Latest / The Nonprofit Podcast / Ep 208| Why Your Nonprofit's Next Leader Needs More Than Potential - With Chris Wong

Transcript

Ep 208| Why Your Nonprofit's Next Leader Needs More Than Potential - With Chris Wong · The Nonprofit Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Your best people, they get promoted and then everything quietly falls apart.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not because you hired wrong, but because nobody ever taught them how to lead.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: The Nonprofit Podcast, powered by DonorBucks.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Nonprofit Podcast.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Brit Stockert, fundraiser coach over here at DonorBox.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Each week we bring you practical information, clear insights, and inspiration to help you raise more, reach further, and take your nonprofit to the next level.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Today's guest is talking about something that doesn't get enough airtime in the nonprofit world.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: It is what actually happens when you promote some of your best people and then watch things quietly start to fall apart.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Chris Wong, he is the founder of Leadership Potential.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: He's a licensed therapist and he spent many years career building leadership development programs inside nonprofits from the ground up.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: He works with so many human service orgs out there.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I've been in many of these where you hire your best program staff, they get promoted, and then they're kind of just left to figure it out.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: And Chris happens to also co-host the Art and Science of Diffocal Conversations podcast.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, hey, a big warm welcome here from Seattle.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for that warm welcome.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that introduction.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, before we get into any of this, is I want to take it back for a bit.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Just thinking about your personal story, right?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: You've spent so many years, you built leadership development functions, you built mentorship programs, you've really kind of developed managers from the from the inside out.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then you got laid off, right?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um just kind of like like that.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: And and so I want to begin here.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us a little bit about that story.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: How did you actually end up here with with your coaching work?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a big question.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: How far back do you want me to go?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: I know, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: It gets a spill the tea, Chris.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: We would love to hear uh whatever it is you're willing to share.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I actually got my start in the nonprofit space, at least uh as a licensed therapist.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I love that work I was doing at I was at a residential treatment center, but I got burned out.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was just so intense.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I love the work and I value my time there.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but afterwards I was feeling a little lost.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I worked at uh Blue Cross Blue Shield for a little bit, and then I ended up doing learning and development at a nonprofit.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I really learned or tapped into my passion of helping people grow, helping people develop, and I could still be in the nonprofit space and not feel like I was burning myself out doing the direct care work again.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it just kind of evolved into doing leadership and organizational development because I think naturally I just want to help the whole system get better.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to have as big an impact as possible.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And just teaching one person a skill is great, but it doesn't really impact the entire system.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I just saw my passion leading me to how do I help this entire organization get better?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: How do I help everybody get better?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I truly believe it's the leaders that can do it, more so than a consultant, more so than a uh a learning and development professional or HR.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's the leaders that have that day-to-day impact on their staff.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's that's where it starts.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen you write about, especially on LinkedIn, this idea of accidental leadership.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh if you, if you don't mind, what what are we actually talking about when you say that, especially with your personal story?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just that there are so many people who are promoted because they are a top performer.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're really good, they're reliable, maybe they're really good at problem solving, which is what gets them to you know stand out above the rest anyway.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're good at thinking, they're good at kind of coming up with workarounds.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're like, well, we need somebody to lead, we need somebody to manage the rest of the team.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And people keep coming to you for answers or they see you as a good influence.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we give you this leadership position?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes sense.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's who I would hire, that's who I would promote as well.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: But there's not always that same level of, you know, it's a different skill set.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Leading people, managing people is different than just doing the work really well or problem solving by itself.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of places, especially if you're a smaller organization, you don't have any infrastructure, you don't have any support.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so you just are left to figure it out on your own.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the better people will figure it out on their own, some of the people don't, but they still stay in that position.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then it just creates a whole host of ongoing issues because either you get promoted to a higher level and you feel even more kind of lost or imposter syndrome, or not able to not able to figure out what to do.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's keeps demanding of you different skill sets, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like so many directors, VPs, and especially higher level, you need to learn how to budget and use financial management.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you learn that?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's no easy mentoring that'll teach you how to do that and read a budget and and manage all those different aspects of a program or an organization, but people are expected to just figure out on their own somehow.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it it happens at all levels, and you just continue through that pattern, unfortunately.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: What comes to mind here immediately, Chris, and you can let me know when you're coaching work, I'm thinking about all of the direct service, human services organizations.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: I worked at Diaper Bank and we partner with a lot of DV shelters, mental health.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is a space where accidental leadership happens.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and also it's very busy.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: This is a role when leadership isn't working.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like I, as longtime volunteer, guess what?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: I got hired as an ED.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: I was there to work with community and serve the mission, but they hired me to have some sort of authority.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: And we kind of followed suit where we promoted our best case management volunteers into managerial roles.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: And none of us were prepared.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like the board, they just kept telling us, hey, we recruited some of our best people, but we were really drowning.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: And this is kind of common where when we come to our boards, the answer is basically in a very well-meaning way of like figure it out, like lean on each other, recruit more volunteers.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I wish I had met you, Chris, because looking back now, 10 years later, my leadership, it was good, but it wasn't great.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I think much of that that had to do with as a child of the 80s, I was kind of always told that authority as a woman was bad to speak up and and be a disruptor.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: And because of that, the team, they kind of felt it.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: The reason I bring this up is you also grew up being told not to speak assertively.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: And now here you are, like you're coaching people for whom assertiveness literally is part of their job, right?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um with the fact there's so many executive coaches out there, but because you're a licensed therapist, how do you actually show up when you're sitting with someone that has been in an accidental leadership?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: They're drowning.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do you even are you approaching that as a coach or as a therapist or both?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think, especially those in the coaching realm and the therapy realm that like to debate it a lot.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and there are people up like me that are therapists and coaches.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's uh overlap.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a Venn diagram.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the skill sets are the same, uh, you know, reflection, listening, really non-judgmental, letting the person you're working with kind of guide the conversation.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it will also deal with mindset, right?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do we even view, like, for instance, what you say about assertiveness, how do you view assertiveness?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And is it a good thing or a bad thing?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is it uh a lot of times when I'm working with people and they have to deal with their assertiveness, they they want to be more assertive.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: What gets them hung up is a lot of them get stuck on they don't want to be aggressive.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the first thing we have to work on is assertiveness is not the same thing as aggressiveness.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so once we deal with that, and once we once they learn that difference and think about how they want to show up, that's an assertive, appropriate way, then it's kind of building on that.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I think a lot of it still is very similar in the sense that you're working on these mindsets and changing some of the negative patterns that we've all had from a young age, right?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've all learned different ways of behaving or responding to authority and or speaking up or not speaking up.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So part of it is what do we even think about the situation?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then how do we reframe how do we how do we uh look at it so that we can move forward and approach it in a more helpful way?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: And in these mindsets that you're talking about, I know, and maybe I'm making a presumption, but what shows up differently in the nonprofit space is we have a lot of guilt and there's self-sacrifice that really runs deep in the sector.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I imagine the way you show up as a coach and a therapist is so different than if you were to show up with leaders in the corporate space because it's not just our internal psychology of about leadership, but again, so much is tied up to our identity.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: Do you did you ever see any of that in the corporate space when you were um working with Blue Shield?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I would say it's actually more similar than you would think.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I I it's only because I've worked in some corporate spaces that I realized or noticed that like we they all experienced the same thing, even in startups, in biotech, biofarm, everybody's experiencing similar things uh to a degree.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a matter of what they're necessarily the content of what they're focusing on, but it's all they're still experiencing the same people issues, the emotions, and bringing that in.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: The only space where I've seen it totally different is in a blue-collar manufacturing space.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: That tends to be much less emotionally focused, much more uh direct and blunt, uh, maybe sort of an aggressive way, but to a degree, it almost doesn't matter because as long as it gets the job done, as long as the the message is received, then it works fine, then it's okay.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but I don't I don't see much difference between corporate and nonprofit space.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: People are people, they want to do a good job regardless, and especially this younger generation wants to work for a good purpose.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they are working for a for-profit, they just want to work for a good reason and something that resonates with them personally.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's the same.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just some people just happen to get paid more for that work than others.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I, you know, I I want to touch on this a little a little bit more.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think we alluded to it.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: It I think it has to do with this promotion gap where, you know, a nonprofit, they're promoting their best case manager or program manager.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that person is fully bought in.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: But as soon as that promotion happens, that person is disengaged or they disassociate.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: What's actually happening in that gap or that shift?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like, can you can you name that at all?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a few different things happening.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is they might be feeling imposter syndrome, right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do I deserve to be here?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's comes with a whole host of kind of their own thoughts and feelings about themselves and their worth and value and things like that.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a sense of they used to be an expert at something, right?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Especially if they're an if really good at what they were doing before, they were an expert.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: They figured it out, they optimized for everything they were doing, but now they are doing something that they don't know how to do, or they're overseeing areas that they have no insight into, they have no experience into, right?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were, you know, a great operations or program person, but now you're a senior director and you also oversee fundraising for whatever reason, it just reports to you.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna say, I have known nothing about fundraising, and I don't know if I can answer those questions.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a little bit of doubt and guilt about like, can I lead this function?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then also there's an element of um, it's not what you expected it to be, right?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: You expected to have a bigger impact.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: You expect it to be guiding and coaching and mentoring the people below you, but you didn't realize that number one, there's a lot of paperwork that comes with leadership and management.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of performance management.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of people that don't want to do the job in general, just in life.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to work for whatever reason.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you're dealing with the fact that not everybody's motivated by the same thing you were, right?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's actually the number one thing I work with new managers on is realize, coming to the realization, coming to terms with the fact that not everybody has the same level of motivation to do work that you do.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like you got promoted because you showed you were had like that self-drive, you had that determination, you wanted to get better, you wanted to fix things.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody wants to do that.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Some people, even in the nonprofit space, they just want to clock in, clock out, go home, live their life.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they want to feel like they did a good job in the world.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's why they work in a nonprofit space, but they also want to do their own hobbies, hang out with their family or friends or whatever and live their life.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's a weird thing for a lot of um newer managers to come to terms with.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so when the reality hits them of all those different changes, suddenly they're like, well, this is not really what I expected, and this isn't what's bringing me joy.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't realize also how much they will miss the direct care work or the work they were doing before.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: They don't realize how much it meant to them because they were good at it.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's essentially like we're being asked to be a completely different person when we're promoted.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no primer to prepare us for that.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's kind of after the honeymoon phase is over, it's that rude awakening of this is real, right?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um we've talked about kind of what happens um to the new leader, but what about to the team?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a new leader, right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: They've always been top talented, top talent promoted, then just things kind of quietly fall apart.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: What happens to their team in this process?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: We can even include, you know, there's a person that probably also wanted the position.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a little bit of um jealousy that may show up there, or there might be someone that's older, been in the field for a lot longer, and they're like, Well, who are you to tell me what why to do this your way or whatever way?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: My way's been working for whatever amount of time.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to manage those responsibilities.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I think managers at their heart are also project managers.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: They have to keep track of tasks, keep people on target, help people prioritize.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a hard part of that work to realize how do I prioritize for other people?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so without that, you know, and especially you're bringing your own strengths and and gaps, right?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're not good at planning, your team is going to be struggling to figure out what to do, how to do it, when to do it.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And at best, if they're really high functioning, they'll figure out ways to work around you, which are good temporary fix, but aren't good long term, especially if your team wants to grow or or the environment changes.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, they're working around you.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then a lot of times what I see also is there'll be lots of turnover, right?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: This manager or this leader is not holding people accountable correctly.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're allowing all sorts of behavior, and they finally have to either terminate somebody, let somebody go, or people just leave because the the environment becomes so toxic.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you have a leader with a high turnover rate on their team, but the leader just looks like they're doing the best they can.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so then you don't look at the leader as the problem.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: You just look at why can't this team hire the right people?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is this work too hard for the team, or et cetera?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so they just continue to perpetuate these, you know, not great behaviors and habits.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh, and I think what you're calling out here, it makes me think of that the one manager that just can't do difficult conversations.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: They avoid it all entirely.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And from the surface, we all think it's the team, right?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: I have a feeling we have a number of new leaders, managers, executive directors, they're tuning in and they're like, I hear you, Chris.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: I love my people.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a people person, but they're watching people burn out slowly in new uh promotions.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: If that person were to call you this afternoon, is there any one thing that you can advise them on?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Burnout's hard.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would say if they're getting ready to burn out, um, you know, I I don't even have a good answer for burnout because that's something that I suffered from many years ago, as I said.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I would say it's it's looking at doing a deep dive into the system itself, look at the entire leadership team or the structure and figure out what's going well and what could be improved.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And are there processes or policies that are stressing everybody out without even realizing it?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I actually wrote about this in a newsletter just today.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I recently worked with a team that was by all accounts doing well, but they were really struggling, they were burning themselves out because the executive director just wasn't able to plan.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't able to, you know, organize activities and he didn't even set planning meetings.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so everybody was just kind of improvising all the time.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: They were always just winging it.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And a bunch of the staff felt unsettled all the time because they didn't know what was coming next.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't know how to plan their own work or their own timelines.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, really, the the only intervention that made sense was this executive director just needed to have a planning meeting with his staff.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he he set this own frequency.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Once a month, he would just meet with all staff as just a let's just plan the rest of the next few months together.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's coming up?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: What do we need to be aware of?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he just changed the structure of one of their ongoing staff meetings to include some some of that stuff in a small way.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: But simple fix like that, right, is is doesn't require a ton of finances or uh getting extra funding for new training or anything like that or coaching.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's just having an extra meeting.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it starts with knowing like what's what's causing that burnout, what's causing that stress, and then figuring out what are easy ways to meet that need with your team.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: I I think it's never harmful to overly communicate and create those spaces, but you know, something as simple as an additional planning meeting, there also needs to be psychological safety.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: I know I've been part of teams where we share feedback, we're we're bought in, we're eager, but then it just goes to the ether.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and and that's very demoralizing.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: And and and that could be maybe the manager doesn't really want feedback, right?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: They want us to be compliant, or maybe they're just conflict avoidant.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: But in these planning meetings, with that, I think there really needs to be the psychological safety where whoever is showing up needs to be able to unmask and be able to verbal vomit whatever it is they they need to, right?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that's the key thing, right?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of leaders, uh I, or maybe it's on LinkedIn, maybe not in real life, but I see a lot of leaders say that they're servant leaders.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: They want to serve their team, they want to listen, they want to do everything for their team and help their team thrive and succeed.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then when you dig into it, are they really listening and taking into account those things?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not always.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're not always creating the space, or they may be creating the space, but there's no structure to it and there's no direction that to your point, it just feels like people are just screaming into a void.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, even if they get to say what they want, it goes nowhere.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so it feels unsettling.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: If any of this of resonating with any of our listeners, Chris has a difficult conversations playbook.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna drop that in the show notes.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, anything else that we can offer up to our listeners that might be of support for them?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I um I have a case study of how a my uh recent for my leadership academy working with leadership teams helped one organization.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that might be helpful just to kind of see, even if you don't use me, that's okay.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's lots of other providers out there.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: But just the idea of how strengthening your entire team is a really good investment in helping your team function better together and fill in those gaps that you weren't even realizing were gaps.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: For all of the human service organizations, you know, they've fallen into this accidental leadership.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Is your ethos of like, okay, this is real?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's do something about it, or are you trying to prevent committed, loyal, passionate people from following falling into those positions?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you take a stand there?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, are you trying to kind of, this is the reality, let's let's really upskill and develop these leaders, or should some of these most passionate people not fall into those positions from the get-go?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm curious what your thoughts are there.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a good chicken and egg question.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: I will say this.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think many leaders are not as good at identifying talent as they think they are.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I think not only not because they don't try, I think because it's just not it's a very complicated field to understand somebody's potential and what they can be like.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and you know, Gallup, I think in 2017, estimated only one in 10 people have the natural talent to become a leader.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so that means the rest of us have to learn it and grow in it somehow.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I call my company Leadership Potential, because I believe that almost everybody has the potential to grow and learn.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Where many leaders will look at it and say, well, they didn't succeed, so they just don't have it in them.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no way, like they're just assuming that you have to the ability to learn something completely a new skill on your own is the is like what separates leaders apart.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say there's plenty of good leaders that had to learn.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: They needed that mentoring, they needed that coaching, they needed to get feedback in some way, even if it's not a formal training.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: They needed to get that sort of support along the way.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so that I believe, like, there's no way around you're gonna always promote your best performer or somebody that shows that motivation, that drive that you saw in yourself that you think is important.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe they will have it, but they need that support too.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's never just like, you know, you just go in there and wing it, right?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: None of these professional football teams or professional uh sports, they don't draft a player and then say, all right, we'll figure it out.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: They get ongoing coaching, even in the pro level, ongoing training, coaching, mentoring to continue to develop their skill sets, right?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because they can continue to get better, even though they're already at the top of their game uh at that level before that.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that that goes to what you said earlier.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: This is not just a personal type of thing.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it really needs to be a systemic shift.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, one one other question.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if folks want to find you, where can they sync up?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is it your website?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: Is it your LinkedIn?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: The best way to find me is my LinkedIn.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I'm most active.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Chris Swong L M H C.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's you'll find my website on there, but I think that's the best place to find me and all my stuff.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I'm most active.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can get off my newsletter on there and uh and such space, and I'm happy to always chat with people.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's been a real joy.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, such a gem to our pod community.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'd love to sync up again and uh carry the conversation on.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, thanks so much.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks so much.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: I love the conversation.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: And thanks for hanging out with us on the Nonprofit Podcast.
• 23:34
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• 23:42
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