Latest / Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for Startup, Small, and Growing Nonprofits / Nonprofit Leadership: Could You Keep Leading This Way for Another Three Years? (Ep. 62)
Transcript
- Matt Stockman (00:00) You can lead at an unsustainable pace for a surprisingly long time. You can keep answering every question, making every decision, carrying all the fundraising pressure, solving every problem, and telling yourself, this is just the season we're in. But at some point, you have to ask the harder question. What if this isn't a season anymore? What if this is simply how you've learned to lead? Today, I want to help you look at five separate areas of your leadership and answer one important question. Could you keep leading this way for another three years? Matt Stockman (00:37) Welcome to the Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for startups, small, and growing nonprofits. This podcast exists to help you build your nonprofit from the ground up on a strong, sustainable foundation by providing the clear frameworks and the practical tools and all the guidance you need that you can actually put into practice to make huge impact with your nonprofit. I'm Matt Stockman. I'm a nonprofit growth coach and your host here of the podcast. Here at Nonprofit Launch Plan, we believe that every successful nonprofit Has got to be operating at peak performance across six key areas. Those areas are leadership, fundraising, marketing, programs and services, operations, and finances. So on every episode of the podcast, we focus on one of those six core areas to help you make lasting impact with your nonprofit for a long time to come. Now, before we dive into today's episode, if you like the kinds of things you're learning and picking up from listening to the podcast, there's more in my free podcast. Weekly email called the Nonprofit Launch Briefing. Every week I send out one meaningful email about something different than what we're talking about in the podcast. Strategies, tools, fundraising insights, guidance for startups, small and growing nonprofits. So if you're getting serious about building a healthy nonprofit that makes real impact, I'd love to have you on the list. Shoot me a quick email, Matt at nonprofitlaunchplan.com with sign me up in the subject line. Again, sign me up in the subject line. My email is matt at nonprofitlaunchplan.com. I will get everything squared away. Now, I want to start today's episode by acknowledging something that I see all the time with startups, small and growing nonprofits. Leading one of these organizations is hard. And I don't mean that only from the negative side. Building something from the ground up can also be incredibly rewarding. Seeing a problem in the world that becomes an idea or a calling that at one point existed primarily just in your head, and slowly turning it into an organization that is actually making a difference in people's lives. Is very exciting. But it also means that, especially in the beginning, you probably do almost everything. You're meeting with donors, you're talking with volunteers, you're developing the programs, you're writing the emails, you're keeping an eye on the finances, you're answering the questions from the board. It's you, you, you. You're thinking about marketing, you're solving all the problems. And because you're the founder or the executive director, there's another layer to all of this that most people around you probably don't see. You are carrying the organization. You're the one who's lying in bed thinking about whether enough money will come in this month. You're thinking about whether that new program is actually gonna work or you'll ever get it off the ground. You're thinking about the staff member who's struggling, the board member who's disengaged. You're thinking about the donor who said they would give and they haven't yet. And you're starting to question why and wondering if it was something you did or you didn't do, or how you could have handled that different. And then the next morning, you get up and you do it all over again. And for a season, that's normal. The problem comes when a season becomes the system, and the season never ends. So, one of the things I want you to consider today. Is whether the pace you are maintaining right now is actually sustainable. Any of us can survive pretty much anything for a short period of time, six, eight months, maybe even a year. But the question I'm actually bringing to the forefront of today's episode is: could you lead this way for another three years? And if the answer is no, something eventually has to change. And I'd rather see you make those changes intentionally than wait until circumstances Make them for you. So, like a lot of topics we talk about on this podcast, this one comes directly from conversations I'm having with nonprofit leaders right now. In fact, I'm currently coaching four different leaders who, in different ways, are all wrestling with the same problem. The pace of leadership they've created simply is not sustainable. And here's what's interesting: unsustainable leadership doesn't always look like burnout. You may still be getting things done. The organization may still be growing. From the outside, things are actually looking really good. The warning signs often show up in smaller ways first. So rather than wait until you hit a wall, I want to give you five areas to examine in your own leadership. Think of these as five places where an unsustainable pace tends to reveal itself. And as we work through them, I want you to ask yourself one question. Where is my current way of leading starting to cost me or the organization more than I realize? The first place to look is what I call decision fatigue. One of the interesting things about unsustainable leadership is that the first warning sign isn't always physical exhaustion. Sh sometimes it's just That decisions start getting harder, harder than they should be. Think about how many decisions you make in a normal day. Likely it's hundreds, maybe thousands of decisions about expenses and partnership opportunities and donor responses, the volunteer intake form that needs to be fixed, the beneficiary that's being difficult, when to reach out again to a board member that hasn't called you back, who should get the email you still need to write. How can I find time to start looking for an assistant? Every one of those decisions, and there are hundreds of them today, not to mention all the decisions you need to make being a spouse and a parent, et cetera, they all take a little bit of mental energy. And when you're leading a small organization where almost every decision eventually finds its way to you, that mental drain starts to add up. That mental drain may start off looking like you're putting off decisions you normally would make quickly. Or small decisions start feeling much bigger than they actually are. And then eventually your patience gets shorter, you become a little bit more reactive. Even while you may be getting plenty of work done, you're spending less and less time actually thinking. You can be incredibly busy and simultaneously be doing less of the strategic thinking that your organization really needs most from you. So here's the first question I'd ask. How many decisions are you currently making that somebody else could make simply by you empowering them? Maybe you've got a staff member who could approve purchases under a certain dollar amount. Perhaps there's a volunteer leader who could make some decisions about the elementary decisions about an event without checking with you every time. Maybe somebody else could respond to. Routine inquiries that come in through your website. The answer to decision fatigue is deciding which decisions actually belong to you. Okay, the second area or symptom I want you to think about is isolation. This is one of the parts of nonprofit leadership that nobody really talks about a whole lot. As the leader, you're typically the only person who sees the entire picture in its totality. Your bookkeeper, for example, understands the finances, at least we hope they do. Your program director sees the current challenges with this one particular program. Your board has clarity on some of the strategic high-level issues, but you're probably the only person in the organization who knows all of it. You know there's a $20,000 gap in the budget. You know, one of your staff members is struggling to show up for work on time. You know a major donor. hasn't responded to your last three calls, you know there's tension between two board members on the board. Nobody else may be carrying all of those things simultaneously, but you are. And that is a very unique kind of pressure. And I think one of the most important questions a nonprofit leader can ask is: who knows what I'm carrying right now? If you don't have a good answer to that question, I'd encourage you to pause and think of who that person could be in your circle. It might be a board member, it might be a pastor or another nonprofit leader. Certainly a coach or a mentor could be crucial. Maybe it's somebody completely outside of the organization. In fact, in a lot of ways, I think that's better. I'm not suggesting either that you violate confidences or share things that aren't appropriate to share, but leadership can get really dangerous. When there's nowhere for the leader to process what they're carrying, when you're not able to process that with somebody else, you need at least one place where you don't have to pretend that everything is fine. And a quick caveat here: while I do think your spouse does play a critical role, and I'd never suggest that you not share the reality of where you are with your spouse, I'd also want somebody hearing your heart that is a little more objective and who is very willing to both come to your rescue. Empathize with you and at the same time punch you in the throat when you need it as well. And that's not always going to be your spouse. The third area that can be an indication that your organization is maybe a little too dependent on you is the pressure of fundraising. There's a particular kind of weight that comes with knowing other people's livelihoods or the continuation of your program depends on your ability to raise money. A donor sees a fundraising goal. You see it as payroll and utilities and rent and insurance and licensing, all the things. A donor sees a campaign thermometer that says you're at 70% of the way there, you're noticing the 30% that hasn't come in yet. And if you're not careful, every donor conversation starts carrying that pressure into it. So instead of sitting down with somebody and genuinely just building a relationship like we talk about, there's this voice in the back of your head saying, I really need this person to give. That pressure can begin changing the way you fundraise. It can make you hesitant to call donors because every conversation starts to feel pretty consequential. Or it can push you in the other direction sometimes, where every conversation starts becoming an ask because the financial need feels so urgent. And neither is particularly healthy. this is one reason I talk so much about building fundraising systems and donor journeys. A healthy fundraising system distributes the pressure. You're not waking up every morning wondering where am I going to find $10,000? You're consistently identifying people, building relationships, thanking donors, talking about the impact you're making, adding value into their lives, and then making appropriate asks when the time is right. Systems They don't eliminate the fundraising pressure, but they do keep every fundraising need from becoming an emergency. All right, the fourth area is boundaries. And when we talk about creating a more sustainable pace of leadership, it's easy to think about boundaries primarily in terms of protecting your time. Take a vacation, turn your phone off, create some space when you're not working, all the usual suspects. Those things, they matter, but I want you to think about boundaries in a different way, a bigger way. Boundaries can actually be an organizational development strategy. Because every time you decide what needs your involvement and what doesn't, you're not just protecting your time, you're teaching other people what they can own, what they can decide, and how to operate without you. Let's say you've gotten into the habit of answering every staff question immediately. That feels helpful. And in the short term, it probably is. But over time, you answering every question, what have you taught your team? You've taught them when you're unsure, just come and ask me. Now imagine instead that you begin responding to staff questions with, Well, what do you think we should do? At first, that slows down the pace of everything quite a bit. You could probably give them the answer in 30 seconds. Is this this is going to take maybe several minutes to basically walk through that conversation? But in that question of what do you think we should do, you're actually teaching somebody else how to think. The same thing happens when you take time away. If you can't leave your organization for five days without everything grinding to a halt, your vacation actually isn't the problem. Your systems are telling you something, or they should be telling you something. Taking time away exposes where you've made yourself unnecessarily indispensable. And I think that's one of the greatest tensions of leadership, especially early on in your nonprofit journey. Doing something yourself is often a lot faster today, but teaching somebody else to do it creates more capacity for you and for the whole organization tomorrow. Efficiency today can create dependency tomorrow. So here's another question. What are you still doing primarily because it's easier than teaching somebody else to do it? Your answer could identify one of the next things that you really seriously need to consider delegating. And that brings me to the fifth and the final area in the podcast today. I want you to build an organization that doesn't require what I call heroic leadership. There's absolutely going to be heroic seasons. Emergencies are going to come up. Fundraising campaigns are going to need to be designed and launched. There will be weeks when everybody needs to dig a little deeper and work a little harder. That's just part of being a leader and growing an organization. But emergency mode cannot become your normal operating mode. Eventually, something is going to give your health, your family, your creativity, your patience, your ability to make a decent decision quickly. Or maybe one day you just realize that the organization you started because you love the mission has become something you dread walking into every morning, which is not fun. We've talked a lot about stewardship over the last couple of episodes of the podcast, and I actually think this is a stewardship issue. I get to say things as your coach that are hard for you to hear. And as the leader, you are one of your nonprofit's most important resources. And a resource that deserves to be stewarded well, which I get. It can feel really weird to even think. As the executive director, you're responsible for stewarding the resources of the organization. And now this guy in the podcast is saying that you should be stewarding yourself. I get it. It's awkward, but it's true. Your ability to think clearly. It matters. Your ability to make wise decisions quickly and correctly matters. Your ability to be able to build the donor relationships that you do, that matters. Develop other leaders, that matters. Cast vision. It all matters. And protecting those abilities is not selfish. It's actually part of stewarding the organization that you have been entrusted to lead. So I want to give you a really simple exercise. This week, as we kind of land the plane on the episode, find 30 minutes sometime this week and ask yourself four questions. One, what am I currently doing that somebody else could own? The second question, what decisions unnecessarily depend on me? The third question, what pressure am I carrying that I haven't shared with anybody? And the fourth question, maybe the most important question, what part of my current leadership pace would be impossible to maintain for another three years? Don't rush through the questions, especially the last one. And if your current answer is there's no way I could do this for three more years, don't ignore that. Just start. By identifying one thing that you could change, delegate one recurring responsibility, give somebody else some authority to make one category of decisions, just one step in that direction. Protect one block of time each week as thinking time for you. Have one honest conversation with your board chair or somebody you trust about the pressure that you're carrying. Just take one step towards making your leadership more sustainable. The goal is to build a healthy organization that is around for a really long time, way longer than you're around, where ordinary sustainable leadership produces the extraordinary impact over a long period of time. That's the goal. That's enough for today. Thank you so much for listening to the Nonprofit Launch Plan podcast for startup small and growing nonprofits. Remember, if you like what you're learning in the podcast, you can get more of it in your inbox each week. Sign up for my free weekly email, the nonprofit launch briefing. Each week I send you this one email with something you need to be thinking about, considering, or working on as a nonprofit leader. It's different than what we talk about on the podcast, never the same stuff. Designed to help you lead smarter, raise more money, grow your nonprofit stronger, and make more impact. If you're serious about building a healthy nonprofit, I'd love to have you on the list. All you got to do is send me a quick email with sign me up in the subject line. My email is Matt at nonprofitlaunchplan dot com. Sign me up in the subject line, Matt at nonprofitlaunchplan dot com. Thanks for listening to the Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for Startup Small and Growing Nonprofits. If this podcast was helpful, would you consider doing all the podcast things? Leave a comment, share, like, also share it with another nonprofit leader who you think might get some benefit out of this. I would really appreciate that. Until next time, again, thank you so much for watching and listening. Keep building wisely, And keep making an impact.