Latest / Fire That Gathers / Decisive and Inclusive: How Do You Do Both?

Transcript

Decisive and Inclusive: How Do You Do Both? · Fire That Gathers

• NEW CHRISTINE REPLY: Welcome to Fire That Gathers, fuel for purpose-led leaders warging what's next. Leading in a way that meets this moment is a stretch, not just for what must be done, but for how you're called to lead. Fire That Gathers is a movement of leaders choosing to use this moment of breakdown and possibility as a catalyst for the systems you're creating and for who you're becoming. With this hearth, there is fuel for your movement. From the field, real conversations with purpose led leaders forging what's next, not the polished case study, the live questions they're walking where the map runs out. At the edge, breakthrough moments for my coaching rooms and me walking my own developmental edge in real time. I'm gathering too. Come with me. Every episode anchored with an alchemical question, the kind that transforms what you see. Cause shifting our paradigm is among the highest leverage points for systems transformation. How we see shapes what's possible. Welcome to Fire The Gathers. Welcome back to Fire the Gathers. I'm thrilled to go deeper in this conversation I have with Christine tomorrow. I'll share a bit more about her in a moment. But the inquiry was: what becomes possible when we listen from the balcony? From that place where we slow down to speed up? From that place where, as an organization, you might have a bird's eye view and see things that Not every leader, not every community member in your network might have access to see. And at the same time from the ground, from the community, from the field, from those most impacted. Now, Christine Tamara, she's Chief of Networks at Hispanic Access Foundation, guiding regional networks and leaders across nature and environment, economic mobility, health and well-being, and leadership. She oversees the foundation's relationships with more than 150,000 Latino churches in the US and Puerto Rico. She was also a recent member of our network leadership series cohort. It was an honor to have a conversation with her. So I hope you take a listen. But there's a couple pieces of that conversation that I'm just excited to explore further. Themes that I keep hearing. So one is for network leaders, for those that are in an organization that has an agenda, it has programs, it has a budget, it has a direction it is pulling in. And as they move towards networks, toward more distributed leadership, towards leaning into trust space. Practices and really listening to and honoring communities' choices. The question we often hear is do we need to choose? Do I need to choose and make our programming all about what I hear around the ground? Do we need to let go of our programs? Do we need to let go of our national grant making process? Or is there something else possible? What Christine really highlighted for me is an example of, what can you see from the balcony? Her organization, Hispanic Access, had the opportunity to see patterns, to see possibilities, to see opportunities for education, and it had its own point of view. For example, with air quality. You know, she was on the ground in a community that had the poorest air quality in the state, with no curfews for semi-trucks. Warehouse after warehouse. And from the balcony, Spin Mac Access saw air quality as a concern, but it wasn't something initially named by community leaders. And yet with the grants that Hispanic Access had, with the programs that it had in place, it provided education. Leaders became citizen scientists. Some from that community actually testified at the state capital. And there was a worry as this organization was moving towards a network model or trying to include more. Listening, more distributed processes, would it lose this? Would it have to give something up? And what thought was interesting as we explored how do you hold both? What if you don't have to choose? What if there's just such value from the insight perspective, sense making, seeing the whole sense of policy that you have at a national level, then it's actually important for the organization to retain its point of view. Some of the some of our exploration NLS and our what I've seen from Christine and other network leaders is this moment where they recognize it can be a both and. That the balcony, that her perspective, her seat at the national table, actually allowed her to see possibilities for local communities that they might not actually have known about. But how she navigated it, how Hispanic Access chose to navigate it was to listen all the way through. They provide, they listened and sensed into. What was needed, the health care, the air quality concerns, that came from listening. And then they also brought the education, the resource, the possibilities to the local community. And then they let the community choose. The community, they didn't push this agenda down. Each community had the opportunity to say yes or say no. Or a region could say, not now, but can you circle back next year? So to me, what I saw, Hispanic Access Model, just so exquisitely was how you can be on the balcony with an organization's point of view, perspective, programs, agenda, and listen to the ground. Send into what was needed, provide the resources, education, support, and Take the yes and take the no. I think this w where this feels different to me from often what I hear with just a trust-based approach is the just trust the ground. Trust the community, follow the community. Yes. Like yes, and is their information resource that they might not have heard yet. Certainly had Hispanic access, just follow the lead of their local communities and what they asked for, this air quality project. would not have moved forward. So one of the things I see network leaders and leaders and organizations as they're exploring this more distributed process is, you know, what is my role? If I'm here to listen, if I'm here to kind of support in a more distributed way, what are we giving up? Are we giving up centralized programming? Are we giving up centralized fundraising? Are we just, is our grants team now just supporting local communities? And doing their own fundraising efforts. I think that's a common inquiry, right? If if we go to networks, is it is it gonna swing all the way? So that what you know, I see leaders wrestle with this at two levels. One is the like I like my program. I've created this. I've stewarded this. I see value in it. I don't want to give it up. But I also see people wrestle with like, do I get to keep a job? If it's all distributed, what's my role? Do I get to keep one? So with one client, what was really interesting was to explore as you are looking at fundraising. Yes, you know, it might be that you're looking for grants and providing grant rating workshops to local communities. But it also could be aggregating the needs across communities, being able to steward bigger bets, pulled resources, leverage across the network. What we see again and again in the network leadership series is how how leaders are used to needing to show up with the answer, the program, the pro the the clarity on the direction, the exactly where we're gonna go. And what shifts as they step into more network leadership. And what I saw. And this question about how do we hold the balcony in the ground is that the role shifts to having a point of view, having a perspective, and also having an inquiry. When I was leading a six-month cohort for new foundation leaders, one of the questions that came up again and again was how can I be both decisive and inclusive? How can I meet this moment? I need to be bold. I need to have a point of view. I need to drive, you know, and and make change as a new leader, a new CEO of a foundation. And I also need to bring my team with me. I need their engagement, their buy-in, but I also need their perspectives, their experience, their relationships. I need them with us. And so how do I do both? And one of the tools that I created. in response to their inquiry. And as part of that conversation was a decision-making spectrum that really looks at all the way from kind of tell and clear direction to test to consult to co-create all the way to actually fully delegating and empowering others to do the work. So if you're curious to hear more, you can actually read and see the actual decision-making spectrum that I shared with our six-month cohort. foundation leaders. It's at ompertogether.com slash grow. So one thing I notice as Christine was telling her story and as I we start pulling apart the kind of what element of the decision making spectrum she was using is how this is a pattern I see across sector. This is not something that lands only for foundations, but I'm just thinking about one executive I work with, Kevin Albers Who was partnering with when he was SVP of Customer Experience at Slack. And he had a team of more than 200 people h reporting to him. And as he was looking to set the direction at the start of the year, you know, we'd really done some work on like what's your role like as a leader at the stage, as at this level in your organization. What is it? And so much that emerged from that conversation was around, you know, his job as is to set the vision. to take what he's hearing from across the system and out in the field and be able to make some of the big bets. And so he chose the one lever for the team to pull that year, which was to focus on improving first contact resolution. That first time the customer service employee has contact with the customer, improve the resolution right there. And then the team experimented. People who had been under the radar spoke up. New team members brought fresh perspectives. Operations started collaborating with live support in ways they never had. couldn't have known and he was definitely surprised by what emerged. But what allowed it was his own sense was that he was way more comfortable putting important responsibilities on others, knowing that he could coach them, that that was the role he was playing was coach, that they might do it better than even he could. And as a result, he commented that his team never operated with as much collaboration or care. What I see is, what's in common between this story and Christine's is this is the role of the leader at this level when it's stewarding a bigger initiative, it's not to be bold and decisive or inclusive. It's to be discerning and transparent. Where are you going to be decisive? Where are you making the call? What's your call to make? Where from the balcony, as Christine would say it, can you see opportunities that are meaningful and worth seizing? And how can you listen to the ground? How can you listen to the team? How can you actually empower others, provide the coaching, support, resources, education so that the experiments can begin and can be fostered and supported? And using that spectrum, then the inquiry is all right, so where? Where is it useful to be Bringing your perspective, your insight, your agency. And we talk more about this when it the collaborative leadership assessment and the decision making matrix, both available at on purpose together.com/slash grow. It's just to notice like what are your patterns? Are you more likely to put your attention outward, to get curious, to listen, to want to co-create fantastic. Often useful, especially for these complex problems. And is it edgy for you to actually come in and make the call to be decisive? To to name the one lover you're going to bet on. Or for some leaders I've worked with, some in that in the cohort of foundation CEOs, there was one in particular I'm thinking of who that I don't know, the spectrum was easy, right? She was had moved into the role from head of operations. She was ready to drive. She knew what was needed. But the edge was actually noticing when was a participatory process useful and how might she focus her energy on when to empower and to coach her team. As I was listening to these foundation CEOs talk about the role they needed to play, what was clear as a coach was that they need to hold things that feel like their intention. They need to be able to be both. bold and decisive, right? There is a need to meet this moment, to have a bigger vision, to actually make some big bets, to make some hard choices, right? That I think to to fully feel like they were meeting the moment, it required some That agency, that clear clarity of direction. And they needed to be inclusive. Not just for buy-in, but because the people on their team had perspectives, relationships, resources where they needed them fully engaged. And it was also values aligned, right? So if you're working in a participatory process out in the world, if you're working in a trust based way with your grantees or with your community or with your impact, the tension if you're not doing that internally is so loud. I've seen foundations that are, you know, speak about doing really trust-based work, but their internal process is extremely hierarchical. And I watch the employees struggle to stay engaged to hold that kind of contrast. And so I saw with the foundation leaders is okay, how do we get to be, we know, what is the what is a way we can approach decisions that allows us to be bold and decisive and inclusive. And what emerged was this decision-making spectrum that really gave language and context for what is the kind of decision you want to make and how are you going to approach it. In more like simple or complicated situations where there's a known answer. Everybody, we could do the research, an expert could tell us how to do it. Or these are the moments when the leader's actually just making, they're using intuition, they're making a big bet, they've gotten all the information they can get, and now it's time to make a call. There's one side. And the other side, there's more complex situations, more systems change work where no one leader. has all the information, all the resources. And so it requires a more participatory process to bring the stakeholders, the people, the resources, the perspectives to the table. So if you're curious to learn about the decision making matrix, it is available for free at onpurpestogether.com slash grow. It's something that one of those foundation leaders actually printed out and gave to every member of her team. Another member actually in every one of her leadership team meetings, she'd name the kind of decision she was aiming towards and why, and give the show that she had the discernment to choose and the transparency, the clarity the team needed to actually feel engaged. So what I see in Christine's story is an example of this in action. That they were looking at these mini grants she talks about related to mental health. So The organization made a strategic priority around mental health and the need for these small grants. They decided the area of focus, they decided the $15,000. Those weren't told, those were actually made from the bounty. And then leaders in California and Texas, Puerto Rico, the East Coast had a chance to say, how do we use these funds in a way that actually works best for our community. And that's where we see there's a tell on one side of the spectrum and real co-creation or empower. Like we're going to support you. We're here to be consulted if you want input from the organization, but you are fully empowered as a community to do this together. And what I loved is Christina was sharing the story was the different experiments that emerged that the suburban regions filled mental health summits with experts and panels and training. But in the rural regions with fewer services, more distance, they didn't bring in the experts. They built affinity groups that met over months, led by their own leaders, certified in mental health first aid, that it was actually for it was focused on providing direct care. And the organization wouldn't have known to make that distinction. They couldn't have known the variety of ways those fifteen thousand dollar grants could be used. So there was a clear sense of direction. There was something decided from the bal balcony, a full tell. And there was Insight, information, decision making at the ground. What I love was about the way Hispanic access during the time of COVID and working with faith leaders and their network, they realized that a lot of those leaders were carrying secondary trauma. And when the staff called to just to ask, How are you doing? The real the need for mental health support emerged. So it came from First, they listened to the community. And in hearing this and sensing into the pattern, it wasn't just one conversation, but really seeing something that maybe every little every region, every small community wouldn't have known that there is an epidemic of need. There is a just a significant need throughout the system for mental health support. And that's when Hispanic Axis made the decision. Right. It listened to the community, made a decision. We're going to focus on mental health. We're going to use it. We're going to use small grants. So it's fifteen thousand dollar mini grants. We're going to give the power back to the communities to make decisions. Right. And I've seen this, whether that's, you know, this is a foundation context, but I've also seen this with one of my social entrepreneur clients, somebody who came in looking at the big levers for change for the business over the course of the year. And he identified five levers with his team, what they all thought would move the needle the most. He chose the one. And then he pushed each team to actually experiment similar, right? This was this as a foundation or your enterprise. But what's the decision for you as a leader to make? What's the decision for you as a leader to make, to hold based on what you hear, based on your intuition? What is your big bold bet? Opportunity to be decisive. And at the same time, how are you all also listening to the ground? How are you providing opportunity for experiments, for learning, for iteration, for growth to be surprised? One of the quotes from my the executive, the social entrepreneur, about the work after he put the experiments out there was that his team had never executed with that much collaboration or care. Because they had the opportunity to really step in together. Here's my question for you. When you step back, when you get the eagle's eye view as a leader, the combination of what you've heard, what you've sensed in the system, what you've heard on the ground. What's your perspective, your point of view? What's the vision you're called towards? And what's the big bet that you're ready to make? And how can you leverage participatory processes, co-creation, empowering your team and your way forward? And to notice which one of those feels easy or easier, and which is an edge worth practicing on purpose together. You love this episode. You might be a leader who's interested in joining me for the Collective Council. The Collective Council is a curated circle of purpose-led founders, funders, and executives who gather twice monthly for 90 minutes. Together we slow down enough for you to sense into your most alive strategic questions and to be able to not only receive your own insight, but to have peer counsel and my coaching on what's next. You bring Your questions, your opportunities, the tensions and challenges that you're walking, what you're really wrestling with, and we work them here together. This isn't another course. There aren't any modules. It's time for your real work of leadership held. And this is an opportunity for you to have true inquiry, real-time decisions with peers, and to be coached on what's alive and true for you right now. Clients who've worked with me include a funder who came in to move a million dollars fast for immigrants and refugees. We were able to pause long enough for her to see what was truly needed and to shift what from what she could deploy with her team to what she could move with an ecosystem, moving $3.5 million within weeks and funding an additional 80 organizations. There was an executive who stepped into the largest role of her career. Feeling the edge of imposter syndrome, moving out of being the expert, and stepping into bold delegation, an even more possibility as she gathered leaders who could challenge and invite her bigger vision. All of this made possible because of exactly the way we're moving inside of collective counsel. If you're curious, let's have a conversation. You can schedule directly at www.onpurpetogether.com. com slash call. You'll see the link in the show notes too. On purpose. Together.