I work with a lot of helpful people, and I find what is intended as helpfulness in new executive directors can often look a whole lot like doing someone else’s job – sometimes a staff member’s, but surprisingly often, a board member’s. One ED I worked with would even sub in for board committee chairs that missed meetings and create detailed scripts for her board president who often flew into board meetings late and completely unaware of the matters up for consideration. But

Missteps happen. Misunderstandings happen. Plain old mistakes happen – big and small. Sometimes when I suggest a client acknowledge a mess up that impacted a member of their team, the suggestion is initially dismissed with something along the lines of, “I met with them about something else, and they seem fine.” I get it. Sometimes we just want to move forward, but in leadership if you don’t acknowledge the error and potential harm, you miss an incredible opportunity to make

If you don’t know it, own it. Ask others who know more. Normalize not knowing. With many nonprofit leaders these days being new to leadership or new to the sector, I have seen a lot of really great, fresh perspectives. I have also seen an inclination to mask uncertainty with swagger. Not knowing does not mean you don’t belong in the room or in leadership, because we never “make it”. A leader’s job isn’t to know everything but rather to be willing to seek out good informat

Collaboration is amazing — unless it isn’t. Unless it's not really a give and take and build, but a hash and rehash without clarity on who contributed what and no guidance for when the process ends. We’ve all created something wonderful and then been given guidance that made it that much better. Or worked on a team, each providing a unique contribution to make something great. And we’ve all made collaboration muck -- been given an assignment only to see the product complet

“We just aren’t that hierarchical.” If that is your take on your organizational culture, consider -- Do your frontline employees feel the same way? Often when I note for a director that they should not circumvent a line manager or should have mechanisms for anonymous feedback, I receive a little push back along the lines of the organization being more open and casual and therefore not requiring formal communications channels. It’s easy for the lead decisionmakers in an or

Can we make it go away? Not so long ago I worked with an organization that wanted a big, comprehensive assessment to launch them into organizational improvements. Sure, I noted strengths, but the challenges were there too. The board president – aware of some of the issues but previously unaware of the causes – wanted to bury the assessment. His second suggestion was to share the report with board and staff – but only after I pulled out pieces he thought would hurt morale. T

We were in a budget shortfall – so I raised her salary. I was an interim ED and a manager came to me worried about losing a critical team member who had the lowest salary on staff. The trickiness was that the organization actually was in need of a full salary overhaul AND was in a budget shortfall. By many measures, this was not the time to raise salaries. Many staff were underpaid, though some positions and departments were earning well above their counterparts at other or

"What are we meeting for?" Does your organization use committee charters? I find more often than not, organizations go without formal committee charters, leaving the committee chair piecing together what their responsibilities are based on vague committee descriptions used for recruitment, brief references tucked into bylaws, and memory of what transpired in prior years. A one or two page charter can be incredibly helpful in aligning organizational understanding of responsibi

Almost everyone I work with has at least one outsized person in their professional sphere. Someone who like all of us is just a person, but looms large in my clients’ minds. Often it’s a boss that a client understandably wants to impress or a peer who seems to always have all the answers or a board member who enters conversations with pronouncements rather than an attitude of co-development. These individuals can take on mythic proportions – causing otherwise confident peopl

I work with a lot of Executive Directors and a lot of board members. Especially gratifying is when I work with staff and their respective boards individually and then together – facilitating conversations and bringing clarity to roles. A lot of these engagements are proactive – seeking clarity because an organization is in a state of change or growth (new leader, new board members, organizational expansion, etc.). but to be candid, sometimes it’s because things have gone a li