spk_0:
living in deep denial. Maybe

[00:04:52.28] spk_2:
it happens with 3 60 assessments. I feel like um how you show up to different groups of people can intentionally be different. So what your supervisor sees may be different from what your direct report see or what your peers see and that might be OK. So it’s about taking that information, finding those discrepancies, finding that alignment and then interpreting it uh for your own, your own work, your own lifestyle and, and what, how you wanna be, you know, showing up to all of those different groups. I actually do something and it’s not for, for today’s conversation, but I actually do something called an intercultural development inventory, the I dia qualified administrator for them and that assesses uh intercultural confidence. And there’s actually uh I’ve seen a greater disparity in that assessment than in 3 60 assessment asses which typically assess more general or more common leadership competencies.

[00:05:12.82] spk_0:
OK. All right. So in the, in the intercultural intercultural assessment, people perceive themselves as more aware, sensitive conscious than, than they are perceived by others. Not surprised. Yes,

[00:05:18.43] spk_2:
we do that a lot. Right. We do. It’s why, for me that’s why, you know, we all think

[00:05:24.01] spk_0:
we all think we’re great people.

[00:05:26.17] spk_2:
We do and we are right there. We all have great skill sets and things that we can offer the world. But I think if you think about your to do list, right? A lot of us will tend to put too many things on our plate. And then we wonder why we can’t accomplish at all. It’s because our perception is not always matched to our reality.

[00:06:04.88] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. Perception and reality, right can diverge greatly. OK? That could be, I mean, this could be fodder for therapy too. But, but when we’re talking about coaching, because coaching, you know, you need, uh I gather, you need somebody to help you assess all this input that’s coming in. And especially if you’re deeply divergent between what you think and what others think. Uh you know, you, I could see how coaching would be critical so that you don’t jump off a cliff with these results.

[00:07:04.51] spk_2:
Yes, absolutely. With 3 60 assessments, I recommend going through the assessment process, which just helps to increase kind of your own self awareness where you are, where you want to be and then working with a coach to help prompt you to action. So, in the awareness phase and you know, you’re taking this assessment process, it’s anonymous feedback. So it’s feedback that you’re not necessarily going get anywhere else. Most people aren’t gonna just walk up to you and say your communication skills are not as good as you think they are. So it’s feedback that you’re not necessarily going to get anywhere else and it can show that those discrepancies in that alignment, um which is really, really helpful, it brings a lot of self-awareness to the table. But then during that coaching session, you can start to identify action, focus on the action that you want to take. So you’re able to identify, you know, which skills are, are most essential to your current role. And how did you do on those skills or which skills are most essential to future role? If you wanna look at it from a future perspective, I know I wanna move into this other position or this other role. And so what skills are gonna be most important there? What do I need to work on to get there? And so you can start to consider what you might need to leverage. What are your strongest skills are? Uh but also what you might need to enhance as you move forward. And then those skills which are identifying with that coach uh can become part of a custom action plan that you have. So again, you’re able to prioritize your professional development a little more effectively.

[00:07:47.84] spk_0:
Ok. Um All right. So let’s take a step back. We, we get a little ahead, but that’s ok. Um, where, what’s the, all right. So you’ve already said this is confidential. It’s anonymous. All right. So it’s, it’s really the best information we’re gonna get. Um, it’s from all different, all different networks. So it’s people that are lateral to you, uh, working for you who you work for could be others. I mean, I don’t know, in nonprofits, might you go to, you go to board members? If there’s a relationship there, if there’s some liaison, work there or something, would you go to? Maybe donors, would you, donors, volunteers that the person is working with or is that really not appropriate to ask them to participate in?

[00:08:16.89] spk_2:
Yeah, I’ve not seen anybody go to donors, but definitely volunteers if you’re, if you’re working with them in a capacity where they’re going to see those skills at play, right? If they, if you’re not working with them in that way, they wouldn’t make a good feedback provider.

[00:08:30.94] spk_0:
Ok. All right. So volunteer. Yeah, donors, that seems like a little much to ask for someone to rate the person that you rate the fundraiser that you work with or something. Ok. Um, so let’s identify the benefits for the organization that would do a 3 60 assessment.

[00:09:38.71] spk_2:
Sure. Yeah. So what I love about assessments is that they are strategic uh but also compassionate, human centered, right? So when it comes to leadership development, um professional development is especially important. You want your leaders to be better, you want them to be stronger for your organization and you want them to perform well. So assessing on uh those common leadership competencies, gives a baseline that is both relevant to their work and to your organization and practical. Um But you also, if you think about the human Center piece of it, um your leaders also have dreams, they also have goals beyond just your their role at your organization. And so, uh by having the 3 60 assessment, you’re able to assess those things, those competencies that are important for your organization, but you’re also giving them some ownership and what they do with that information. And so they’re able to tailor the, the action plan that they’re gonna get out of this, they’re able to tailor that based on what their goals are within the organization as well. So whatever they decide to do will benefit the organization, but it will also be tailored to them. And so they, it will benefit themselves, you know, their own development as well.

[00:10:00.92] spk_0:
So I’m gonna ask about some outliers ha have you seen cases where the, the assessment was just so bad that the, the organization decided, you know, we, we gotta just let this person go like we just, we can’t, there’s no performance plan, there’s no action, there’s no action worksheet. That’s gonna, that’s gonna, that’s gonna bring this person along. It’s, it’s, it’s just

[00:11:07.34] spk_2:
hopeless. Yeah. So I have not, uh my recommendation is not to use it to use a 3 60 assessment in a punitive way. Um And so you would only use a 3 60 assessment. If there’s someone that you want them to develop, you want to see them develop and grow within your organization. Um And in fact, I I recommend that the results are kept confidential between the participant and the coach and that no one else actually gets a copy of those results. I actually get that request a lot at the board level. If it’s the, it’s the CEO that’s going through um the assessment process, the board chair will, will want those results. My recommendation is, is not to do it that way. Um I also get a lot of um requests for the 3 60 assessment to be the performance review and that’s also not a great use of a 3 60 assessment. You wanna do the performance review separately and then one of their goals through that performance review process might be to complete a 3 60 assessment. But again, only if you’re really invested in them growing and developing as a leader, not as a way to, to sort of move them out of the organization,

[00:11:32.68] spk_0:
it’s counterintuitive, not using the assessment as a as performance uh evaluation tool. What, what why is that say? Say a little more about why that’s not recommended.

[00:12:06.47] spk_2:
Yeah, I think so for me. Um, I think giving the 3 60 assessment to someone that you um believe in and you are valuing their contributions, you’re gonna have a lot better outcome. They’re going to be more honest in the assessment process. Uh, their feedback providers are probably going to be more honest as well and then they’re able to have a good honest conversation with their coach and they’re able to kind of lean into that vulnerability without constantly thinking, I’m gonna get fired, right. It’s actually really good useful information to grow. Um And I would recommend 3 60 assessments for star performers. Um you know, just as much as I would for those that you are looking to develop for a particular reason.

[00:12:30.57] spk_0:
Ok. Ok. Um So how do we get started with this uh uh in the, in the organization? I mean, if we’re gonna suppose we’re gonna do this enterprise wide, I mean, that could mean, you know, 456 employees for some listeners, it may mean hundreds of employees. How do we start this? Yeah, where do we start?

[00:14:13.63] spk_2:
Yeah. So every organization is different, they’re going to approach it in a slightly different way. Um The I work with a vendor that hosts 3 60 assessments. So those assessments are already created, they’re standard, they exist for um different types of leadership. So whether it’s the, the CEO executive director or um whether it’s more of an di contributor in individual contributor or something in between, they have assessments um that are tailored to each of those different um types of roles within an organization. So I would, you know, first look at um how do you want to roll this out? Um A lot of organizations will start with maybe a senior leadership team to show that they’re, you know, modeling what they, what they, what they would ask of their other staff. Um And so they might start with a leadership team, um have a small group, go through this process and then look at adding some additional staff to that. Um The only thing that you would wanna consider really is um great or fatigue. So if in an organization, you’re going to be asking the same people to provide feedback to multiple people at the same time, um that can get a little bit fatiguing and then they might not be as honest or they might not take as much time um as they go through the assessment because they’re just trying to get through all of them. Uh So you want the readers, the people who are providing the feedback um to feel like they have the time and um you know, the energy to get through those assessments as well.

[00:14:32.73] spk_0:
Yeah, because if, if, if there’s a lot of people at the same level and you’re evaluating your peers, right? I mean, you could have to be doing a lot of these. All right. So how do you overcome that spread, spread out the time and give them more time to do. I mean, I suppose you have to do six or eight of these things.

[00:14:46.78] spk_2:
I would start with a smaller group and then as that group finishes, you could look at bringing in another group to complete the assessment.

[00:15:28.11] spk_1:
It’s time frame break donor box. You’ve heard the testimonials, easy set up fast checkout QR codes simple for your donors and incredible results like you’ve gone to 10, eighteen’s 70% increase in donations. If you’re looking for a fast flexible and donor friendly fundraising platform for your organization. Check out donor box, donor box dot org. Now back to performance improvement.

[00:15:31.56] spk_0:
So this is not something that sounds like it can be easily done in house. You, you’re saying you work with a vendor that already has these, these assessment tools published. It sounds like something that would be kind of hard to recreate in house and, and do and do. Well,

[00:16:08.09] spk_2:
I think it depends on just the resources of the organization. Uh There are really good off the shelf assessments where you don’t have to spend the money to create something that’s custom to your organization. You can a lot of um a lot of the vendors who offer off the shelf um assessments can also do custom assessments for your organization, but it’s, it’s a fairly resource heavy project um, because you wanna make sure that whatever gets created is statistically relevant. It’s a valid assessment and all of that. And so, um, to do that a lot of times it does take more time and more resources to make it happen.

[00:16:25.93] spk_0:
What happens if there’s an outlier in the, in the Raiders, like one person rates somebody so high or so low compared to the other six or eight people. That, that rate what, what happens to those outlier ratings.

[00:17:23.67] spk_2:
Yeah, that does happen from time to time. You’ll have somebody who, um, you know, every question just about is really high or really low. Um, you know, I, as a coach, um, I might ask the participant, um, if they have any thoughts about why that might be the case and we might have some conversation around, you know, why someone might be rating really high or really low. It is anonymous. So, unless it’s the supervisor, they’re probably not going to know who said, you know, who it is, that’s rating them that’s out there. Um, but you can have some good conversation that way. Sometimes there’s not, you know, anything that comes to mind that would make someone, um, be completely different than the other radio. And so, um, you know, you’re gonna kind of go with the, with the theme across and so if most people are rating you at a four and then one person at a one, perhaps that one person had one particular experience that they’re, they’re, you know, calling to mind if they’re completing the assessment. And so that’s causing those scores because

[00:17:45.64] spk_0:
the person, you, you, you keep their car when they took your parking space to the right,

[00:17:52.72] spk_2:
you never know, you never know. Uh And so it’s, it’s information um but it’s not necessarily the focus because the theme is that most people are, are rating you in that four.

[00:18:52.95] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Kela increase donations and foster collaborative teamwork with Kela. The fundraisers, CRM maximize your team’s productivity and spend more time building strong connections with donors through features that were built specifically for fundraisers. A fundraiser, Crm goes beyond a data management platform. It’s designed with unique needs of fundraisers in mind and aims to unify fundraising, communications and donor management tools into one single source of truth visit, Kila dot co to sign up for a coming group demo and explore how to exceed your fundraising goals like never before. It’s time for Tonys take two. Thanks, Kate.

[00:24:10.82] spk_0:
I’m replaying the Tony’s take two from the show that Heather Burright appeared on. I was talking about sharing non profit radio, but I went into a, a bit of a tangent about waiting tables and sharing tips. Here. It is, sharing is still caring. Who can you share a non profit radio with? I was thinking it could be a lackluster colleague or maybe somebody who’s in another non profit or you know, a friend who works elsewhere who you just happen to know is not up to speed mediocre, lackluster because we’re talking this week about performance improvement. So, whose performance do you want to improve? That’s the person you refer to nonprofit radio. They need to be listening. They got to up their game. They don’t want to be mediocre and lackluster any longer and you don’t want them to be, especially if they work in your shop, they’re dragging you down. It’s like when you used to, did you ever wait tables? Those are waited tables. If, if you did and sharing tips. Oh, that’s the worst. It was just last week. Um I wrapped it up. Yeah, just, just in just uh late July uh no years ago waiting tables and we shared tips, the mediocre people bring you down and you know who they are. You, you know, you can hear them at the adjacent tables. The adjacent station, I was always mediocre at one thing. I was terrible, worse than mediocre. I was always terrible at cappuccinos when somebody ordered a cappuccino. And I had a face that daunting high, highly polished copper machine with the nozzle for the milk and the foam and the, the knobs and the, they gotta press the espresso in right and it’s just the right pressure and the milk has to be the right temperature and this, this machine just scared the hell out of me just to look at the thing. I didn’t even like walking by it. I got, I, I would, I would get, I would get, I would get sweats just walking past it. Let alone, I had to face off with the thing when somebody ordered a cappuccino or God forbid, a table table of four or six. Yeah. Well, all round of cappuccinos. Oh, my God. Every other table in my station is gonna be half an hour late Now while I fight with this machine to get the milk to the right temperature and the foam and the right consistency and the wh cappuccinos my death. I really somebody who wrote a cappuccino. You sure you don’t want a Limoncello. I have a Limoncello on the house give you I’ll give the table around Limoncello. If you will, you alone will just not get a cappuccino. All right. That was my bane as a waiter. But so, so, but that didn’t bring the tips down cause everybody got free drinks because I hardly ever poured once I got smart. Of course, the house didn’t like it but they never knew. Um So you know, so the tips actually were, were better because I was given free drinks for everybody to bribe them away from a single cappuccino. So that aside the uh yeah, the sharing of tips, I hated it. I the, the, the, the, the poor performers were always dragging us down were killing us every night and I could hear them you know, that in low energy they forget what the specials are. They read the specials of their little, their, their parchment paper, little, little note pad because they couldn’t afford to buy a new one because their tips are so low because they’re so poor and they were gonna drag me down with them. Well, first of all I didn’t use the little book. I used to memorize the specials. I never liked looking at that because the thing gets red wine spilled on it. And you know, it’s, it wouldn’t get cappuccino on it because I didn’t know how to make them, but it might get milk on it as I was trying. So the poor performers, the poor performers in your nonprofit, I’m bringing it back. I’m bringing it back. Don’t worry. Uh You know, they’re dragging you down. So you got to refer them to non profit radio. That’s it. You want to raise the level of all the boats. Wait, you want to raise the level of the whole sea. Wait, you wanna raise, you wanna, you wanna raise all the boats, you gotta raise the sea. That’s what it is or the yacht basin. So your organization, you’re non profit, that’s the yacht basin. You gotta, you wanna raise all the boats, you gotta raise the sea. Refer these poor performers to nonprofit radio. That’s the point. That’s where I’m headed. All right, cappuccinos and Limoncello. Who can you refer non profit radio to I’d be grateful. Remember, board members too, if you got any friends, they’re board members. Board members are great listeners. They, they use it to stimulate conversation to stimulate thinking very valuable. Plus anybody who works for a nonprofit naturally. Thank you. Thanks for thinking about it. Who you can refer non profitt radio to? That is Tony’s take two. That is Tony’s take two Kate.

[00:24:15.55] spk_1:
You know, dad just got a new espresso and cappuccino machine. So when you come over for the holidays, we’re gonna learn how to make cappuccino. So you can’t, you know,

[00:24:38.92] spk_0:
I can practice, I can practice on the, on the, on that machine. All right, I’m telling you those things scared me. It’s got that long tube with the milk that, that the milk has to come out of and steam and froth and the knobs and everything.

[00:24:40.94] spk_1:
You’re gonna be an expert by the end of the holidays.

[00:24:44.12] spk_0:
Ok. Christmas cappuccinos. I’ll, I’ll be pouring them. All right.

[00:24:49.07] spk_1:
We’ve got, we’ve got just about a butt load more time. Let’s go back to performance improvement.

[00:25:01.75] spk_0:
And what form do people who are rated, get this information in? WW? Is it something quantitative or is it narrative or both or what, what are they seeing? What’s each person who gets rated seeing?

[00:25:34.04] spk_2:
Yeah, absolutely. So, um the vendor that I work with particularly, um and I think this is true of, of other vendors that I’ve seen as well. Um There is data that’s involved. So you will be able to see for each question um how you were rated, you’ll be able to compare those scores by the different R groups. Um A lot of times there is um an opportunity to roll that data up as well, so you can start to see overall what are my strengths and my development opportunities. Um And then there’s typically something um a little more qualitative um included as well where people can kind of open comments, provide feedback and you can spend some time looking at that as

[00:25:54.30] spk_0:
well. Ok. Ok. Um And, and let’s talk more about the, the coaching and the, and maybe the work plan that goes along with improving areas that aren’t so strong. Um How long does that last or what? What, what does that look like?

[00:26:55.70] spk_2:
Yeah, so um the assessment process itself uh can take a few weeks just to get that feedback. You know, you’re gonna do self assessment, you’re gonna invite your readers, they’re gonna go in, provide their feedback, it’s gonna generate the, the data, the report for you. Um And then the coaching session you want at least one that I would say is the absolute minimum. I thought this was right to go through that data. Um If you’re really looking to, to see that person um that participant make progress on their action plan, so they’re making progress towards their goals, then I definitely recommend looking at a longer term relationship with that coach because they can start to become an accountability partner and they can continue to prompt them to action. They can continue to help them think through how they’re gonna apply what they’re learning on the job. And so there’s just a lot of value there. Um, I would say that about that, um, does vary by organization as well. Um, but if you want to see, you know, those results, um, and see the action being taken. Um I would say at least three months um probably longer to, to watch that behavior start to change.

[00:27:33.84] spk_0:
Uh Tell us a story about an organization or it could be a person. Um I kind of like the organization level if you have a story like that, like where you saw, you know, you saw them go through this process and you saw improvement among key people in the organization and they don’t have to be senior leaders, but you saw, you saw improvement, you know, you saw a benefit come out of this, whatever, eight months later, a year later, a year and a half later, you know, share a little story.

[00:29:27.05] spk_2:
Yeah. So um for, I guess for anonymity sake, I can share my own story because I have been through the 3 60 assessment process um myself. Um If you like, so I, when I went through the 3 60 assessment process, um some of the feedback that I received was that I needed to use my voice more that I had, um, you know, good ideas when I spoke up and that I needed to, you know, speak up more and make sure that people heard and valued what, you know, whatever it was that I had to say. And it was something that I, it was a piece of feedback that I found very interesting because I felt like in some environments, I was pretty quick to speak up to, you know, take a lead in something um to have my voice heard. And then in other environments, I might be a little less likely to do that. And it just kind of depended on the situation. What um I was on a lot of cross functional project teams at the time. So, you know, what was my role on that project? Who was leading that project, that kind of thing? To me, it all felt very strategic about when I was um using my voice and, and when I wasn’t, but with that feedback, right, that’s information. So with that feedback, I was able to um start to think about how do I want to use my voice? And um when do I want to use my voice and what would it look like or what would it feel like to be heard in, in different settings? And uh through that process, I was able to um more intentionally start pick up um not just in meetings, but also, um you know, one on one with my supervisor and say, you know, hey, I’m interested in this or I wanna know more about this or I think we should do this or whatever the case is. And I was able to start using my voice a little more intentionally. And the within the organization, um and saw from a, from a career perspective, saw my own, my own career start to um open up and, and grow quite a bit from that.

[00:29:56.55] spk_0:
And so the feedback you got wasn’t as nuanced as you would have, you would have thought it would be like you said, certain situations, you were deli deliberately reticent to speak up and others, you were more vocal, but the feedback wasn’t that nuanced.

[00:30:31.97] spk_2:
Correct, correct. Because if my, if you think about like my peers, they’re seeing me in different environments or uh my partners, I was working on a lot of cross functional teams. So I had partners from all over the organization that were providing feedback. And so depending on which projects I was working on, I might have been leading the project or I might have been just a contributor on the project. And so depending on um what my role was, I was showing up differently in those settings,

[00:30:51.04] spk_0:
right? So each people, each person saw you differently. They didn’t, they didn’t see the full breath. But overall, you took it as I should speak up more, I should be more assertive, I

[00:30:52.06] spk_2:
guess Yeah, absolutely. And just think about how I’m being perceived as well, right, within a, within a meeting or, um, a team.

[00:31:06.28] spk_0:
And then how about developing an action plan? What, uh, what, what do you do that in conjunction with the coach or what ho how does that, how does that look? And how long is an action plan last?

[00:32:56.08] spk_2:
Yeah. So I recommend doing that in conjunction with a coach, uh, at least on that first coaching call to have um something in mind that you’re gonna be working towards. So I typically go through kind of the who, what, when, where, why, how questions. So um you know, what is it that you wanna do? What is it that you wanna focus on? Which competency is standing out to you? Which area are you believing that you want to develop in some way? Again, it could be enhancing um or leveraging a strength that could be enhancing something that’s a little bit weaker. But what is it that you wanna work on? And then how are you going to do that? Are you gonna go um to a training? Are you gonna participate in a leadership program? Are you going to, you start listening to podcasts like this one about, you know, whatever topic you’re trying to work on, what is it that you are going to commit to, to develop that particular skill? It could be taking on a different project at work, right? That you know, is gonna challenge that skill set. So um thinking through your options and deciding how you want to develop that skill and then also with that, putting a timeline to it. So when, when are you gonna start, um what are the, you know, milestones that are gonna be along the way? How long will it take you to complete whatever it is that you’re deciding you want to do? Um And then from there, who, who’s gonna help you, who’s gonna help hold you accountable? We know that most people don’t just change automatically. So if you think about the number of people who um don’t uh follow through on their New Year’s resolutions, right? It, it takes more than just knowing that you need to change or even sometimes having a desire to change and so who can help you, who can be that accountability partner for you, um to make sure that you’re working on this goal and, and it could be the coach, but it could be someone else as well. It could be a supervisor, it could be a peer, um a partner, even someone just in your life that’s going to help, um help you, you know, work towards your goals. And so going through some of those questions, you’re able to put together an action plan that includes things like that timeline. How long you’re gonna be working on it? What do we

[00:33:21.08] spk_0:
do for the folks who really just don’t take this feedback. Well, maybe there are strengths but they’re not, they’re not acknowledging those or maybe, maybe they don’t have strengths identified or let’s just say it’s objectively, it’s, well forget, um, subjectively it’s taken as very bad, forget how it looks objectively. The, the person is taking it very badly, very hard

[00:33:41.46] spk_2:
it happens.

[00:33:42.08] spk_0:
What do we do? What do we do?

[00:34:27.39] spk_2:
So, you know, a skilled coach will probably do one of two things. I, I believe I’m a skilled coach, but a skilled coach will likely do one of two things. Um, one try to on that call, uh, get to at the, the bottom of that feeling, basically what’s causing it. Why am I getting such a reaction from this information? Um, just trying to understand perhaps there’s something that is triggering the reaction beyond just what’s on, on the, the paper, so to speak. And so having that conversation can actually sometimes move people into a new place, a better place to, to have the conversation that you have wanna have. Um, another option. And, and another thing that a skilled coach might do is just ask to reschedule the call. Um, because sometimes

[00:34:36.89] spk_0:
to do what reschedule

[00:34:53.58] spk_2:
the call, the coach call, right? Um Because sometimes there’s just something, whatever it is, whether it’s a, uh, a data point or a comment that has been included in the feedback, something just hijacks you and you can’t move past it in that moment, but that doesn’t mean that two weeks from now, one week from now you wouldn’t be able to move past that. And so sometimes having some space can, can be really beneficial. And so just saying, you know what it sounds like, this is not gonna, you know, be a good time for us to have this conversation. Why don’t we reconnect on Tuesday and then you’re giving some, them some space to kind of think through and process what they’re, what they’re learning in the assessment.

[00:35:21.60] spk_0:
Ok. I could see how some people could take it hard.

[00:35:23.86] spk_2:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. There’s that one comment, the comment that

[00:35:29.60] spk_0:
like maybe you even thinking, I know who said that. I know who that was. He killed me.

[00:35:36.52] spk_2:
Yes. People spend time trying to figure out who said what and it’s not, that’s not the point, right of the assessment and so helping them move past that can, can be part of the, have you had

[00:35:48.58] spk_0:
people plead with you to tell you? Oh, come on, who said that?

[00:35:51.98] spk_2:
Well, as a coach, I don’t know who’s at it. So

[00:35:55.20] spk_0:
it’s anonymous to

[00:36:08.79] spk_2:
you. It is, I, I might know uh for the, for the data points, I know which group it came out of and, and they do too, um but not necessarily for the open field comments. Um And so it’s, it’s, you know, you can think about this all day, but it doesn’t mean you’re gonna get it right. And then what if you do, what, then what, you know what’s gonna change for you? How are you going to use that information? So,

[00:36:17.88] spk_0:
now I’m, now I’m blowing this up. Like, have there been cases of retaliation where somebody confronted somebody? I know you, I know you’re the one who wrote this.

[00:36:26.79] spk_2:
I, I would guess somewhere in the world that perhaps that is the case. Um, but I have not experienced

[00:36:42.49] spk_0:
that. All right. No workplace blow ups or confrontations over 3 60 assessments. All right. All right. Um What else, what else would you like us to know? We still got, we got some time left. What like what happened? I asked you that you think folks should know about these 3 60 degree feedback?

[00:38:23.26] spk_2:
Yeah, I would just add that. Um So I work with, with nonprofit leaders to help them create scalable learning strategies. And um you know, oftentimes when there is some sort of learning need, some sort of professional development need, we go to training and I create training. So I’m biased. I, I like it. I think it’s a great solution but it’s a solution. And I think pairing any other sort of professional development program, um like a training with a 3 60 assessment is actually even more valuable because if you’re able to assess your skills first and then say, here’s where I need to improve, here’s where I need to focus and then you send them through, say a leadership training, they have that skill set in mind. As they’re going through that training, they’re focused on that particular skill set, whether it’s, you know, communication or relationship building or whatever they’re focused on that, they’re gonna get back out of it and then you’re gonna see some really intentional transformation um because they had the assessment process first. So when I think about creating scalable learning strategies for organizations, it is thinking through that whole process, how can we make sure that we’re being strategic, that the organization is getting what they need? But then also thinking about the individual within the audience. So things like 3 60 assessments combined with formal training, combined with coaching, um can actually be a really effective way to see how people grow and develop. I think, you know, for me, I think people are worthy of investment and then I think investing in your people, make them feel valued and gives them, you know, a new, new skills and a new passion for their work. Um And as leaders in our organizations, we get to create that environment, we get to create those opportunities so that our people can thrive. And so an assessment is one great tool that you can use in conjunction with many other tools to help your your leaders grow and develop.

[00:39:02.09] spk_0:
So then by coalescing all the assessment data for all the individual people, you’re saying you can target training enterprise wide that that helps lift lift skill deficits that, that are like common across lots of people in the organization.

[00:39:27.21] spk_2:
You can, you can. And even if you have a general leadership program, if your individuals have gone through the 3 60 assessment process, they’re looking to develop particular skills. And so they’re gonna be looking to find that you, you often find what you’re looking for, right? So they’re gonna be looking to find whatever that is in the leadership program. So even if it’s a, a more general program that you’re offering, um or you’re, you know, sending people to the 3 60 assessment, gives that individual information so that they look for that when they’re in that program. Yeah.

[00:39:51.41] spk_0:
Right. Right. As you said, right. They’re looking, they find what they’re looking for. Yeah. Absolutely. Ok. All right, we leave it there, Heather, what do you

[00:39:53.31] spk_2:
think? That sounds good, tony. Thanks for having me.

[00:40:10.16] spk_0:
Oh, it’s my pleasure. Absolutely. Heather Bright founder and CEO of Skill Masters Market. The company is at Skill Masters market dot com and she is at Heather Burright. Thank you again, Heather. Thanks tony

[00:40:18.28] spk_1:
next week. Financial Fitness for your board. If you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:40:21.11] spk_0:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com

[00:41:11.92] spk_1:
were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your non profit donor box dot org and by Kela, grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency. With Kila, the fundraisers CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. Our creative producer is Claire Meer. I’m your associate producer, Kate martignetti. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:41:26.83] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for August 7, 2023: Leadership Lessons

 

Steve JohnsLeadership Lessons

Steve Johns’ book is “Fearless.” He shares his philosophy of fearless leadership including building a service mindset and embracing a culture of curiosity; investing in yourself; talking without telling; understanding how “No mud, no lotus” can help you persevere; and a lot more. He’s CEO of OneCause.

 

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Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:00:33.70] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite He Abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with mono blea if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with highlights.

[00:00:56.43] spk_1:
Thank you, tony. This week we have leadership lessons. Steve John’s book is Fearless. He shares his philosophy of fearless leadership, including building a service mindset and embracing a culture of curiosity investing in yourself, talking without telling, understanding how no mud, no lotus can help you persevere and a lot more. He’s CEO of one cause on Tony’s take too

[00:01:11.38] spk_0:
summer stewardship.

[00:01:27.09] spk_1:
We’re sponsored by Donor Boxx with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is leadership lessons.

[00:01:54.67] spk_0:
What a pleasure to welcome Steve Johns to nonprofit radio. He is CEO of One Cause fundraising software company and he’s author of the book, Fearless Leadership Lessons at the Crossroads. He has over 30 years of experience in technology, corporate development, venture capital, event production and entrepreneurship. You’ll find the company at one cause dot com and Steve is on linkedin Steve Johns. Welcome to nonprofit radio.

[00:02:03.24] spk_2:
Thanks tony. Thanks for having me. Appreciate

[00:02:05.19] spk_0:
it. Uh Absolutely, my pleasure. And uh the, the book is leadership lessons. So we’re gonna talk a good bit about a bunch of your lessons. And I love every, every chapter has a collection of lessons from that chapter. Uh But just, you know, give us the, the high level overview why this book, you know, why

[00:04:27.82] spk_2:
now ha ha happy to do that. So, so first of all, I didn’t set out to write a book. And so what I call myself is the accidental author. And so this all started tony at the beginning of the pandemic, we’re making a bunch of changes to the business and I made a commitment to the company to keep them informed of how the business was doing. And II, I hesitated a little bit and then I said, I’m gonna make that commitment to, to be weekly and so on April 2nd, around 2020 I wrote my first weekly update and I wrote my second weekly update and my third and I kept writing these weekly updates. A year and a half later, my marketing team presented to me that, that following summer, the compilation of these weekly updates. And we looked at it and we shared some labs and actually, we probably shared some tears as well. And we said, wow, this feels like it might be the beginning of a book. And that’s really how it came about. And so, and so we, we set about then taking and I had, and then I wrote for another year because this was the summer of 21 and we weren’t out of it yet. And so I continued to write and we continue to look at the opportunity to kind of bring some of these lessons together thematically. So we didn’t just do it all chronologically. So we grouped them together in themes. And in the summer of 22 we wrote introductory pages to, to talk about how I was feeling what the company was going through, what the tone of the country was at that moment in time. And then to your point, and I said, what we have, if we’re gonna call this leadership lessons at the crossroads, we have to have some pretty specific leadership lessons. So I was really insistent and we got it at the end of every chapter. There’s three or four leadership lessons that here’s the, here’s the thing that, that I want that I hope people take away from this. Yes, we wrote these chapters during the course of a global pandemic that changed our lives. But these leadership lessons I believe are lessons that people can use every day. We, we, we run across crossroads every day, we have decision points every day. And what I would say is these are lessons that can be applied every day, whether it’s at, at the office as a, as a CEO or any type of leader in your company, as a spouse, as a parent. These are just leadership lessons that I think are broad based and can be broadly applied.

[00:05:20.69] spk_0:
There are a lot of episodes of nonprofit radio folks will say, you know, this isn’t only for nonprofits and this is clearly as I expected. And you’re suggesting this is clearly one of those episodes, not only for nonprofit, less lessons for life, really, a lot of, a lot of them do. Um I love your humility in the book. You know, you’re open. Uh you share even that you had trepidation about committing to a weekly update. That was, that was gonna share how the company is doing. Uh you know, that just, you’re, you’re, you’re very, I, I think humble and, and transparent in the book. I, I admire

[00:06:11.17] spk_2:
it. II I appreciate that. And again, you know, part of, part of what I like to do is, um you know, just kind of rally around this notion of being authentic um in, in and also part of my authenticity. Tony is this vulnerability and, and the vulnerability that I had to show in, in the pandemic. Because if, if you stand up and say in, in the course of this, this, this great unknown, these great uncertainties, I’ve got all the answers. Well, then people are going to know that you’re not being transparent and that, and that you’re not being honest. And so I think the, the only, the only way to do that is to basically say open yourself up, be vulnerable, have the trust in your organization. Um when you expose yourself like that, that they’ll follow you. And so what I also say is that vulnerability has a little bit of a paradox because everyone thinks of it as a weakness, but it actually has to start from a, from, from a position of strength. You have to be strong enough to know that when you open yourself up and when you make yourself, as they say, vulnerable, that, that you have a plan that you have the strength to say, I don’t know, I don’t have all the answers, but I have a plan. Let’s go.

[00:06:41.46] spk_0:
Absolutely agree that vulnerability is a sign of confidence, I think and, and not at all weakness, uh vulnerability, humility, you know, these are, I think, I think very good uh very positive traits in, in all people leader, leaders, leaders are not um help us with uh fearless leadership. The book is fearless leadership lessons at the Crossroads. What, what do you conceive of as fearless leadership?

[00:09:23.37] spk_2:
So we were all so we have this raise conference that we sponsor every year and we’ve been doing so since 2017 and we started using the word fearless together with fundraisers and we hashtag fearless fundraisers and it became something of a mantra that we would continue to use with Ray. And then when it came time to, to name the book, we just really came back to this notion of being fearless. Ok. So what does fearless mean? Right. Fearless means the willingness or the ability to take action in the face of great unknowns and uncertainties. Well, if you think about when we started writing these chapters, it was in a time of the the of great unknown and great uncertainties. And again, you can call that courage. I, I really like the word fearless. And I, and I actually mentioned in the book, I, I wrote about wearing this No Fear hat that, you know, kind of uh I was a brand in the maybe in the early two thousands, maybe late nineties or something like that. And, and I, I really, you know, uh metaphorically and actually, you know, want to put that no fear hat ad on all the time. And so, so being fearless is being willing to move forward, um not getting stuck down with analysis paralysis that, you know, because we could have all just kind of just frozen in time, right? What do we do? We, we, we’re, we’re in the, we’re in the business of providing software to help nonprofits fundraise at primarily in person gatherings, auctions, galas dinners, runs and walks and rides that all came to a screeching halt in March of 2020. We had literally had 2100 in person events scheduled for the spring that went to zero overnight. And so you can just sit there in your fear or you can choose to be fearless, create a plan and move forward and, and that’s what we did. And in fact, you know, I say sometimes procrastination is really just another form of fear. It’s either, I don’t know, fear of being found out, it’s fear of failure, it’s fear of uh not being good enough or smart enough. And we basically said we just, I need to, I need to set the tone. I need to take action, I need to put a plan together. Let’s be fearless together. And in the face of this great uncertainty that we’ve never experienced before, let’s move forward. And again, that’s what being fearless is all about. And like, like we said, this isn’t just for nonprofits, this isn’t just for one cause or Steve Johns, this is about every day. We face these fears when we get up in the morning, when, when we, when we get to the office in the morning, when, when we’re just taking our kids to school, there is this, you know, uncertainty and doubt and it’s just the willingness and ability to take action

[00:09:45.49] spk_0:
that that actually gets to one of the lessons that uh I, I’m, I’m sure we’ll have to talk uh a chance to talk about which is uh that you can’t control events, but you can control how you react to them. But we’ll, we’ll get to, we’ll come to that. We’ll come to that. One of, one of many, 11 of many, um, something else that runs kind of runs through the book and, and I think is important to, to, to get at the outset is the uh, no mud, no lotus metaphor. Uh, share that with us.

[00:10:17.54] spk_2:
So I, I appreciate the ability to do that. And, and that really, I, what I would say is that I’m gonna call it maybe a parable really set the tone for the rest of the book.

[00:10:22.72] spk_0:
That’s, that’s higher level. Now, I only called it a metaphor. You’re going parable. I’m all right. Go ahead,

[00:13:01.98] spk_2:
go ahead. Really set the tone for the rest of the book in terms of finding inspiration outside of our world to bring to the one cause one cause team every week that we could kind of rally around. So it was probably my, my third or fourth update. I have a, I have a routine tony every morning iii I get down on the mat and I listen to my, my Calm app. I listen to the daily Calm. I listen to meditative music. I try and get a sense of mindfulness going in the morning so that I can kind of use that to propel me through the day and take me through the day. And that morning, I was listening to the Daily Calm App and there was a retelling of the story from Buddhism that starts with the lotus bud in the mud. And the lotus bud makes its journey through the mud and the muck and the mere of the pond and, and it represents potential and as it works its way up through the pond and finally comes to the surface of the pond and begins to open up, pedal by pedal into this beautiful lotus flower that’s rebirth. That is, that is the the ultimate of what that bud can become. And so when I was on the map that morning, I heard that story in, in, you know, the the shorthand is, you know where there’s no mud, there’s no lotus, it’s without the test, without the mud, without all of that stuff that the lotus bud has to get through, then that journey and to become that beautiful lotus flower um is something less than and so I said to myself, this is who we are. This is who one cause is right now. This is our customers, our nonprofit customers, we are in the mud. We’re not even in the pond, we can’t see the surface. And so I have to be able to tell the story and I have to be able to tell the story of where we are today, but also provide a vision for where I think what that we can go or where, where we can finally become. And that’s that beautiful white lotus flower that sits at the top of the pond. And so that became uh very inspirational to us in terms of the artwork for the book. Um and again, uh it is, it is so beautiful. It’s such a beautiful story. It’s such a beautiful illustration and it, it’s such for, for me, it’s such a uh an illustration of where one cause was where our customers were. And I will say that 2022 was a great year, 2023. You know, we’re, we’re getting hit by all kinds of different issues. Now, now we have fears of inflation or fears of recession, we have inflation, we have high interest rates, we have all that other stuff. But from the, from the aspect of the pandemic, I would believe that we have finally emerged as that beautiful white lotus flower on the top of the pond

[00:13:23.91] spk_0:
pushing through that the, the uh the muck of, of adversity. Yes, to uh to

[00:13:30.21] spk_2:
emerge. I really like that. You use that word too because I use that word a lot. So the fearless is a story of great resilience in the face of great adversity. That is really the story of fearless.

[00:14:15.25] spk_0:
Let’s talk about some of these lessons like we’ve said, every, every chapter uh wraps up with, with several uh lessons and related to what we’re talking about. Uh So I’m gonna take a bunch off and I’m gonna ask for you to ask you to elaborate on them if that’s ok. And we’ll, we’ll come to a point where I’ll ask you what your favorites are too, but we’re not quite there. We’re not quite there yet. That gets, that gets a little anarchic. I, I gotta, I gotta maintain, I gotta maintain my control. So, um, focus on what’s in your power that we can’t control the events. But we can, this is, you know how we respond. This is the one that I was just alluding

[00:15:21.37] spk_2:
to before. So, so again, II, I appreciate that because you just helped me jump to one of my favorites. So, so that is, that is definitely one of my favorites. And, and so this the, the, it, it, it comes in a, in a few ways, it really kind of weaves its way through the book, right? And it’s this notion and, and, and I actually refer to it as like the secret to happiness and the secret to success. And I wish somebody would have explained this to me 30 years ago, tony. It, it, you know, that, that, that, that what you need to focus in on is the things that are in your control and not focus on those that aren’t in your control. And there are various forms of this, that, that, that, that we, we see um every day. But my, inspire, my inspiration from this came from the Stoics and, and there was a couple of Stokes, particularly Seneca and Marcus Aurelius um is one said something like it’s not what happens to you but how you react to it, that matters. So, so again, take for example, the pandemic or even somebody cuts you off on the road or somebody’s at the grocery store taking too long in front of you, right? Oh my God. The examples

[00:15:32.35] spk_0:
are, are rampant. I mean from right, from somebody cuts you off at the grocery store to climate change

[00:15:37.52] spk_2:
and climate change, right? The the

[00:15:39.02] spk_0:
exist existential

[00:16:34.56] spk_2:
questions like that we’re not in control of those external factors. And so what we have to do is we have to say, ok, I’m not in control of that. But what I’m gonna focus on right now and that I’m 100% in control of is how I react to that I can react with anger. I can react with frustration. I can, I can react with compassion and, and grace. And so man, it’s such a it’s such a great lesson to, to learn. And and so, you know, again, as I said, I wish somebody would have taught me this 30 years ago. I hope somebody listening today hears this and says, aha, that is going to change. My life is not to dwell on those things that I can’t control but to focus instead on what I’m 100% control in control of. And that’s how I react and respond to that. And I know that my wife is happy that I’m trying to embody this lesson as well.

[00:17:20.33] spk_0:
I, I have AAA, personal example that I, I’ve seen several times, uh, calendar mistakes, you know, somebody, we, we’re all, we’re all scheduling events, right? And the, the savvy of us, uh, use calendar and then there’s the rest of us like me who just still do the back and forth emails and, um, you know, people make mistakes, you know, they, they, they forget the time zone change. Oh, you’re eastern. I thought, yeah, I’m central. I thought, you know, I was an hour so I was an hour late, you know, et cetera and the way you react, you know, people. Uh Well, II, I always say, you know, I’ve done it, I’ve, you know, with no problem, we’ll reschedule. I, I can’t do it right now. We’ll reschedule. No problem. I’ve done it myself. I’ve, and people are, people just come back with such effusive gratitude that I’m just saying, you know, I make the same mistakes, you know, instead of all right. You know, uh I, I guess I understand uh we can, we can reschedule some time. We’ll see if it works out for the future

[00:17:36.41] spk_2:
in that passive aggressive kind of way. Right. But

[00:17:43.12] spk_0:
people are just so gracious, grateful for a, a decent gracious, you know, I, I screw up too. Let’s, let’s reschedule.

[00:17:46.32] spk_2:
Yeah, I think Grace is one of those words that we really started to use a, a lot during the pandemic. It’s just like grant people some grace, man. It’s, it’s OK like stuff happens. Let’s just, yeah, let’s just figure it out.

[00:18:04.16] spk_0:
Um start a conversation. Uh a a around difficult subjects.

[00:19:29.25] spk_2:
Yeah. Again, um what, what, what, what we were trying to do there again, was to say what we have to do is engage and, and again, from, from my perspective, this is, this is really about more human connection. And so, and so, one of the things that we lost dearly is our ability to communicate, I think effectively. And we all went to Zoom. Uh and we lost this, this ability to just have a conversation in a hallway. Just have just, just to talk with these serendipitous um uh collisions as I think that they’ve been called from time to time and just have a conversation and have an openness about something and be willing to talk about it. And I think sometimes we lose that with Zoom. Sometimes we lose that with everyone working from home. I think we lost that during the pandemic. And so part of what I uh you know, big strong message. Again, for me, it’s actually the second thing that I like. Uh one of my favorite chapters actually is about connection and it’s, it’s chapter 15 and it’s called Connect. And it’s about friendships and it’s about family and it’s about making sure that you live your life now and celebrate your life now. So, um those are a, again, those are lessons that we learned during the pandemic, but also lessons that can be applied um, every single day um of our lives. It’s also important

[00:19:54.28] spk_0:
to be conscious of this because it’s so easy to default to the zoom meeting and, and sometimes they are necessary, you know, if we’re in, if we’re, if we’re across multiple states, you know, we don’t have a choice. It used to be phone, you know, now it’s, now it’s zoom or, or some equivalent. But when you do have the chance for a face to face, you know, when it can work, opt, I think opt for that opt for the opt for the in person when, when it can work and just don’t automatically default to the, to the virtual.

[00:22:00.32] spk_2:
And I think, I think what you’re touching on is a, is another one of the lessons I think it’s called what I call like the silver silver lining mindset is, is that we are always looking for silver linings in the crisis in the everything that the pandemic was throwing at us. And I think, I think the ability to, to reach, for instance, from a, from a, let’s take it from a nonprofit standpoint. Our events went from essentially being all in person to being 100% virtual and online. And so that, that is, you know, at first you think, wow, that’s a real negative because you lose that face to face. You you lose the ability to have that dinner and have that open bar happy hour and experience that gala feeling that drives auction, silent auction, live auction donation moments that drives the generosity of, uh, uh you know, associated with that. But what going virtual did was expanded the reach. And so if you’re in person and inclusivity as well, if you’re in person, maybe you have three or 400 people who can afford the $400 ticket to go downtown. Dress up, get the babysitter, you really kind of spend, you, you make an investment of a day and a lot of, of dollars to do that. And there are some people who don’t want to. So, so what our nonprofit customers found was that the reach of that event expanded from three or 400 people who were of course, very generous to the thousands of people who are in their mailing database who would simply get a link and click on the link and could tune in to the live stream, participate in the silent auction, using our software, participate in the donation moment. And we saw again while the attendance at, at events shrank dramatically to, to kitchens and living rooms and in small studios, generosity continued to flow and people continue to, to, to step up and answer the call of the, of the nonprofits who needed them now more than ever. So we saw that as part of the silver lining mindset is that they found reach in this, in the, in the void of in person. They found the opportunity with online and virtual.

[00:22:31.55] spk_0:
Let’s talk something too about uh having these difficult conversations, you know, making uh making time to talk about weighty subjects rather than waiting for the time to appear, which, you know, time never taps us on the shoulder and says, uh you’ve got a half a day coming up, you know, tomorrow. So do something, do something important with it that, you know, to make the time for these, these weighty

[00:23:31.24] spk_2:
conversations. Yes. So, so time was, was, you could see time was a topic that I tackled a couple of times in the book. Number one, I tackled it in connection with the Eisenhower matrix, which is kind of, uh, some, some a different variation of the Stephen Covey urgent and important. We’re gonna get, we’re gonna get to that. Yep. Yep. Ok. And then, and then, uh, so I’ll move on from that. And so, and then I also talk about this Kronos time and Cairo’s time and Kronos time is time that goes so slowly and it ticks away. And if you’re watching the clock, you’re like, did the clock just move backwards? I swear the clock just moved backwards. But Cairo’s time is that time flies, feeling that feeling where you can be just involved in something. It’s a moment you’re experiencing this moment and all of a sudden three hours have gone by and you say, where did, where did the time go? My gosh. And so my, my, my rallying cry was, let’s, let’s live life in Cairo’s time and, and, and not in Kronos time. And I’ll uh I’ll, I’ll send it back to you and say, I will wait to talk about uh the Eisenhower Matrix until you, you’d like me to. Ok.

[00:23:56.47] spk_0:
But why don’t we do it now? We’re not gonna tease listeners right now. You, you gave a great instruction to it. It’s, it’s such, it’s so simple and Eisenhower and uh Stephen Covey.

[00:26:12.45] spk_2:
So what I was addressing with, with this, this topic was this notion that I just don’t have the time to do this. And so, you know, I get a little bit like, yes, of course, time is the one thing is the one thing that everyone on the planet has the same of Elon Musk doesn’t have more than 24 hours in a day. He doesn’t have any more than I do. He doesn’t have any more than you do. But somehow he’s able to create so much more in that, in that period of time. And so we’re all given this time and, and during the pandemic, we were, we were forced to really manage this time. How do I office from home? How do I school my Children from home? How do I be a good spouse and be a good partner at home? Be a good parent at home and also look after my friends and family. And so what I tried to do is I said, let’s put, let’s let’s learn some things from some, some, some people and the Eisenhower matrix in the, the Covey matrix kind of really focused on urgent and important. And what we, what we, what we don’t take the time to do. Tony is the things that are important but not urgent. And what are the things that fall into that category? Things that are kind of uh bettering us as human beings learning a new language, reading books and, and, and, and educating learning. It’s so important to our development as people. But yet we get caught up in the day to day and the urgency of paying the bills and making money and, and taking care of the kids and feeding the kids. Those are urgent things that have to get done. But what we have to eliminate is those things that are not important and not urgent. What were we doing? We were watching a lot of TV. We were, we were, we were getting caught up in scrolling through Facebook and Instagram and, and all the online social media. And so what I was trying to do is get people to think, listen, you do have the time. What we need to do is just, is just take inventory of how we’re using that time. Give yourself a little bit more of the things that are important and not urgent and eliminate some of those things that are not urgent and not important. Of course, the things that are both urgent and important, you gotta do it right. You can’t, you, you have to do those.

[00:26:22.51] spk_0:
And then there, there’s the fourth cell of urgent but not important and the advice there is to delegate.

[00:26:51.52] spk_2:
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Delegate and, and again, it’s, it’s, it’s, you can sometimes delegate to technology too. It’s not just like, oh, I don’t have an assistant. Well, let technology handle that go into your email and set some rules, you know, just say, listen, I don’t want, you know, if, if, if they’re, if, if, if, if you’re spending all your time on, on managing your emails that are coming in, set a couple of rules that, that send them to, you know, later box and, and only work on the things that, you know, are important as they’re coming in.

[00:27:02.40] spk_0:
It’s a very simple matrix, uh simple. But, but valuable. If you learn, if you, if you, if you just pay a little attention to it, you can easily find uh your own work that belongs in all four cells and uh or your own, your own distractions in the case of the, they’re not urgent, they’re not important, you know, these kind of time suck type things. Um It, yeah, I, I love it. It’s simple, it’s elegant but it, it is

[00:27:51.05] spk_2:
valuable and then just think tony, what you can do. Let’s just say you find another half an hour of your day or another 45 minutes of your day. Just think of the things that you could do. I just talked to my call map only takes 10 minutes. And so you get, get on the map and get on the mat and listen to the call map for 10 minutes, 11 minutes and it’ll change your day completely. It’s time for a break.

[00:28:42.43] spk_1:
Donor box. What makes Donor box stand out? It’s a fundraising platform built with fundraisers for fundraisers. They have the Ultra Swift donation form that makes giving four times faster and it cuts down on drop off. They’re a comprehensive fundraising platform along with the Ultra Swift donation form. There’s event ticketing, peer to peer text to give and the new donor box live kiosk. So your folks can swipe tap or dip to pay at events. They’re committed to customer support and they understand nonprofits because they all have nonprofit backgrounds. Donor box helping you help others donor Boxx dot org. It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:30:21.83] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate. Summer, summer is the ideal time for stewardship. It’s a time that we typically are taking care of ourselves. Right? Thinking about our vacation with family, friends, maybe vacations, right? And that’s all important you because you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. I say that routinely you gotta take care of yourself first. So, after you do that though, I’m suggesting summer is a great time for stewardship, talking to your donors. Easy conversations. What’s going on with their summer? How are they handling the, the summer extra heat? If, if that applies where you are, if it’s temperatures are higher than normal, it seems like they are just about everywhere. But you know, what are their summer plans? Uh How are they taking care of themselves? Share your summer plans, you know, so it’s just, just light, light touches easy stewardship during summer. So I, I urge you to take care of yourself first and then think about your donors. Make these easy outreach calls. Um And yeah, and, and calls calls are perfect. Not, not, I’m not thinking email. I’m thinking pick up the phone and have some light conversation with, with donors. That’s it. Summer stewardship. That is Tony’s take two Kate. Well, my voice just broke like I’m 14, Kate. Kate. Kate. Hey, Kate.

[00:30:29.90] spk_1:
Do you want me to continue? We got, but loads more time now back to leadership lessons with Steve Johns.

[00:30:39.90] spk_0:
Another of the many lessons harness a service mindset.

[00:32:00.92] spk_2:
Yes. Yes. So I’m really big on this. And so, and so again, it goes back to the stoics a little bit but it’s, it’s, we live in, I live in service to, to my customers. I live in service to one cause and, and we together live in service to, to our customers And so I think that if you, if you, if you operate from a position of being a servant leader or understand that you’re here for the benefit of others, again, I think that it will, it will change the way that you, that you act. And so it’s also part of the, the, the ancient stoicism of doing the right thing. And I think that’s why, that’s why I think stoicism connects with me because I would just call, I just, before I learned about stoicism, I just called it common sense. I just called it doing the right thing. I just called it being smart. And then when I started to learn about the, the how the, the, the Stokes went about life, it really was about living a life of service and doing what’s right. Um And, and putting yourself um second to, to others. And again, I, I try to live that way. I try and serve that way. When I introduce myself. Most of the time time, I try to say I’m Steve Johns and I serve as a CEO of one cause because I feel that is how I serve one cause and that’s how I serve our nonprofit customers. Say a little about

[00:32:14.13] spk_0:
the, the Greek Stoics. Yes, uh educate us on

[00:34:01.13] spk_2:
that. So this is a 2000 year old philosophy really started by the Greeks picked up by the Romans. And it’s this notion of um of, of doing, of doing What’s right? And, and um Marcus Aurelius is one of the uh greatest I would say, maybe most well known um of the, of the school of Stoicism. And he has a book called Meditations. That is a book that I carry around in my briefcase. II, I bring it on flights because I can pick it up. I can literally open it to the middle of it and learn something. I don’t have to be reading it. Chrono chronologically, I don’t have to uh remember where I was. It’s just literally his musings or his journaling of his thoughts as the emperor of, of Rome. And it’s really this, this sense of ethics um right and wrong. Um You said humble before um humility, um and the notion of serving others. And so again, I have been asked from time to time. Hey, Steve, uh what book are you reading now? And I’m not really a big reader of current novels and, and current books, but again, $9 on Amazon, I don’t get any royalties from it whatsoever. But here’s the offer that I made to, to the company in one of my updates. I said, if you go on Amazon and you buy Marcus Aurelius Meditations for nine bucks, and you don’t think it was worth $9 I will personally refund your money. And so I’ll offer that to your listeners as well. I would say, go pick up, go pick up meditations on, on Amazon. And if you don’t learn anything, if it doesn’t improve your day through, through tony, I will pay you your nine bucks back.

[00:34:04.13] spk_0:
And, and you, you don’t have the, uh, residual stream from Marcus Aurelius.

[00:34:08.34] spk_2:
You, I do not.

[00:34:11.35] spk_0:
This is all related to one that, uh II, I remembering now this was II, I wasn’t thinking about this one for discussion, but it’s so related that helpfulness is not zero sum.

[00:36:21.48] spk_2:
Yes. Yeah. So when I, when I say I say that I said what we do is not altruism because um it al altruism is, is helping at the potential um a loss of opportunity or benefit for yourself. And so what, what, and, and, and, and I think I, I quoted, um I think I quoted Zig Ziggler in there if I, if I’m not mistaken um about, you know, we are, we are help, helpful is one of our core values and, and I, I don’t know if there’s many companies out there who have helpful as a, as a core value. And, and it is our, it is our um obligation to help our nonprofit customers raise more money and connect with more donors. We do that by providing software that provides that value, but we also have a company to run. And so, and so I expect also I have, I’m in, I’m, I am a commercial company and so I expect a fair price for that software and that’s so that I can continue to be the innovation engine for nonprofits for the next 5, 10 15, we think, you know, 30 years or more. I want to be here for the needs of the nonprofit organizations because of the way that they’re structured, they, they can’t in invest in long-term technology and innovation and that’s where I come in. And so we want to be helpful, we want to provide the best value and software possible. We want to be able to, to, to wrap, you know, to, to have consulting and people around that and help them be successful. But we also have to get paid for it because we need to be self sustaining and we need to be, to invest. I said, you know, we’ve invested literally millions of dollars over the last several years in making our software better so that nonprofits can benefit from that. And so that’s what I say, it, it, it has to, there has to be, you know, a, a, this is not altruism, but this is helpfulness and, and I think related

[00:36:35.62] spk_0:
to, you know, it’s, it’s interesting. Uh uh as we’re talking about them, I’m seeing more how they’re, they’re intertwined than I did, you know, reading, reading the books. Um But, you know, uh listen, you gotta start with the book. So, you know, and, and I didn’t, uh where, so where I said, where the company is not that we’re done, we’re not done, but I’m just Midway. I want folks to know where do they find the book? Is it at one cause dot com or, or it’s not?

[00:36:46.77] spk_2:
No. So you can go to Amazon and search for Fearless and my name as an author and you should be able to find it there.

[00:37:09.40] spk_0:
Ok. Amazon. All right. We’ve heard of that. All right, good. Um So that so related, you know, again, the, the interrelationships between these um a, a culture of curiosity that not, not fearing change. And that’s, this is all related to what you were just saying about software development, software investment, nonprofits can’t do it uh largely. Uh but, you know, all your investments have not been lucrative investments in technology, of course, right? Curiosity, the, the the value of curiosity,

[00:39:00.74] spk_2:
right? So, so again, it, and, and our values go, we are passionate, we are curious, we are helpful and we are committed and so the, the curious comes the from the passion. So we’re, we’re passionate about our customers and their causes and, and the issues and problems that they, that they face. And so we’re curious, we wanna learn more about the problems that they face so that we can convert that to solutions and be helpful. It’s really interesting, tony, we have these four values and we talk about them at, at the company, we talk about them as we’re bringing in new, new staff, almost invariably the the younger generation. When we ask the gen Z and, and the millennials, which one of these values speaks to you the most. And for me, it’s committed because that’s what I’ve really built. My entire career around is like, is, is building and, and being committed to, to customers and, and, and boards and investors and, and getting the job done and to young professionals. It’s curiosity, it’s learning, it’s exploring, it’s innovating and just, I just love that because that’s what we need, we need that as, as a company, we need that as a society for that continual process. And I’m not too old to be curious. I want to be curious but it, it’s, it’s not, it’s not a, it’s, it’s more commonly found in, in these, in the younger professionals. And, and in the story, I talk a little bit about our uh our relationship with curiosity kind of as we grow up. And, you know, we’re curious until we uh burn ourselves on the stove or, you know, we learn a lesson. Um And, and you know, I, I quote, you know, curious George always getting into trouble because he’s always curious about

[00:39:25.61] spk_0:
something curious George man in the yellow hat.

[00:39:26.64] spk_2:
Exactly. So, so again, I want, I want us to live in this balance of our values, but I love the notion of curiosity. I love how it drives our innovation and it loves how it, I love how it drives us continuing to find solutions to our customers issues. And and problems that they’re, that they’re trying to solve every day. And how for listeners,

[00:39:56.40] spk_0:
for listeners, you know, the curiosity goes to uh you know, problem solutions, uh you know, exploring avenues to overcome challenges that, that your organization is facing, that, that your beneficiaries, your, the, the the folks your service are facing, uh you know, look exploring, you know, openness to new ideas about how to, how to, how to achieve your, your mission,

[00:40:56.41] spk_2:
right? And, and we even talk about curiosity just in terms of your, your f your coworkers and your colleagues and, and you know, just showing a curiosity to learn more about what is driving them and what is, what is their background, what motivates them and really understanding more, what, what, how your, your team works so that you can work better. And so we actually do take uh tests, strength finders, tests and learn about uh what makes Steve Johns Tick so that, you know, how you can work together with me. And so that’s part of our curiosity too, is learning just more about people and, and, and being more open to that. And for our uh

[00:41:19.36] spk_0:
generation Z and perhaps millennial listeners, uh you could be curious about curious George. You can certainly uh Google, curious George Man in the Yellow Hat and you will see the uh see the books, I don’t think Curious George ever had a movie, but I think you’re right. You should have, I don’t know. Why didn’t curious George become a Disney. He would have been a good Disney character. They could have, they could have worked with that. Why didn’t Curious George ever get a movie?

[00:41:22.41] spk_2:
I am not sure, man.

[00:41:39.82] spk_0:
He got screwed and, and the, and the nice man in the yellow hat. Uh, they both got screwed together. All right. They, they should have had a movie anyway. They were good books. They were good. They were good children’s learning books. Um Yes. Uh investing in yourself making that this, this sort of goes to that, that cell where it’s important but not urgent uh in the, in the Eisenhower coffee matrix investing in yourself. The value of doing that.

[00:43:32.30] spk_2:
Exactly. And it became it beca again, it became so important during the pandemic, but it’s not any less important today. And so I feel very strongly about investing in myself. And so, but, but to your point, tony about everything interweaving it all gets back to time too because what do we do is we’re too busy for ourselves most of the time. We’re too busy working, we’re too busy taking care of our family. We’re too busy doing everything else but ourselves. So then what I say is, well, when are you in complete control of your day? And that’s probably at early in the morning. And so you have to start back solving. It’s like, well, ok, the dog wakes up at seven, ok, the kids wake up at 6 30. Ok. Well, then get up at six, get up at 5 30 you have to figure out. So, so then now that is your time between 5 36 or between 5 36 15. Now, what do you want to do be, you know, if you want to focus on mindfulness, get on the mat and listen, if you want to focus on physical fitness, get outside, put your shoes on and go run or put your shoes on and grab your gym bag and go and, and work out. Or if you want to learn a language, put your headphones on and, and start listening to Italian or start listening to Spanish if that’s your goal and I, I called myself out. I have been putting Learn Italian on my personal development list for probably 20 years. I have yet to do it. Um And, but I continue to, I just put leverage on myself by telling you and so people can hold me accountable. I think that’s another great, it’s another great tool about investing is tell your spouse or tell your partner or tell somebody, hey, you know what, I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna learn a new language or I’m, I’m gonna lose £5 or I’m gonna get more physically fit. They will hold you accountable if you don’t hold yourself accountable. So make those investments in yourself. But I think it gets back to time again. You have to find the time to do it because you’re always gonna find the time to not do it.

[00:43:53.65] spk_0:
And can I challenge on one word there? You have to make the time. Yes, you have to make the time you. No. And this is related to one that I did want to talk about. Don’t be passive with time. Listeners are probably tired of me saying this, but you have to make the time. You, you’re not gonna just find it. Time is not gonna tap you on the shoulder and say you’ve got 45 minutes free tomorrow. You, you’ve gotta be conscious. You, you say passive, don’t be passive with time.

[00:44:14.77] spk_2:
And that’s what I was trying to do with this notion of the Eisenhower matrix and urgent and important. And you know, say I feel the same, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s bunk, that’s, that’s whatever it is. You know, you, there’s, there’s 24 hours, you can

[00:44:28.71] spk_0:
call it bullshit. It’s OK.

[00:44:30.84] spk_2:
There’s 24 hours in the day. You can figure it out, grab it, take it, control it, it’s yours. And, and, but you also have to stop doing the things that are time wasters

[00:44:47.87] spk_0:
talk without telling, talking without telling that that uh you don’t, you don’t, you, it’s related to what you had said earlier. I it didn’t occur to me at that point uh that you don’t have to have all the answers. You know, you don’t always, you don’t have to be telling you can be talking

[00:46:05.91] spk_2:
without. So when I, when I sat down to write my weekly update every week, I was talking, not telling, I was sharing stories. I was, I was letting people know how I was feeling. I was thinking I was, I was picking up the vibe of, of how other people were, were thinking I was tracking what was happening in, in, in the nation. I was tracking what was happening in with our customer base and, and fundraising. And I was hearing stories of, of success and creativity and ingenuity in ways that our nonprofit customers were using our software in ways that we had never experienced before. And I was having a conversation, I was talking, I wasn’t telling, I wasn’t preaching. I wasn’t, I wasn’t admonishing or anything to that effect. I was just saying, hey, this is how I feel or this is how you might be feeling and right. You know, it’s hard to argue. You can’t, if you say this is the way it is, then people can argue with that. But if you say this is the way I’m feeling or this is the way I think about that. Well, you can’t argue, you cant disagree, you can have a different opinion, but you can’t take that away from me. And that’s, that’s what I believe. And so that, that’s my point is, is we need to talk, we need to engage in dialogue. We need to have conversation, but it’s not about telling people what they need to do or telling people what they’re doing wrong or telling people what they should do next.

[00:46:36.52] spk_0:
All right. So we’re, uh, we’re 40 some minutes into this. Now, I’m, now I’m, now I’m feeling uh gracious and generous. So let me read to you. What, what, what would you like? Which, which lessons would you like to talk about that? We haven’t, uh we haven’t talked about

[00:49:44.44] spk_2:
yet. So again, um, you know, again, picking some of these lessons is like picking your favorite child. I have two. I love them both. Um And so I, I did, I did choose, um, you know, when I think about what I, what my favorites are is human connection. So let me just kind of touch on that one again because III I kind of glossed over it. A little bit. Chapter 15 is called connect. And I’d say that if we look back at the pandemic and what it uniquely took away from us was human connection. In fact, what it did instead was it taught us to fear humans. We were walking on the sidewalk and there were people who were walking towards us, either we or they would move to the other side of the street to avoid passing, you know, and, and so, and, and we were taught and we were telling our kids like, oh, don’t touch that or, or don’t go uh approach that person or here comes a person, we need to walk to the other side. And so it was such a huge loss. And so a lesson is seek human connection. There’s actually a physiological connection. I’m not. Uh and I probably cited a study in the book, but there’s actually a proven physiological con connect connection of health and wellness and well-being um in long living longer that’s tied to human connection and friendships. And so I said, reach out to people that you haven’t talked to in a while, be the person who makes the call, not who waits for the call. Um Because there might be somebody who’s sitting at home who’s feeling super isolated, who needs to hear from someone. Um So be the person who, who does that reconnect with old friends. Um uh you know, again, whether if you can’t see them in person, get, get, get on the phone or, or, or get on the Zoom, reconnect with your family, spend more time with your family. So I relate a story of us getting in the car and driving out west is that my kids are adult kids, but it was a lot of fun to just reconnect on that level and just, just spend more time with your kids. And then finally, this whole idea, we had great loss during the pandemic as well and we continued to have loss and my dad um is, is nearing 90 he is um he, he has dementia and the isolation of COVID rapidly accelerated his decline because he needed that human connection. And we had people in the family pass away who we weren’t able to, to, to, to be with. And so my, my, my message and my lesson behind that was celebrate life. Now, don’t wait, don’t wait for anything because we don’t know, nothing is promised to us. And I, and I wanted to encourage everybody do it now celebrate life, live life. And so, um I really want to uh encourage and again, I think the, the, the mental health crisis that we’re continuing to face today, that really um was it, of course, it happened before the pandemic, but it was really exacerbated by the pandemic. It’s gonna continue for a while and we just need to be, we talked about grace earlier. We need to give grace. Um And we need to, to, to, to be with people. We need to connect with people uh phy physically as well as help with uh the mental health aspect of the pandemic that unfortunately, we’re gonna have to live with for many, many years to come.

[00:50:08.39] spk_0:
One of your lessons explicitly is celebrate. Don’t wait. And you were just talking about celebrating celebrating life, friendships, loved ones. But celebrating uh on the professional side, celebrating successes and they don’t have to be, they don’t have to be monumental. It could be a daily, you know, I did a good job on that call. I handled that meeting. Well, II I handled that question. Well, they don’t have to be monumental for us to, to celebrate and

[00:51:24.95] spk_2:
recognize tony. And, you know, interestingly enough now in the post pandemic world that, that we’re entering, I was communicating weekly. Now I’m communicating maybe quarterly. I’m on a regular cadence of, you know, commercial entity reporting quarterly revenue and earnings and you know what I’m hearing, we’re not hearing enough. We, we, we need more. And so, and so I need to go back to that to your point celebrating those little victories being in touch more because I was, I was communicating weekly uh with the team. So, so I don’t, I don’t have another, another favorite, but I did have a quote that I wanted to, to bring to your attention and bring to the reader’s attention, maybe have a conversation around it, just love it. It’s a CS Lewis quote and the quote goes something like you can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. And I, when I found that in the middle of the pandemic, I’m like that is gold. That is mic drop stuff, right? It’s like you can’t go back and change the beginning but start here right where you are and change the ending. And I think, you know, if there’s anything that we could learn, we can, we can apply that at any point in time in our lives, at any point in time in our career, in our marriages, wherever we are, it’s just like just start again, start today and change how it ends.

[00:52:11.82] spk_0:
That’s a beautiful place to end. I appreciate it. All right. All right. The book, uh Fearless Leadership Lessons At The Crossroads. It’s on Amazon. The company is one cause at one cause dot com and you can connect with Steve Johns on linkedin, Steve. Thank you very much. Wisdom Pearls. Thank you. Thank

[00:52:15.78] spk_2:
you, tony. Thank you. This

[00:52:17.87] spk_0:
was uh I it felt like Cairo’s time to me. I hope it did time for you.

[00:52:22.67] spk_2:
It was Cairo, I can’t believe an hour passed.

[00:52:26.25] spk_0:
All right, good. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks so much, Steve.

[00:52:30.27] spk_2:
Absolutely. You bet. Thanks. Thank you, tony.

[00:52:39.90] spk_1:
Next week, Impact Metrics with John Mark Vanderpool. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I

[00:52:43.03] spk_0:
bet you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:53:01.33] spk_1:
We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from Donor Boxx. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others donor Boxx dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Barnett. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:53:28.07] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scottie be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.