Tag Archives: leadership

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were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters generosity.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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[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.

Nonprofit Radio for February 20, 2023: Talent Development

 

Preeta Nayak & Lindsey WaldronTalent Development

With a few practices, you can turn your talent development process into an employee retention tool, a leadership pipeline and a step toward greater inclusivity. Preeta Nayak and Lindsey Waldron, both from The Bridgespan Group, talk through their article, “How Nonprofit Leadership Development Sustains Organizations and Their Teams.”

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:28.03] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure to welcome Preta Nyack and Lindsay waldron to nonprofit radio Pretty Nyack is a partner in the bridge span. We’re gonna do that again. No, I can’t have that, I can’t watch the first three words, it’s terrible. All right, let’s do it again. Bridge span group. Do people have trouble with that bridge span group? No, I don’t know why, I don’t know why people would, I did Okay bridge span group, the bridge span group, the bridge span group and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of necrotizing ulcerative ginger vos dermatitis. If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show talent development with a few practices, you can turn your talent development process into an employee retention tool, leadership pipeline and a step toward greater inclusivity. Preta Nyack and Lindsay waldron, both from the bridge span group. Talk through their article On Tony’s take two. Non profit radio 50 redox here is talent development. It’s a pleasure to welcome to nonprofit radio free to Nyack and Lindsay waldron. Preta Nyack is a partner in the bridge span groups SAN Francisco office and head of bridge spans leadership and community services, she’s co author of the book nonprofit leadership development what’s your plan a for growing future leaders Lindsay waldron is manager in the bridge span groups boston office. She worked on the development and facilitation of leading for impact bridge spans, two year consulting and capacity building program for nonprofit executive teams. Bridge span is at bridge span dot org to lindsey. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:35.58] spk_1:
Thank you. tony It’s great to be here.

[00:03:18.23] spk_0:
I don’t know who’s the expert in which subjects. So you know, if I call on somebody and then, you know, if you want to pass it off and say no, peter knows that better lindsey or vice versa. Of course, you know, feel free to do that. It’s not, I won’t consider it anarchic. If you, if the person I asked doesn’t, doesn’t fulfill the, you know, fulfill the question. So let’s see overview. I’ll just throw it out and one of you can take it and then maybe the other wants to contribute something more. What is not going well for nonprofits generally in, uh, in talent development? Well, why don’t you start us off? There we go. Yeah. You

[00:04:36.92] spk_1:
jump in. I’ll jump in and, and, and name some some challenges. Um, and then, and then Lindsay definitely invite you. I invite you to jump in as well. I mean, I think let’s, let’s be clear everyone in this moment. Every organization across all sectors is, uh, facing a set of talent challenges that, um, you know, that have been precipitated by sort of layers of crisis. Right? So we, we had, we experienced covid. Um, and what that meant in terms of the workplace. We’ve experienced the racial reckoning and the questions that has led us to ask, We are, we’ve, we’re facing is it inflation recession is in both our people quiet quitting or are they getting laid off? Like there’s just a, there’s just a set of things that is also affecting the nonprofit sector now in particular, I think I would say that for the nonprofit sector, if you’re a nonprofit leader, you know, you have historically and probably even today not had the resources at your disposal to really invest in your leaders. We, we invest first in, you know, in our constituents and our clients and the people were serving and we put ourselves last often times and that means we don’t have some of the habits we should have. And it means all of these pressures than can hit us harder. So I know I’m talking about at a high level there, but I do think it’s a very real challenge.

[00:05:25.18] spk_0:
We put our own selves last. It’s like the, it’s like the founder who doesn’t pay themselves for the first three years of the, of the nonprofits existence. You know, we, we, we put our, we set up maybe perpetuate that and we put our teams are, I don’t know, arguably our most important resource, our, our staff, our teams. Um, you know, last, right?

[00:05:28.28] spk_1:
Yeah. And then, and that might, you can maybe do a sprint that way. Right. But what is social change? Not a sprint. Right? More than America cannot

[00:05:39.08] spk_0:
right lindsey, please.

[00:06:42.36] spk_2:
Well, just to just to build on that, you know, I think what, so what that leads to then that lack of investment is the turnover and increased rates of turnover that we’ve, that we’ve seen. So bridge fan has done some research. We cite a lot of other research in the, in our article as well. Um, you know, estimate, we estimate that one in four senior leaders leaves their role every two years. Right? So eight years you’re kind of looking at a whole new, a whole new team, which is, which is just difficult. And we also know that a huge reason for so much of voluntary turnover among nonprofits is for lack of career development and opportunities. Right? So that, that turn over that turnover treadmill that has a real cost associated with it. Both a financial cost for organization, The cost of recruiting hires, the cost of training new people and it has a cost on the impact side as well trying to fill new positions kind of, you know, constrains the amount of impact we’re able to have through the programs and services that nonprofits run. So I think that really kind of puts a pin in the problem itself.

[00:07:00.28] spk_0:
It takes a new employee three months just to know for sure. You know where the bathrooms are. I mean it takes, there’s a lot of, there’s a learning curve and so right. That impacts the services. Um, very interesting what you said about the volunteer 40% of voluntary Tony over is not feeling like there’s opportunity. So basically like I’m in a dead end job, I don’t see any advancement here for me. So I’ll go somewhere else. Is that, is that it essentially putting it crassly dead end job.

[00:07:48.21] spk_2:
Yeah. Or you know, not feeling an opportunity for professional development, right? Like not every organization is structured like a professional services firm, like a law firm for example, that has a clear ladder up. But regardless of whether or not there’s, you know, a clear, a clear up the task at a given organization. I think the point that we try to make, um, in this in this piece is that there are many ways to grow professionally. Um, whether or not, you know, there’s a new role or a specific new job on the, on the horizon.

[00:09:16.58] spk_0:
Funny you mentioned law firm, you know, a normal progression like associate partner maybe name partners. You know, I practiced law for two. Well in some respects they were two short years, but for me, there were two of the longest years of my life and I, I couldn’t stand it because in large measure I was dreading the partnership path because I was looking at the partners, they were all gray eyed, miserable divorced from their spouses or estranged from their Children. Like that was the last thing I wanted to do was follow their path, but I know that’s, that’s not the, that’s not the example you were giving. But your example conjured, uh, some hysteria in me as I recalled Not wanting to be like, I don’t want to be like those people, I don’t want, I don’t want to advance in this career. If I have to look like those people 15 years from now, I’ll be miserable. So I bailed out after two. Okay. But on to more, more, uh, more encouraging talent development progressions and scenarios. They’re not all, they’re not all bad in law firms, but a lot of them are outside. So, uh, so like we’re looking for, you know, like transparency, right? We want to transfer you, you cite the arctic in your article, which we’ll, we’ll give folks a link to shortly, you know, transparency and consistency. We’re looking for some, we’re looking for something, some bedrock that we can rely on so that we, uh, we know there’s a future for us in this, in this organization.

[00:11:13.49] spk_1:
I think, I think that, yeah, I think that’s right. And I, I think that one of the things that, um, because we don’t have, you know, the habit of investing in ourselves investing in our people or that, you know, it’s when it does happen, it tends to be a little bit at hot, right? You’re sort of a little bit making it up as you go along and the real, there’s, there’s sort of two challenges there, right, at least, right. One is that you’re right Tony you don’t get, you’re not providing anyone with visibility of like, how is this gonna happen, right? How how will will somebody invest in me? Right? You just don’t know. It’s not, it’s not predictable. The second is, and this is a really important point that we try to make repeatedly throughout the article, is that when you do things in that ad hoc way, inevitably it leads to inequity in the results, right? Inevitably. It’s the people who are the least connected, often the most different from people who are in the most senior thoughts, who aren’t going to get what they deserve right, because it’s going to be through some informal relationship or oh, Lindsay, you’re just like me in this way we connect and then like I give you an opportunity and if we don’t stop to actually ask ourselves, oh, is everyone, are all the lindsey’s getting opportunities and what kind of opportunities are they getting? And are we systematically having that conversation with everybody? That’s the only way you’re gonna get to some of the equity goals that I know many of our, many of our nonprofit leaders have rightfully kind of established now for themselves. They said we want to have a more inclusive culture, we want a leadership team that looks different from the team today, but the only way you’re gonna get that is by creating some systems and habits

[00:12:00.32] spk_0:
you say that, um, nonprofits fill the top leadership positions internally at only half the rate that for profit employers do. So it feels like we’re, we’re abandoning the people that we know the best, the ones that have worked for us. We’re, we’re not, we’re not promoting them. We’re doing it only half the rate that, that companies do it. So we’re not like we’re not investing and we’re abandoning the folks who seemed like the best shot because we know them, they have a history with us rather than bringing somebody from the outside

[00:12:37.68] spk_1:
well. And the other, the other piece there is that those people from the outside there, there are moments to be clear, you should have a mix of hires in your organization. People, you’re growing internal leadership. But the, the success rate on external hires is for all the reasons you would imagine not as not as high, right? Because those are people who are to some extent unknown and who don’t know you. And so it’s not just that you’re not giving people internally a chance. You, you may also then be like, it may take a lot longer to get to a two to a higher that really works

[00:12:45.70] spk_0:
Lindsay, was there something you wanted

[00:13:06.41] spk_2:
to add there? No, just the point that, you know, as as pre dimension, external hires are kind of less likely to be successful and they’re, they’re also more expensive to attract, right? It’s like this, the cost of turnover and kind of relying over indexing on external hire to fill leadership gaps in your organization is, you know, there’s a real cost to that, which again, it just like all builds the case for a thoughtful approach to leadership and talent development that that we outline and are excited to talk about

[00:13:23.14] spk_1:
today. Okay,

[00:13:43.57] spk_0:
so let’s, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna make improvements in D. E. I were going to make improvements in retention, we’re gonna reduce turnover. Your first idea is craft competencies who wants to wants to introduce us to crafting competencies? Just pointed to Lindsay Lindsay. I guess that means you do, if you had pointed first, peter would, but she did you go,

[00:15:36.99] spk_2:
No, I got it. Well. So I think you know, the first, the first question is what’s a competency was kind of a big, big words are just to break it down. We talk about competencies at the end of the day. They are kind of a unique set of skills and capabilities that people need to perform, you know, and develop in their work today and and to develop in order to be successful in an organization going forward. Um so a competency could be something like strategic thinking or communication or you know, data analysis analytics, mission orientation, there’s, there’s a whole number and we kind of outline some of the more popular competencies that we’ve seen in our work with nonprofits over the years. But the idea is, you know, there’s such, there can be such value in, you know, as a nonprofit leadership team, Distilling the set of competencies. It shouldn’t be an endless list. But say, you know, what are the top five or the top 10 that matter most for the people in your organization, Right. It’s really critical that, you know, folks in our organization are able to bring an equity mindset to this work. So what does that actually mean? Let’s spell it out right and name that as a competency. We want people to invest in developing or, you know, ability to communicate with our clients with people. We serve with funders with policymakers. That is a critical competency. So what is good look like on that dimension for people in our organization? So the process of kind of naming the, the skills and capabilities that are critical for people in our, our organization to develop in order to promote our mission, advance our our work um, that in and of itself, you know, we found both with our clients in a bridge band right to be a really a really valuable exercise that kind of lays the foundation for this approach to talent development

[00:16:04.63] spk_0:
pre to you. You distinguish between core competencies and leadership competencies. Why did you flush those out for

[00:17:12.09] spk_1:
us? Yeah, I think one of the things that um, you know, Lindsay mentioned that it’s, it’s valuable to to name together as an organization, A relatively small set of competencies that you’re trying to build in all your your employees right. Um at the same time we recognize that there are going to be a set of folks who may be taking on broader leadership or more complex challenges for the organization and they may need to have an additional and slightly different set of competencies that they have to grow into as well. And so we encourage teams again to just think still try and keep lists short. You’ll see in the article we name some of the most popular but but also recognize that yeah, there are some things as you take on more that that you may need to build um additionally to what beyond the core competencies and those are the leadership, we call them leadership competencies, you could call them all sorts of things but but we distinguish between core, which is something that you know, everyone in the organization you would hope would grow on and leadership which would be for a subset of folks taking on more complex tasks.

[00:17:50.26] spk_0:
And it’s important, let’s just stay with you preta it’s important to recognize that the competencies today may be very different than the competencies that we need both. Core and leadership in the future. Although I would think especially leadership would would change but if we’re gonna look ahead, I think it was, well it was one of you who said earlier, you know what what what got us here basically what got us here is not what’s gonna get us ahead, you didn’t, you said it more elegant ever said, it said it more eloquently than I just did but but what what got us here is not gonna work for the future so we gotta, we gotta be looking ahead to competencies as well.

[00:20:10.22] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely. And this is where I’ll just name, you know lindsey and I have both had the opportunity to be in, I don’t know, hundreds of leadership team conversations where the, where where folks are sitting together and actually trying to wrestle with this question of like oh yeah what are, what is it we mean by leadership or talent in our organization, what are the competencies we want to name? And those are really energizing conversations right? Because to your pump point tony you realize like you’re not trying to, you know, just name what you do now, you’re trying to think ahead like what what is the organization we may be in the future and what does that mean? We’re gonna need in our staff and in our leaders and you know some of that’s gonna be the same, there’s some things that you want to continue but some of it’s gonna be different and that that can be a really exciting conversation, I think the other thing is that um what’s what’s often fun about those conversations is you can just have, you know, I think Lindsay you use use the, you think, you said strategic thinking or strategic mindset like you could actually just like even sitting together with others and being like well when I mean when I say that when I say someone’s being strategic, this is what I mean and then like you’ll realize that like you’re not always even speaking the same language and actually one of the most important things about competencies is is actually then going one layer more to describe them and describe them in like observable ways because that means then like tony when you join my team and I say look I want you to be more strategic a lot of times people will walk away and be like I don’t even know what you meant, what what is she talking about but instead I have to say like so here actually is what I mean tony like I mean when when a problem comes your way, I want you to I want you to show me that you can break it into pieces and and tackle that piece, piece by piece with with your staff right? That’s what strategic means and that’s the kind of language you need in these competency definitions so that everybody can kind of say like oh that’s what I need to do, that’s what this organization needs, it was really powerful,

[00:20:30.11] spk_0:
peter trust me you would not want me working on your team, I would be a terrible employee of any company, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t even get, I wouldn’t even get hired. I would just I would probably just not even show up for the interview. I would I would book it and then just to prove that I’m independent, I wouldn’t show up. I wouldn’t

[00:20:31.15] spk_1:
even then you’re right. There are some core competencies that were they missing out

[00:20:36.22] spk_0:
on. I have core arrogance. I think that’s that’s my arrogance is arrogance. One of the core skill sets. One of the core competencies.

[00:20:43.16] spk_1:
We it has not been frequently named. It has not been frequently. Not

[00:20:51.04] spk_0:
frequently. It’s very diplomatic of you. Thank you. Um Alright let’s so lindsey, let’s go. Was there anything else about crafting the competencies from anybody that that we didn’t talk about? You think folks should know?

[00:21:44.34] spk_1:
Oh I will say I will, I’ll name one more thing which is just that a mantra we have in the in the competency sort of list processes. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So do not be the organization that spends 6 to 12 months trying to identify your competencies. That’s 6 to 12 months that have not been developing those competencies in your people, right? Because you’ve been worrying about the words that you’re using. I’m not saying words don’t matter at all. But like you know get most of the way there and try it and then you can always come back and adapt your list if you need to. So yeah, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good Lindsay

[00:21:48.27] spk_0:
you wanna introduce us to uh, co creating professional development plans.

[00:22:13.76] spk_2:
Yeah, sure. This is a fun one. you know the, the way that we introduce the concept of an effective um, professional development plan um, is through kind of a really fun example, um, which is by asking, you know, nonprofit leaders that we work with. Let’s reflect on how you learned how to ride a bike for the first time, right. Um, and tony if I asked you that question, right, assuming you know how to ride a bike. Um, what, what did that, what did that look like?

[00:23:00.03] spk_0:
Well, my, my mom and dad would take me out and I had a bike with, well started with a tricycle, right? We start with a tricycle and then we, we got, I graduated to a bike and they would put training wheels on it, of course it had training wheels and they would kind of hold the handlebars one of them with me as I rode even with, even with the training wheels in the beginning I think and then eventually the training wheels come off and mom and dad are left behind and I bike away.

[00:26:08.07] spk_2:
Yeah, and now here you are a bike rider. Um, no, it’s a helpful, like what you just described is a very kind of active and involved process of you kind of learning while doing right with people kind of by your side, you know, making sure you don’t like fall too hard and and coaching you along the way. Um and I think that’s a really helpful kind of picture to keep in mind as we think through well, how do people learn, how do we expect people to kind of grow and develop some of the competencies that we just developed. Um and it’s not by just reading about it, it’s not by attending a training on how to ride a bike or by watching a video. And I think I elevate that contrast because what we, what we often, what we often see like many nonprofits are, are guilty of this is, you know, an expense budget that’s kind of tied to training and development and more often and then not like that, you know, that the default is well, attend this training online or go to go to a seminar or kind of like learn about it, read about it, which is fine and which is necessary to a certain extent, but that’s not gonna help you develop the skill. Um and so there’s a, there’s a body of research that has kind of resulted in a framework called the 70 2010 around how how people learn, which is that 70 per percent of learning happens on the job that happens while doing it happens while you’re kind of pursuing that stretch assignment, right? 20% of learning really is kind of anchored in thoughtful coaching mentoring and development, right? So pre to for example giving me pointers along the way the work that your parents were doing right, kind of coaching you along the side, holding the handlebars, making sure that you knew what you were doing, Giving you tips, you know, and then there is a role for kind of learning through reading through more formal training, but that’s really you know closer to 10% and so it’s you know that that mindset, that allocation of how I think through how I want to develop myself, how I’m going to kind of become better on some of these dimensions that we that we name as organizations, those competencies that matter. I think we we encourage and we even include a template in our set of resources around like a development plan that kind of brings to life the 70 2010 approach and the great news is this right I mentioned before a lot of, a lot of organizations out there, they have a training and expense budget, Right? But that’s really at the end of the day, that’s kind of like the 10%, so much of learning happens on the job. So if if we could invest more in thoughtfully developing those stretch opportunities that preda alluded to kind of at the beginning of this conversation, um that’s great, that’s the most effective way people learn and it’s also one of the least expensive way to kind of teach our people to, to mentor them through more of an apprenticeship model.

[00:26:53.88] spk_0:
So how do we develop and we’re supposed to co create these right between the manager and the person who reports to the manager co co create the plan. But how do we Make the plan when we don’t know what the, what the opportunities are gonna be for the 70% part of the 70 2010 rule, how are we going to craft up? I mean, we don’t just create opportunities to see the person succeed or not. I mean, how do we how do we develop a plan around something that’s uncertain for the future? The the 70% part, the on the job part, we don’t we’re not really sure what’s coming.

[00:28:00.88] spk_1:
Well, i if I can jump in Lindsay, I’ll just say, I mean, no, you’re not sure of everything that’s coming, but you know, a good amount of what’s coming. Right? So if you’re, you know, you know, um in particular, I mean, obviously will vary by um by competency. Right, let’s remember that, right? You’re picking your your decided in advance together, there are these two or three competencies maybe that you’re going to really focus on? Well, let’s say it is about communications, it was one that that Lindsay mentioned earlier. Well, you might not know all the big presentations that are, that are gonna come up in the next year, but you know that there’s, you know, there’s the annual staff gathering. There’s the there’s um, you know, there’ll be at least a couple of updates to the board, you know, that, you know, you have a sense of what’s coming right and so you can, you and then you can together look for those opportunities. So the other thing to know is that if we agree, you’re gonna work on communications tony we might pick out a couple of things that we think are gonna be opportunities in the next couple of months. But then we should also revisit this plan at least once a quarter and say like, okay, what, what opportunities came up and what might be coming up in the next quarter so that you can continuously be updating it right? You can’t plan out a year and can’t plan out a year,

[00:29:11.81] spk_0:
especially for the, the arrogance building skill set. No, we didn’t, those are gonna be particularly particularly hard to come by, but, but I’ll fight for them anyway, let’s flush out the coaching and mentoring part a little bit the 20 and the 70 2010 that I think maybe, I don’t know, it feels like sometimes it’s left to sort of, you know, people kind of find a mentor on their own might be in the company, maybe, maybe you’re saying ideally it should be in the, in the organization or, but it’s, it’s left too much informality and it’s left up to the mentee to go find somebody who will mentor and coach them. I think you want it to be much more formalized in the organization, don’t you Lindsay? Go ahead lindsey.

[00:31:16.80] spk_2:
Yeah, yeah, well I was, I was just kind of observing, observing Preta’s like head nodding and I think, you know, I think that is ultimately the goal and then I think that that it speaks to kind of like the third piece of this puzzle that really makes it all work, is making sure that your, your supervisors, your managers throughout your organization are kind of taking ownership over their team’s development are kind of stepping into that role of coach so that my team of, to my team of five, my team of however many I’m aware of what they’re working on, right? I’m thinking about what opportunities I can help create for them and with them and I’m and I’m actively kind of coaching them through providing providing constructive feedback on what they’re doing well on what they need to to improve. And so often it’s the case that me in a supervisor role, I could be that coat, I should be approached to my, to my teams, those I’m supervising and at the same time it may be that, you know, there’s a, there’s a certain competency that I’m really focused on developing and my current supervisor isn’t the right person to support me on that. Right? So they’re, there are certainly opportunities where I might seek outside counsel, um, an expert on a certain topic to help coach me on something like public speaking, for example on on data analysis or or something like that. Or I may I may, I may seek out coaches from folks within my organization that don’t directly supervise me. So it’s not kind of a one size fits all situation, there are kind of different avenues and at the same time I think it’s our, our perspective that that talent development often hinges on an organization’s ability to kind of equip and hold their their management, their their supervisors accountable for developing their teams. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Oh,

[00:31:43.22] spk_1:
I you know, honestly, I just keep imagining tony like learning to ride this bike and his parents at his side. And as you were describing, I was thinking to myself, I guess we should all whatever that competency is that we’re trying to develop whatever that skill is. We should be asking ourselves who’s gonna be like those parents who trusted tony enough to get him a bike right to put him on the bike, but then who he trusted enough that if he was going to fall, they would be there to help him right? Like it’s like you’re gonna kind of asking that question of yourself as you’re building the skills is who are the people and it’s probably not just one person, right? It’s probably a set of people you go to under different circumstances, but it’s that environment of management support that I think the best kind of like talent rich organizations have created, they’ve created that environment.

[00:35:38.89] spk_0:
You, you all are making me picture my little block on uh orient way in Rutherford New Jersey where I learned to ride a bike and there were too many, there were too many trees, you know, because the trees upend the sidewalk slabs so it’s all bumpy and it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a good environment, but you know, that’s where I grew up orient way Rutherford New Jersey, I hope they’ve repaired the sidewalks in the past 55 years or so. It’s time for Tony’s take two nonprofit radio 50 for the planned giving accelerator, it’s the re ducks, it’s a reminder that you can get 50% off planned giving accelerator tuition by using the code non profit radio 50 the accelerator, the class begins in early March and you’ll be done with it with me. We all together will be done by memorial Day, so no impact on your summer March april and May will spend an hour a week together, you’ll meet with me and all your peers in the class and I will step you through launching planned giving at your non profit there’s no homework from week to week, there’s incredible peer support. We share challenges as well as successes together. The outcomes are incredible like $4 million from a small humane society in Georgia and $2 million from community development organization in Oregon and five new board gifts from another small organization in also in Georgia, a child development agency. So lots of lots of good outcomes. Your outcomes can be just as good. It’s all, it’s all available to you. It’s at planned giving accelerator dot com, You’ll see how to proceed and you’ll get the 50% off with non profit radio 50. Any questions about the accelerator naturally you ask me tony at tony-martignetti dot com. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got the book. Ooh, we’ve got boo koo but loads more time for talent development with pre to Nyack and Lindsay waldron. What about the idea of not leaving this to the mentees? Like the organization should be assigning or how do we, but it might the leadership might not know who the best mentor is for somebody. How do we, are we leaving it to the mentees to go find their own or what, how we, how do we formalize this but not make it overburden over overbearing. I’m very interested in this mentor mentor relationship. Maybe I never had a mentor as an attorney that maybe that’s why I dreaded. Uh I dreaded from promotion. I didn’t want to be like those people. Maybe I didn’t have a good mentor in in the law firm. How do we, how do we help Pope folks not have the same crushing defeat in their career that I had.

[00:35:42.41] spk_1:
I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to manage that tony but

[00:35:49.27] spk_0:
I’m unmanageable. I told you I don’t want, you don’t want me to work for you. Trust me. Exactly. You just said it, I’m unmanageable. But for the other folks who are, who are manageable, how do we help them get the right mentor?

[00:36:51.79] spk_1:
I would actually one question I would suggest even before that is like, is actually trying to just get a sense of who has, who has someone that they’re relying on that they’re able to turn to. And again, these development plans are an opportunity to ask that question. Who’s got me and you know, who doesn’t because I think that like you may not, it may not be that big a stretch. It may be, you know, a small set of people who don’t already have the connections they need that. You can then focus your energy on. Um, and, and so I think just the other thing I’ll just name is, I think generally when organizations for profit, nonprofit ask this question, they do find that the folks who are often left out are those who aren’t, haven’t traditionally been in that employment space, You see women who don’t, who often are lacking a mentor, people of color. And so you know, again, some areas where you can kind of double down and focus if other folks are, are seem like they’re doing okay

[00:37:41.56] spk_0:
alright. I see. So we can use these at least quarterly check ins to which we’re gonna get to the check in. All right. So then the remaining we got 70 2010, the remaining 10% is formal Lindsay like you said, go to a webinar seminar, go to attend a conference, that’s the 10%. That’s I mean we need to budget for that because there is a role I would think especially in in developing like a new competency that may be an early stage of developing a lacking competency skill set, you know, hearing, hearing listening to a webinar or going to a conference on it might be very valuable. So we need to budget that also.

[00:38:16.15] spk_2:
Yeah, for sure. Like a concrete example we use in at our organization at at bridge band which is focused on strategy, right? And operating effectiveness. But a lot of, you know folks that come in to our organization like need a pretty solid like quantitative background because a lot of our, you know, we use a data driven approach right? But if I’ve never opened Excel Microsoft Excel for example, It’s gonna be hard to just start doing immediately. And so there are so many tutorials kind of online and person around like what are the basics, right? How can I invest again? Not 100%, but like 10% of my capacity to just kind of familiarize myself with this thing, understand the basics, get my bearings and then start to apply that learning um on the job.

[00:39:04.71] spk_0:
Uh I should have asked you earlier. So it’s your suffering under a lackluster host who’s unmanageable, lackluster, arrogant. See these are all the traits you don’t know all the reasons you don’t want me working for you rita, you don’t want, you don’t want me in the bridge band organization. Um, you know, what’s the, what’s the basis for the, the conclusions that you drew? What? This is all based on Lindsay. You referenced hundreds of conversations but was this a survey or was this intentional research or it’s just organically grown, gained over time. What who wants to talk to why you have the credibility in this space to help

[00:40:27.68] spk_1:
us? I can talk a little bit about the path. Um, because tony you actually mentioned at the top, top of our time together the, the book I’ve written with a colleague plan a right on developing developing future leaders and that was over a decade ago we wrote that and we did that was research that was talking with um, uh, folks in the field who are leadership and talent development experts to understand what are the best for profits and nonprofits doing to create leadership pipelines. We then have like a set of general practice is to anchor our work in and building on that. We have then worked with. I think we are now probably at over 200 teams we’ve worked with in cohorts to apply these principles and that’s where we get the reps and refined it and where like some of these stories that you see even in the article come from. So, so it’s been a, we’ve tried to take our own medicine, so to speak, like we did the 10% desk research and then we wanted to apply it in the field and like actually just understand what’s going on and what’s hard, you know, what, what’s easy on paper, hard to do in practice, what kinds of tools might help that sort of thing. Anything else you’d add Lindsay?

[00:41:51.97] spk_2:
Um, I think we’ve also like in addition to coaching those nonprofits right around the country around the world at this point we also are learning within our organization, right? So, so a lot of like the structures that we, that we discussed were kind of trying to like eat and breathe ourselves. So I I have a development plan, right, 70 2010, I revisit it um, twice a year actually with my mentor, we talk about it, I talk about my strengths, my weaknesses, you know, where I need to, where I need to develop what that could look like to kind of reach the, the next level within my career at the organization, whether or not really that means a new role, so to speak, I know that I’m kind of growing regardless. Um, and, and so that, you know, it kind of motivates me to, to stay at this organization because I know I’m constantly learning, I know there are people who are investing in me and I have clear insight into what it takes to be successful in our organization because we’ve kind of spelled out those competencies, we’ve we’ve made what is often implicit explicit for everyone in our organization, right? Not just the folks that kind of our proactive in seeking it out.

[00:42:13.74] spk_0:
Are you supposed to be revisiting your plan at least quarterly? I thought you said you said you’re only doing it twice a year.

[00:42:20.92] spk_2:
I’m Oh I I will say I I have development conversations and we’ll get to this next right? I have development conversations with my supervisors and with those, I supervise, you know, every every couple of weeks or so. Right. So regularly we’re talking about like what am I doing? Well where do I need to improve? And we kind of have this framework of the competencies we care about to kind of reference.

[00:42:47.66] spk_0:
Okay. I just wanna make sure you’re not violating

[00:42:49.63] spk_1:
your I

[00:42:51.89] spk_0:
mean, I can’t lessons from a bunch of hypocrites, but Okay, you’re not you’re not you’re not hypocrites. Okay, Okay, what are you saying? I’m sorry, I was just talking

[00:43:02.95] spk_1:
unmanageable,

[00:43:04.33] spk_0:
I talk over my manager, it’s terrible. He’s unmanageable. I get him out, get him out. He’s unmanageable.

[00:43:11.36] spk_1:
Sorry, I was gonna say it’s a feedback rich environment and and tony maybe that’s another reason why you would not you would not you would not want to be with us because we would be telling you regularly what we love and what you can do better. How’s that?

[00:43:51.36] spk_0:
Yes, what I can do better. It’s again very, very tactfully put. Thank you. Uh there are there are there are expletives that could substitute but you use the tactful way. Um let’s tell a story peter you mentioned. Yeah, you have you have three examples for each of the three, you know, we have craft competencies, co create professional development plans and and then we’re gonna get to consistent development conversations those check ins um tell a story. Somebody, somebody this is worth talking about the professional development plans. Your your your example was shocked to see if I said it right shocked the Sustainable Energy Foundation, which I love Shaq Shaq T and Energy going together. I don’t know if they intended that when they created their Foundation, but I like it. Who wants to tell the story about shocked and their professional development plans?

[00:45:09.01] spk_2:
Yeah, I’m happy too. I’m happy to kick us off. Yeah, shocked is an as an organization based in India um that we supported through through a version of this process, through this kind of offering that we um that we deliver for cohorts of nonprofits and our main point of contact was actually an HR professional who had been doing this work for, you know, over a decade, but was was still new to this framework of of 70 2010. Um and so, you know worked with his leadership team with his ceo um to develop a set of competencies as we discussed right? They went through that process with with some bridge span support, we’re able to articulate what matters and then focus first on developing you know that what we often see with the organizations we work with is they don’t roll it all out at once. That would be really hard. But often first you know the it’s the work typically of the executive team of the leadership team to align on what competencies matter most in their future leaders

[00:45:27.93] spk_0:
you make that point that leadership has to set the example

[00:47:35.76] spk_2:
exactly, leadership has to set the example. So once they’ve done that then they kind of you know they start to walk the walk and this hR professional who was in a leadership position um He provides the example which we highlight in the article around a competency that he was working on which was improved communication right in public speaking. And so he named that as something that he needed to develop. It went on, his development plan, you know? And in this case he actually sought out somebody who was not his kind of like direct supervisor, direct boss, I’m forgetting exactly who it was but say it was a board member right who he admired who had a very strong concise and effective communication style and he he sought out that individual as a mentor and what they I would do is check in again like every quarter um to kind of review and assess how am I doing, How am I progressing against this really important skill that will help me grow in this role. That will help me be successful as a leader within this organization. And so that’s just one example and I think you know you point to a piece that we name like you leader you have to lead by example right? Because this is the type of thing as Preda mentioned up front, like it’s easy not to invest in talent, right? It’s easy to focus all of our attention on the programs we’re running on the services we’re offering on the clients that we are serving because those needs never never stop. Right? It’s and so the grind of just our day to day is it’s real but taking the time and discipline to pull up and reflect on our own learning our own development, our own professional growth um is critical and so if a Ceo or director of HR can find the time to do that can be candid and transparent about their growth areas, right? Everyone has growth there areas right? Even the C. E. O. S of the top companies out there, nobody’s perfect. We’re all growing right? That in turn kind of helps make visible um to others throughout the organization that like oh if the Ceo or the director of whatever department has time to do this and is taking charge of their professional development, then I can do that too. And that helps create this kind of culture of learning development of feedback

[00:48:30.51] spk_0:
completely contrary to the Jack Welch at general electric style of management to I know everything I am perfect. I have all the answers. Just just come to me. Uh, but he’s he’s long been his theories anyway. I think I’ve been debunked. All right, thank you. Good story about shock. T Yeah, it’s interesting that he chose a board member to, to uh, to help. I mean, he went to a volunteer leader, you’re saying,

[00:49:20.64] spk_2:
Yeah, and it can’t, I mean that’s, that’s the point. I think it’s, you know, I think an organization can play a role in kind of making those connections like the mentor match, so to speak. But I think it, you know, it also requires there’s a role for kind of your supervisor or manager to play and there’s also a role for each individual to play and taking ownership over their professional development and growth, right? So I might say, oh wow. Like creed is so awesome at the way that she engages clients, right? And I really, I really want to learn from from her. So, you know, I to have the agency to kind of reach out and seek, seek out mentors that spike on some of the skills and dimensions I care about. Um you know, is very much like that’s totally possible. There’s nothing preventing me from from doing that. And if you kind of like create the culture within your organization that, that is, you know, that that happens. So that is the norm that people are receptive to that. Um, I think that that can enable great things.

[00:49:39.92] spk_0:
So preta let’s talk about what we’ve, we’ve alluded to a couple of times. The the 3rd 3rd recommendation, consistent development conversations, these check

[00:51:58.23] spk_1:
ins. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was just, um, I was just thinking as for, you know, for folks who are listening to this. You know, there, there there’s value in the whole system, there’s value in putting in place these competencies and, and development plans and, and all of that. And you know, there’s also a question of like, well, what could I do as an individual tomorrow, Right? What could I start doing? And I, and, and I think actually the important there’s a lot because at the heart of all of this is regular conversation between a manager and a direct report or someone in their sort of network about where is it you’re headed? What are the skills you’re trying to build and how do we make sure you’re actually getting effective opportunities to build it right. And those effective opportunities are probably going to be on the job. And so that and it’s the regular conversation, right? So I had a, had a conversation Um, just yesterday with for 30 minutes with a mentee relatively new mentee someone when I’ve just been chatting with regularly for a couple of months and you know we we spent most of the time just kind of kind of getting to know each other and then talked about one particular problem that was on his mind and it was 30 minutes and we’ll do it again in a month. you know, and it’s a it’s just a little bit of a muscle you start to build and then in six months I will we will know a lot about each other and there will be a lot of space for that hard moment for him to pick up the phone or send the chat or whatever he needs to do because because those moments you can’t really schedule, can you write those are those are those are unscripted. Right, So so I just think it’s that muscle that gets everybody comfortable with like sharing feedback, sharing ideas, celebrating the winds, you know, sometimes like having a good cry, whatever it is that it’s that pattern that I think um really sustains that the relationship. But then actually if you have a web of those in an organization, it really sustains the organization

[00:52:20.38] spk_0:
and and to your point earlier was that the the formal check ins with with with the the supervisor, those should be at least quarterly, but but but mentors you’re saying, you know mentors mentees, I mean that can be on the fly as as ad hoc as needed or you know, maybe could could also be scheduled to?

[00:52:31.42] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean I like I’m a huge fan both in my professional and personal life of the recurring, the recurring appointment, you know, set the recurring appointment, have it for the half an hour monthly, you may end up canceling it or not using it, but like put it in there and and I I just really encourage everyone to be doing that with with the advisors in their life, whether they’re formal managers or or mentors or something else.

[00:53:21.30] spk_0:
Do you have any other action steps or for either of you? I love stuff that people listen on a Tuesday and they can think about it Wednesday and then they implement on thursday. What anything else for from either of you that we can act on immediately start taking action steps. No, this is all 100% theoretical, there’s no value

[00:53:58.99] spk_1:
in. Yeah, no, I think that I mean that the This the simple sort of thought exercise I would encourage people to do is like if you download there’s a 70 2010 template, we’ll share the materials but you can probably make this yourself. It’s not rocket science, right? It’s a couple of what are the couple of skills or competency areas, you can use our list or you can come up with your own or Google, there’s plenty of banks online available and then what do you think the 70, is going to be for you in the next few months on that thing. What’s the activity you’re going to do? What’s the coach, you’ll have do it for yourself as the first step and then share it with your manager or maybe or actually even better share it with the person you manage, right? Let them know how you’re thinking about this and maybe those, their wheels will start turning too. So I know that would be uh, just an easy way to get started lindsey. Any other suggestions?

[00:56:03.01] spk_2:
Well, I think just, you know, I feel like most of the people, I imagine a lot of folks listening like they may not have a set, a very like clear, explicit set of like what are the qualities, characteristics and skills I need to develop to be, to be great at my role in my organization over the long term and if that doesn’t exist, that’s, that’s okay. I think I think just kind of carving out some time for some self reflection um, on, you know, what, what are the assets that I bring to my role to my organization? How can I build on those, what are some things that I’m that I’m working on, right? That I need to continue to develop and then, you know, that becomes, you know, the, that becomes in large part the focus of my development plan, but again, it shouldn’t be like, we want this to be an asset based approach, right? So like building on strength. This is all I think one of the, one of the lines going through my head that I’ve I’ve, you know, started to appreciate um you know, at this point in my career is just this notion that feedback is a gift, right? It can be easy to get defensive, it can be easy to think like, oh, what am I not good enough at what am I doing wrong? But at the end of the day, like creating this culture of feedback is so critical because it it helps us grow as individuals. How am I going to get better if I don’t know, kind of where I need to to grow. Um So I just keep kind of thinking about that like self self reflection. Um I think is is really a critical piece of this

[00:56:04.79] spk_0:
process. Self reflection, introspection. I like I like I like introspection. It doesn’t do me any good, but I like I think it’s an admirable thing to spend time on where can we get the article? So because there are a lot of links to other to other research, other articles, there’s two other stories where where can we read the article?

[00:56:54.44] spk_2:
Yeah, well it’s available on our website, right www dot and dot org. Um and you know, we’re really excited actually because it’s we’re we’re kind of in the process of developing a new a new space on our website, um, that houses all like, not just this article, but all of the nonprofit knowledge we’ve, we’ve collected over the years on areas such as talents, on financial sustainability, on strategy, on organizational effectiveness and so our goal at bridge fans to kind of disseminate these tools, these resources which are all free as far and as wide as possible so that, you know, nonprofit leaders across the country around the world can can pick them up and apply for them like what, what is most useful? So go to our website.

[00:57:38.63] spk_0:
So Okay, so is there a spot at bridge span dot org that uh, someone just politely put it in the chat I guess was preta while while lindsey was talking. So bridge band bridge span dot org slash insights and then slash library. Alright, we’ll put it in the show notes.

[00:57:44.25] spk_1:
It’s unfortunately a bit of a mouthful of a U. R. L. So,

[00:58:05.82] spk_0:
okay, we’ll include it. I feel like craft competencies, co create professional development plans, consistent development conversations. Those are the three, three Tenets of the article. I know you three CS if you had, if you could tease out four more sees, you could do like the seven seas of talent development. Wouldn’t that be clever? The seven seas of talent development and there’s a bridge band group so that the bridges spanning the seven seas of talent development. If you could tease out four more sees, you know, I would, I would recommend it.

[00:58:26.15] spk_1:
But

[00:58:28.82] spk_0:
There are three, Pardon

[00:58:30.70] spk_1:
Me, we can come back with the next 4Cs.

[00:59:00.78] spk_0:
Yeah, so we’ll do a follow on with the with the remaining forces. Now these are very three very valuable sees and they are free to Nyack and Lindsay waldron. Preta is a partner in the bridge band groups san Francisco office, Lindsay, waldron manager in the bridge bands, bridge span groups, boston office and the company, the organization pardon me, is at bridge span dot org. So Preta Lindsay, thank you very much. Thanks for sharing all this.

[00:59:05.07] spk_1:
Thank you.

[00:59:06.37] spk_2:
Thanks tony

[00:59:46.52] spk_0:
next week managing your nonprofit for resilience with ted village. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, 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 B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for October 10, 2022: The Smart Nonprofit

 

Beth Kanter & Allison Fine: The Smart Nonprofit

That’s Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s new book, revealing the potential of smart technology and artificial intelligence for your nonprofit, and the entire sector. Beth and Allison are with us to share their thinking.

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:44.94] spk_0:
Oh, I neglected to mention, you hear me, you hear me do an intro to the show and then we’ll chat uninterrupted and then I’ll do the outro and then I could say goodbye Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of infra occlusion if you made me chew on the idea that you missed this week’s show. The smart non profit That’s Beth Canter and Alison finds new book revealing the potential of smart technology and artificial intelligence for your nonprofit and the entire sector.

[00:00:56.53] spk_1:
Beth

[00:00:56.87] spk_0:
and Allison are with us to share their

[00:00:58.74] spk_1:
thinking

[00:01:28.01] spk_0:
on Tony’s take to debunk those top five myths of planned giving, sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I. T infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper.

[00:01:32.30] spk_1:
What

[00:01:32.54] spk_0:
a pleasure to welcome

[00:01:33.29] spk_1:
back

[00:01:41.59] spk_0:
Beth Kanter and Allison Fine to the show. Both been on multiple times, although you know them uh they they they each deserve their own special

[00:01:47.79] spk_1:
introduction.

[00:01:49.33] spk_0:
Beth Kanter is an internationally recognized thought leader and trainer in digital transformation and well being in the nonprofit

[00:01:56.46] spk_1:
workplace.

[00:01:57.94] spk_0:
She was named one of the most influential women in technology by fast company and received the N 10 Lifetime achievement

[00:02:04.82] spk_1:
award.

[00:02:05.48] spk_0:
She’s at Beth Kanter and

[00:02:08.97] spk_1:
Beth

[00:02:30.78] spk_0:
Kanter dot org. Alison Fine is among the nation’s preeminent writers and strategists on the use of technology for social good. She’s a member of the National Board of Women of Reform Judaism and was chair of the National Board of Naral Pro Choice America Foundation and a founding board member of Civic Hall. Allison is at a Fine and Alison Fine dot

[00:02:34.94] spk_1:
com.

[00:02:36.18] spk_0:
Bethan Alison welcome back to nonprofit radio

[00:02:40.69] spk_1:
Thank you for having us. tony

[00:02:43.75] spk_0:
congratulations on the book.

[00:02:47.60] spk_1:
It’s very exciting. The response has been tremendous so far.

[00:02:52.45] spk_2:
So both of our 4th book and 2nd collaboration together.

[00:02:56.91] spk_1:
Second,

[00:03:20.05] spk_0:
yes, you’ve co authored the network non profit if I’m not mistaken. Alright and fourth book for both of you. Congratulations all around. I would actually like to start with the last sentence of the book. If every nonprofit in the sector can transform itself into a smart non profit we can transform the world end quote. Uh does anybody want to claim authorship of that particular sentence? Is it possible for co authors to remember who wrote each each sentence throughout the

[00:03:28.19] spk_1:
book?

[00:03:29.76] spk_0:
Not, no,

[00:03:31.30] spk_1:
not possible, but so

[00:03:33.14] spk_0:
then All right, Allison, what what uh what does it take to become this uh ideal. Smart non profit

[00:04:33.67] spk_1:
So a smart non profit tony is an organization that understands deeply how to stay human centered and by that we mean putting people first, internally and externally using the most advanced technology organizations have ever had at their disposal. This this, you know um family of technologies like ai machine learning robots and so on and by doing that tony we can stop the incredible hamster wheel of business frantic business of organizations just playing a daily game of whack a mole with email and telephone and ongoing meetings. All of that road work can be done by the technology, freeing up people to build relationships and tell stories and build communities and solve problems and do the deeply human work that most of us came to the sector to do in the first place.

[00:04:45.71] spk_0:
And you you used the word business that was not business, that was business

[00:04:52.15] spk_1:
in the U.

[00:05:08.43] spk_0:
S. Y. Yes. Okay. Um Alright. So there are many uh considerations for becoming a smart nonprofit and some some important roles of leadership that that come out in the book. Um Beth anything you would like to add to the to the intro to our conversation.

[00:05:25.86] spk_2:
Um Sure. What Allison laid out so beautifully is the key benefit of that nonprofits get from embracing this technology and that is the dividend of time and that time can be reinvested either in building better relationships with donors or or clients or stakeholders or also could be reinvested in the staff to free up time. So we’re not. So as you said, the busy work takes up a lot of time but it also takes up a lot of cognitive overload and maybe if we had more spaciousness we would be less exhausted. Um and and more inspired and less burnout.

[00:06:15.66] spk_0:
Yeah the that that dividend of time is throughout the book. And uh well except that hypothesis for now I have I have I have some questions about that, some little skepticism about that, but for now we’ll accept that the dividend of time will indeed accrue to people who work in in in smart nonprofits and to to the to the organization generally. Um Are

[00:06:18.75] spk_1:
you skeptical that it can be created or are you skeptical that people will know what to do with it once they created it? No,

[00:06:27.95] spk_0:
well I don’t wanna I don’t I don’t want to challenge right off the bat but

[00:06:33.36] spk_1:
uh

[00:06:52.52] spk_0:
skepticism that that it that it can be realized. Not not that people will know what to do if it does get realized, but um yeah well let’s come back to it, let’s leave the hypothesis uh as as as perfectly fair and and uh something to truly aspire to because there are as you say, and as you lay out mostly in the last chapter, um there are great places that the sector can go when we realize this uh this dividend of time. Um

[00:07:10.37] spk_1:
let’s

[00:07:19.93] spk_0:
talk a little about, you know, some of these elements of being a smart non profit Um beth let’s stay with you for you know, human centered. What what do you what do you all mean by by that?

[00:08:00.23] spk_2:
Well I guess we use another term in the book um called co batting and really with that I like that because it’s like figuring out what the machines can do best. Right that the automation technology there’s certain tasks that the technology is really good at doing. And those are things like analyzing large amounts of data and automating kind of rote tasks. But there are there’s stuff in our jobs that humans should do and always do. And that is the relationship building, taking the donors out to lunch. Like you were telling us you took a donor out to a nice restaurant recently. You know that’s not something the automation is going to do for you. Um and being creative having empathy, making intuitive decisions. And so when we use this technology leaders really need to understand like what is the right workflow and always keep humans in

[00:08:19.06] spk_1:
charge?

[00:08:21.28] spk_0:
What what’s the what’s the

[00:08:25.05] spk_1:
how

[00:08:25.33] spk_0:
can we how can we make sure that we center humans in in adopting this this smart technology?

[00:09:29.83] spk_2:
Well I think the first step is to ask to talk to them and get their feedback and their input in before you even like grab the software off the shop? It’s not about that at all. Um you really have to start with. Um you know, what are the points of pain? What are the exquisite pain points that we want to address by adopting this technology and getting feedback from the end user’s whether that staff clients donors and then, um, setting up a, you know, an understanding of what the journey is, what the workflow is and where you divide things. And then you begin to go look at software tools and uh, and and find vendors that are aligned with your values and once you’ve, or technologists that are aligned with your values and then once you’ve done that, you can begin to start with pilots and uh, an iteration on it before you get to scale. This is so different tony than social media, which both Allison and I have talked to about where we’re encouraging people to just jump in experiment fail fast. What we’re saying with this technology is that it’s really important to, um, to go slowly and to be knowledgeable and reflective about it.

[00:09:53.74] spk_0:
And reflective. Yes, reflective is, uh, something else I wanted to ask about. So what you read my mind fantastic being reflective Alison, what is why, what’s that attribute about for the, for the smart non profit

[00:11:37.25] spk_1:
So this is, um, something I’m deeply passionate about tony Um, I don’t know if, you know, I had a first career as a program evaluator and uh, it’s very, very difficult to get, particularly smaller nonprofits who are so busy and so under resourced to take a step back and not only think about how is what they’re doing, Getting them closer to the results that they want to do, but how can they improve over time and we need them to understand not only the human centeredness that beth just spot on, you know, outlined, but in particular tony how are we making people feel internally and externally about our efforts? Are we making people feel seen and known and heard or and this is particularly important when we talk about smart tech, do you feel like a data point, just you know, a cog in large machinery? Um that’s just getting lost um and we know that feels terrible, everybody has experiences of feeling being made to feel small by organizations and nothing is more important in our work, particularly in the social service and human service areas of making people feel known and heard and yet it is just the sticking point for the sector that it is the thing that gets left off and again we’re back to the business of work, so we want people to be reflective of. Is this the right technology, are you solving that exquisite pain point that you had? How are you making people feel when machines are now doing what only people could do until just a few years ago, you know, through smart tack and is it solving the problems that you set out to solve?

[00:12:00.50] spk_0:
Uh Yeah, I I admired that idea of, of reflective because you know, it’s it’s closely related as you said to being human centered uh you know, thoughtfulness um and it goes to like preparation to um it

[00:12:23.51] spk_1:
also goes to leadership right? You have to have a leadership within an organization that isn’t so brittle that they are open to learning about how to improve and there are too many organizations that are so fearful of being seen as not doing something well that they won’t openly and wholeheartedly be reflective about their activities.

[00:12:42.57] spk_2:
And it’s also about the culture too, and we’ve used this word a lot dizziness and when we have a culture of business and people are multitasking and there’s back to back meetings. They don’t have that space to be reflective. So um and and that’s so required to um to make the changes that you just read about the last line of our book, you know, to get to that place

[00:13:23.79] spk_0:
and we’re gonna talk some about the leadership. Uh you talk about being trustworthy and empathetic, we’ll we’ll we’ll get there. Um Another, another attribute you you mentioned um beth is being knowledgeable, knowledgeable about the tech and I think it’s limits too. But what would you you say it you’ll say it more eloquently than I will.

[00:13:33.54] spk_1:
I

[00:13:33.74] spk_2:
think we can both say that both Alice and I can say both eloquently, but I’ll kick off with um when we say knowledgeable and we’re and we’re saying this to leaders, we’re not saying that you need to know how to code. Um you know, roll up your sleeves and write the code but you need to understand um

[00:13:51.97] spk_1:
what goes

[00:13:57.94] spk_2:
into the code and whether it’s biased um the data sets it’s been trained on and you need most of the time. A lot of leaders in the nonprofit sector when it comes to technology it’s kind of push back, you know sent down the hall to the I. T. Department and we’re really asking leaders to lead in because there’s you know potential challenges which Allison is really great at explaining.

[00:14:16.56] spk_1:
Alright

[00:14:18.19] spk_0:
well Alison explain those but then maybe you can tell us a story too about

[00:14:22.12] spk_1:
uh

[00:14:22.80] spk_0:
about like the degree to which a leader needs to be knowledgeable.

[00:15:38.16] spk_1:
Uh So we’re talking about um this family of technologies tony that is very quickly becoming embedded in every single part of organizational life. Right? This is not a you know fundraising software, smart tech is going to be embedded in the finances and the back office and the coms and development and everything. And the idea of having machines automatically paid for things or screen resumes or screen people for services is a fundamental shift in who is doing work and how it’s being done. Right? So when you understand that premise, you have to have the C suite leaning into this to underst and what it means when your staff is doing different things than they used to do and when people on the outside are engaging with machines instead of people, these are fundamental shifts. So one area. Um Well too I just mentioned that are so important is if you are automating the screening of resumes, then the assumptions that some programmer put into that system and the resumes that were used to test it for looking for certain kinds of employees with certain kinds of skills are going to be biased. I can tell you that right now, right. They are going to have a bias. And largely that bias is going to be against, you know, people who are black and brown or or women.

[00:15:57.35] spk_0:
It’s gonna be in favor of white men.

[00:16:40.39] spk_1:
Exactly. Because that is what employment looks like. Those are the questions we use those are the expectations that we have and the programming was done most likely by a white man. Um So if you don’t know what to ask. The creator of that software that you’ve just bought that is going to quote save you a ton of time looking at resumes. Um but also screen out um people of color and women then you’ve just an incredible disservice to your organization and the same if you are providing housing services or food services to people in need, the same kinds of biases are going to be found in these systems, right? This is a systems problem. And that’s why as Beth was saying, this is not a technical problem. This is not something where you say go I. T. Guys go find us a good product. You know, they’re not looking out for your organization’s interest in equity. That’s what leadership is for right, setting those moral standards, setting that compass and making sure that your values are aligned in everything you do and how you do it as an organization.

[00:17:59.64] spk_0:
Yeah. You both are very clear in the book that this is a leadership issue, not a technology issue. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They have another interesting newsletter this week advocating for the use of cliches. Their argument is that cliches shouldn’t be ruled out entirely but used judiciously. Like not don’t go overboard either. Whatever you think about cliches, my point is they’re thinking about them. They’re thinking about how best to communicate your story because your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Now back to the Smart non profit any any stories, can we can we tell a story at this point? Alison

[00:18:23.00] spk_1:
sure there are, there are social services agencies around the country um that we’re using smart tech systems to provide um food assistance. And only after the system had been in place for several years. tony did they find out that it was literally leaving out black people from the system. In the opening chapter of our book, we talked about a screening tool called V. I. Speed at uh

[00:18:39.80] spk_0:
three times.

[00:18:40.55] spk_1:
I

[00:18:42.50] spk_0:
just kept saying it. V. I. S. P. D. D. Yeah.

[00:18:50.81] spk_1:
Yeah the I stood at that was programmed by um why white man with very good intentions that unintentionally was leaving black people out of getting priority housing in hundreds of communities around the world, four years before the social workers finally got heard saying, we know this tool doesn’t work on the ground, we’re using. It, it is not screening people correctly because the questions were biased against people of color who have so much trouble getting into public systems.

[00:19:32.89] spk_0:
You you have three caveats sort of that that you uh you make very clear and bias is one of them. So we’re just talking about that um responsible use is another another of the three beth can you can you talk to uh what you’re thinking about responsible use and sort of thinking through problems?

[00:19:59.01] spk_2:
Um Sure. Uh it’s kind of like taking a Hippocratic oath that you will do no harm. Right? So the example that Alison just laid out, obviously there was harm done by keeping people screening people out for important services. Um so so it it who’s um non profits to do uh something that we call threat modeling? I know it’s a big scary term and word and it comes from the internet cybersecurity but

[00:20:11.51] spk_0:
didn’t frighten me.

[00:20:17.94] spk_2:
Okay, well it might frighten some people we have had that reaction, um but it’s just basically

[00:20:19.33] spk_0:
not profit radio It’s very savvy listeners here.

[00:20:21.72] spk_2:
Absolutely,

[00:20:23.24] spk_0:
this is this is a higher echelon audience than you’re

[00:20:25.77] spk_2:
right, of course, your

[00:20:26.90] spk_0:
other podcast. So please

[00:20:28.49] spk_2:
threat

[00:20:29.80] spk_0:
modeling is not intimidating to us.

[00:20:31.51] spk_2:
Okay, so threat modeling is actually having a brainstorm of all the possible things that could go

[00:20:36.33] spk_1:
wrong.

[00:20:42.33] spk_2:
Um if you uh implement this technology um what what harm could be done to the end user um if they if they were given um let’s say you have a buy right? And in fact the Trevor project is an example of an organization that did this threat modeling. They wanted to they had a problem. Um they had, you’re familiar with the Trevor project,

[00:21:02.88] spk_0:
explain, explain what what

[00:21:04.80] spk_2:
okay, so they provide uh

[00:21:07.10] spk_0:
counseling

[00:21:23.42] spk_2:
to yes to L. B. G. T. Q. Youth, you know through text and online phone, if you will. And so they’re dealing with kids who are in crisis and a whole, you know, um continuum of issues and they have councilors that there who are volunteers but they’re trained in this very specific, very sensitive type of counseling, especially when young people are coming to them in crisis. And so um so the problem was, you know, they needed to scale um and get more counselors in there so they could help more clients. And so they decided that they wanted to use a bot,

[00:21:44.37] spk_1:
which

[00:22:33.01] spk_2:
is, you know, automated response. We’re all familiar with thoughts, you know, buy a pair of sneakers online or trying to make a doctor’s appointment and you encounter a bot. And so rather than replace the counselors on the front line with this technology that won’t be human center, it could be potentially dangerous. Um especially with a sophisticated self learning bot, which could learn through, you know, and learn through interactions and say the wrong things and that could be devastating to an end user who’s in crisis. But what they decided to do was to use the bot for training simulations. So they took data from real conversation, stripping all privacy information and they use this to train their bot, which was a highly sophisticated software that was self learning. But they said that this spot will not be on the front lines with anybody, will only interact with um for training simulations. So what this did was free up a lot of time from the staff in terms of delivering trainings to more quality control. So they were able to get more counselors on the front

[00:22:51.82] spk_1:
line, so

[00:23:01.15] spk_2:
it’s an example of being human centered, but it’s also an example of that dividend of time and and repurposing it um and also uh making sure, you know, so it’s doing no harm. Yeah,

[00:23:15.16] spk_0:
and that and that responsible use. Okay, okay. Um the other the other caveat you have, so you have, you have three caveats bias, responsible use and privacy. Talking about ethical standards who’s uh, who’s who’s most interested in talking about privacy Allison Fine, raised their hand first.

[00:25:08.25] spk_1:
Yes, I did. Um so this is not a new issue, right, We’ve been dealing with digital privacy um for a long time, but as a sector haven’t really ever gotten our arms around it. tony right in that we has a sector have just subscribed to. I think we think the lowest expectations from the commercial side, which is you try to get as much personal data as you can write. You ask for those emails and you leave. You might let somebody unsubscribe from a newsletter, but you don’t delete their emails. Right? And a much, much more ethical model we feel is in the european union, the G D P R. I can’t remember what that stands for. But the idea is that, um, the people, the consumers, constituents, donors, volunteers are in charge of their data and they get to tell us how they want to be engaged with us, right? They get to tell us that they want to be forgotten entirely from our systems. They don’t want to be on any of our list. They don’t want to be in our systems. And that flipping over of the model we think is very in keeping with being human centered, right? It’s very in keeping with the values that we’re trying to, uh, in view in this whole concept of smart nonprofits, right? That we shouldn’t fear, um, asking people what the value we provide to them is. Right. Do we brought enough value in having their email for them to want to stay with us or are we just turning through again, as we said in the beginning, turning them through systems like the cogs in a great big machinery. So we think the smart tech is going to generate even more data than the last 10 years of digital tech, which is astonishing to think about kind of mind blowing to think about

[00:25:18.86] spk_0:
Because I think didn’t you cite 90 90% of the data that we have is in the past two years?

[00:25:34.41] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah. It is remarkable to explode. And so we need to be, we need to raise the bar on our ethical considerations on the use of data and the relationship that we have with our constituents. They need to trust us more. The fact that the nonprofit sector along with other sectors, the degree of trust is going down. tony is, is not good and we ought to hold ourselves to higher standards of privacy and data protection.

[00:26:52.20] spk_0:
Two weeks ago, Gene Takagi and I talked about that exact subject in a show that I called in nonprofits do we trust? It was just, it was just two weeks ago. It’s time for a break. 4th dimension technologies, your tech is an investment invest wisely. What’s the state of your office infrastructure? Should you give remote or hybrid employees tech allowances or just give them the equipment outright or both or neither. How’s your disaster recovery plan? How’s your backup working? four D. Can help you with all these investment decisions, check the listener landing page tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But you know they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return to the smart non profit Do we know what the impact has been on, on business? Uh,

[00:27:02.62] spk_1:
coming

[00:27:13.65] spk_0:
out of the G D P R has, it, has it had the devastating effect on business that the business community in europe was, was claiming when they were, uh, lobbying against it or trying to, you know, trying to weaken it. Do we, do we know I’m putting you on the spot. Do either of you know, whether that’s had such a devastating impact on european business?

[00:27:25.95] spk_1:
It’s been fine. And, and look, companies, commercial companies here have had to put, uh, more effort into privacy issues when they do work in the european

[00:27:37.36] spk_0:
union,

[00:27:40.59] spk_1:
you know,

[00:27:40.96] spk_0:
California

[00:27:41.82] spk_1:
for Nya are holding people to the same standards now. Um, but it hasn’t had a huge negative impact on business,

[00:27:50.70] spk_0:
you know,

[00:27:51.44] spk_1:
it’s fine.

[00:28:01.23] spk_0:
Okay, okay, now this, this smart tech artificial intelligence we’re talking about, this is widely used commercially, Right? I mean, isn’t this, I don’t know, fundamental to amazon google the 24 hour chatbots that beth mentioned, you know, you see a little about 24 7, the likelihood of that being a live person at four in the morning is very, very small. This, this is, this is ubiquitous in the commercial sector,

[00:28:22.79] spk_1:
isn’t it?

[00:28:23.82] spk_2:
Yes, it is, but I think we’re at this point um, uh, Allison likes to call it the heel of the hockey stick where it’s going to the cross of this technology has come down. It’s becoming democratized and it’s becoming more accessible to non profits of all sizes.

[00:28:41.29] spk_0:
You

[00:28:42.67] spk_2:
don’t have to be nasa to use this.

[00:28:51.56] spk_0:
All right. Now to keep yourself out of jargon jail. You’re gonna have to explain the, uh, the hockey stick on a graph metaphor. So go ahead, tell us what X and Y are and why it looks like a

[00:28:54.63] spk_1:
hockey stick.

[00:28:55.50] spk_2:
Okay. It’s okay. So imagine a hockey stick, right. Or I should do it this way. I’m looking at my

[00:29:02.71] spk_0:
nobody can, nobody can see your hands, but we all know what

[00:29:04.91] spk_2:
happened, but

[00:29:05.98] spk_0:
not sophisticated enough to know what hockey sticks.

[00:29:20.11] spk_2:
It basically shows. And this happens with technology. Um, is that, you know, early adopters use it because it’s very expensive, experimental. It’s unproven. And as it, the technology improve and the cost comes down and it becomes more accessible to consumers and small businesses into organizations. The adoption rate starts to skyrocket. So it goes up. So you see sort of a flat line and then a steep hill or steep mountain increase in

[00:29:35.49] spk_0:
X’s time. And why is technology adoption?

[00:29:39.42] spk_2:
Yes.

[00:29:40.76] spk_0:
Yeah. You’re better at

[00:29:41.91] spk_2:
charts than I am.

[00:29:43.65] spk_0:
Okay, well, you, you, you invoked the metaphor of the hockey stick. You gotta, you gotta be able to stand behind it now.

[00:29:48.41] spk_2:
Oh, I guess I guess I should.

[00:29:50.13] spk_0:
All right. All right.

[00:30:31.21] spk_1:
It’s not just nonprofits adopting this now. tony I would say that it’s all medium and small sized organizations in every sector that now has available to them, technology that they couldn’t afford just a few years ago. And that’s, that’s what the difference is. The technology is a brand new, it’s just become very affordable for smaller organizations. However, as I mentioned before, just because it’s available and just because it’s affordable, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right stuff to grab off the shelf. And that’s the part that’s that’s the impetus for us to write this book. You need to know what you’re grabbing and using, Yeah,

[00:30:42.60] spk_0:
the availability to small and midsize shops, I think is through is throughout your book. Um, let’s tell another good story. The one with the, uh, uh, the repurposing of the school bus routes to deliver food instead of drop off Children during the pandemic because Children were no longer going to school. So they repurposed school busses to drop

[00:30:55.43] spk_1:
off meals.

[00:30:57.87] spk_0:
Who knows that story best.

[00:30:59.76] spk_2:
Yeah. So, you’re, you’re talking about research at Carnegie Mellon University and you’re talking about Pittsburgh school system and

[00:31:07.96] spk_0:
Pittsburgh school system.

[00:32:38.23] spk_2:
United Pittsburgh school district or whatever it’s called. Um, so this was at the very beginning of the pandemic when we were in the shutdown and um, and kids that are in schools that are in poorer areas relied on the school lunch program to get their meals right. And so if schools were shut down and, and, and students were tele community, there’s no way to get this food. So they used a machine learning algorithm to re engineer the must routes to take the food to the kids in the most efficient way. It’s really interesting how during the pandemic, you know, there was a little bit of a silver lining. I know it’s awful. But there was a silver lining for some nonprofits to really push and to innovate. And I think food banks in a way we’re forced to do this. Um, there’s another example in boston of the boston food bank completely automating its inventory and it’s stocking to become a lot more efficient. And at one point they even were experimenting with having robots come in and stock the shelves because most of the food banks, volunteers are older and they were told not, you know, during the very early part of the pandemic, not to, you know, come in because it could be dangerous to their health. Um, and that’s also a great kind of idea story, use scenario to think about to do the threat modeling that we were talking about earlier. So let’s just say for example, food banks. So let’s let’s bring in the robots and have

[00:32:38.99] spk_1:
them stock

[00:32:40.47] spk_2:
the shelves, you know, so, but you also have to think about that volunteers who are coming in, um, to do this type of work. Those were their lifeline in terms,

[00:32:50.89] spk_0:
yeah.

[00:32:51.75] spk_2:
How are they going to feel and how are we going to redesign the volunteer job and how are you going to encourage them to come back in and make them feel safe and welcome into the food

[00:33:02.13] spk_1:
bank. Right.

[00:33:02.86] spk_0:
Less feeling less unless they feel useless and replaced by machinery. And this is all the organization thought of us. And now they now it’s just a bunch of metal replacing us metal and plastic parts. So yeah. Alright. Also being human centered, reflective,

[00:33:59.75] spk_1:
but that that’s that’s the dividend of time, tony if you can say all right, we used to have these uh, you know, two dozen volunteers who came in and were stocking shelves all the time. And now we’ve automated that task. What is it that these, you know, lovely people who wanted to help could do that would be so, you know, deeply human and centered as you say, and uh, you know, in in improving our relationship with our clients. Maybe they could be calling clients. So what else do you need? You know, what else is happening for you or just saying hello to somebody, Right. I mean, there are all sorts of wonderful human things that those people could now do if they want to um that they never had the time to do before. That’s the that’s where this is again, a leadership issue of really thinking about how do we want to use our human capital in the next chapter of organizational development?

[00:35:40.16] spk_0:
Okay, I think that’s an excellent example of the dividend of time that we’re we’re about a half an hour in or so. So let me uh let me try my, my skepticism out on you that we I’ve heard this before, that there was gonna be, there were promises of increased productivity and increased time. I’m thinking of smartphones, we’re going to give us more time and they certainly make us more productive, but I don’t I don’t I don’t see studies saying that we we have so much more time. I see that time being absorbed now you might say, well maybe I’m making your case for you that time being re allocated. Unthought feli unwisely. But I don’t I don’t see people walking around feeling that they’ve got so much more free time since the widespread adoption of smartphones 10 years ago or so. Um Another video conferencing, you know, whatever teams uh zoom, I hear more about zoom burnout than I do about feeling that I’ve got so much more time available because I don’t have to go to meetings. I don’t have to go to the office. Um You know, so those are a couple of the paperless office. That was another paper, the promise of the paperless office was going to be so much so much more efficient for us and I think that was gonna save time because we wouldn’t have to file papers and it was gonna save office space because we wouldn’t need storage and these promises. Um I sound like a whining 60 year old, but these promises have not come

[00:35:44.78] spk_2:
to not

[00:35:46.09] spk_0:
come to fruition in the

[00:35:46.96] spk_2:
past. So I’ll take what I’ll tackle the zoom fatigue thing and, and then Alison can kind of related to smart text. So

[00:35:56.32] spk_0:
I guess I should say uh, it’s not whining. I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeonly 60 year old.

[00:36:00.94] spk_2:
Well you’re not a curmudgeon and you never whine.

[00:36:03.79] spk_0:
All right, Thank you.

[00:36:52.45] spk_2:
So, so if you take zoom fatigue, right? Um, and that came from stanford University and basically what is causing it is the flight or fight response that is going on in our bodies when we see the grid. I mean, there’s some ways to mitigate it. But what happened is is that nonprofits like many businesses all of a sudden were forced to pivot to becoming remote distributed teams. We never really work like that. So the idea was, let’s just all make, get a zoom meeting. Let’s just take everything we did in person and just plop it online. And what happened because everybody was doing this there was, we didn’t really evaluate how do we collaborate effectively. What do we need, what can we do? Like a synchronously so we can make use of our synchronous or real time experience. So we can make meetings shorter. There’s research from Microsoft that shows that if you have stacked back to back meetings without taking a break your level of stress just stays the same throughout the day. And so if organizations were reflective, knowledgeable

[00:37:07.39] spk_0:
and kind of prepared, they

[00:37:16.17] spk_2:
Would have looked at and said, Okay, so let’s look at how we can, you know, stick to a culture of maybe a 20 minute meeting with 10 minute break in between or have a zoom number per day that we know that we’re not going to schedule more than x number of meetings, which would then think to how do we rethink our work? Um So it’s not just the technology, that’s true, the technology doesn’t create the dividend of time. It’s a combination of the technology with thoughtful leadership, reflective leadership as we’ve been saying, that can then change the culture.

[00:37:41.25] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:37:51.31] spk_1:
And let me let me let me build on that tony So we have an entire generation of digital technology That was intended to make us go faster, right? That was that’s what it has done. We are at a point now, we’re checking your email on average, 74 times a day is quote normal, right?

[00:38:04.53] spk_0:
We’ve gone from uh let’s say facts to email, to texting to to to um slack.

[00:39:36.27] spk_1:
We we we get that this technology, smart tech ai automation is not that technology, it is a fundamentally different kind of technology that’s intended to do things instead of people not to have us do more, But as Beth just said, it’s only going to do that. If we implement it thoughtfully, right, if we end up in the same place where we are checking on the box 74 times a day shame on us. The stuff has the potential to relieve us of so much administrative wrote work that just eats up everybody’s day. And if we can co bott well and have the bots do what they’re supposed to do and the people do what they they’re supposed to do, we can actually re humanize work. But as you know we’re just at the beginning of this process a lot of this is theoretical and that’s again is why we wrote this book instead of jumping in and grabbing the stuff and adding it onto your existing dizziness, frantic nous culture, we need you to stop and think and figure out how to do this. Well you know

[00:40:34.55] spk_2:
there’s some research that’s from M. I. T. Sloan school that looked at the effectiveness of this technology and um and where it is effective is if people don’t just focus on the efficiency of it that is to, okay well we can get all of these tests done way more efficiently because people aren’t cutting and pasting from different spreadsheets. Um But we’re not gonna fill up people’s with more work to do so it’s not to go faster, it’s really to be more effective and so if this technology can be implemented and it can kind of relieve some of that stress and pain of overload then that has an impact on morale and people feeling good about where they work and there is a synergistic impact that the study found that where efficiency and kind of effectiveness, let’s work together. So there’s so that can have more people feel better about their work, they do better, they get better results, they’re less likely to quit, there’s less likely to be turnover and the organization moves forward in a in a better way with better outcomes.

[00:41:09.01] spk_0:
Right, Okay. Alright. And that’s that’s if if it’s adopted with leaders consciously being human centered, knowledgeable, reflective, prepared. Uh and we’re gonna get to trust and empathy. Um All right, well you may have moved me from skeptic to uh cautious optimist.

[00:41:16.14] spk_2:
I was gonna say, what are you still are you still a little uh

[00:41:34.32] spk_0:
you know the history, the history has not has not borne out that leaders have adopted the new technology reflectively thoughtfully and prepared. Lee um It’s just so I’m just basically,

[00:41:36.18] spk_2:
pardon

[00:44:17.51] spk_0:
Me, they never had its 2022. Now they have the book, they didn’t have it when we went from facts to email or email to slack or email the text and text. Alright, Alright. No, no it’s okay. Um so leaders please uh keep listening. It’s time for Tony’s take to debunk the top five myths of planned giving, that’s my free webinar coming up. It’s Tuesday october 18th at 10 a.m. Pacific one o’clock Eastern I say free webinar but it’s not free for everyone. It’s free for you because you’re gonna use checkout code tony T. O N Y couldn’t be simpler. I think you have to put it all in caps too. I’m not sure about that part but do it all in caps to be safe. So I’m gonna be talking about debunking these insidious, pernicious top five myths of planned giving, I hate them, I loathe them, they are loathsome, that’s why I loathe them because they keep people away from planned giving like the one that says plan giving is gonna ruin all your other fundraising. It’s going to take away from your annual gift and your major annual giving and major giving. Debunk. We’re gonna debunk that and for others as well. So join me very simple to sign up. Of course. You go to our gracious host site. We are thoughtfully hosted by N. P. Solutions. So you go to N. P. Solutions dot org. You click workshops, you’ll find me in the list and then when you’re checking out use that code tony do it in all caps and it’ll be free for you. Not for everybody, but for you, I hope you’ll be with me. Let’s debunk these Hateful Top five Myths. That is tony stick to we’ve got boo koo but loads more time for the smart non profit with Beth Canter and Alison fine. Let’s let’s talk some about the leadership. That’s perfect. So you mentioned the three things I really want to talk about trustworthy empathy uh, and curiosity and I have to get this in. If you had an H then you could have spelled out tech trustworthy empathy, curious, high minded

[00:44:18.40] spk_2:
human, human centered,

[00:44:26.89] spk_0:
human centered. You need, you got the T. E. C. In the book. I was looking where’s the H. All right. Uh, what does it look like for leaders to be to be trustworthy? To adopt Trust?

[00:44:34.88] spk_1:
Who

[00:44:38.64] spk_0:
who who’s the best, who’s the most trustworthy explainer of of trust?

[00:44:43.00] spk_1:
I

[00:44:43.18] spk_0:
don’t care. It could be either one. Okay, Allison Trust is yours. We got to go in order and then if we can come up with an H uh centered, but that you already have that in the in becoming a smart non profit That’s that. You already covered that one. So you can come up with another one. Um Herculean, heroic, heroic, Herculean, Right. Trust Alison, Why why is this trust?

[00:46:58.76] spk_1:
Important? So organizations are making a bond with people in their communities, right? We are, we are asking them to come along on a journey with us, uh, to be clients to be donors, to be volunteers, to engage with us in some way and trust is the stuff that’s sticking us together, right? It is social capital. It is thinking that an organization has your best interests at heart, not just their best interests at heart. And um, I feel like for 20 years, so many organizations have been going moving so quickly on this hamster wheel advised by people who make a lot of money off of transactional fundraising and transactional engagement online and have lost sight of the fact that unless and until people out there trust that you are doing the right stuff in the right way, nothing else matters. And we’re all trying to scale way too quickly, tony without really understanding the fundamental D. N. A. Of making sure that we are entirely values aligned from what we want to do to what we’re actually doing to the outcomes. And again, you know, beth and I feel so strongly that the nonprofit sector is such an incredibly special place, right? We are the epicenter of the world for you know, providing human services and doing advocacy work and it is such an incredibly brave, difficult work and yet we still have a ways to go in asking are the leadership of organizations both C suite and the boards to raise the bar to be more transparent uh to to ask more questions about how they’re doing, to measure their outcomes, to uh take care of their people internally and externally better. And so that’s why we put trust so high up on the scale of what we want organizations to be focused on.

[00:47:19.32] spk_0:
I think leaders feel when they’re there

[00:47:24.02] spk_1:
falling

[00:47:24.70] spk_0:
short in in in in in the aspirations that you just described. I think I think folks feel it it’s just but they’re on that hamster wheel and it’s, it’s hard to take, it’s hard to take that step back and and acknowledge what you’re feeling and be introspective as an organization.

[00:49:01.87] spk_1:
Let me, let me, let me describe something though. That’s really important. tony that we as a sector don’t talk nearly enough about. And that’s what Beth and I called the leaky bucket in fundraising. Right? So year one, you get 100 donors by year two, you’re down to 25 of those. You’ve lost 75% of those donors Because you’re so busy filling up the bucket again because you’ve lost 75% the year before and all you’re doing is this transactional fundraising, the email, the direct mail to fill up the bucket again. All of the measures of fundraising success are front loaded, right of did we hit those, you know, revenue targets for this year? Very few organizations are really focused on donor retention and how to increase it. It’s never been at a board table for discussion that I have been at in many, many years, many, many organizations of being on the board and that is where the panic comes in. And it feels terrible to staff and you know, my heart just goes out to all of those people who are in a panic about hitting those revenue numbers knowing that what they’re working with is hemorrhaging donors every single day and that’s where, you know, just in my heart of hearts tony I just want everybody to stop, just stop and take a step back and figure out how to improve your relationship with donors more. So they stay longer with you and you’re not in this panic every day.

[00:49:25.83] spk_0:
Allison, we’re gonna come back to you for for curiosity beth let’s talk about empathy,

[00:49:29.41] spk_1:
I’m

[00:51:40.41] spk_2:
sure. And I think the empathy is, needs to be turned within first before it gets turned outside to the donors to solve um, what what Alison was just talking about. But so empathetic leadership means the ability to understand the needs of others and being aware of their feelings and thoughts. And unfortunately it’s viewed as kind of like a soft skill. Um, and it’s not always linked to performance, um, indicators, right? And so I think it’s really important, especially with what we’ve been through in the pandemic, um, that organizations really need to have clear expectations with their managers to lead in a way that is supportive of, of employees and that supports and contributes to their overall well being and they can do that and still get work done. Um, and I think that like don’t get me started on well being, but um, well being has to be put center and it has to be raised up and given as much importance as fundraising metrics or, or other financial metrics, especially given what we’ve been through. And so this includes checking in training people to like actually observe on their staff and making sure that their, um, you know, caretakers for each other’s well being. And it’s, you know, like a one on one check in isn’t just about, hey, where’s that report? Where’s that proposal? But it’s also how people are feeling what their energy is. Like what their job experiences like what could be improved, which gets us closer to that conversation around technology. So, um, the types of skills and competencies that make for a culture of care or empathy or self awareness and self regulation, adaptive skills, active listening coaching with powerful questions, observing for signs of burnout. Being able to give and receive feedback in a way that doesn’t cause stress, disrupting microaggressions, inclusive facilitation, having those difficult conversations sometimes, which is too nice. But there’s ways to have those conversations that aren’t devastating and genuine perspective, taking. Being able to see it from other people’s points of view. And it doesn’t, I don’t think that makes us weaker. I really think it makes us stronger.

[00:51:54.81] spk_0:
You know,

[00:52:05.03] spk_2:
it’s not a bunch of, you know, reaction when I wrote the happy, healthy. Yeah. Right. We get the, you know, that’s a bunch of hippie crap. Yeah.

[00:52:07.04] spk_0:
I didn’t say that when I talk to you. You

[00:52:08.92] spk_2:
didn’t say that. Of course you wouldn’t say that. You’re too smart.

[00:52:25.83] spk_0:
Thank you. Well, you hardly know me, but thank you. I’ll take it anyway. Um, I know a lot of what you’re describing to is vulnerability. And I think vulnerability is a sign of uh is evidence of confidence that you’re, that you’re strong enough to be vulnerable where lots of people think it’s a sign of weakness that you’re showing, you know, you’re, you’re showing your human side and you know that I think that’s terribly misguided. Um alright, if we’re gonna, we’re gonna, I’m gonna keep you uh not beyond our allocated time. Let’s go to Alison for for curiosity.

[00:52:48.83] spk_1:
Why is it important?

[00:52:50.46] spk_0:
Yes. Why is, why is curiosity a valued trait for leaders?

[00:54:31.33] spk_1:
Uh, you know, the world is moving really fast tony and we have um, a lot of organizational leaders who think tech is not their thing, right? Tech is for somebody else and it can’t not be your thing. If you’re running an organization right now, it’s too important. It’s threaded throughout everything that your organization is doing and you can’t just lean back, You need to lean into it and to do that? You need to be genuinely curious about in our case for smart tech, What is this stuff and why is important and how is it different from the last generation of technology and what could we actually accomplish if we didn’t spend three quarters of our day responding to emails? What is possible out there in the world. And you know, my heart breaks for so many of the nonprofit folks that beth and I talked to who have such good intentions and are so deeply unhappy with how stressful their jobs are or how unrecognized they are by the C suite um or how um pressurized they feel. So it is just uh innately important for organizational leaders to be genuinely curious about, where do we go from here? Right. The world broke two years ago in so many fundamental ways the political economic stress of this moment is wearing people down but we can’t stay here tony we need to go somewhere and we genuinely believe that the family of technologies we call smart tech creates an opportunity to be different in the future to make work joyful and much more meaningful and rewarding and you can only get there if you’re genuinely curious and engaged in understanding the technology

[00:54:58.39] spk_0:
and I think curiosity and empathy are interrelated to curiosity about your people as beth was for all the, in all the ways Beth was describing. That’s

[00:55:08.56] spk_1:
exactly right

[00:55:12.54] spk_0:
alright. Um I don’t suppose the beth I don’t suppose you on the fly came up with an H for to spell out tech for us. Did you?

[00:55:23.89] spk_2:
You

[00:55:24.77] spk_0:
Have that one already?

[00:55:27.02] spk_2:
Humility

[00:55:28.26] spk_0:
Humility is a good one. There you go.

[00:55:29.86] spk_2:
So let’s riff on that humility in

[00:55:31.81] spk_0:
the second edition, you can add, you can add humility and spell out

[00:55:35.20] spk_2:
text and then we’ll footnote and say suggested by tony

[00:55:44.65] spk_0:
Thank you. Yeah, humility. Right. Isn’t that simple? Yeah, related to being empathetic leaders don’t need to know everything, do they?

[00:55:49.85] spk_1:
Oh gosh

[00:55:50.62] spk_2:
no listen

[00:56:15.01] spk_1:
we you know the reason why we wrote the network on profit tony was to take that idea of the hierarchical model of leadership and organizations out of the equation and say the point is somebody else in your network has the answer. You don’t have to have the answer yourself. You just have to know how to go about getting it right and and that of of flattening your organization and your worldview is so important to being able to survive all the uncertainties of what’s happening right now.

[00:56:52.37] spk_0:
Since we started with Allison, Beth I’m gonna let you wrap us up please. There’s so much more in the book. There are use cases, you know, we don’t the book, we can only scratch the surface here. You gotta get the book. That’s the point. You get. They talk about increasing program capacity, fundraising, back office automation, including a lot of talk about human resources. Um you just you gotta get the book which is the smart non profit but beth why don’t you leave us with inspiration and wisdom?

[00:58:30.19] spk_2:
Okay. Um we’ve been through a lot the sector has been through a lot. I mean the world’s been through a lot in the last 22 plus years with the pandemic and accompanying other crisis is and as Allison is outlined and I think we’re we are like at a precipice where we could just either go down the rabbit hole of you know a human capital crisis and spiraling out and people leaving the field and organizations just, you know, stopping business and, you know, leaving lots of people who are vulnerable who need their services. I mean, that’s we can’t go there. We have to pivot. And I think that um, smart tech is part of the tools that can help us get there. But again, their tools, they also need this empathetic leadership that we’ve been talking about and we who can also steer and change the culture to put people first. Um, and um, and I think if we can have all of these things together, working for the organization, the Smart Tech plus the culture plus the leadership, uh, we’ll be able to move forward in a post pandemic world with much better outcomes with happier staff, with staff doing a better job with donors, feeling seen and heard and wanting to, you know, um write bigger checks if you will with clients who are receiving the services that they need and we’re on a path to a better world. It’s not gonna be easy, but uh, we believe that non profits can do this.

[00:58:48.89] spk_0:
That’s beth cantor at Beth Kanter and Beth Kanter dot org co author Alison Fine at a fine and Allison Fine dot com. The book is the smart non profit you can find it in either of their two sites,

[00:59:00.00] spk_1:
Beth

[00:59:00.35] spk_0:
and Allison, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing

[00:59:03.70] spk_2:
genuine

[01:00:00.00] spk_0:
pleasure next week. Eric Sapperstein returns after many years. Let’s talk about waking up excited and going to bed fulfilled. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech You find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C O and by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff showed 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, you’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.