 This episode is part of the Culture Fit project that Carol recorded with her son-in-law Peter Cruz. In this episode, Carol, her cohost Peter Cruz, and their guest Ariel Salome discuss:
Guest bio: Ariel Salomé thrives on challenging assumptions and limiting beliefs, reframing challenges into opportunities. She possesses the uncanny ability to constructively disturb the status quo to the point where it opens the floodgates of possibilities, leading to transformation. For the past 18 years, Ariel has served as a training & curriculum designer, DE&I practitioner and group process facilitator. She just returned to California from Washington D.C. where she managed National Science Foundation grant-funded projects in STEM higher education reform, supporting the development of STEM faculty leaders across the nation. Ariel is now known as the “Corporate Healer” as she coaches and develops the next generation of leaders in tech as the PM for Leadership Development at Lyft. Ariel is also the founder and space holder for METANOIA, a spiritual community of practice. Ariel received her BA in Sociology and dialogue facilitation training at Occidental College. She completed ICF comprehensive coaching certification and doctoral-level training in human and organizational development at Fielding Graduate University. Her research and practice include transformative learning, ontological coaching, and the somatic release of intergenerational and racialized trauma. She believes that the world’s greatest problems can find solutions when we show up as fully human and fully divine. Important Links and Resources:
Guest bio: Ariel Salomé thrives on challenging assumptions and limiting beliefs, reframing challenges into opportunities. She possesses the uncanny ability to constructively disturb the status quo to the point where it opens the floodgates of possibilities, leading to transformation. For the past 18 years, Ariel has served as a training & curriculum designer, DE&I practitioner and group process facilitator. She just returned to California from Washington D.C. where she managed National Science Foundation grant-funded projects in STEM higher education reform, supporting the development of STEM faculty leaders across the nation. Ariel is now known as the “Corporate Healer” as she coaches and develops the next generation of leaders in tech as the PM for Leadership Development at Lyft. Ariel is also the founder and space holder for METANOIA, a spiritual community of practice. Ariel received her BA in Sociology and dialogue facilitation training at Occidental College. She completed ICF comprehensive coaching certification and doctoral-level training in human and organizational development at Fielding Graduate University. Her research and practice include transformative learning, ontological coaching, and the somatic release of intergenerational and racialized trauma. She believes that the world’s greatest problems can find solutions when we show up as fully human and fully divine. Important Links and Resources:
I am Peter Cruz and with all as always with me is Carol Hamilton: Carol Hamilton, or you want to be here with you Peter and Ariel. Ariel Salome: Great to have. Peter: So just as an introduction, Carol has already mentioned our guests' names. So Ariel, tell us a little bit about. Ariel: Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me. My name is Ariel Salome, and I always liked to lead with who I am, what I love, what lights me up and what I have to offer to the world. So I eliminate pathways for leaders to embrace their full humanity. Which in turn gives them the permission to give others around them to do the same thing. I craft experiences that turn on light bulbs and produce aha moments, but ultimately I'm a healer. So leaders are no longer called to be on blockers and closers, but the holders and the keepers of the mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing of their teams. And I believe that the world's greatest problems, including systemic oppression can find those healing solutions. When we show up for each other as fully human and fully divine. Peter: Wonderful. How I guess to start us off is how it sounds like it's going to be a very lengthy answer and response, but how has 2020 impacted you. Ariel: Well, 2020 has actually been good for me. Yeah. I, I, anytime I interact with my team, anyone that I have contact with is as you can tell from my introduction, fully human and fully divine, I advocate that we always show up in our full awareness of who we are as creators and as human beings. And so I just see this as an opportunity for consciousness and the expansion of consciousness. And what that means is that there are so many things that have been beneath the surface, just kind of bubbling, almost like a volcano. So 2020 was that push to get all of the lava to kind of pop out. Scary, right. Nobody wants to be overtaken by the hot magma coming from the center of the Earth's core. However, it's a natural process. It's a cleansing process and. The study, all climates are environments that have volcanoes such as Hawaii. there's a really, there's a beauty that really evolves after the cooling of the magma. There are particular plants, floral, and fauna that thrive in that environment. And I see this as a kind of evolution. So for me, I've landed in my career at a tech company. I worked for Lyft. I am the program manager for inclusive leadership. I also have my own coaching and consulting firm amid a NOAA experience. And I've had this kind of transformation of my own. So 2020 has been great. And I just see it as a healing opportunity for us as individuals and as a collective. Peter: Yeah. It's certainly there, there certainly has been instilled, like, I think this is one of the first. Like I guess I've only been alive for like 31 years, but like in the mind, short time, just seeing how you're actually witnessing a lot of change and you're like in the action, you're actually being a part of it. Like, these are the things that people will read about, decades from now. So it's interesting, but also very foreign and unique and uncomfortable at times to be a part of it, like trying to question what you can do as an individual who may not be working in some of these professional spaces or, if you are a kind of a quote, unquote cog in a wheel at an organization. Like what can I do to try to steal the change? For those people, we will talk about like, I think leaders in those spaces. But for people who are kind of. Active members of the change, but may not have the power to instill it. What has been your experience with them? Like what are some words of wisdom for those people? Ariel: Yeah. So let me clarify this. I actually think that everyone is a leader, so it's not just about where you sit in an organization, but you're the leader of yourself first. You're the leader of your family? You're the leader. Non-positional leadership is just as important as positional leadership. We all have a part to play in this kind of evolution. I love Benjamin Zander. He's an orchestra conductor, and he talks about leading. Any seat bets are in. So we know that in the symphony, those who are in the first chair I played the violin as a child. And so, being that first string is what you are in, in the first seat is what you aspire to. But everyone in the orchestra has a part to play that is very critical and important. So it's really, I like to say, if you, if you bolster your own. Of self first, right? Where do I fit into this macrocosm of society and all of the societal ills and the structure that exists, where is my place? And I say that it just starts with education, educating yourself, enlightening yourself, and then. Spreading your own personal gospel after. Yeah. Carol: And I loved how you described it. Kind of 2020 is the metaphor of the volcano and what's been bubbling underneath for a long time. And for some folks that. The question for 2020, why's why now? Why, why did it take y'all so long to have some awareness of what's been going on for a very long time. But there've been folks trying to do education and trying, building kind of a I don't know it's in some ways, like getting people ready to then this outside, I don't know. It's not really outside, but all these forces coming together in a particular moment, allowing company difference. Whoops. They want my pen allowing something different to happen. But yeah, it's been building for a long time. Ariel: Yeah, there's a, there's a concept part, the law of diffusion of innovation. And I believe Daniel Pink's book is the tipping point, or is that Malcolm Gladwell? I'm not sure it's one of them, but the whole point, the whole point is there's a scale by which people you have early adopters, and then you have the great majority. And I think we've just reached that majority. And so we're starting, we've seen the tipping point. And now the rest is kind of like waiting for people's old ways to kind of die out. And with this, the oncoming generations to really carry these messages forward, because I think that the whole, the next generation of. And just like beings are gonna, Ooh, I do not feel like the amount of I guess I think because people who are, I guess, a little more resistant to the change will just feel like they're just overwhelmed with this wave and this rush. Of change because I think the generation below me, like generation Z, like they are far more with it than I ever was at their age. And, they have the vocabulary, they have the quote unquote arsenal and, and I think, with millennials and gen X, so like as they're, I guess we're moving up in these organizations as well. So, and if we're trying to, I guess, More receptive to feedback. I think that's always something that I faced when I was an employee talking to someone much more senior. It's just that open door, that flexibility, that, that, that kind of desire to change and leave something better. Wow. I'm going to do my best to like, try to instill that change. Probably going to feel at a place because of what I've been used to in the professional landscape versus what everyone who's going to be coming up in their workforce. You mentioned how we all have different roles in this for people in regards to diversity equity inclusion, who may be part of the majority. And I think allyship and co-conspirator ship or terms that have been thrown out there. How, how can they act on their desire to be one of those people, but not knowing where to start? Ariel: Yeah. Yeah. I like to say that it begins with cultivating courage. There's this level of like a zero F's that you have to give. And I like to consider myself to be a status quo disruptor. And I think if we take on that persona, if you will, to be a status quo disruptor, and just be like, you know what? This is. And it comes down to meetings. When you hear, interrupting emails, I've done that at previous employers, I've seen, I've been CC'd on emails and I've interrupted language that wasn't inclusive. I've been in meetings and I'm like, Hey, I haven't heard from so-and-so. Let's make sure everyone has. When I do leadership trainings for lifts and we do a word cloud in the beginning of our inclusive leaders training is where who's in the room and who's not in the room. So yes, of course, I'm going to keep referencing leadership because my personal philosophy is everyone is a leader and I do leadership development. However, Just for the everyday individual contributor. Who's not a people manager, just that, like I said, taken on that persona of like, if I see something I'm going to say something and, and it's, it's safer to do so now than it ever has been before. And learn. Go ahead. Carol: What were you saying about stepping into courage and building those muscles for courage, because I think one of the I mean, one of the cultural values in, in white culture is being polite and, being conflict avoidant and skirting around the issue. And so you, you're having to step into something that's kind of counter cultural and, and. But I think it is in those small moments, right? I mean, there's so much culture. We talk about culture is kind of this big thing, but it's really made up in all of those small moments, interactions between people. How are you showing up? And so it goes back to that, each person can be a leader if they're thinking about how they're showing up and, and it may not be calling people out, it may be asking, asking that disruptive. It interrupts the kind of just status quo, normal, how we might go about. Ariel: Yeah, absolutely. And we've witnessed that this week as a country, as a global community, when Meghan [Markle] and Prince Harry came forth to share their story, it took a lot of courage and it also showed like, this is real, you know? Yes. And everywhere. We have this culture of silence, because that's just the way it's been. I mean, if that wasn't one of the top themes of Megan's experience was this is how it is, everybody's gone through it, you know? And it's like, Does it really have to be that way, especially for those who like pledged awardees and fraternities I've always thought like, well, why do we have to keep doing it? Carol: Just because it was done that you can't, we have the hazing and sororities and fraternities hazing in professions. Ariel: Exactly. Yeah. Well, I had the, I had to do that. XYZ entry level person. So you got to do a hazing theory. Yeah. I just came from five years working in academia and higher education. The process of obtaining a PhD and becoming a tenure faculty member is just as fraught with hazing as ever. So with all of these, right. That's a theme that we're seeing. So why can we just ask ourselves why? And is there room for something else? Peter: Yeah. And what's, it's like this history of modesty within like kind of like white supremacy culture, like. What do you, what are some, I guess, I guess maybe I'm asking for like a free lesson here, a pro bono lesson, but like for, for younger people of color who had to assimilate into these like institutions, how, like, what are some recommendations for them to like, kind of shake it off and, have, I guess the courage and build that stuff when they've kind of been beaten down. Ariel: Yeah, I would say that. One tip, I would say, is find community and find your safe space. I have been fortunate to land in a place at Lyft that values people being their authentic selves and being able to bring their full selves encouraging, if you're in a position of leadership or an influencer in any culture, can you. Can you create a space or a safe for everyone to be themselves, to disagree on something and to move forward? I also, I also would suggest, imposter syndrome, I just came out of a lovely with Dr. Chayla white Ramsey taught. She taught imposter syndrome for the forum. Great, great group in a network of women who are teaching career development. And it's, it's a pastor syndrome is a really high experienced psychological experience for people of color. And then we also in whistling Vivaldi, the author talks about what it means to have a stereotype threat. They kind of all fit in the same category of what it means when this perception of who you are, because you're a member of this group that's underrepresented or that's melanated, or that's clear that, this. Somehow going to impact how you're able to show up, but how can you challenge even those internal narratives that because you don't quote unquote fit in one way that I did this for myself personally, because I am a spiritual mystic. And so I infuse that in everything that I do. So it's really hard to give an answer that does not have some type of spiritual undertone. So I'm really big with affirmation. And one thing in my early twenties, when I was having a difficult time finding my place in my work style, and how to lead and how to build teams. I said, I bring value wherever I go. And I just kept saying that to myself because I was receiving these messages. Like you're not valuable, you're creating problems, there's chaos around you. And I was just like, you know what? That's not true. I'm not going to receive that near. I'm going to receive this narrative. I am going to create a narrative that I create value wherever I go. Another message that's pervasive. I don't know how this shows up in other ethnic groups, but from those particularly who are descendants of the enslaved Africans who were brought to America is this notion of you have to work 10 times harder to get half of what, the predominant group. I challenged that narrative. I was like, that's not true. If I show up and do my best, I'm going to be rewarded. Now, a lot of people would be like, oh, you can't say that you're disregarding the experiences. Yes, they are very real experiences. But in our process of acknowledging that we are also divine beings and we have the power to create and shape our world, our world through our thoughts, actions and our. If I continue to tell myself, I don't have to have this pressure of doing 10 times the work of someone else to get half the recognition. I'm just going to be the best at being me and people are going to see it, the period. And that's, that's how I live. Peter: Yeah. I mean, I remember like just some still, I guess, relatively new and relatively young and just like the workspace. Cause I'm probably going to work for another 50 years, but I mean, in words of affirmation are a big thing that I think we all struggle with, especially like when you are part of a minority because you're getting that culturally from your family, like you shouldn't, you need to do this and that and this and that. So you're like, okay, I need to confine that way. You get into the workforce and like, whoa, you're you only have so few doors open to you and your, your comments about your tone about like, Ariel: Oh yeah. I had a conversation with someone and, and about tone. I was like, oh, I am an African indigenous woman. Yeah. Like that's the story of our life. They're like black women are sassy, they have a chip on their shoulder. I'm just like, that's your narrative. And I don't subscribe to that narrative. And I've had instances where I've been penalized because of someone's perception of being this tall five foot, 10, 200 plus. black women and I'm just like, this is just not the place for me. Peter: Yeah, exactly. I definitely felt that as well. They're just by your appearance, just like how you, like, what role you'll play within the organization and whether or not you're serious. Like, I, there have been like, cause I'm like six, two was two 50 and like a Puerto Rican man. So, in the summer I get darker. So it was like, people would just, I think I'm a very intimidating presence or, maybe I'm authoritative or maybe like, people don't even want to ask me questions or do anything Slightly, but then it's like my whole professional career has been to dismantle that that's a burden that we have to live with. It's like, no, like all judgements that you may have are just like, no, no, that's not, that's not true. Carol: I wanted to follow up on one thing you mentioned, you've mentioned stereo threat, a stereotype threat. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about what that is and how that shows up. Ariel: Yeah. So stereotype third is a concept that was developed in, illuminated in the book whistling Vivaldi, and the author studied what occurs for underrepresented groups. I believe he was, excuse me. I believe the author was studying African Americans. I'm not a hundred percent sure. But what happens when they sit down to take a test? So if there's a stereotype, let's use the model minority myth. So Asian Americans are told like, oh, they're good at math. So if someone keeps telling you you're good at math, you're good at math, your brain will actually trick you into believing like, Hey, I'm good at math. So the converse of - and let's clarify, we know that that is a myth and that is not for everyone, but the way that our brains work psychologically, we tend to internalize those messages that have been fed to us from the time that we pop out of our mother's womb, and we enter into the world. These messages subconsciously fit with us. So if the message that women or other minority groups are not good at. That way, or if the, even if the teacher, if the student has perceived that the teacher doesn't even think that they have capability, that impacts testing scores. So that's a stereotype threat. So it has nothing to do with someone's actual innate capability, but those subconscious, the subconscious reception of those stereotypes can hinder academic performance. Carol: Internalizing those oppressive messages. And I guess one, one kind of slight window of hope that I think about is that given that, that all of these cultures and all of these messages, all of these systems were made by people. Then they can be made into new things and that, so I think starting to uncover that, actually this isn't just, it isn't, it doesn't just exist kind of beyond us, where we're either helping to perpetuate or trying to dismantle any of these systems, any of these ways of thinking in everything we do. Ariel: Absolutely. Absolutely. Peter: I think I only have one more question. So the question we ask every guest is: as the workforce had to shift in response to COVID and that vaccinations are being rolled out, so they can only have one, it's only safe to assume that there will be a return to normalcy, so to speak. What are you most looking forward to and optimistic about the post lockdown world? Ariel: Hmm. That's a loaded question. That's a lot. I actually want to add something to a question you said. When you talked about what can people who are allies and co-conspirators do take another step. So here we go. Another step that allies can take is to normalize, calling out social identity, because what Carol has illuminated earlier around, what is the culture of whiteness? And what are some of them? Old ways that have been passed down from generation to generation are the silence or the hushing because as Carol said, it's being polite. It's not polite to talk about racism, not polite to talk about identity. So if we, I am Irish American. My family has been in this country for X, Y, Z numbers of generations. Or my family comes from Russia. My family comes from Italy. Right. And to embrace that within yourself. So call out like, okay there's this thing called whiteness. And I am a part of it because I don't call white people, white people. Just philosophically, fundamentally, I like to tie people to a land into a nation because that's who we really are. Whiteness is a social construction and it just so happens that people who do not have melanated skin get swept up into this construct of what it means to be white. But we, there are European Americans. There are people who have. Just as there are people who have origins here in the Americas, the indigenous people, the tribes of those who are also nameless. So if we normalize, I am and I am X, Y, Z, queer black differently. Et cetera, et cetera. I'm Muslim, I'm Jewish, I am, all of these things; because colorblindness is at the root of it is an eraser. You're just erasing people's identity to say, oh, I don't see you because you're just a human. I was like, well, our brains are not set up to work like that. So normalizing calling out an isolating social identity is one thing that you. Find comfort with, and then celebrate, celebrate the differences because diversity is an excellent thing. Diversity is a beautiful thing. And some studies show scientific studies, mathematical studies show that when there are people from different groups who are together, you're going to find different solutions. Peter: So it's like step one, normalized difference, and then go on to the next. Carol: All right. Well, and I think it's beyond that, because what I've observed is: it's very easy for someone who is not white, just to name their identity first and foremost, as whatever group they are. Part of that is not white. It is not typical for white people to say I'm a European American. First it says, I don't know something that you can't see. I'm someone who grew up in this place or I'm the sister of a person with a disability, I'm many things that I have to tell you about that. I do not name the first thing that you can say, which is that I'm white. Absolutely. And I think that is what would be different if white people, also people of European descent in America started saying that first. Ariel: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because we tend to that and that's the function of whiteness is that you don't have to think about what's your right. So you start looking and searching for all these other things. Like when we do this activity people are like, I'm a hiker, I'm a cook. I'm like, yeah. Right. Well, that's not really a social identity, but. Cool. Hey, you know so yeah, you start searching for all these other identities because it's invisible and privileges are invisible. That's what is created to do, Carol: absolutely. Peter: I think that's it. Ariel: What was your closing question? Peter: Oh, I'm just looking forward to the graft or mystic about anything. If there's something to look forward to, if not, then that's also fine. Ariel: Well, one what I'm looking forward to moving forward, moving on from this point. The evolution and expansion of our consciousness as a collective. So go back to the volcano metaphor, or actually to use a metaphor of the purification of gold. Gold has to be heated so that all of the impurities can rise to the top and to be swept up. And so we're seeing, the, the, what has been impure in our thinking has been impure in our culture, our ways of living, how we're treating one another based on socially constructed identifiers. Like it doesn't mean. So I'm looking forward to the next generation's innovation. I'm a part of a conference that's coming up and this conference, or, and I shouldn't even call it. It should be called an unconference, but the organizers of this event, the innovation that's coming out. We're not going to be virtual. We're going to be virtual, but we're not just going to sit in a zoom meeting and listen to people talk all day. I mean, the innovation that's coming from these ladies shouting out facets is absolutely amazing. I am so excited just to see what Springs forth from the collective, life is not going to be the same. So it is the beautiful and perfect time for innovation and evolution. If you, anyone who studies any astrologers, are telling us in terms of where the heavens and the stars and the planets are aligned. We're in the same position as the world was when we came out of the dark ages and went into the Renaissance. Carol: Well, let's hope that this brings around a sauce. Ariel: Pretty good. Peter: But really the roaring twenties again. Well, thank you so much, Ariel. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you for having me hope to have you on sometime in the future. I think things are ever-changing so hopefully there'll be another new perspective that you could have, or a new thing that we could have your perspective on later. Ariel: Yeah. Alright. Thank you so much. Thank you. Peter: So again, thank you to Ariel. I think one of the things that I took away from that conversation was how, regardless of your position with an organization or company, you are a leader and you play an active role in. And installing change whether it's voicing up from, responding to an email, seeing some, it's kinda like that, that subway attitude, if you see something say something. So that was a very big takeaway from me. What about you? Carol: And I think building on that, it's just thinking about for each person kind of what's their sphere of influence. So it could be with their coworkers, could be on their team. And write either you're kind of playing along with the system or you're, you're asking questions and, and helping people, perhaps he sees things a little bit differently questioning, the kind of commonly accepted norms that maybe aren't even that are so, so normalized that people don't even see them. So by asking some questions, you can help, help lift those things to the, to the surface from under the. Peter: Yeah. It's like a, if, if you're naturally inquisitive, then the current work landscape is keen for like, it's just ideal for you though, because people get tired of people asking too many questions. Peter: That's true, but that's not gonna just be like the old regime trying to instill its power, just like. Be quiet. Yeah. But yeah, for our audience and our listeners, if you have any questions that you'd like to send us for Carol and myself to answer and our guests of the week please feel free to send those to culture fit pod@gmail.com. And that's it, have a good rest of your day. Carol: All right. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. Peter: Bye.  In episode 36 of Mission: Impact, Carol, her guest, Anne Hilb discuss:
Anne Hilb, MSOD is a community and culture architect, an expert at conflict resolution, and a champion of restorative and racial justice practices. As a community and culture architect, she partners with managers, executives, and front-line employees to repair conflict and restore trust so they can succeed and organizations can thrive. Her approach to this work is unique due to her blend of a decade of hands-on experience with more than a half-dozen degrees and certifications. Anne harnesses the power of circle and uses her deep listening skills to help build healthy workplaces. She develops deeply connected people and communities by leading with authenticity, transparency, curiosity, and care. Her work is centered around building confidence and accountability while mitigating blame, shame and guilt. When not repairing harm, working through conflict, and restoring trust, she can be found searching out the best taco, hosting circles, and spending time in nature. Important Links and Resources: Transcript: Carol Hamilton: My guest today on Mission Impact is Anne Hilb. Anne is a community and culture architect, an expert at conflict resolution, and a champion of restorative and racial justice practices. Anne and I talk about why so often people wait too long to deal with a conflict or have someone help out or mediate. Why a first step to resolving a conflict is to define what the conflict is actually about and whether the parties are in agreement about that and why organizational culture is dictated by the worst behavior we allow. Mission Impact is the podcast for progressive nonprofit leaders who want to build a better world without becoming a martyr to the cause. I’m Carol Hamilton, your podcast host and nonprofit strategic planning consultant. On this podcast we explore how to make your organization more effective and innovative. We dig into how to build organizational cultures where your work in the world is aligned with how you work together as staff, board members and volunteers. All for this is for the purpose of creating greater mission impact. Anne, welcome to the podcast. I like to start each conversation with the question of what drew you to the work that you do, what motivates you and what would you describe as your why? Anne Hilb: Yeah, so, I was drawn into this work from a lot of different points of entry. I think my own experience of belonging or not belonging in probably more cases and wanting to promote healthy dialogue and use my skill set to create safe environments for folks is really my why. Because in a lot of ways I didn't feel like I saw that. And in a lot of ways, I also feel like or experience that rather. And in a lot of ways, I just feel like it's the best use of the gifts that I have from. Childhood and also from developing those through educational experiences, life experiences. Carol: You often work with groups where there's a lot of conflict going on. Can, can you set the stage of what that might look like or a typical scenario that you might be walking into? Anne: Sure. A couple of different sorts of groupings of those scenarios. And so conflict work is definitely my area of expertise, but I do, I do a lot of different work but in the conflict realm in particular, I'd say there's a couple of buckets, so it's usually. An incident, an incident of harm. Most often sexual harm I would say is what I get called into the oftentimes racial or sexual, but usually sexual harm these days. Two founders fighting or two or more founders fighting or senior, the senior level leaders and the mid level. Leaders fighting or having some big incident or just in general, poor culture or the senior level leaders or the leader not, not doing well with the rest of the organization. So again, those are sort of the three buckets. I'll give them a more specific one example. So Well, let's say that the founders are not doing well. And they call me in because they, for whatever reason, have reached a point of no return and they're deciding how we can continue? Right. Like, do we shut down? Do we buy each other out? It's just, it's no longer sustainable now it's affecting their home lives. It's really, really affecting their employees because they're screaming at each other. Or maybe they have decided to take a temporary close if they're a business that's a product business or like a restaurant or something. So they call me and depending upon the service, right? Because I offer different ones, they might need a mediation. They might need to come in and consult. They might even need to come in and do a circle for them. And so I'll come in and I'll work with them to work through what's going on. Carol: For those mediations. What are some of the steps that you typically take to I don't know, bring the temperature down, I guess, between the two folks who are in Anne: conflict. Yeah. So if it's a mediation, right, I'm going to do pre-work and talk to everyone first to find out what's going on the same way you would in any of the work that we do and find out. What success looks like ultimately, and really find out what the different perspectives are because one person might be thinking something's totally different than what the other person is, and they might be experiencing it totally differently. And also. What's really bothering one person might be completely different than the main thing that the other person wants to tackle is. And so one of the main things in conflict that's really important is to land on what the conflict is about. So, you can all be working on the same thing at the same time. Carol: Yeah, it's interesting. I was on a board where we had a conflict between the two leaders of the staff leaders of the organization. It happened to also be a faith community where they went to mediation a number of times. And by the time climate got to us as the board, once we heard both sides of the story, if you will, it was almost. We couldn't find that common ground of figuring out the kernel or each person saw the situation so differently and described it so differently. It was hesitant, being in different countries, speaking different languages on different planets. It was, so it wasn't one where, where we ended up, the folks ended up staying ultimately over time. But one where we could find a good resolution. I felt like in that situation, we only have bad choices to make, but that was just interesting to just hear they are so far apart in terms of how they're seeing this situation. It was really hard to find that common ground. Anne: Yeah, that's unfortunate. I think oftentimes folks wait and it's anything where we talk about preventative work, right? Like we, I mean, just last week I had a new computer installed. Right. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm talking to my tech person. I'm saying, this is really necessary. Like I, my computer works fine right now. And we're installing antivirus software on my new computer and I bought a new computer. Right. And I'm like, but this seems like a really expensive thing to invest in. And I know of course that I need to do that, but because I can't see it, it doesn't feel like it's necessary yet, but it, but I know that just because you can't see the embers of a fire that's burning in the wall. Doesn't mean that it's not possible to have a fire burning low and people wait until the flames are bursting through the wall to take care of it. And I think that's the issue sometimes with something like conflict is people wait until the whole building is on fire. Carol: And another, another situation that you described or one where there is sexual harm, I'm assuming sexual harassment or racial harm. What steps would you take in entering an organization where that type of thing has been going on perhaps for a while, or perhaps it's part of the culture. Certainly we're seeing a lot of that in the news these days. But I'm curious how you approach it. Anne: Yeah. Delicately definitely with Vanessa. Yeah, so I think I would say I approach every conversation and every client by asking a lot of questions. Right. So with sexual harm or racial harm but I'll start with sexual harm, I think Aye, try and find out more about the feelings and the facts more than anything, right? I mean, the facts are important and it's important to find out more about first, like what happened here and it's usually more about what's residual than it is about what happened in the first place. Because first and foremost, when I'm coming in, unfortunately it's usually after things have burned. Ideally folks would bring me in before that has happened to support a healthy culture. And unfortunately I usually get called in after the fact. So when that happens, I'm coming in and I'm Working usually with HR and the founders or the CEO. And typically when it's sexual harm, it happens to you more of the women in the workplace. And there has been someone who's caused harm. So we will. Group, group people into like, what assess, okay. What harm do you think has occurred and try and do some understanding of what's happening to those who feel that. They have been harmed. So oftentimes in organizations, there is a lack of understanding around sexism and toxic masculinity. So how do you group folks up so that they can speak in a way, the same way that when you do white cops, and caucuses for people of color and give them a safe space to talk about the culture of the organization. Right? Sometimes the harm has occurred in a different way where maybe the culture is such that it feels out of alignment, right? So conflict is a clash of ideas. And it's also to me when there's a lack of alignment, so. In organization development speed, right? A lack of alignment leads to difficulties, right? If there's misunderstanding or miscommunication, we know that something in the organization has gone amiss. And that means that we're saying that we have these values, we have these espoused values and we're not practicing those values in action. And that's going to lead to conflict because. We're saying one thing and we're doing another, were hanging up values on the wall and we're running around and living these other values or we're on zoom and we're, saying something or doing something that we can get away with because people don't know how to call us out on it in a virtual room, the same way that we can. We've with our physical bodies folks don't know, oh, I can leave this virtual space in the same way, because a lot of it is new. And so when that happens in a place where there's harm created with sexual violence, like let's say a leader. Creates an instance of sexual harassment and they're covered by the firm's lawyer. And now the leader leaves or gets pushed out. But the firm's lawyer is still there, which is why I've had this incident happen many times. And then there's all this animosity towards the lawyer because he's doing his job and also. Folks feel like, well, why are they still here once that all comes to light? So then you have this schism in what the firm says they stand for, especially if they're an organization that says it supports a women's issue. Right. So how do you then look at smoothing over the, the. Lack of alignment in a way that you haven't technically broken policy, but you have broken the, the values or the espoused values of the organization. So, that's an instance where you're going to have to work with folks in a way that gives them bullets. And those back to the foundation of what do we stand for? What's our mission and how do our policies, our processes and what we say we want to do line up. I don't know if that answered what you were asking. Carol: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I, I heard I'm not, I'm going to have to look up who it was that said this, because I, I heard this person at a conference, but they talked about how they saw things like sexual harassment as a, as a symptom of an unhealthy culture, rather than you know central. I don't know, it was just interesting to me. I don't know if, I don't want to put a bigger and lower thing, but it was interesting to me how they talked about it, as that's the worst manifestation or some of the worst manifestations of a really unhealthy culture, but what's underneath it. Is that, that culture, I'm curious to know your perspectives on that. Anne: Yeah, I. I think it's an and also I think that culture is dictated by the worst behavior we allow. So, when we see one person, I heard on a podcast, the analogy of this, that in society, when we allow someone to litter, right? Like. And we don't call it in, then all of a sudden society becomes full of trash, right? Like it's very quick. I mean, like I leave a piece of trash in my car one day. This happens to me all the time. Right. If I take my piece of trash with me when I leave my vehicle, Then I'm pretty good about continuing that behavior. But as soon as I leave a water bottle, after I go golfing in my car, you can be sure that I have five water bottles in my car. Right. So very quickly that that behavior continues. And so as soon as we allow any pad behavior to occur, Then many bad behaviors accrue. And as soon as we disallow bad behavior and we say, no, that we don't have that here. Others are witness to that. And they realize, oh, we don't allow that here. Right. And so I really think with your question about sexual harassment, right? Like if you nip it in the bud, then. People know what the expectation is. And I think that there's a lot of debates about hiring for culture and all these things. And sexual harassment is one that's probably, and sexual harm is probably one that's very complex and nuanced to get into because. A person who will do something like that. There's a lot of complexities with that person. And we could get into all of those things. And at the same time, the cultural component of that is as soon as something that's inappropriate happens, it's absolutely imperative to. Say we do not allow that here. There's not going to be tolerance for that. That being said, there's a very big component of how we handle harm in this culture? Right? So condemning the deed and not the person and separating those, separating those things out. And The way that you handle a bad act versus a bad actor is also going to be something that's important and says a lot about your culture. Carol: Yeah. And when someone's caused harm, one of the things that folks want often as an apology and we've seen again, I think in the news instances of really poor apology is what would you say goes into making a good apology that could actually move towards some resolution? Anne: That's a great question. I think a good apology has three parts. A good apology says, I'm sorry. I take responsibility for that and here's what I'm going to do going forward. And here's what I essentially like learned from it and how I'm gonna use this as a learning example. Most people tend to miss it. One part of the apology or when they say, I'm sorry, there's lots of different ways to say, I'm sorry. Like I'm sorry. You feel that way is putting the responsibility back on the person or, I'm sorry, but, or I'm sorry. And here's what's happening, like, and trying to excuse the behavior of the defendant, you know. I won't go on. I'll just answer your question. Carol: Yeah. I love it. Cause I think, yeah, any, any one of those missing and it's so easy, right? You can be in a conversation. When you are trying to say, you're sorry, did you actually see those for like going forward backtracking? But yeah, so I'm sorry. Plus the plus the taking responsibility, but I appreciate the third one, which is, what am I learned about it and what, how will I do things differently? Moving forward based on that. Anne: Yeah. And that is, I will say from experience, incredibly hard to do. Don't feel as much remorse in the moment as you might want to. Like, I apologize this week I was on vacation with my family. I apologize to my sister or something. And it was incredibly hard for me to do that part when I didn't feel some frustration towards my sister at that moment. Because I didn't want to say that part. Right then. And so there's a lot of timing involved and apologies, I would say as well. And in a workplace scenario sometimes if you are, if there's pressure on you to apologize because of the HR aspect or the public relations aspect or whatever's going on. You can really make things worse. If the person is put under duress to a pod, Carol: And it's interesting. I'm thinking of the timing and it takes a little bit, a little bit of time and reflection to know what you've learned and how you might act differently in the future. And so, you might manage to get the first part of the apology out and half of the second part, in a first go, and then it might take a little while to come back and be able to do it. Do the full thing and let me do, let me do sorry. Take it to try again. Yeah. Anne: A circle once with, with young children, like kindergarten age and the parent and bought one of the parents involved with trying to force me to have one of the children apologize. And I said, I'm not going to force an apology because an apology, if it's not genuine, means nothing. And young people are often forced to apologize, and that is something that. Is ingrained in us as adults that, oh, well, apologize to your sister. And so an apology then comes to mean very little to us as we age as, as do many things that are rote. So. We say a lot of things and we lose their meaning, like, think about when you bump into someone in the grocery store. Oh, I'm sorry. Right. And so many of these things that are meant to have a great bit of meaning lose their meaning when we do them out of learned behavior. Carol: Yeah. And one, one thing you, I wanted to follow up on that you talked about before was the instance of, well, maybe the incident didn't quite cross the line in terms of a policy, but there's still a ripple effect in terms of lack of trust or, or diminished trust or how people are working with each other. How, how, how, what are some steps to, to deal with those ripple effects? Anne: Yeah. I would say, clarifying the role, I think is always a good first step in a lot of these interventions. Right. And helping folks understand. What everyone's role in the organization is to play. Sometimes people aren't going to like that. And it's important to acknowledge that individuals can hold their own feelings and those are important. And also that conflicting feelings can hold without creating a conflict. That presents a fight. So a conflict and a fight are different. And it doesn't need to rise to the level of tension that it did the first time, every time. Then I might say that, when you bring in someone who does what I do, they can help you to understand that not everyone is privy to information every time, while at the same time sharing information is helpful. And the more information you share the better while at the same time, that information is not Always going to be going to mean that everything is an open book for everyone, right? There are different ways to be transparent as leaders. And I think leaders think because something's confidential, that means they can't share information. So I think there are ways to say this is what's going on without sharing the details of it also. So you can say. We are doing X, Y, and Z, and not saying the specifics of X, Y, and Z, and then the employees that are not getting the specific details need to also understand that what was shared is enough and the building of trust can happen in better ways by sharing information transparently. But the expectation of transparency also needs to shift. And I think that those are the nuances of shifting culture that happens slowly and also break down that distrust that happens when something like sexual violence in a, in a community does occur. Carol: I feel like transparency is one of those big words, like communication. Well, if we could just solve our communication issues, if we could just be transparent, everything would be fine. But yeah, I think, and I do think that people see it in an all or nothing context. So it's interesting that you're saying it's more of a continuum. Anne: Yeah, absolutely. And I do think that that. Need better language around breaking down what their expectations are and the way to ask her what they need and the way to offer it. And when I say asking for what you need, I'm also aware of that. Those who would be doing the asking have much less power in the organization. So, the folks with formal power and titles need to really understand the power over that they have and, and take ownership over that. The understanding of that power, because I think oftentimes we are a manager or in the C-suite, or even just have informal, formal power or hurt in that we are positioned to take power in a manager position purely because of the type of role that we have, because it's a more formal desk job and it can roll into a manager position or because we have Privilege. And we tend not to recognize that. And so working on that, understanding in an organization or just as an individual is really important in order for these shifts to happen. Carol: And you mentioned that there's a distinction on that. Between fighting and conflict. And for me, I probably use those words interchangeably. How do you see those as different? Anne: So, like I said, I think conflict is to me, a clash of ideas or lack of alignment. So I see conflict as neutral. When I teach a course on conflict, I will say conflict can be positive, negative, or neutral, right? Like it, I can have a conversation with you where we're in conflict because we. Both are trying to decide where to go to dinner and you want Italian and I want Chinese and we're in conflict, but we're not fighting. And so when we're fighting about it, we're at odds in a way that we're really expending energy, that now we're in a duel, so to speak. And so you want Italian and I want Chinese. Maybe we leave one another angry and you go to Italian alone and I go to Chinese alone and we don't talk to each other for three days. Right. So we are at odds in a way that puts us in a really bad way with one another, as opposed to in the right relationship. Carol: So it's a question of the intensity and emotions getting caught up in it. And, and I guess in that instance, each person digging in and then somehow taking personal offense and not wanting to speak to the other person over their dinner choices. Anne: Yeah. And, and, and these aren't like terms that I've looked up in conflict management that I, this is just the way I'm calling it for this conversation. I'd have to go look at, I mean, maybe I know the conflict piece is definitely a neutral pot. conflict is not inherently a negative thing. Haven't looked up the word fight, like I'm, I'm relatively positive. This works Carol: I mean, it's interesting though. Cause I think you, most people, when they hear the word conflict will assume that it's inherently negative. Anne: Oh yeah, definitely. And that's the first thing you'll learn in any conflict workshop, every single person who teaches the work will write conflict on the board and say, what does the word conflict mean to you? And you'll hear everyone say all these negative words or draw pictures of dust clouds or fists. And that's like the first teaching of conflict that you'll likely learn in any course. Carol: Yeah. And I think in our culture and the us in the dominant white culture yeah, we tend to be very conflict averse and tend to be afraid of all of those, all of those pictures that you just mentioned. Certainly doesn't mean the conflict doesn't happen, but with that tendency, how does conflict then show up? Anne: Yeah. Conflict. Can be creepy and that it creeps in, right. I have a workshop called conflict creeps and to your point, it shows up in very passive, aggressive ways oftentimes. And I think. We often hear the expression elephant in the room because the expectations are not clear. Right. So I talked about lack of alignment. I think that that shows up a lot here. And, I would say that folks are often not seeing the covert ways that conflict shows up. They only see the overt ways that conflict shows up. So if it's not spelled out for them to your point, like in a fight, they think that everything is okay. And that's one of the reasons why I think that right now is such a moment because. I do believe that most people think conflict intentions are so high because they think particularly white, white folks are thinking that the workplace feels and the world or the U.S. I'm talking about the U.S. right now. Their world, I should say, feels like an unsafe place to them because everything is a quote unquote fight. And actually, I think there's a huge opportunity here because if they get it right and have constructive dialogue in a really open way, I think it can actually lead to less harm and less conflict then we were having before. I just think that way people were missing it because it was going on in a lot of ways, without their knowledge. Carol: Yeah. So underneath the surface and covert or those embers in the wall, as you talked about before. So at the end of each episode, I'd like to ask a question where I ask a random icebreaker question. And so what is one family tradition that you would like to carry on to the future? Anne: Hm, interesting. I think the first thing that comes to mind for whatever reason is that. My parents gave us contracts when we learned to drive like legit contracts, driving contracts made up by a lawyer that we had to sign. That had like 10 things on them. I have it framed behind me. And we had to know how serious something like this was. And I mean, my parents did a lot of weird things and I would like to carry that on for my kids so that they know the seriousness of. Big things. I mean, they did a lot of mile markers, things like that, but I just always thought that was really cool that they took that so seriously and imparted that on us. That, and I just remember the line that said, driving is a. Privilege and, and a responsibility and not a right. And if any of the following are not followed, then this privilege will be revoked. Carol: Awesome. That's certainly getting really clear about expectations and communicating them very directly. I did some contracts with my daughter at various points along the way. She would remember better than I exactly what they were about. But we have, we did sign them. There were no lawyers involved. Anne: We had friends that were lawyers. Carol: I think getting things down on paper and having it clear can really really help lawyers get a bad rap, but in that way of just making it all clear what, what each party is expecting and is really important. Well what are you excited about what's coming up next for you and what's emerging in the work that you're doing. Anne: Yeah. I'm really looking forward to a community that. I'm advertising for right now. There are some amazing women signing up called the confidence community. This particular one is for white women utilizing DEI in their work. And If you're interested, people are registering. Now, it's going to be amazing. I've been utilizing circle practices in my work for a long time. So really, really looking forward to sharing that with more women identifying folks and I'm Baltimore. I live in Baltimore city and we are working to be the first Equitech city. And There is an amazing entrepreneur community tech community in Baltimore. And they have This incredible group of folks building out this Equitech space. And Techstars is like the BC engine behind it right now. And I'm just really, really excited to be a part of what's happening with that work. Carol: And can you define that term? Anne: Aquatech? So the idea is that it's equity meets technology and they're working to put equity at the center of the tech work in Baltimore. So that rather than just doing diversity, equity and inclusion in technology work in Baltimore, they are trying to make it the first. Like a full equity city. And they're trying to be really thoughtful about how they are disrupting that and how they are thinking about the entrepreneurs that are already here. Baltimore is a huge hub because of Hopkins in the biotech sphere. The same way that Silicon valley is for chips. So. Really looking at how they can draw folks here as there's a new opportunity in the tech space because of everything that's been disrupted because of COVID and everyone moving around again. And it's just a really exciting time to see where folks are gonna land. Carol: Well, thank you so much. It was great having you on. Anne: Thank you. Great to see you. Carol: I appreciated how Anne described the impact of an instance of sexual or racial harm – and even when technically a policy or the law has not been broken the trust within the team has been broken. There still is a ripple effect in the organization. Morale is impacted and trust needs to be repaired. As part of this I thought it was interesting how she described the residual feelings about those who were involved with managing the issue – whether it is the lawyer or HR professional or other organizational leaders. While the offender may be gone, trust in those who remain is likely much lower than before and it going to take a process of healing to move through the remaining feelings about what happened. I was struck by Anne’s comment that culture is dictated by the worst behavior we allow. What behavior are you allowing to slide in your organization that may be eroding the trust within your team and your organizational culture? Thank you for listening to this episode. I really appreciate the time you spend with me and my guests. You can find out how to connect with Anne as well as any links and resources mentioned during the show in the show notes at missionimpactpodcast.com/shownotes. I want to thank Nora Strauss-Riggs for her support in editing and production as well as April Koester of 100 Ninjas for her production support. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it on your favorite social media platform and tag us. We appreciate you helping us get the word out. Thanks again for listening.  In episode 35 of Mission: Impact, Carol, her cohost, Peter Cruz, and their guest, Nathaniel Benjamin discuss diversity, equity and inclusion and its intersection with human capital management. This episode is a release of a podcast Carol planned to start with her son-in-law and has many transferrable ideas and concepts to the nonprofit sector. We talk about:
Guest bio: Nathaniel Benjamin approaches the space of Diversity and Inclusion as not only a profession, but as a passion that’s taken hold of his life’s work. As a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, University of Baltimore and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, his educational endeavors led him into a marketable career in Human Resources -- working in the C-suite level --managing workforce planning, strategy, policy and talent management. But to “really” understand how an organization works, he later found that you must understand its people… the diversity of those who make an organization thrive. He brings 17 years of experience as an organizational Change Agent and a D&I Strategist, ready to exceed your organizational needs. Contact: Nathaniel Benjamin: Peter J. Cruz: Transcript: Carol Hamilton: Today’s episode of Mission Impact is a little different. As with episode 33 where I had on Stephen Graves and Peter Cruz – this is another of the series of interviews I did with Peter on diversity equity and inclusion. I worked on a short project with my son in law Peter Cruz and New family obligations in the form of his son, my grandson and new career directions meant that we just did 5 interviews and 5 episodes. I am going to feature those episodes on my podcast feed. While each of the people that we talk to in this series do not necessarily focus on the nonprofit sector, there is a lot to learn from each conversation. Today Peter and I talk to Nathaniel Benjamin. Nathaniel is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, University of Baltimore and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, His career has been in Human Resources -- working in the C-suite level --managing workforce planning, strategy, policy and talent management. With a special focus on diversity equity and inclusion Mission Impact is the podcast for progressive nonprofit leaders who want to build a better world without becoming a martyr to the cause. I’m Carol Hamilton, your podcast host and nonprofit strategic planning consultant. Peter Cruz: So this week we have Nate Benjamin. How are you doing Nate? I am. Well, how are you, Peter? Nathaniel Benjamin: I'm doing well. I'm doing really well. I'm halfway there halfway to feeling very well. Peter: So for our audience, could you introduce yourself and your professional background? Nathaniel: Absolutely. So I'm Nate Benjamin. I am, I have been in the industry for about 17 years. worked in the space of human capital as well as inclusion, equity, and diversity. I do small projects with my business Benjamin and associates consulting group. But from a full-time perspective, I am a senior executive for a federal agency. Peter: The industry that you're talking about is diversity equity inclusion, right. And hence your presence here. I think one, the first question that we want to start off with is, So I've been recently unemployed, due to budgetary cuts as a result of COVID and have been trying to make the switch over to becoming a diversity equity, inclusion professional, and having that be like my main function. but in my search, I found that these roles exist in different departments, whether in the for-profit space, government space or nonprofit space, but mostly they require some human resource experience. So, from your perspective, do you think that DEI strategies and their rollout and that whole part of their infancy belongs or should be responsible for human resources are probably living in different departments. Nathaniel: Yeah, that's a good question. So I think part of it is, I do think it depends on your organization, right? So, I do think that based on organization, there are times where it should be aligned with your human capital or human resources program, but then depending on the organization, maybe things that are going on, culture as well, there are times where I think that DEI should be aligned directly direct report to your, to your senior leaders, to your CEO or your, your team operating officer, if you will. So I do think that they belong somewhere together. We'll tell you where I don't think it belongs if I can go there. Against it being within the equal employment opportunity space because this organization that is focused, oftentimes in EEO is, is a needed function, but it's very compliance for, and I am very, this is a part of the organization its culture, it's what we're supposed to be doing. And so it impacts your human capital. So you have to be able to take it out of a compliance exercise and put it in a place where it can stand on. and if it's within human capital, it should still be a function that's supporting your overall human capital strategy because diversity is about your people. And it's about the experiences that these people leverage. So for me, if I were to create the perfect organization, your human capital in terms of your processes, then you look at culture, you look at engagement and belonging, and then you look at diversity. And all of those areas together to me is the, the, the strongest framework to create a human capital, centric culture. Peter: That makes a lot of sense. I think from some of my personal experiences that the human resources staff at an organization is very minimal. and they are responsible for a multitude of different things and to add on diversity equity inclusion on top of that just doesn't seem to work at all. So in, in like, yeah, going backtracking, Is it more of a development and training type of function that they should live just so it promotes that internal exercises and then builds those internal muscles that we should have? Nathaniel: So, I think there needs to be partnership with your learning and development group. It should live there at all. generally I always look at learning and development as a part still as a subset. I mean, And then if you diversity and inclusion under learning and development, you are devaluing the actual program because you're saying that it belongs under two layers under your human capital strategy. So me, I would want to see either diversity and inclusion equal to your human capital or infused into your human. But to put it lower in the organization, it sets a tone, even if that's not beaten. And then going back to something you said in terms of the human resources, generally being understaffed, which is a common theme across the industry. But if an organization is committed to diversity and inclusion, then they have to be able to. Find the resources, the best support, because DEI should not be an ad hoc responsibility. It should be of your organization. And so when you have your, whatever, your mission is, your human capital strategy is going to align to your overall organization. A DEI is missing from that. Then you're missing the opportunity to hit the mark when it comes to whatever your mission is focused it's as well. So we can't put it in like a backroom activity. It needs to be on the forefront and it needs to have the exposure. Carol: Yeah. In terms of. To really have it infused throughout the organization, not just throughout the human capital strategy really is talking about, in, in most cases I would guess, some sort of culture change and, and that, that's a, that's a huge endeavor. I was listening to another podcast where the person talked about, I'm always listening to Brene Brown's podcasts. So it was probably one of hers. And, she was saying the, how, if, if they're going into an organization and working with an organization, if DEI is not infused, and if the HR folks are not on the leadership team, they're not working with the organization because that structure alone just shows how it's either valued or not. Nathaniel: Correct. And, and even adding into the human capital stress. Diversity and inclusion needs to be a part of every segment that you have in human capital, bouncy your management. if you break out the layers of human capital, you have things that are dealing with your executive space, your culture, engagement and belonging. You have your performance management, your employee relations, or labor relations, all of these subsets of HR. And you have to use the DEI in that. So. You have supervisors who don't necessarily know how to manage a diverse workforce, right? So how are you holding them accountable, but then how are you also giving them the tools to be successful? So just that sentence alone, you talk, we've talked about diversity and inclusion, learning and development and performance management all in the same breath. So if you start with diversity and inclusion and separate from human capital things are disconnected. Peter: Yeah. And I think speaking for myself and I probably Carol as well, like being, an entry level brown man and really experienced about when you have. People who don't share your perspective or from a different generation or from a different workforce generation, or you could say, just have a difficult time connecting and, and not really, I guess, being so open with feedback in general, which and I think we'll talk about this in a future episode, but forces you to assimilate in different ways that. Would be a detriment, not only to your career, but also to their progress and furthering themselves and trying to become a better leader or et cetera, et cetera, whatever they're looking for. the question, my next question, cause it seems like we're, we're leaning towards that now. For organizations or for-profits that may be starting this work and a response to 2020 in general. and the previous administration, they're starting to establish DEI, an entity at their organization where it's going to live. And I think that's, we touched on that already, but we're not to put it, whether where, what are some signs. that you would recommend or not signs that you would share that, they are on the right path, that the work that they're starting out to do seems to be working. and what are some things that they would probably want to avoid, when beginning this work? Nathaniel: Yeah. So, good question. I think it still goes back to the culture of the organization and I think a way to be able to know where you're going and your progress is to incorporate your feedback mechanisms. Right? So what are ways that you are assessing your org? Because what works for organization A might not work for B, but you have to put, to truly do some type of feedback mechanisms and assessments. And so for instance, there are activities that people use that I've used such as stay interviews, right? Stay interviews are a great way to know what's going on in the pulse of your organization and ensure that questions that you have within your stay interview. Are aligned with the segments of, either areas that you want to see growth in or areas that you have concern. And so if you have a view that has 10 questions, how are those questions linked back within your organizational strategy, right? Looking back into your organization. So if you're looking to see, how, how competitive are we with pay? You want to ask questions that are compensation. If you're looking for clues and questions, then you want to make sure that you're asking questions that can best measure, the, the, the inclusion response of those within your org as well. So I think stay interviews are a great way. They're, they're super easy. And they also show that you as an organization have a commitment to your human cap. And you're not asking the questions when people are walking out the door, hear about you now, and I want to see your success. And so give us feedback to tell us what we can then do. Carol: Go ahead. I think people are very familiar with the exit interview. Can you say a little bit more about what the stay interview is? Nathaniel: So the stay interview, it's really a pulse check and you can decide at what point you want to have it. So for instance, if you want to do a stay interview at six months, you joined the organization in January and now it's June. I want to do a pulse check with you to see how things are going. And then I want to be able to assess this data based on this information. And that information is what you're seeking. Now what you also have to do, which is extremely important, is not just to do the state interviews, but what are you going to do with the data? Right? Because if people don't trust that anything will be done, then they're not going to be receptive in providing the feedback. So it's going to be able to say, this is the information that we've captured over X amount of time. And so from this amount of time, this is information that you've told them. We've heard you, these are actions that we put into place as a result of what you said and what that does is it fosters, it fosters buy-in and more people will be prone to be responsive because people know that their words help result in changing or at least shifting organizational [culture]. But human capital space if you lose someone, right? If you're losing your employees the amount of time to be able to backfill the position with a fuse, then with the amount of time that it takes to train someone up to the proficiency level of the person that was in the organization before that's. Right. So you can look at what those dollars and what those costs are, and that can range from anywhere from 30 to 60%. And so if an organization wants to be able to best keep their knowledge management within the organization and to be a talent, then the best way to be able to do this is to be able to, leverage your people, keep your retention low and be able to foster an organization that is inclusive. And here's the needs of the organization. Peter: And this is different from a three month probationary period where your supervisor just brings you in just to see how, whether or not you're sufficiently getting used to everything. It's really getting a deeper knowledge and understanding of that. It's like a, it's like a reverse evaluation of the 360 evaluation at that point. Right. It's like how they are looking back at you if I'm not mistaken, right? Nathaniel: Yeah. That's a little bit of. looking at it from, from the organization. So it's more macro than mine. And so from a 360, you're looking at it where, what is the feedback from my peers? What's the feedback from, my, my boss and maybe what's the feedback of someone that's one level below. This is looking at the organization in March. And so if this is Peter Cruz enterprises, how does Peter Cruz enterprises? Because there might be 10 different offices or sub organizations, but how does the organization work? And so you're not just doing this bay interview just for your boss and for your staff. You're doing it in, you're trying to measure this across the organization. What also happens with. Is that you're able to then get the data so that you can do comparison breakouts as well. And so for instance, if you have 10 organizations and nine of those organizations have, let's say, let's stay interviews because the attrition is low and then you have one office where the state interviews, we're doing more of them because there's a revolving door. And then we're getting data that shows that these are some of the same issues that we are reporting. Every time someone comes in the door, we now may be able to use the data. Well, we will be able to use the identity, the data to identify things in particular problems that may exist. There may be, it may not be the result of a supervisor. It may be. It may be, we're not really using the smart use of technology. There may be different reasons why people are staying or going, but you're taking the time out on the front end to diagnose what issues you have so that you're treating the disease. And not this. Peter: So well, first I want to say like, now I need to get a Squarespace or something for Peter Cruz enterprise and before someone else takes that. How regularly should these types of stay interviews? Nathaniel: So I'm going to go back to the, it depends because you really want to look at organization, right? If you have a turnover of, the average FTE stays within the organization for 18 months and you probably want to do it sooner. Yeah. If you have an organization where the normal turn is five years, maybe you don't want to do it in the first three months. But I would say that that's where human capital and diversity inclusion have to come together because you have to look at the data from the human capital systems perspective to understand like, okay, attrition is telling me this, right? So that's the human capital folks. Now as a diversity expert, what is this data system? And so now that I have this data and it's suggesting perhaps. When we look at our state interviews that this demographic is unhappy in XYZ and the third, well, why are they unhappy with XYZ third? So at that point, the next step may be okay. I'm seeing that this demographic is experiencing these challenges and is likely to look for a new job within the next six to 12 months. So maybe I then do a deeper dive and focus. And that focus group comprises everyone because we're inclusive. But in that focus group, let's kinda like to hear a little bit more and maybe it's bringing in that third party or that outside facilitator where people will be more candid and open and not have the feelings of, there's any type of retribution should they say? And then that information is then taken and synthesized and then leaders can now say, okay, I have, it's not just anecdotal. I have this information that shares that this is what's going on within my organization. So as your diversity leader, how are you now championing your senior leaders to invoke change? And then that helps you drive your strategy. So that's why going back to what I said before, human capital and diversity have to be. Because there's so much overlap. Can't do it by itself. We can't use diversity as a way where, okay, we're coming up with programs that we're coming up with ideas, but what is your strategy? Because if you don't have the connection to your human capital programs, then you're doing activities for the sake of doing activities without ensuring that there is a clear strategy for your organization. Peter: And this probably echoes why this type of work should not exist within the compliance driven role, because it requires so much flexibility. Nathaniel: Correct. And I will tell you, I have lots of friends that have it in their compliance role and, and, and I appreciate it, but if you're asking me for my opinion. I think that that's the wrong place I think is wrong. Is the graveyard for organizations. Peter: I think we have just one more question. Carol, do you have anything to add? Carol: No. I mean, I think it's, my experience has been with much smaller organizations, so HR, if there's even an HR person, unfortunately they've been, up to their eyeballs with just the compliance stuff. So, any looking at culture has had to be in a whole organization thing, just because the numbers are so much smaller than I think what you're talking about. but really moving over time it could be that the wording changes around calling it human capital or calling it human resources. Since that in many ways, objectifies people, it makes them objects just like machines and software and all the other things, rather than who they are people and what we want as a healthy culture in an organization. So it'll be interesting to see how those things shift over the next couple of [years]. Nathaniel: Yeah, I agree. If I've seen titles now shifting to more like chief people, officers, and I just think that. I mean, it's snazzy, a little cool if you will, but it's really encompassing what we do in this space. Like everything is about the people and if we don't have the people, you don't have your mission and you're not going to get your bottom line. So, I agree with you. I think that, and, and in an ideal world, I love titles. When I see chief people, engagement, inclusion, belonging. Those are the things that we really are assigned to do. Not necessarily look at, transactional, just resources and capital, because again, you objectify people to just being, a bottom line. Carol: Yeah. And it probably feels maybe, I don't know, hip or whatever right now, but I'm, I'm my, my hope is that, over time it will just become. Peter: speaking of overtime and becoming normal. The last question I have is ingrained with educational non-profits and educational institutions. what have, being that we've seen. And have become more and more increasingly aware of how COVID specifically has impacted disproportionally neighborhoods of color, public schools of color or predominantly. And what do you see from your experience and from your expertise may be long lasting effects from COVID in regards to facilitation and, and delivery of, lessons, et cetera. we'll start there. Nathaniel: Yeah, it's scary. It's scary. my concern and I see it and, I have, I have children as well, and they're going through the pandemic and, interestingly enough, my, my wife was able to start working and she became a full term, homeschooling, parents last year. And so I sit in education, I sit in a seat of privilege, right? We were educated, we could give up one income and be fine, and our children are thriving, but that's one story out of probably a hundred where we're watching particularly, particularly black and brown people who have to not only still work during the pandemic, but are working with. And so when they're working on site, many of their kids are sitting home and they're left to their own devices. It doesn't matter how good their kids are, they're left to their own devices. And so when you look at the one, the lack of resources within black and brown, And then two, when you look at the absenteeism that's occurring, because parents are at work and children have to stay at home. The long-term effects of this is going to be crucial because one who's going to fail children during a pandemic. No one. So you're going to have children that are past the long, and that are going through the system that are inadequately equipped. And so what then happens. You create a pipeline of children that are missing the functional and technical skills that they need in order to succeed. And so then what happens when we get to the 11th and 12th grade SATs COVID is behind us, but the educational gaps are not. And so then you have people. Are ill prepared to go to college might, may not go to college. families are disproportionately impacted. They may not be able to afford college. and then when they get in college, you're systematically taking on some of those challenges. And so what ends up happening is you create a gap really between the haves and have nots. But those that are mostly impacted are those that are on the lower end of the financial total. And unfortunately we see that black and brown people are more represented in that space. So it's not whether or not they can. A pandemic has completely stretched the uneven playing field that already existed. And so what then happened? 10 years from now, 15 years from now, we look at the workforce and do we see people who are more diverse in equal playing fields? Or do we see that there are less people who had less opportunities during this time? So, I say that, all that, to say that I'm nervous. I am, I've seen it before the pandemic. I worked for an organization where we had, and I'll give you this quick example. We had an unpaid internship. And it was a very reputable organization, but most people that were black and brown did not come into the organization. Not because they weren't qualified. Well, it was because who is going to be able to give up for four months of their summer, not making any money only for an experience in Washington, DC where rent and everything else is, above the national average. So there was this ration of who got the opportunities at that point, who got the connections, who could be able to bridge into opportunities once they graduate versus those that couldn't. So now you couple COVID on top of that. You couple that, black and brown people will be disproportionately impacted by that. And you see a system that is not. If you see a system that's so there are organizations that are trying to mitigate that. Of course people are coming up with businesses, of course, where there's more, educational, tutoring and things like that. But like, when we go back to that, who's going to then be able to pay for it? Carol: Yeah, the ripple effects as you lay them out. I mean, it's just, it could be, and obviously those gaps and impacts were happening before the pandemic. And of course it's just, it just made it so much worse. and yeah, we'll be, we'll be seeing the ripple effects and, and unfortunately, The U S is not very good at history. We're very good at forgetting real quickly, what happened. Peter: Yeah, because the second part of that question was like, if there are any positive things that have come from it, like, what do you think will like, we'll. moving forward, like, well, being, accessibility is important. Like maybe remote learning, like blended models still exist in 2024, like who? but being that, like what Carol just said, we don't tend to forget about the immediate CMI go back to normal. Cause that's always like what we're seeking. but normal, as you mentioned, wasn't great to begin with. Nathaniel: Even with the hybrid learning and the different forms of doing that. there may be educational advances that occur, but there's still the, it's the ripple effect. So with the future of work and the future of education, things may be more digital, but then what happens to the businesses that thrive on those, either schools or anything else that is close to that location. I mean, we look at DC right now, DC is half of DC's. And why is it boarded up? Because small businesses especially can't make any money because everyone is in the future of work, if you will. And so then what happens to school? The same exact thing, and who's impacted if you have less schools because you have a virtual model, you have those, the cafeteria workers and the janitors and all of those different people who now they don't have a job or a place to clean because you shut down buildings and impacts your real estate as well. So, I could go on and on and on about it, but it impacts everyone, but we've got to look at the data to see who. Even the greatest impact, and we know what the data is going to show. Carol: Well, that, that is all true. And we try to, we try to end on a positive note. So I'm curious what, what, you're, what you're looking forward to, what you're, what you're hopeful about, as we move forward in this next year. Nathaniel: Yeah. So I'm going to flip it because I do actually like to be half-full. I am excited about the future. I am excited about the smart use of technology. I think technology is going to do something for this, for this world in, in, in something that we have never seen. the fact that we can have this podcast and we're doing an interview at 11 o'clock and I have a briefing at 12 o'clock and I have a meeting with clients at one o'clock and I'm able to do all of this, literally from my home. I mean, before. We're literally driving from or flying from or going all of these places and really extending and burning ourselves out. Right. So I think that organizations have the opportunity to, if you seize the smart use of technology in the correct way, and you also are focusing on the culture and the health of your organization. I do think that there are going to be extremely positive, ramifications and impacts from. I'm excited. I'm absolutely excited. Peter: That's what I mean. I am as well. I mean, if it seems like it's a great time to progress and the cause there's like, I think with a lot of change, that's been instilled over the past couple of months and there's sort of like a whole, like everyone's optimistic at this point, right? We've just been so severely impacted from last year that it's hard to be a pessimist at this point. you just got it just to motivate you. You have to be optimistic. I think that's it for today. So thank you so much, Nate, for joining us. like you mentioned being in a couple of minutes, we are not as important, but thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule, to speak with us and share your perspective and your insight. Nathaniel: Thank you. This was a pleasure. I appreciate you so much. Carol: Thank you for listening to this episode. I really appreciate the time you spend with me and my guests. You can find out how to connect with our guest Nathaniel Benjamin as well as my co-host for this episode Peter Cruz as well as any links and resources mentioned during the show in the show notes at missionimpactpodcast.com/shownotes. I want to thank Nora Strauss-Riggs for her support in editing and production as well as April Koester of 100 Ninjas for her production support. We want to hear from you! Take a minute to give us feedback or ask a question at missionimpactpodcast.com/feedback.  In episode 34 of Mission: Impact, Carol, her guest, Doug Spencer talked about:
Guest bio: Douglas Spencer is president of Spencer Brenneman, LLC, which helps mission-driven organizations reframe their focus and remaster their messages to thrive in any environment. In 2021, Douglas launched the podcast, Messaging on a Mission. In it he talks to leaders of nonprofits, social enterprises, associations about their journeys and the messages they’re using to thrive. He is also the author of Do They Care? The one question all brands should ask themselves, continually, a book that shows leaders how they can create meaningful connections with everyone important to their organization's success. Resources:
Transcript: Carol Hamilton: My guest today on Mission Impact is Doug Spencer. Doug and I talk messaging for nonprofits. Why it is so much more than branding and branding is so much more than just a logo, and why it is so important to help everyone in your nonprofit get on board with a clear message that everyone can understand. Welcome to Mission Impact, the podcast for progressive nonprofit leaders who want to build a better world without becoming a martyr to the cause. I am Carol Hamilton, your podcast host and nonprofit strategic planning consultant. Welcome Doug. It's great to have you on the pod. Doug Spencer: I am thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me. Carol: So I like to start with asking the question of what drew you to the work that you do. What, what motivates you and what would you describe as your why? Doug: Yeah. Okay. Well, let's see. It's convoluted. It's not as easy as, oh, I woke up one morning when I was a child and I knew that I had to do A, B or C. So, I will start there. My parents were volunteers, they just volunteered at different organizations. And so they set a really good example for me, that way. And, I did that throughout high school and college. And after that, I've always been a volunteer, at least in organizations that I cared about. I did work in nonprofits for awhile, but then I got sucked into the for-profit sector and worked there for many years and, but continue to continue to volunteer. I served on the board of directors of a hundred million dollar health center. And, even was its board chair for a while. So I continued doing that, but after a while I left my corporate job, I started working on my own, doing branding. And, really it was last year in the heart of the pandemic where I took a step back and thought. All right. What am I doing? What I really want to do. And it was then that we made a shift to focus exclusively on mission driven organizations. So mostly not-for-profits, but also, social enterprises, the organizations that are trying to. Solve some sort of societal challenge, and, and, and are focused on doing that. There's the environment. There's education there's it's there, there's some really great folks doing some great work in pretty much all, all areas. And so, yeah, that's why I've shifted to mission-driven organizations. There's a lot of things I can't do, but, such as I can't, take care of kids who have been abused. I can't work in biotech. I can't do a lot of things, but I can help them. I can help the people who do. I can help them talk about their work and get their message out there so that more people join them on their mission. Carol: It doesn't, it doesn't do anyone any good if, it's it's, the organization is hidden and no one knows the good work that they're doing. It's interesting. I'm thinking about my career and I've been in the sector for most of my career and, if you had talked to an organization about branding, when I first started, it was a dirty word. Branding, marketing, all of those things, were, oh, that's what, that's what those for-profit people do. I think that's changed a lot in the number of years that I've been in the sector. but still, it can be. Somewhat neglected or siloed and the fundraising arm or the marketing arm, the communications arm of the organization. Why would you say that it's really important for organizations to get, get those messages, get, get those messages is really integrated through the whole organization. Doug: Sure. Well, there's many reasons for that. one of which is consistency in order for any message to take hold. And when I think of branding, by the way, I really think of strategic messaging. People sometimes think of a logo when they think branding, but that's just one tiny element of it. So it's really about how you think about your organization, how you think about the relationships you have with all the people. All the people most important to your success. And then how do you talk to them? And when I say all the people important to your success, that's where I think your portion's going. that starts with employees. I wrote a little book a few years ago about branding and the first chapter is all about employees, because if your employees don't understand what you're really about, if they can't talk about it in a way that gets other people excited, then. Wow. You're walking away from a whole lot of great connections, a whole lot of great energy, a whole lot of great information because communication is two ways. But, but, so, so it's important that everybody understands the message for consistency. But also, so they can do their jobs better so they can feel more connected to the organization. So that if you're a volunteer, you can't stop talking about it. And more importantly, you can't stop talking about it correctly. And if you don't have that focus on messaging in the very beginning, people are going to go out, go out, about in their daily lives. And they're going to say whatever they think is right. And sometimes it is, but a lot of the times it's not. So that's why messaging is so important that everyone has to understand it and everyone has to feel it. They have to really feel it and get excited about it. Carol: Yeah. Oftentimes you think about board members or board members are, are really, encouraged to be ambassadors for the organization, but you make a great point about all those people who are working there. All the folks who are volunteering, it may not be at the board level. It may be in a lot of different aspects of the organization. but any of those folks, any of those stakeholders only kind of, yeah. It sees the elephant from whatever position they're in. Right. So they may just get a bit of the puzzle and not the whole thing. How do you help organizations go about that and get everyone on message? Doug: Well, the first, the first way to do that is involve them, involve everyone in the development of the message or if it's not development and it, at least it's the. fine tuning or validate or validation of the message. So we have a process that is really research heavy. We focus a lot on research, both qualitative and quantitative, and you bring people into that process to make them feel heard because they do need to be heard. And you're, if you don't. Get input from all the people most important to you, six successes then, wow. You're not doing your job, right? not, I'm sorry to be blunt, but that's just the way it is. You've got to get everyone involved and just that first step does help build that momentum and build that excitement. And then the end product, ideally. We'll have some reflection of what all of those folks have said and input and input, obviously you're not going to just automatically do or say whatever everybody says, but it's, it's the totality of everything they say. So if you do it right, they're going to see a little bit of themselves in there. They're going to see a little bit about the part of the organization that, that they, no. when I was working in the for-profit sector and that's the other reason just, not to be completely stream of consciousness, but that's the other reason that I like what I'm doing now, because when I was working in the for-profit sector, I got a ton of great experience that the nonprofit sector isn't seen there's approaches in this way, just think about that really can benefit the non-profit sector. So I'm, I'm excited to share that where it's appropriate for other organizations, but where I was going before I interrupted myself, right. Where it was, where I was going was that I had a client when I was working with for-profit companies. And he said to me, if I asked every one of my partners, what we do. Every one of them would come up with a different description. And I worked with Harvard medical school and one of their divisions and their executive director had the exact same problem. All the leaders of her. Programs would only talk about the entirety in the perspective of what they did for it, never in how that all adds up to be the organization's true message. So if you get people involved and get them to see how they connect to the greater picture, the greater mission, then they're going to be all that much more excited to be part of it. Carol: And that that process of research has a very similar to, when you were starting out with a strategic plan. And, the other thing that that brings to mind is that. There's the input process and coming to some conclusion around what are your strategic messages, but through that process, you're also shifting people's perspective and almost going through an education process with them as they talk to other people in the organization and see, see the other sides of things. And then how does it, as you're saying, add up to the total? Doug: Right. Right. And, and that totality that if you want to call it your mission, you want to call it your why statement, whatever you want to call it, that brings people together and that can actually help, come to life in many other ways. So for example, sometimes there's a lot less bickering in an organization because everyone understands, okay, what they're really there to accomplish. They may all have different approaches to get the organization. There are more different contributions. But they all agree on the end goal and a lot of organizations aren't operating with that. They're just operating little silos, because they think it's more efficient or it's just really, it's just really icky to have to talk to somebody and, and really hear them out and feel what they're saying. And when you just want to focus on your own stuff, but, yeah, it's the mission. And, given the name of your podcast, mission impact, it's got to be the mission, it's gotta be what drives you and your mission’s gotta be what drives your message too. Carol: So oftentimes, an organization's messaging doesn't keep up with how they've evolved. why don't you say this happens and, and how, how can you kind of, what, how can, what can organizations do to make sure that those two things match. Doug: Oh, gosh. Yeah. This is something that everybody struggles with from time to time. And there are three main reasons. I see why organizations miss messages that fall out of line. The first is we forget what we know that nobody else knows, and we do our jobs day in and day out. We live, breathe them. Think about them, wake up in the middle of night, thinking about them. And that's what makes us really good at it. But what we all do. Forget that not everybody has that level of detail. And so sometimes we go about talking about what we do as if we're explaining a Netflix show, season three, episode 12, to someone who's only seen season one, episode two. And so, we forget what we know and nobody else does. So that's the first one. The second one is that we all have to change a little bit here and there. I mean, life comes at us and throws us things that we have to adapt to, global pandemic, anyone, so a little change here and a little change. There is probably not that bad and something you need to do, but your message probably doesn't change a lot. Right. And then the third reason I see is what I call the squeaky wheel syndrome, especially with organizations that are lean and are running, all hands on deck. These squeaky wheels come up and you have to pay attention to them, but sometimes it's at the expense of the entire machine. So what that leads to is over time, sometimes convoluted. confusing and just basically inaccurate message because you've been going slightly different direction, all of a sudden, and then bam, your message hasn't changed and it's still pointing backwards. So those are the three reasons. I think that the organization's message gets out of sync here. Carol: Yeah. And that makes sense. And as you're talking about those different silos of people, not knowing if they've forgotten what they're doing. So in the details of, episode 22, season three, and they forget the whole long storyline, it seems to me that processes like you lead groups through and, and the work that I do where we're there doing strategic planning and kind of, again, always taking a step back, bringing a larger group of people. Cross-functional groups of people together to think through these things. It helps people reconnect with the why of the organization, whether it's through messaging, whether it's through setting priorities. yeah. It helps them get a better understanding of what everybody does in an organization, oftentimes I'll have board members who've just started and they think, well, I can't contribute anything to this strategic planning process or a messaging process, but they do contribute something and that. One, they're bringing a new perspective and to the whole process they're going to, they're going to be so much further up to speed on the organization than if they had gone to an equivalent number of board meetings. So there's, there's all sorts of other benefits from these processes than just the product at the end. Right? The ripple effects in the organization. Doug: Right. And one of the things that I think is one of those benefits is focus. So when you step back and really think about your messaging framework, what are the things that we are known for, or want to be known for? What are the things that we contribute to the world that nobody else does exactly the same way? And if you come up with three to four of those, and a new idea comes along, someone says, oh, we should totally do this. Or totally do like adopt a highway program like we do, but for, for, but for rabbits, then you say, okay, well, does that fit into any of the predetermined categories of what we've claimed we do best? And if it doesn't, then you don't do it. And that helps. That helps you stay focused. So you put a line in the sand and say, okay, this is who we are. This is what we do. This is how we talk about it. And anything else. You just have to politely say, sorry, we can't do that. Or, an obviously better option would be to point them to someone who does, not just leave them, leave them hanging, but help them somehow. But don't take that on if it's not who you are. Carol: So what are some ways that organizations, what are some steps that they can take to get clear about their messaging? Doug: Yeah. First is, as I alluded to earlier, to do some research. You got to ask questions, you gotta ask questions. All the people who are important to your success. Again, your employees, your volunteers, the people you serve, the people who fund you, the people who used to be on your board and are on your board, or, obviously not everyone, but you have to have a reputation or a representation from everybody that has some sort of a stake or something. A point of view that has value. You have to ask the questions and some of them have to be tough, you know? Do you think, do you have confidence in the executive director? Do you think the organization is prepared to meet the needs of the community in five years? do you think they do the work better than, and then list in some other organizations? So you have to do that work. You have to understand. And the other thing that a lot of organizations don't do that I think is really important is. Take a look at their competitors. And when I say competitors, I know a lot of people go competitors though. We don't have those that's for profit, but no you're competing for the time, talent and treasures of a whole lot of other folks. So, if who else, who else is going to. foundation and applying for the same grant you are, who else is looking for individual donors in say the art space, if that's where you're in or social justice space. So that's where you're in. So you've got to look at what they're doing, what they're saying, and then find a way to authentically position yourselves relevant or relative rather to those other voices, because those voices are out there and you are competing with them before people's time, talent. Carol: Yeah. And I think people only think about competitors as those direct ones. So an arts organization to an arts organization. And, but if you're a local, a local organization, you're competing with all the organizations that are trying to get donor donations from local folks. So sometimes you have to think kind of, there may not be some, someone who does exactly what you do in your locality, but your, that competition may be maybe slightly. Doug: Right. And it goes back to your episode, it goes back to thinking about those people who are most important to your success. You got to get in their heads, who is it that they work with? So if you are talking to corporate foundations or you are talking to some sort of a major donor, who else are they supporting? You've got to get a sense of where their attention spans are. Pointing and then thinking about how you fit into that. And it's gotta be authentic as I, as I suggest, is it can't you just can't, you can't be that car salesman. That is all things to all people. You've got to find your authentic voice and speak that in a way that connects with those people in a way that everyone else doesn't. Carol: So what gets in the way? Doug: What gets in the way? Well, like I said, just the day-to-day work, people are busy, especially at not-for-profits because they tend to have very lean staffs and sometimes they tend to not sometimes, and they tend to work with some, some really life and death situations. And so if you have to. Getting people into, housing for the, for the night versus, having a conversation with people that might donate, it's, you, you gotta, you gotta balance. And so the day to day really gets in trouble, gets you in trouble sometimes, but you've got to find that balance. That's just part of the job. I had a boss that used to, she used to always say to us, put on your big boy pants and do it. And, Gender aside. I just liked the image of that. But, anyway, that's part of the job and you've gotta stay. You gotta, you gotta do everything. unfortunately, so, just the day to day really does it. The other thing is it's not. Fun necessarily the pre-work, it's almost like some people have fashioned it like going into therapy and who wants to do that? and I, people joke that I'm some, sometimes I'm a therapist, which I am so not because I'm so not qualified, but I asked a lot of questions and I listened. So, I guess there is a parallel. But it's not always fun to really do that soul searching, even if it's not about you personally, but it's about the organization that you love and breathe that you are, it's so important to you. That soul searching can be uncomfortable. And then of course, change is uncomfortable too, for a lot of people, if they don't know. If they're not initiating it like you and I have had conversations and you brought up a great point that a change is great for the people who are initiating it. It's everybody else that gets, gets a little weirded out about it. So, those are some of the reasons, those are some of the things that get in the way. I think of people staying on top of their message and really embracing it and using it as a way to further their work. Carol: And I love your point about, especially at organizations that are in direct service where, whether they get food to people or housing or all the things, that day, the immediate needs that are right on their doorstep, they need to deal with them. And I guess, as an and other organizations, That are working on issues that can feel like that too, even though they may not have the one person at their doorstep. and yeah, if you can take the perspective of. We're going to do a better job of serving all those people. If we're able to connect with other people who will support us, and, and not have it be a competitive, a competitive thing within the organization of, of competing priorities to say that, no, we need to do both because, that little bit of time that we're taking or that amount of time that we're taking to get clear about all these things is going to serve us in the long run. It may be that. See that, that immediate gratification of helping somebody right there. But over time, it will, it will help them help a greater number of people. Doug: Okay. It's that, it's another variation on that, that classic, river, metaphor, right. If you're busy pulling people out of the river. One after another is to keep them from drowning. You don't have time to go upstream, downstream, upstream, and figure out why these people are getting in the river in the first place. So it's just another version of that, of that middle. Carol: Absolutely. So on every episode, I like to play a game where I ask one random icebreaker question. So one for you is what is something you think everybody should do at least in their lives? Doug: Oh gosh, that's easy. And I say this all the time and that is. Get into some therapy, talk to a therapist. Oh my God, you have no, you don't, you don't. And nor should you be in therapy forever in my humble opinion, but again, what do I know? But, oh my gosh, our world is so complicated and the pressures that we put ourselves in, the world changes so fast and our parents always do the best they can, but you know what. That doesn't mean that everything was right. So you get to talk to somebody else once in a while, at least once and just help them, help them, help them, help you sort things out in your head, so that you can get a better grip on how to be your best self and how to live your best. Carol: absolutely. I've often joked with my daughter. I was like, well, I'm just, I'm just helping out your future therapist. Well, what are you excited about? What's coming up next for you and emerging in your work. Doug: Yeah, what's exciting. Well, I'm just excited, excited rather that we are very slowly, more slowly than we should, but more slowly getting a hold of the pandemic and starting to move forward and at least starting to feel more of a comfort level with it. So I think, so we're talking now in August. I don't know when you're going to when this will air, but in August we're I think we're, you've got the Delta variant going on, but I think that people are. Racing themselves for another fall or winter, but it's not going to be as. Awful as it had been. And so I'm looking forward to ideally not having that happen, but if, even if it does, I think it's going to be better than 2020, but I do see the world opening up. I'm really excited. I know this is probably inappropriate to go, get all political, but I'm really excited to see what's going to happen with the infrastructure bill that seems to be going on. I think there's some real, incredible opportunities that are going to come from that. And so I'm really eager to see what this is. Has, and how that benefits, the people that are doing the work that we support. Right? Cause it's not in a vacuthe infrastructure, isn't just something that's over there. The infrastructure is something that impacts everybody and how they do their jobs and how they service the people they serve and how, and the environment is a perfect example. so I'm really excited about that. And, am, in sending positive vibes to Washington that they don't screw it up and that it actually happens. Carol: Absolutely. It's certainly long overdue. All right. Well, thank you so much. It was great having you on the podcast. Doug: This is fun. I'll we should do it again. And you've been on mine and I appreciate your time on my podcast and, yeah, happy to do it anytime. All right. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Carol: I appreciated what Doug said about stepping back and help people understand the bigger picture of the story of your nonprofit. It is too easy to start with all the details – as he says – assuming your audience is in the middle of the season that you have been bringing with you, instead of setting the scene and giving the big headline – the tagline that folks will be able to remember. Not getting lost in the weeds and the details. And how to connect with what the person you are speaking with cares about. Not to fundamentally change your mission – but to find that point of connection to help pull that person in and help them relate to what you are describing. Getting into their shoes and seeing it from their perspective. Thank you for listening to this episode. I really appreciate the time you spend with me and my guests. You can find out how to connect with Doug as well as any links and resources mentioned during the show in the show notes at missionimpactpodcast.com/shownotes. I want to thank Nora Strauss-Riggs for her support in editing and production as well as April Koester of 100 Ninjas for her production support. If you enjoyed the episode I would greatly appreciate it if you would share it with a colleague or friend. Send them a link to the episode - We appreciate you helping us get the word out.  In episode 33 of Mission: Impact, Carol, her cohost, Peter Cruz, and their guest, Stephen Graves discuss diversity equity and inclusion in the health care sector. This episode is a release of a podcast Carol planned to start with her son-in-law and has many transferrable ideas and concepts to the nonprofit sector. We talk about:
Guest bio: Stephen Graves Born in South Carolina and raised in the black Baptist church, Stephen had an insatiable curiosity to understand the South’s nuanced history related to race, his place in that story as a black man, and how the Christian faith could be used as a tool to heal or a weapon to hurt. This curiosity set him on a personal exploration, which turned into a professional journey as he pursued and earned a Master in Health Administration from the Medical University of South Carolina. Throughout his career in healthcare and in diversity, equity and inclusion, he has led initiatives centered on addressing health disparities, improving language access, and increasing cultural humility among teams. He has been fortunate to collaborate with healthcare providers, faith leaders, high school and college students, and business leaders in helping them to create welcoming and inclusive cultures where all can thrive. Resources: Cultural humility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaSHLbS1V4w Tuskegee Study: https://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/ethics-articles/The_Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study_and_Its_Implications_for_the_21st_Century/ Racial biases about Black people and pain: https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patients-pain Guest contact: Stephen Graves: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sggraves/ All In Consulting: https://www.allinconsulting.co/ Peter Cruz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjcruz/ Transcript: Peter Cruz: Hey, everyone. Welcome to culture. Fit the podcast where we do our best to answer your equity inclusion questions. That'll help you navigate the professional landscape, especially when you are not a culture fit. Peter Cruz Carol Hamilton: and I'm Carol Hamilton. And today on the podcast, we're going to be talking to Steven Graves and looking at diversity equity inclusion in the healthcare practice. Peter: It's a great conversation and I hope you enjoyed the episode. Stephen Graves: Hey Carol, Peter: How are you doing Carol? Carol: How are you doing Peter? Peter: I'm doing all right. I had a good night's sleep because it's like 16 degrees over here. And when it's really cold, you just sleep real hard. So I didn't move. Not one time. So I'm well rested and well-prepared for today. Carol: Today we do have a guest. Our guest is Steven Graves. How are you doing Steven? Stephen: Good. Glad to be here. Peter: Could you provide some background information on yourself? Stephen: Yeah. I'm Stephen Graves. I'm a native of a small town in South Carolina, upstate South Carolina called Greenville. In between Greenville and Columbia I started in the healthcare profession dating back to when I was in college interning at a disabilities and special needs facility. Also pursue my master's at the medical university of South Carolina down in Charleston, South Carolina. So I had to have about a decade of experience in the medical field. And just really glad to be here today and have a conversation with you all Peter: glad to have you for sure. I mean, you're our inaugural guests, so without you, the show actually wouldn't be possible. Stephen: Oh, wow. That is a privilege and an honor pressure too. Carol: No, no pressure at all. And Steven, I think, as you've been in that field, you've also stepped into specializing more closely in diversity, equity and inclusion. Is that correct? Is that right? Stephen: Yes. Yeah. I've been doing the diversity equity and inclusion work. Like I said for the last 10 years, I really opened my eyes during my time at the medical university of South Carolina working with a limited English professor. In communities trying to make sure that they have access to translators interpreters, and really just making sure that those services meet and exceed their expectations to improve the patient experience. I was really blessed and honored to be around some great folks, great mentors at the MUFC community. And it just really opened my eyes to the disparities that are in healthcare, in the medical community and understanding how we can. Address those to have a more equitable society and make sure that everybody's living to their full potential as far as their physical and mental health is concerned. Peter: Hmm. Great. And this is coming this first, like my question, like it's coming from a place of ignorance because I don't know anyone else who works in the medical field. Especially in diversity equity inclusion. Is there, what are, where are things that are similar? From the medical field in DEI that are, that exist in nonprofit or corporate spaces. And then if there's anything that's unique to there, can you like to shine some light on those? Stephen: Yeah, that's a good question. I think the similarities are that in order for shifts to be made in order for real change, transformational change to happen. You've got to have senior leadership commitment. Whoever is at the top of the organization has the most power. They have the most influence. Oftentimes they can control where energy is being in place, where resources are being placed. So the one similarity, the main similarity is really around that senior leadership commitment piece. I think another similarity is also around being. Data and evidence-based driven, right? So a lot of times the mistake that people make in this particular aspect of diversity equity inclusion is because there's such an emotional tie and pull to it with feelings and it can trigger a lot of people. People don't take a logical, maybe rational and evidence-based approach. And I think whether you're in the nonprofit space, whether you're in the corporate America space, whether you're healthcare like myself, You still need to be driven by data, right? Collecting what we call real data, race, ethnicity, and language, data, collecting sexual orientation and gender identity data. So that's another similarity. And in terms of collecting that data, and then a third similarity would be around using that data. To sit and drive real goals in terms of what are going to be some realistic goals that we can measure and they can help us chart our path forward. I would say the main difference in healthcare is that you are literally talking about life and death, right? Yeah. A lot of people in other spaces can say, okay, well, this is nice to have. But if you don't have the right type of language, access programming in place, or an effective language access program, it can literally be a life or death situation. There can be some dire consequences if you're not focusing on equitable outcomes, I would say that would be the biggest difference when it comes to working in this space in healthcare lands versus any other field. Peter: Thank you. I think that last bit does stand out for me, it being about life or death. I think that probably because my professional experience is all in nonprofit, like youth focused, youth empowerment and because it doesn't have to do with life or death, it provides that opportunity to. Second guests like to prolong and like to require more patients because the senior leaders have the option to just like, maybe test it a little bit, but then if it doesn't feel like it will succeed. And, but does that mean that things, decisions come quicker in, in, in, in the middle of the profession? Carol: The huge organizations that you're dealing with as well. I mean, huge systems with so many people and that, that, that makes the complexity even, even more so. Stephen: Exactly right. When you're talking about a large health system, I've worked in health systems ranging from 8,000 employees to 25,000 employees. So it takes a long time to normalize this across the landscape. If you will, when it comes to that large healthcare. There is a higher sense of urgency, I would say right now, based on the events that happened last year, I think America's having a reawakening and that's happening in the medical field as well. Thinking about the COVID disparities related to the pandemic black and brown communities being hit harder than other communities of color and white communities. When you're thinking about that, the sense of urgency has elevated recently, those same barriers when it comes to that bureaucratic nature of the hierarchy is still there. And that's unfortunate, but I think, again, I'm hopeful and optimistic that right now there's going to be a shift that happens as a result of occurrence. Carol: And I can imagine that that sense of crisis, actually, it could be helpful and it could also be a hindrance of, oh, we've just got to focus on COVID right now. We can't focus on those, those other things going unquote. And I imagine that plays out as well. Stephen: It does, it does. And, me being able to prioritize the advice that I would give to leaders when it comes to that resistance, right. In terms of saying, okay, we got to put this off because there's other priorities saying, Hey, these are priorities within priorities. Right? So wherever the conversation is, whether it's around COVID, whether it's around your EHR, electronic health care, right. There's going to be a lens of diversity, equity and inclusion within all of those priorities. Maybe you're building and expanding your practices, expanding a wing, getting your hospital. You've got to have some consideration for, okay, how are we going to make this accessible, right, for a person with disability? How are we going to make sure that language signage is translated in a way that folks who don't speak English as a first language can understand? So these things are going to be embedded, right? Any initiative, any project that hospital organizations are going to be working on. And that's the case that I always try to make when it comes to prioritizing this work. Carol: And you mentioned data and evidence driven. Can you give us an example of how that's been helpful and bringing that perspective or bringing that evidence to the team. Stephen: Yeah. So a lot of the organizations that I've had the pleasure to work inside of and consult with survey, right? So doing engagement surveys and really asking some core questions around inclusivity and inclusion saying, do you feel respected? In the walls, these hospitals, do you feel there are patients who are racial, racially, diverse, ethnically diverse, linguistically diverse. Do you feel like they're being respected, being treated the same, that data can provide a baseline and it can really be useful and valuable to getting you some really great information that you can build off of. So that's one part of the data collection that I'm referring to. Another aspect is looking at patient experience scores, right? So this is something we all can relate to, whether you're. Inside of the healthcare system, or you are receiving services as a patient, everybody can either deliver, how their experience was, or we're going to hear how the experience was on our end as healthcare providers. That data can be stratified sorted by race, by ethnicity, by language, by age or all of these different demographic factors. And you can realize contrast, and you can see those contrasts and that data. If again, if the organization's willing to make that commitment, to look at their data differently, to see, okay, there's a difference because different, yeah, this exists and that takes a little bit of commitment and it takes a little bit of discomfort to look at that and say, White patients are having a much better experience when they're interacting with their nurse at bedside than a black patient is. So those that, that type of data will really help tell a story and validate for the, the nonbelievers, if you will, this work is so important. Peter: Speaking of non-believers. One, one question that we were going to ask you is the anti-vaxxer community. How has that, especially over the past year during COVID, how has that impacted I guess the increase of people coming into the hospital. And is there a community that exists within the staff? The medical professionals that are also anti-vaxxers. Stephen: Yeah. I would say that when it comes to anti-vaxxers and those who may be a little bit reluctant to take the backseat, it depends on the communities that you're talking about. Right. So we're talking about black and brown communities. There is an understandable and rightful way of having a district. Yeah, the medical community, right, because of history and because of what we've seen, not only in the healthcare space, but in all of our institutions across America. So the medical community as providers and professionals who have done significant harm over the last, however, a hundred, many years to validate those concerns and those anti-vaxxers, if you will. Yes, whether it's a staff member of color, whether it's a patient of color, I've seen it on both ends. And what part of the work that the medical community has to do is to regain trust of those communities by engaging more effectively and more creatively to make sure that, Hey, we are here for your best interests at hand and alleviating those concerns. But yes, there's definitely. That reluctance piece when it comes to the backs of nations, whether it's, staff members, black staff members of color, or folks, out in the community. Yeah. Carol: And can you say more, a little bit more about that history of the, that really drove that distrust? Stephen: Yeah. So I would say, dating back, you can Google the Tuskegee experiments, right? You can think about how women of color are right. Who were pregnant or how they've been treated. So there's a deep history and examples in terms of that level of distrust. And I would say going back to that language access piece, there are some, really Keystone cases in terms of capstones that this suggests okay. One word was mistranslated, right? One word was misinterpreted and it led to a misdiagnosis. It led to the wrong arm being amputated, the wrong leg being amputated. So there's several and numerous examples of that distrust that has been building over time. Peter: Yeah. And I would also wonder with being that, I guess the white community is more of an individualistic community and people of color tend to be. You know more of a collective so to speak. And if one, one patient has a negative experience, it will already create the whole narrative for their entire community about whether or not they will even, if I'm not feeling well, whether or not I even go to the hospital because they mistreated my friend, they mistreated my mother, they mistreated whomever. Right. So that's that, yeah, that, that, that data that you mentioned earlier is so much more signal, like as equally as significant as it. About the historical context, I would say as well, right? Stephen: Yeah. That data is current too. Right. So if you think about as recent as five years ago, I won't say the school, but there was a medical school and the students, the white medical residents actually thought that blue, black people's blood coagulated. And they literally thought that black people's skin was thicker and that led to a misdiagnosis and mismanagement of pain and, and under-valuing pain management and prescribing for pain. So the data most currently, and most recently it provides more than enough evidence to focus on communities of color and ensure they have equitable care. Yeah, that data piece is huge. Peter: I'm looking, you mentioned this, but looking at the past year what we were, we've spoken a little bit about the experience for the patients or potential patients or the community for the medical professionals. How has that last year been? In regards to DEI being that there was like an increased sense of it. Stephen: Yeah, depending on the communities, right. That you're speaking of within the medical community. Right? So the black and brown professionals in the medical field who I've had the opportunity and privilege to work around, they're saying, okay, well it's about time, right? It's about time, that we're having these conversations, right. It's long overdue. So that's by and large, the sentiment that I've heard from communities of color, when it comes to the white profession. There are some who they're on board, right? How can I be an ally? How can I do better as a provider to better serve my patient? But then of course you have those who are saying, okay, we're just one race. We're the human race, right. Or I'm colorblind. I don't see color, right. And you're thinking to yourself, okay, that's well intentioned. There's some blind spots there. Right. And then, Very far end of the spectrum. you have those folks who have been in the medical field for years, right? Maybe 30, 40 years. They just were not trained this way. Right. They didn't, they weren't trained to have any sort of cultural humility when thinking about the patients, the diverse patients that they're serving. So they have a mindset in place that they develop over time and then, develop a sense of their training that they really have to think through and say, okay, what, what do I need to uncover? What can I start getting curious about to be a better provider? Yes, definitely a range across the spectrum in terms of the response to the DEI efforts and the need for DEI efforts. Peter: Hmm. I have just one more question. Really Carol, do you have any other questions right now? Okay, with all you've experienced the past four years, right. With administration, do court like that, connected with the pandemic and how people have interacted with Medicare and the medical systems. Are there things that you are optimistic about with the change of administration in regards to the medical profession? Cause I know that people think it's a very, it's a clean slate. A new president. We're all good. Now we got the right guy in office. It's no worries. Like we're all good. Right? We're all family. I'm colorblind and we love each other now again is that, is there any optimism moving forward? Any like short-term goals or long-term goals? Stephen: I’m optimistic about, from what I've heard from the new administration that has entered is that they are reliable. They are going back to that data-driven evidence-based piece, or they're not saying things that may not be true or may not be validated with data. So I'm looking forward to hearing facts from scientists. Medical experts. And if they don't know the answer to something, I don't know the answer rather than making something up or forecasting something that's not true. Right. And not to get too much into my learning series, but I'm looking forward to not being told to inject our stills with Clorox or other, you know substances that may not, that would probably be harmful to us. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm also optimistic about the focus on disparities. Right? So I think one of the things that I saw coming out of this new administration is a task force. That's going to be developed for health disparities, health equity, especially, during the as we continue to navigate COVID right. So I'm optimistic that there's going to be a renewed focus on communities of color, of being a black man myself. I think that that's critically important. So there's a lot to be optimistic about and, just on a general level, I mean, I'm just looking forward to not being as exhausted. Right. So, and I think that goes for everybody, right? No matter what party you support, I think, everybody can attest to the last four years that it was just a level of exhaustion, whether you were defending the former administration or whether you were radically opposed to the former administration. Well, we can all agree to his bit. It will just be a lower temperature if you will, when it comes to what's happening in DC and how it's affecting our world. Peter: Yeah, it is, it is, it is wild to think that facts were political. Carol: We don't have to defend facts as a partisan issue. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. But I think, as you said, it's a long overdue this, this reckoning that we're having. And as. as groups come together and start really digging into the data that's there. And many people have already researched these things, but bringing it all together into light and to light to the general public through the press, I think it should hopefully move things along. Stephen: Yeah, that's that, that, that is, I'm definitely hopeful. again, with the information, I think that, the. No, not having so much misinformation floating around. I think that'll definitely go a long way. Carol: All right. Well, yeah. Thank you so much. Stephen: All right. Yeah, thank y'all for having me. And I was glad to chat with you all today. Peter: Thank you, Stevie. Hopefully we'll have you back at some other point, looking forward Stephen: to that. Thank you. Yeah, that'd be fun. Carol: So I was particularly struck by his CA our conversation about the mistrust of the medical profession and, and you named folks anti-vaxxers, which I often think of as, as white people who are afraid of vaccinations for their children, because of conspiracy theories around autism and, and lots of misinformation there. I think that history is something that I think a lot of white people are not aware of. And yeah, it's steep and it's going to take a long time to correct. Peter: Yeah. And hopefully we're on being that, as we mentioned, that facts are now political. Like, I hope that that starts to deteriorate at some point soon so that this will, less of them are no longer political facts and are no longer political and the appropriate people are vaccinated appropriately, appropriately. I think a part that stood out to me was the idea of, and it's something that's open-ended is how do we regain the trust of those communities that have been negatively impacted? I feel like that exists everywhere in every single organization, nonprofit or corporate. How, how do you make sure that people are open and are receptive. That, that seems to be like an ongoing conversation and ongoing dilemma because of how deeply rooted and systematic our racism is or sexism or homophobia is and how ingrained that is and in our culture. So I feel like we'll, we'll probably touch on that in every single episode. Carol: Yeah. And I don't think it's even real. Right. It's it's it starts to. Yeah. Trust. Peter: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well I think that's it for this week's episode. So if you'd like us to attempt to answer one of your diversity equity, inclusion, questions, or scenarios for us and our guests, please feel free to send those to culturefitpod@gmail.com. Carol: Look forward to seeing those emails. So culturefitpod.gmail.com. Peter: Yeah. One of those, try them. Try both of them. Somebody. All right, we'll see you next time. All right. Carol: Thank you so much. See, talk to you soon.  In episode 32 of Mission: Impact, some of the topics that Carol and her guest, Don Tebbe discussed include:
Guest Information: Don Tebbe is an organizational planning consultant and one of America’s most experienced advisors on nonprofit CEO transition and leadership succession. He experienced, first-hand, the challenges of sustaining an organization and navigating leadership succession as a former nonprofit executive director and five-time interim CEO. Since 1993, he’s helped hundreds of nonprofit leaders plan for and manage turnover in their chief executive positions. Don was one of the national thought leaders involved in an Annie E. Casey Foundation-sponsored project to develop better practices for nonprofit leadership succession. Many of the concepts and practices used by succession practitioners today originated with the Casey project. He is the author of Chief Executive Transitions: How to Hire & Support a Nonprofit CEO and The Nonprofit CEO Succession Roadmap: Your Guide for the Journey to Life’s Next Chapter. Important Guest Links:
Carol Hamilton: Welcome Don. Welcome to the podcast. Don Tebbe: Thanks Carol. I'm excited to be here. Have this chat with you and. Carol: Absolutely. And I always like to start out and I know you've had a very long career. So this made this, this, the answer to this question may have changed over time, but what really drew you to the work that you do? What motivates you and what would you describe as your, why? Don: I see you sent me that question in advance and I had really pondered that because I think it's been more of a feeling than an explicit calling. In fact, I did some research for one of my books on callings and I am trying to figure out why I was attracted to this, to this nonprofit sector work. But it just seemed like a great place to really do work that's meaningful. And that's one of the things I discovered in doing the research on callings is that everybody has this innate desire for a meaningful life. And I couldn't think of any, I tried business, I tried government. But I couldn't think of any place else where you could have a much more meaningful life than the nonprofit world. Carol: Yeah. I've definitely found that as well. I mean, it's meaningful in the work that you're doing, but I also find it attracts other good people. And so I enjoy it. I often really enjoy my colleagues and enjoy their thoughtfulness and their sense of calm. Don: Yeah, I think for me, the perfect place was to move in. In the consulting arena. I had been an executive director and deputy director for about 10 years before I moved into consulting in 1993. And I just really, I just fell in love with it. the opportunity to work with great people to work with them at a very meaningful moment when they're particularly, if they're. Maybe not necessarily struggling, but questioning, like when we're doing planning work. And it also gave me a lot of flexibility to really double down on, on the missions that I really care about without having the, the daily grind of, of being an executive, like developmental disabilities, like food security, like housing like, child services. Carol: Yeah. Getting to contribute to all of those different things rather than having to pick one, one major passion. Yeah. So you, as you said, you've had a long career in the sector ranging over a number of different areas and, including executive search and really pioneering, how many transition specialists approach executive search today? I think actually. You're one of the people who's been quoted multiple times on this podcast over the past year. So kudos for that. And one thing that I especially appreciated about how you address this issue is that you address it from both sides, from the point of view of the board and the organization, but then also the point of view of a long term executive director or the founder. In your book the nonprofit CEO succession roadmap. I'm your guide for the journey to life's next chapter? Why was it important for you to address the exiting executive director directly? Don: Well, it can't really came out of work that Tom Adamson I did when we were partners in a firm called transition guides. Tom and I met when he was leading a project for the Annie Casey foundation that was looking at the question of how we can have better transitions in the nonprofit world. Invited a small group of practitioners when myself included at the time I was the interim executive director of the interim ministry network. So Tom and I put together this program a two day retreat called next steps. Particularly targeting founders and long term executive directors. Cause it was, yourself, those are some of them. Can be some of the most problematic transitions out there. And, I think it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's a space where governance, executive leadership and strategy all come together in, in one moment. And so I think it's a great opportunity to really address all three of those, those prongs also the organizational capacity. So we started off with, we were focused on executive transitions in, came up with the executive transition management model, all that, and what we realized that we needed to be working with organizations. Earlier, before they hit that moment of transition. So that led us into the succession planning work. And then in early two thousands, I was looking at the, I do these deep dives every few years. And the deep dive I was doing then was around really organizational vitality. I did 140 CEO transitions in my career and managed 104 of them. And some organizations come to you in all sorts of conditions. There's the high performing organizations. There's the low performing organizations. There's the organism. They are firing their executive director. I really wanted to take a look at and see what characters, what are the characteristics of these high valleys? Tell the organization, those organizations where you walk in the front door and you can just feel it. You can feel the energy, the excitement, the commitment, the impact I am w what's what was going on in those organizations that I came away from. I did literature review and some case study research and came up with these three tiers, that base level there's organizational stability, the, the vital signs that are okay. It's not at risk, it's not in the intensive care ward. The next level up was what I would call Sustainability. And then, layering on top of that. What is vitality? And so you really have to, I think you have to address both the executive and, and work leadership on that board higher. So the executive, the board, is responsible for shepherding the mission and shepherding him. And obviously the executive is their key partner in driving that impact. So I think it's terribly important to address both. But we found though with these retreats we had about, I think we had about 600 alumni when I left transition guides. We would do it a couple times a year, small groups, about 25 to 30 executives. It may, when I did interviews with. So folks that are with our alumni, what I found was that just really, They, they, they were our point of entry into the organization and, and, the opportunity to then work, with a board. So I think also my belief is that the executive really should initiate the succession process. And rather than the board initiating it on their behalf. So I think, it's, it's, it's. It's just like in a situation with a nonprofit; their key partners need to be working with both of them. Carol: What would you say is important for exiting executive directors to realize about the transition? Don: Well, probably the thing that I heard the most and was most surprising is to a person for these interviews, they. They were shocked and surprised by how emotional the process was for them. That was something that really caught them off guard. So we really tried to make sure that they understood that in, in, in this retreat process. So I think that's, I think that's one thing that's a surprising thing, but I think in terms of the points that I would make with executives is you probably can't start too early. We were focusing on primarily trying to get to people for three to four to five years ahead of their Parker, I'm thinking of one particular instance this executive was a household name and, she was not just the, the leader of this nonprofit. She was a leader of a whole movement and she was, that's, that's a pretty hard person to replace. So we actually, I started talking with her 10 years before she left and I don't, I don't think that was the cause, That there needed to be some capacity building around the movement and not just inside her for her organization. So, and that's an extreme case, but usually I'd say three to four years, it's not too early. because particularly if it's founder or long-term executive, cause there may need to be some capacity building needs to take place in the organization. They baby, They grew into the role as the organization grew up around them. Right. And so there may be, they may be covering for somebody, they are, there may be a hole in their operation or there may be somebody that they'd been making do with in, in the organization. Also, there may be a board that's overly dependent on them and really needs to do some board building work to make sure that there's a, I would call. The board's gone through a reformation process and it's not a friend's a founder board any longer, it's a fully functioning, or that has a, it has a sense of itself independent of the founder. And so I think that you just can't start too early. And I think the third point that I would make is that a lot of times executives are confused about their role in, in the transition process and the succession process. It's to me, there's no ambiguity, you got three jobs. Job number one, lead the organization through the transition, of course, but understand that that role is going to evolve as your departure date draws closer. Number two is to prepare yourself for that next chapter of life. Like if you're going to retire, have something magnetic, that's drawing you forward rather than a job that you're leaving. And job number three is to prepare the organization for the succession and transition process. Carol: And you mentioned that often folks were caught off guard with how emotional the whole process was. What were some of the common things that folks experienced as they, as they move through? And what were some of the unhelpful behaviors that came out of that, that, that roller coaster, that emotional roller coaster. Don: Yeah. I think it'd be a lot of it distributed by the executives personality. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld was at Yale university and wrote a book a few years back about the hero's farewell and he outlined four different characters for different profiles. There were the ambassadors, people that could leave the organization gracefully, or even have a continuing role with the organization. And, everything's going to be just fine. Governance. Who went on to other, big, big jobs and left the organization behind, so forth. And Oh, I forgot the other two right off the top of my head here, but the Monarch and the steward, right? Oh, that's right there. Exactly. Yeah. Well, steward was my year's term monarch, that you're going to be carried out feet first or X showing the door kicking and screaming. But my belief is that there's a fifth category out there. Another category out there is called stewards. And that's what I see most. In, in the nonprofit world, people that can, leave gracefully and but not necessarily have a continuing role with the organization science and courage to pardon executives, to think of themselves as stewards. And they're going to hand off the organization to the next sewer. So did that answer it quickly? Carol: Yeah. Yeah. So what would you say you, you talked about the three tasks that are inherent in the job of leading an organization through the transition. What can executives do to help make the transition go more smoothly? Don: Oh, gosh encouraging the board chair to pick good leadership for the succession process. And as I said, starting the succession process earlier, and I also, I've been listening to your interview. Liz Wolf and I take a little bit different tack about the idea of, of interim executives being the standard approach for an organization. Now that was the, that is the experience in, in many religious denominations, right? Place what's called a settled pastor until there's been an interim there for at least a year, so that there is that breathing room, that separation, but the challenge, and I brought that into discussions with the KC project and what we found. By comparing notes with compass points in our own practice, for a lot of organizations that just don't work for you, you've got fundraising relationships that you need handoff, or you've got P government contract relationships that you need to hand off and, have you. Having an interim in there and doing that handoff twice, just, just, just doesn't seem to work. And so that's one reason why we took a step back and said, let's start earlier, work intensively and encourage the executives to get some coaching in the process so that they're, they're dealing with their own stuff. About how the transition is going, because the job does evolve and, or, people can feel a sense of loss when decisions are deferred to the new executive and so forth. Carol: Yeah. And one of them is that I'm not listening to the train. And so I totally lost my train of thought, wanted to follow up on, oh, I remember what it is now. One of the points that you made, which I thought was really key, was the scent, the recommendation to pick a date and stick with it, not to be going back and forth. Well, I thought that was a good idea, but really we've got one more project to do, one more project to do and kicking the can down the road. What, how, what impact have you seen that have on the rest of the organization? When, when. That executive isn't it from, and their plans and how they move forward? Don: Yeah. One person comes to mind very clearly. I was coaching him on his departure and we were having coffee. About a month after our initial meeting, he then let out to me that he was rethinking his departure date and his long time, well seasoned deputy just up and quit and said, look, I'm done with this, you're, you're never going to leave this organization. I'm going to go do something else. I think I gave some notice, but what do I mean? It really upset the applecart. And I think I'd also feel whipsawed. Cause for the staff a departure particularly of a founder or long-term executives, this may be the only boss they've ever known. Right. and particularly to their long term staff members and it's unnerving for the staff. And so you don't want your best people to be, cause people. It's an unknown and nerving time men, particularly if you couple that with, The executive or the board being guarded about information. It can be a real stew for the staff and right, for people, you're some of your best people to look elsewhere because they're questioning them. The future with the organization again, and there's always questions anyway. we'll, we like the new executive, can we trust the board to pick the right person for the job? Are they going to bring in some, somebody that's going to bring in their own team and they want a gun we're going to clean house when we don't necessarily need to clean houses as a high-performing organization, all those things. Carol: What are other mistakes that you've seen executive directors make as they're exiting? Don: There's a touchy topic there. One of the points I try to make is you need to take responsibility. You need to take responsibility for your departure and your exit plan. And then I will try to clarify that that doesn't mean you surf the board's authority and try to force in your hand pick success or are on the one hand nor does it mean dumping everything in the board's lap. And saying, Hey, it's their, it's their problem. It's their job. I'm running the organization. It's finding that, that, that place where you can really be a good steward of this entire process without, without rush riding rough shots over the board and not dumping it all in their laps, which volunteer boards are. Oftentimes really pretty clueless about what's really needed in that, in that way. Carol: Yeah, so helping them through. And that's where I think, bringing in external help because, if the person's a founder, it's unlikely that they've managed a transition or their own exit before in, in that case. And so may not know all the things that that could be helpful to, to pay attention to as they're going through that process. Don: Yeah. I think the other thing is that I am paying a lot of tension, a lot of attention to the preparation for the hand. And that can be a great comfort to you, to your leadership team, to your staff. If they're helping to prepare the way for the new executive. In fact, that really is one of your roles as a departing executive is to prepare the way for your successor. And so getting staff engaged in that, whether it's paying the CEO's office. So rewinding here a little bit is, I think it's really important that executives pay attention to the, the preparation to receive and work effect for causation work effectively with the new executive and paying attention to the handoff. So preparation for the new executive. I think there's a, I think. Engaging the board in some con getting the board to engage in conversations about what governance relationship do they want with us new executive, you spent a long time, writing this profile, imagining what this new person going to be like, getting clear about, the priorities for the first 12 to 18 months of their tenure. Well, what relationship? Should you have, within an executive, particularly if you've got a founder or long-term executive leading staff preparation, getting the staff involved in preparing briefing materials for the new executive that it becomes part of that, the handoff, getting some bios together about what the team looks like that sort of. And then expecting that there might be a little bit of overlap between you in, in your successor and that's, that can be fair. Yeah. in small organizations, it may be a couple hours, a couple of days in a large organization. Like one of our clients was an international health charity that had, has. Offices are all around the world. So the current CEO stayed on and the new CEO came in and worked out a month, I think, going on listening tours, visiting all the facilities around the world as the CEO of. And so paying attention to how that, that handoff and making sure that the, the critical relationships get handed off that there's briefing materials for the new executive, that there's an opportunity to really get it's no the organization that they're taking over and and then, then, riding off handoff and ride off. Carol: I love it. So at the end of each episode, I like to play a game where I ask one random icebreaker question. And so what's something that you believed earlier in your career that you think about differently now? Don: Oh my gosh. Well, I think a hard lesson I learned as a, as an executive director was not to expect the board to spontaneously fundraise. Yeah. Do you mind if I go back to a point about that? Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Okay. Well, so one of the things back in the mid nineties I had a great opportunity working with organizations in Silicon valley based here, but worked out there almost a quarter of the time and. So I wrote a book for this and worked for the center for excellence and nonprofits in San Jose. It was started by Dean Martin. When he retired as a CEO of COO of Hewlett Packard, he was the board chair and he was on the Packard foundation board and a really great guy, a great relationship, and worked with him and bopped on Bob carton on the evolution of this organization. Seven years. So one of the things I did with them was do this report, looking at governance practices in highly effective nonprofits. It's really had a very formative relationship for me, our impact on me because I was fresh off a fairly new consultant at that time, fresh off the heels of, of Relationship with a board. And one of the things that really saw was that it really opened my eyes to that whole board executive relationship. And by the way, I loved Mary Highland's interview with you on that, on that point, Mary and I are old friends and what I came away with and it's really had a forum. Fo helped really from my approach to executive transitions and the importance of following through and having that onboarding process and having an intentional relationship building process with the board. What I saw in these organizations is what I came to call the board executive social contract, you in every work situation, we've got our literal contract. Maybe it's as simple as a job description, or maybe it is a formal written contract, but then we have, how do we live? And that's the social contract. And when I saw his organization's spine large, they were clear about four things. Number one, they were clear about the priorities that they were pursuing together as a board and an executive team. That might be what's in their strategic plan. It might be some developmental work with the organization. It might be exploring new ventures or something like that, but they were clear about their priorities that they were going to work on together. They were clear about their roles and responsibilities. And I know you've got an organizational development background, so this is going to make lots of sense. I'm sure. you're you got that separation of executive roles or board roles and responsibilities. How do you tie that together? Well, you tie that together with some sort of accountability mechanism, that thing, that relationship looks different in every organization, but. Every one of those seem to have those four characteristics to it. So that really made an impact on me. And so I brought that into the executive transition work to make sure that there's an intentional way of the board, an executive building that relationship and that there's a process, a guided process that they could actually go through. Carol: Yeah. I had the chance to work with one organization that was going through that executive transition and worked with the group before, it wasn't part of the search process, but then came back afterwards to help the board and the new executive director have that exact conversation about what's important to us in terms of how we work together. How are we gonna, what are the ways that we're going to show up? What are the behaviors that we're going to demonstrate that are going to support? Working together in a collaborative, positive way. So, I had a chance to work with them on their strategic planning. And so then I was able to remind you, and these are the things you said you were going to do when you worked together. And none of them were, that they're all good things. People would come up with in terms of being respectful and communicating and collaborating, but I think being explicit about it and then coming back to it and reminding yourself and then thinking, so how are we doing on that? Are there other places where we could adjust and, and, and tweak it to make it better, can be really helpful. Don: Yeah. And, and having been clear that that, that, that. The connecting mechanism, that evaluation mechanism, has an evolution to it, and should be multi-stage at least in the first year, because, what's the big question on the board? I often hire the right person. Right. And so you want it to, you want to have an intentional non-intrusive way of a non-intrusive way of, of. Yeah, getting that information, getting, getting that. Sure. And so, it might be the first 30 days, having a ha how's it going at conversation? Maybe the first quarter, that's a little bit more of a ha ha how are you, how are you feeling about, your. you're taking charge because there is a taking charge process that John Kabarro at Harvard documented a number of years ago. And so it's, rather than an executive, parachuting in and stepping into the role, it's oftentimes a ramping up process. And so understanding that and just being realistic about that evaluation process. So quarterly. First quarter. Half of the year and then, maybe the annual review after that, but thinking of it as an assurance mechanism and in being realistic about it, because the executives aren't there. They're coming into an organization, they may be confronting problems. There's oftentimes as, legacy issues that don't come up and don't get the cat's not out of the bag until the new executive is there. And so making sure that they're feeling well supported on that. And everybody's being realistic about this. Carol: Yeah. And you've got all those lines of communication open, which is really key. And yeah, so we did that once, but it doesn't mean that it's done, right. It's not something you just checked off the list. It's something you'd come back to and what needs to be adjusted and how are, where, where are we now? And what else, what, what do we need to think of? So what, what, what are you excited about? What's coming up next for you. What's emerging and the work that you're doing now. Don: Oh, wow. Just a bunch of things. I'm retooling a course that Susan Shaffer and I developed called going solar going big. It's of course for consultants. And so I'm doing some editing of that after it's been out there for a couple of years online. We do it in person. Yeah. Yeah, some are retooling that this sounds very nerdy, but I'm really excited about a series of books, discussions that I've been facilitating with a group of consultants, mostly alumni from our workshop. Last year we worked on productivity and the sugar we're going to work on communications and insights. And so doing that and just and really, really enjoying, my practice now is primarily focused on succession planning and organizational planning, and I'm developing a process that I call impact crafting, and I am working. I've worked with about five organizations now with that pilot, it can bring in a lot of the ideas from my executor transition work, I've looked at air free organizations, strategic plan and ask them how they, developed it and really discovered that a lot of organizations, th they, They think the board should do it. They think the staff shouldn't do it. sort of trying to bring that into sharp focus and also discovered in the transition work, a lot of organizations have broken business models and the board doesn't understand how the work really gets done, in the organization. So one of the pieces that I bring to an organization is really to clarify their impact statement beyond their vision, bring it down to a little bit more operational level, and then work with them to actually make. Yeah. Using a variation of the business model canvas to actually map how the work gets done, how they turn vision over here into impact over here. And so that's been really satisfying work and I think it brings a much more grounded feel to the. The planning process. Carol: Well, we'll probably have to have you back on, to dig into that a little bit more because you love to use all the words that I like to use. So I want to get one, I like to open the door and see what's behind it, but thank you so much for coming on. It's been great talking to you. Don: Thanks Carol. Great talking with you. Good luck on the podcast, loving the episodes thus far. Carol: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.  In episode 31 of Mission: Impact, some of the topics that Carol and her guest, Sharon Anderson discussed include:
Important Guest Links:
Carol Hamilton: Welcome Sharon. Welcome to the podcast. Sharon Anderson: Thank you. Pleasure to be. Carol: So I'd like to start out with a question of what you, what drew you to the work you do, what motivates you and, and what would you describe as your why? Sharon: Okay, I would actually say the roots of it really go back to my growing up actually, because I saw with my parents, my family a lot of engagement with community service. And that just resonated with me through whatever form of non-governmental organization, the non-profits space, the ways that people found to address needs. And I just grew up with the sense of how important that was. And then. Having some opportunities to serve on some nonprofit boards and to see it in, in that regard. But I think as far as really the motivator around my consulting with nonprofits came from a project that I worked on for capacity building. And this was one of my friends. Projects. When I started as a consultant, I just saw that need and that space of different nonprofits with really good intentions, but needing support, needing the information to help them take it up to the next level. Yeah. And one of the areas you focus on is helping organizations with their advocacy and policy development starting with a definition, what, what would you describe? How would you describe advocacy? My conversation opener with advocacy is telling your story. And finding a way to make certain that you are clear about what it is that as an organization, what is the organization about, what do you do? Who are you trying to help? What kinds of things are you doing to make those and make improvements. So That for me is the, the why I, and going back to something I mentioned sort of earlier, just looking at, at nonprofit, I saw some times that there were a lot of nonprofit boards in particular that when you said advocacy to them, it was like, oh my gosh, no, I can't, I can't do that. And so that's what I mean. To address the importance of it not only to their sustainability, but also the fact that, yes, there are rules and you can meet those rules and still do what you need to do in this space of advocacy. Carol: Let’s start with why it's important. And then I'm curious for you to say a little bit more about why you think it's so scary to folks, and then what the reality is. Sharon: Okay. The reason that I think it's important is the fact that when you really sort of look at it, And sort of put the nonprofit under the microscope. Almost everything that they do is in that sphere of advocacy, there's raising money. You need to be able to advocate for yourself in order to indicate this is why we are a good investment, because this is what we do. And here are the people that we are right. You are looking at issues around sustainability. You need to be able to advocate for your organization in order to get board members, potential board members in the pipeline to get community supporters in the pipeline. And I think more and more now there's a reality to that in that public policy space. There is a place for nonprofits to be able to come to the table and say, this is an important area. So for instance, as a quick example I worked in a couple of areas with a nonprofit dealing with the foster care system and being able at one point to go before the city council to talk about foster care in the city, what was working, what was needed. And I think sometimes that gets missed in that legislative space. Which is nonpartisan. What you're addressing are the guts of legislation and why certain legislation is important and what's needed in order for the system to function. Carol: Yeah. And I think it's important for organizations to remember that in that whole public policy and that policy development process, there's often that, that initial steps where legislators are hearing from a lot of people doing hearings, getting testimony, and they may not have even, I don't I'm, I'm not an expert in this, so correct me if I'm wrong, but they may not have even put a bill forward yet. That may be in the formation phase or maybe they have, and, and it's to inform, what else, what might be missing, what needs to be amended. Correct? Sharon: Yes. and, and at various stages, yes. In some instances they are looking at legislation sometimes within, especially I would say the local and state government sphere, a lot of times when they are doing budget oversight, because a lot of these profits are working with governmental agencies, the question becomes, how are things working? What's working well with that, and what's not working, in order to make any necessary adjustments or changes to the system. And that's a good space for them to be because of the fact that, government. A lot of times it basically needs those kinds of partnerships with nonprofits to help. When I mentioned the foster care system, for instance working with court appointed special advocates, well, it's a nonprofit that brings in the volunteers and trains them, and then they work. The family court system. And so there is a need to have those conversation lanes open in order to make the necessary improvements in order to share here's, here are the trends so that adjustments can be made or, What, what needs to happen to stop what's going on here? How do we protect the children? Carol: Yeah. And I think that there are a couple of different things in there, but one thing that comes to mind is with all the growing distrust of the government in our country, one of the things I think people don't realize is how it actually is. Non Profit organizations that are actually getting, being granted money, being contracted with, to deliver a lot of these services. So it's not necessarily the government doing it themselves, but empowering it, giving others the resources to then, fulfill those goals and, and, and provide those services. What, what would you say Are some of the misconceptions, especially among boards that folks have around, what nonprofits are and aren't allowed to do in terms of advocacy. Sharon: I think a lot of times there's a concern because of the discussion around, especially with a 501C3 designation of not lobbying. And so it's that confusion between what is lobbying and what is advocacy and. And sometimes it's like, I don't, I don't even want to touch it and it is daunting. And, and a lot of times too, especially within the state government, sometimes their additional rules are our requirements, but I think it's been. Clear about what it is that this particular agency needs to do. And I think there are also some very clear points where you can say, okay, first and foremost, you don't endorse. You just have to clearly be key. You don't endorse candidates. That is a definite no-no. So stay out of that realm. However, if as a nonprofit. And maybe in partnership with other nonprofits, you want to put together a candidates forum so that your stakeholders in the community can hear what people feel about income support programs, or about. Foster care. I keep sort of circling back to that one or about these literacy programs. Then basically there's a way to do that. You invite all of the candidates and you make certain that they all come and they all answer the same question. And that's a service. That's a part of advocacy, but it's a service to educate your stakeholders. Carol: And what is the definition of lobby? Sharon: Lobbying is basically getting into the partisan space. So it's also, it's about the people running for office and saying we do or don't vote for them, do or don't vote for somebody. So that is some part of it. And then the other part of lobbying can also be around. And it's tricky. Area, and I will, it really depends on local guidance a lot of times, but it's around legislation and the extent to which you try to make certain that people are informed about legislation and where the particular nonprofit stands on it. Without necessarily saying now, go out there and change this legislation or, it's, it is a tricky navigation and a lot of times it does depend on the state too. So I'm thinking, for example being able to say that this as an organization, we support. Back in when the affordable care act was being challenged, to be able to say the affordable care act is important because of these reasons for our, our community.And it's an essence saying, think about this Congressperson, council member versus putting forth that debate without getting deep into the politics of, and if you don't do this, then we're not going to vote for you. Carol: Yeah, the way I've heard it described as, and it's interesting that you say that there's, there's variation at each state and locality. So putting a caveat on that, folks should really pay attention to what the rules are in their local area. But the way I heard it described was, advocacy education, when you're providing information. Stories about your constituents and the people that you work with. Statistics, trends that you're seeing, that's all in the realm of education. And then lobbying is only really, when you say, our members where we're getting part we're part of a coalition and our members are supporting this particular bill, we urge you to vote for it. And, and yeah, without any . Connection to whether or not. The people that you represent, the people that you work with might or might not vote for a particular candidate that being walled off, but the space that, that is okay within limits for non-profits 502 and 501-C 3 is to engage in is that piece of, we urge you to vote for HR. Number one, whatever it is within limits and their limits. But, since it's a pretty narrow definition, very few nonprofits. You know that very few who do some advocacy and are actually gonna run up against that limit. And I think that's the part that boards don't understand. Sharon: Yeah. And, and it's, it's interesting one of the parts maybe. Right, right. And, and, and of course to the whole, when you look at the range of 5 0 1. Organizations, we always focus on the 5 0 1 C3 because of the fact that they generally tend to be charitable. And then, realizing that there are other nonprofits. Who are in that space of doing endorsements and the likes. So this is why I think it also gets to be tricky for boards because they need to understand the range of things the different options that are available to a non-profit and then just be sure to stay within their space. But I, I definitely agree and appreciate the, when you mentioned the education piece that educating people and that's your stakeholders. Elected officials about what's going on in this space that this nonprofit serves, then you're definitely in an, in your lane, that's the sweet spot for nonprofits advocacy. Carol: Yeah. And I think that another point that you make is that, W w we quote the part of the IRS code, the 5 0 1 C3 that, that designates one particular type, which is, a large portion of the, of the nonprofit sector, but there are others C4, C5, C6, all who, all of which have different purposes and, and then different rules. But yeah, what we were just talking about really pertains to the C3 category, which is. Most organizations that are trying to do either serving a field or trying to do some educational, some, charitable service work, making things better for people, animals meant the whole range, all of it, the whole of things that could be within a mission. What would you say helps organizations be successful with their advocacy efforts? Sharon: I think being really clear about What is their advocacy policy and their plan. I think having some very doing that work and what the standards for excellence, for instance, program there. Resources there as far as being able to talk about here's a draft plan, but you need to be clear. So from an organizational perspective, who speaks for the organization. So making certain that they've clearly delineated that if a question comes in, let's say the media calls and says, where do you stand on this? Well, everybody in the organization needs to know who's equipped. Answer that question because not everybody in the organization can answer that. So, you want to be clear about that and also be clear about what the objectives are. So, let me pick another organization, like the league of women voters, there's the league of us and then the league in various localities. And so in the interest of full disclosure, I'm a member of the league and the district of Columbia. And, there's a strong non-partisan state. But there, but the, the educational pieces about making certain that people know about the candidates and that there's an effort made to get feedback from all of the candidates. So in an election year, the policy is going to be, we're doing everything we can to make certain that people understand what the rules and regulations are for voting in our community. During an off year, it may be some other thing, but that's the policy. And then you just have to be able to have what the plan looks like as to how you go about doing that? How do you accomplish that and how do you, what are the outcomes you're targeting? Carol: Yeah. When one point that you made around who can, who can talk to the media, having a plan for that pause for a second while the train goes by. One of those enthusiastic conductors who really likes to blow their horn. Sharon: Maybe it has some spectators on the side of the tracks. Carol: Maybe they're waving and yeah, a couple of points there with who can talk to the media or who can talk, who can represent and speak on behalf of the organization. And especially if, if a stance is being taken, who could write a letter to the editor, all those things I think are really exciting. For groups to have conversations about and know, make sure that everyone's clear. I think one of the things that on any board decision is important is for ma board members to understand that they can only work on behalf of the organization as a whole. And so if they're the board member who's empowered, they then need to. I mean to talk to everybody else. So they have a sense of, they know what the organization stance is. They themselves may have a different opinion and to be really careful and clear, are you talking as XYZ, individual citizen? Or are you speaking now on behalf of the organization? Sharon: Right? Right. And depending on the nature of that organization, there, there may be some very specific pieces of. You know what that looks like and how that's interpreted. So, the, the league of women voters, I'll go back to that, with their non-partisan position, if you're serving on the board, there is a nonpartisan statement, which indicates that, you have this hat on representing the organization writ large and in the interest of not muddying the waters. It's encouraged that you stay in that lane and not get involved in campaigns, for instance. Of course, as an individual, that's your right, but because you are with the board and people, if they know, especially that you're a board member, it gets a little dicey. And in order to just make it clear that policy is you wouldn't be campaigning. Carol: So you could, after you're done with your board service, that might be something you choose to do, but while you're a board member, they've made that policy just so that they have a super bright line. And again, that's an individual organizational policy. Others might have different ones, but having those policies and having had discussions and then documenting it about. Yeah, how do we take a stance as an organization? What are they, what has to happen? what discussions and processes have to happen so that we know that we're in agreement on this, et cetera, I think would be super important. Yes. Yes. And you had mentioned the standards of excellence before. I just want to make sure folks know what that is. It's Program that came out of and is still housed within the Maryland nonprofit association, the Maryland association of nonprofit organizations. And it's a way for nonprofits to be accredited in this set of very high standards. The standards of. In all aspects of their operations. So, advocacy is just one component. And all the other things that you need to think about in terms of how you run your nonprofit are part of that accrediting program. Sharon: Yes. And one of the things that I truly appreciate about the standards for excellence program is that. There is that accreditation process. If an organization chooses, they are very generous with their information. So I often use in the work that I do when I do workshops on advocacy their policy and plan. I, I provide copies of that to say, here's the sample that you might work from, just because they are open with a lot of their information. Carol: Yeah. And they have samples for all, all other aspects. So I've, I've built used pieces from, and we're both standards of excellence consultants. So we have access to all of this, but I've used their board assessments as a jumping off point when working with the boards and organizational assessments, right. Pretty much everything. And, and even if our organization doesn't decide to go through the entire process, there are aspects that could be really useful. And a lot of the state level associations also offer it. So you don't necessarily have to be in Maryland. This is nationwide. Sharon: Yes. It is a nationwide program and they have, what's a code which basically provides, guidelines, high level. And the code is easy. There's an app for that. Carol: I didn't realize I'm going to have to look it up. All right. Well, at the end of each episode, I'd like to play a game where I ask one random icebreaker question. So I have one here for you. I'm out of my handy box of icebreaker questions and it is what is the last random thing that made you smile? Sharon: Lately, given everything that's been going on with health challenges in the country and the world. The last random thing that made me smile was noticing that birds were starting to be attracted to the flowers on my patio. And, and starting to , I've seen them in the general vicinity flying over, but actually coming down and landing all the table versus just sitting on the fence and it just. Actually that just happened to me before this call. In fact, I just was like, oh wow. And I just was so tickled by that. So it gave me joy. Carol: Awesome. Awesome. I'm not much of a birder, but we are big. We have a lot of flowers around in our front and there was a Cardinal that came by and landed in a tree. So that dramatic red was quite, quite lovely. Yeah. Lovely birds. So, what are you excited about? What's up next for you? What's emerging in the work that you do Sharon: Currently we’re making some pivots as far as being, if you will, in the nonprofit space, but I'm starting to work with the national museum of African-American history and culture. And I've worked with them previously, but I'm now working as far as with visitor services and it's just First and foremost, I am just taken by the museum and all that it's done and, and just the immense scope and importance of it. And to have an opportunity to contribute means a lot to me. So for me right now, personally, that's where I am. Carol: Yeah, it's an amazing, amazing museum. I am definitely going to go back to it because you can, it's not possible to do, to really take all of it in, in one visit. So I definitely need to go back. Sharon: And, and I just I, I guess I should tread gently here, but I think it's legitimate as an employee. I could still say but wonderful resources on their website too, because and, and a huge. I am biased in the museum space, but the Smithsonian has been doing a wonderful job with all of its museums and digitizing a lot of their information and definitely during the pandemic, making that those resources available as a way to reach everyone and definitely check them out because they're just amazing museums within the system. Carol: Yeah, I think we forget living here in Washington, how spoiled we are to have those amazing resources. So-called so close by. Yes. All right. Well, thank you so much. It was great having you on the podcast. Sharon: Well, thank you. I greatly appreciate being invited and I've enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.  In episode 30 of Mission: Impact, some of the topics that Carol and her guest, Hilary Marsh discussed include:
Important Guest Links:
Carol Hamilton: Welcome Hillary. It's great to have you on Mission: Impact. Hilary Marsh: Thank you. It's so good to be here. Carol: So I love to start with just finding out what drew you to the work that you do. What motivates you and what would you describe as your why? Hilary: Well, that's a great question. The story of how I got into content strategy, I will leave for another time. But the thing that led me to work with associations on an ongoing basis is that I had worked for a very large association starting in 2005 and I learned. Really that associations are content machines that really the products, programs, services, everything they do manifests itself in the world as content. And so they're, if content is how they show their value and how they do their work, then the better they can do that. The more successful they will be at their goals of attracting and retaining. So that's I guess, my why? Carol: So, as you mentioned, you focus on content strategy for associations. Can we, can we start with a definition? What exactly is content strategy? Hilary: Okay. Gosh the first definition I learned back in the day, which was all the way back in 1999 was the content strategy is the who, what, when, where, why and how of publishing content online. So yeah, that's expanded a little bit to be the act of. Planning creating publishing, maintaining and governing content, and specifically for associations, that is content that comes from every department. And so that it wants to make sure that they're part of that, that it's content that's usable, meaning people can use it, that it's useful, meaning that it's relevant to them. And then it's effective, meaning that it's got a clear, explicit and measurable audience, right. Carol: And how does this relate to content curation? Are they, is that, are they synonyms of each other? Hilary: Sorta different? And so curation, is that the idea, the notion that well, there's sort of two aspects to it. The first is the content that an association's audiences are looking for. Might be created by the association, or it might be created by another organization. And regardless of who creates it, it's selecting and surfacing the right content. That's going to help the person reach their goal. So I wrote a white paper last year with Elizabeth Engel, which might be why you're asking about curation and certainly Came up then, and back in the day associations were gatekeepers for information. Well, now Google's a gatekeeper, but not right because Google will surface everything. There is. So no one has time to read everything there is, and everything in there isn't necessarily relevant to the person. But what an association can do is select or curious. The content that is relevant. Oh, the other side of that is that because associations do create so much content it's choosing the right things that the association itself creates. So it's not only external things that might be internally created by the association. Carol: Not just a long list of things that could possibly be of interest, but also giving some context and connecting it to just, as you said before, making it useful and relevant there might be something from another industry, but then it's relevant and, and connecting it with, with a particular audience of that associates. Hilary: Yeah. So the idea of curation comes from the world of museums. So a museum has a huge storehouse, typically in the back of 2000 artifacts from China. But if they're creating an exhibition about ancient Chinese art, they're not going to show you 2000 artifacts because that's overwhelming. They're going to pick the 10 or 20 or 50 that will best tell the story. And they're going to create labor. That explained why they chose these things, why these things are important, what you can learn from them. And so Elizabeth and I created a content curation maturity ladder. And the top of that maturity ladder is not only choosing the right things, but telling the person why this is relevant to them and how it's going to help them. And that's the unique piece that the association can, can offer really, but it requires skills. It requires people and time, all. Carol: And I feel like over the course of probably your and my career, we've, we've seen that shift from what you mentioned before of the association as being the sole source of credible information for the field to be in one of mine. And the way that the internet has just opened everything up and enabled individuals, they might be volunteers with that association. They might be the recognized subject matter experts, but then they may have their own platform as well. And I remember. I haven't had conversations with a boss of mine, you know? And he was still in that mindset of, we are the credible source I'm like, but the internet happened. So you need to adjust Hilary: Well, yeah, part of the things that I often do as part of an association’s content strategy project is to do a comparative audit. So let's look at that. nature and quality of the content that other associations might be creating that serve your audience or other publications or other for-profit audiences. And what I often find is that the association provides content that's better, could be better written and also unbiased. So a for-profit publication. In specific, it is going to have a bias. They're going to have sponsored content. They're going to have content from, from other industry sources who have a vested interest in putting out a specific point of view. And that might not be what the association's members do. Yeah. So the association has a huge opportunity anyway, but they need to do it, they need to create their content or make their content decisions based at least in part on what else their members are seeing and getting. Carol: So it's almost a matter of Helping members see the distinction or the differential between all the different sources of information and the information and the content that the association has provided. Why would, why, why would you say the content strategy is particularly important to organizations? Hilary: Well, I mean I don't tend to work with product organizations. I tend to work with content rich organizations. And so if, if all of an association's advocacy work it's courses, it's conferences, it's publications, any initial research, clinical practice guidelines, industry standards, all of that work that the association does is content. And so. Because associations are so busy and prolific, whether it's the staff creating the content, as you mentioned, or volunteers, because they've got so much of it, they tend to just share everything, but nobody can consume everything. And so and not only that and associations deepest subject matter experts don't necessarily have. Practice or training and how to translate or communicate their really good work to an audience who doesn't have the expertise that they have. And so I'm usually good content strategy requires a partnership between people with expertise in a subject matter and people with expertise in, in Producing and sharing, presenting, and sharing content with an audience. That is the work that the association needs to do. It's already, typically at least in the people I see really good on the smart side of creating good, valuable, deep material. But if they don't present it to the audience in a way that shows its relevance, that shows its benefit, people might pass it by where if they only knew how amazing it was, they would use it. They would see it, they would talk about it and they would really see that additional or the maximum value from their association. Carol: And it's interesting what you were saying in terms of subject matter experts and them being able to, they have deep expertise and knowledge and want to share that. And yet depending on what audience they're, they're talking to, whether, someone. Newer to a field, a more of an emerging professional. I know I was working with subject matter experts and we were putting together workshops and training programs and whenever we were working on the beginner one it was. A struggle for the experts to really be able to hone in on what were those basic things that a beginner needed to know. And they were, and I kept coming back to, we got to do the 80% that happens in your cases. You're fascinated by the 20% or even the 5% of the really interesting, complicated exceptions. But what's the 80% of the cases that beginners are going to be dealing with? And the challenge is of course, from someone with expertise is that they've honestly literally forgotten or it's so embedded in all of those preliminary steps that. They don't even think to mention them. So yeah, it takes another person to help them translate. And, and again, depending on the audience, cause it could be that they're, their audiences of is a very experienced and seasoned group that already knows all this stuff. So going over the basics actually wouldn't be helpful. So you really tailor it Hilary: So there's jargon involved and so jargon is fine when it's expert to act. Every field has jargon, certainly content strategy itself as a field has plenty of jargon. And, yet to do that translation of the jargon for the people who may not know it, because even someone who is experienced in a profession may be coming to a topic that is new to them. So that's a matter of structuring your content too, so that you're creating. It is sort of in layers so that the person who doesn't even know what they don't know or isn't sure whether this topic is actually what they're looking for can just skim the surface. And those who want to dive more deeper can, can do that. I want to come back to something that I glossed over briefly, which is this idea of success. And often associations think, especially subject matter experts. That success means I published it to a task force, a working group, a committee that thinks content success is that I got it out there. And so I try to help my clients shift the conversation to one of like four with the committee or task force or whoever is creating that content. What do you imagine the impact of this content is going to be, or who's the audience and what we're still do you want to happen and then craft the content explicitly with that result in mind and promote it and publish it with that result in mind because otherwise your content, your website is your file cabinet. Otherwise your website contains everything that you've ever published with. No. Way to make a decision about how long should this stay live or, or why should it come down or what should it be grouped with? So their success metrics, there's, taxonomy that needs to glue content together from different departments and the conversations also then have to provide that goal. From one piece of content to the next, because it is all connected, but the people who work tend to lose sight of that because they have the deep expertise and they have their marching orders and they go forward and create that and they forget to bring it back to that bigger content. Carol: Yeah, I think that's a great question to ask, first who, who you're doing this for. Who's the audience? And then what, what action do you want them to take? What impact, what results do you want to have happen based on this work? Yeah, it's very easy to get into, we've been giving a charge committee and the last thing is publish. And so check we're done. So, yeah, I appreciate that. You mentioned a term, a taxonomy. Can you say a little bit more about what you mean by that and how that plays in? Hilary: Sure. Taxonomy is a very daunting sounding term, but it's actually pretty clear and straightforward. It's basically tagging whether it's tagging content for an audience or tagging content by a topic because Computer systems are not smart. So a computer system can't know that a term that has a slightly different spelling or a slightly different variation is actually the same as another term or another audience grouping. That's sorta different. So you have to make one single list of all the terms for your topics, for your audience groupings, for your locations, anything else that, that somebody might need to group or sort that content by so that they can create they can create related links, they can filter, filter and sort on search all those other kinds of things that will connect the content. If you're interested in this, you might also like that. And so in the, yeah. Awesome. Carol: So, what would you say gets in the way of an organization having an effective content strategy? Oh Hilary: gosh. The first thing is that people don't know each other, they don't talk to each other and they don't they don't work in those bigger contexts. So they, they. think beyond the goal of getting something successfully published. They don't, they don't know their audience as well. So they think they know their audiences. And I think associations have a particular challenge in this term of audience because of the committee structure. So when you have a volunteer who has worked really hard, or a group of volunteers, really, who worked really hard to give back to the profession to serve on standing committees for years, often, many years, and work closely with the association staff to determine initiatives, programs, all of that. They forget what it's like to be a regular. What do they call them? Checkbook members who just join, pays peripheral attention to the association and then goes on with their lives. And those people are not your focus group. They're not your typical average member and they can't be your audience anymore. So how do we engage them? Rest of the staff, all the people who create content, the volunteers for that matter too, in remembering who it is we're creating content for. And what is their life like? What is the context that those people live in, that our content fits into where people think that the audience is just sitting around waiting for their content or for their program or for their. Offering and we see it in how it's manifested. Right. We see the email newsletters that say, guess what? We have a new video. Okay. That's nice. How is it going to help me? How's it going to help me make more money? How's it going to help me advance in my profession or do what it is that I need to do? Everyone is self centered and that's not a bad thing. It's just the reality that we work from our own lens and our own perspective. Carol: Yeah. So even taking the step from here's our new video to just telling people what the topic of the video is, is a step forward, gives them gifts. It gives people a chance to say, am I interested in that or not? Hilary: Well, and, and, sometimes people go a little far, the more marketing focused people in the world will have the 10 steps to make more money from this video approach. And I don't really recommend that, but, but why did you decide to create this video? Oh, we decided to create this video to retrace our steps. We decided to create this video because somebody has got something to say really? Why does, why would someone care about that thing to say, well, because what they're, what they've gone through, somebody else can learn from, oh, now tell me more, and getting to the root of why that content was created in the first place and that passion for whatever it is, not only the content, but the initiative that it's part of that, really is that passion. Carol: And you mentioned in, in what you were talking about the sense of people working in isolation, or maybe they're on a small team, a committee, a task force, or a department within an organization, but not, not necessarily being aware of the wider context that all of this information is being offered to, that member that, that may or may not open that, that email newsletter. Hilary: Right. So that's really sort of an old, older fashioned way of thinking, back before the internet existed, that was all that people could do. Every department, I used to draw the lanes with my hands and every department had its own sense of the audience and created and delivered content to that audience independently. Cause that's all we could really do. And maybe it came together in a print newsletter, but, but maybe it was, they were a collection of separate brochures or a collection of separate things. And when the internet came along, Those differences really became that much more apparent. And not only that with the ongoing digital world that we live in, people expect a seamless transition from your website to the phone, to an email, to video social media. They expect all of that to just mesh and, and in order to deliver that unified omni-channel experience. You have to be unified internally too. And not only that people have to have the skills to, to take their raw subject matter expert and take at least part of the translation to that user benefit forward. So they need time for that and skills. So it's not only that people aren't willing. To communicate, which is certainly part of organizational culture. It's that there, they don't have time and they're not rewarded or motivated for behaving in that way, because of that sort of older fashioned ways that many associations are even structured, they're structured by, by a content type in a way. And then they're budgeted by content type too. So a lot of it is about how people are. Carol: So a website, a web team, a publishing team, a training team, a conference team. They're all working separately and yeah, I've definitely been in those conversations trying to cut across those, those departmental lines to come up with a comprehensive or a unified just starting with that word. Taxonomy. I, I worked in an organization where I. I don't know how long, maybe two years before with sporadic meetings to try to finally come to an agreement around how we were gonna, what the list of words were and the terms, and, and some have some commonality across how people were using it in, in all of those different varieties of service offerings or products. Products, programs, et cetera. Hilary: And everyone is doing their best to do an amazing job. And they don't, it's just a new approach. And the organization has to be clear that we want this new approach for the benefit of them. Carol: And, folks, folks often talk about tearing down silos, but the truth is you're always going to have some sub organization, some ways that you organize staff. If you're beyond five, 10 people And there are lots of different ways to do that. And it could be by, the old, old way would have been, the training department and the conference department and the publishing department and the advocacy department. But even if you were to say organize it by parts of your member audience, you still end up with divisions. And so you just still then have to create some. Cross cutting work groups that actually have the people see value in that can produce something that has some authority to, to, bring that comprehensive and unified thing together. Hilary: So part of that's a question of tools. I mean, a shared content calendar goes a really long way. But it has to be required. So you have to make sure that people put in the shared calendar, whether it's a spreadsheet, a Google calendar, Trello, I mean, there's an infinite number of tools for that. But that people put their content in there and they then are, would have to look and see, oh, who else is publishing content on my same topic. So it could be a topical work. And so that if you're creating a course about a topic that you make sure to look in the magazine, to see what articles they've done on that topic, or look and see the advocacy on that topic, et cetera, et cetera, because why reinvent the wheel? So it's a matter of efficiency and also member benefit, for sure. Carol: So what would you say helps an organization be successful in this area? Hilary: Yeah. Can you ask, like, so content strategy is figuring it out, right? So you're figuring out who are top priority audiences. What do they want from us? What are we delivering? What's missing? And then how do we, how do we address that? It's figuring out the content life cycles or success metrics. It's putting the tools and communication and HR stuff in place so that people who will have these responsibilities that it's explicit. And it's not something that folks are supposed to do in their spare time, because we all know that no one has any spare time to do it in. And it's also that it becomes operational, that it becomes part of the way things work. In the association, the roles and responsibilities for content creation, planning creation, as I said, publishing promotion maintenance, an expiration that all of that is known and that everybody understands their part in that. And it becomes clear and part of how things work, you also need. So this is all called content governance and governance is such a tricky word and association because it has that whole other meaning, but in the bigger world, it's called content governance or digital governance and operations. So operations are, yeah, it actually happened. So not only writing down, like when I left. Content strategy back in the day, I thought you create a document and you're done and magically, it just happens. And the more I do the work, the more I realize that the document or the rules or guidelines and policies and all that are just the beginning of figuring out how to put them in place so that people know what they are. Understand that they have the trust in their colleagues. All of that is operations. So that's what's required to be successful. So I wrote that I did a study a couple of years ago for the ASAE foundation with Dina Lewis and Carrie Hayne about content strategy, adoption and maturity in associations. And we found associations of all sizes and natures, whether it's trade or professional. There's a lot of associations doing various amounts of content strategy work, and we grouped them into a maturity model. So when we learned that there are different levels of work going on, we looked to see whether the associations were doing more. Had things in common than those who were doing a medium amount or, or only a little. And, we did find that there are differences and it gets to culture. It gets closer. It gets to how operational your content is. And it gets to do the collaboration level, right? Because organizations who are at that more advanced level already know, oh, well, this is. All mine to do is figure out what I need to work. And I want to work with those people over there who have the companion expertise to mind. And that's what it's going to take for my program together. The impact and reach that it deserves. Carol: Yeah. I think that shift that you talked about I thought was just writing down the plan and having the, the, the shared calendar, but really it's about shifting towards a more collaborative work culture which can, can be a big shift in house. How organizations work together. And so being able, and, and then exactly what you talked about that trust that needs to be built so that those staff division barriers will come down and people will share and coordinate and collaborate. It's really important. Well, I like to end each episode where I play a game where I ask one random icebreaker question. So, which piece are you when you play monopoly? This of course assumes that you play monopoly. Oh my Hilary: gosh. I haven't played monopoly since I was a kid. Carol: Well, which one do you remember what you used to pay? I, Hilary: I'm sorry. I do not. Carol: I think it's a, the top hat and the dog and the shoe. I think there's an old fashioned car. So, what would you choose today? Hilary: Let's say, whew. All right, cute. They're cute. And they go, they go neatly from, from square to square. Carol: So neatly from square to square. I wouldn't say that the monopoly, she was particularly cute, but so what's, what are you excited about? What's up next for you? What's emerging in your work? Hilary: Well, I was thrilled to also do a chapter also with Dina Lewis. Latest edition of professional practices and association management. And that makes me so happy to see you. The prospect of content strategy incorporated and adopted by even more associations. So I was really excited about that in terms of what's next. I'm working with an association now to try it. Really get to the bottom of these very thorny questions about things like what the audience needs is this content filling, which is a very difficult question for them. And a very difficult question for lots of associations. And I'm, I'm always excited to do that work with an association, help them know the answer to that. So that next time when they are creating more content, they already do it with that information in mind. Yeah. Carol: All right. Hilary: Well, thank you. And just thanks. No, just joined the summer and hook, getting back maybe to normal. Carol: Maybe it will say time. We'll see. All right. Well, thank you so much. It was great having you on. Thanks a lot.  In the special 1-year anniversary episode of Mission: Impact, Carol Hamilton discussed the following:
Transcript: Carol Hamilton: Welcome to mission impact the podcast for progressive nonprofit leaders who want to build a better world without becoming a martyr to the cause. I'm Carol Hamilton, your podcast host and nonprofit strategic planning consultant. This is an exciting episode for me. I've been podcasting now for a year. So this is my one-year pot of nursery, and it's been so much fun doing this podcast. I've had a lot of great guests, wonderful conversations, and have really appreciated everything that I've learned from everybody that I've spoken to. And I launched the podcast back in August of 2020, but actually started doing interviews for it. Even at the beginning of the pandemic, starting in March. And so this has really been a pandemic project, although I will continue. I intend to continue on after that. Hopefully there will be an after at some point But I certainly have learned a lot. I've learned, heard a lot about how the pandemic has impacted how folks do their work, how they approach their work. And it certainly had a lot of impact on how I approach my work. The default before the pandemic for strategic planning was of course, to have some in-person event where you did the planning of one day retreat, a one and a half day retreat. Where you brought the key stakeholders together, got them all in a room and had a series of conversations that helped them make decisions about the future of the organization. Other parts of the process certainly have been done online though. Video conference, focus groups, listening sessions, interviews over the phone, et cetera, but that main crux of the process where you bring together the planning group has always by default, been done in person. And of course we had to shift that overnight to working online. Now I had a head start because I'd been doing online events since the early two thousands, I in fact organized my first virtual conference in 2004 and had been producing a number of different online experiences over the course of those years. And so it was pretty easy for me to switch up how we were going to do strategic planning, but what's been so interesting to me over the course of this period. As I've done over 10 different processes with 10 different organizations is actually to see the benefit of doing it online, doing it in a, in a remote setting. And most folks think, well, how can you really make good decisions if you're not all in the same room? And the thing that I've really noticed is that when you do that intensive retreat oftentimes right, when you get to the point of making a decision. With the group, they have hit cognitive load. It's three o'clock in the afternoon, four o'clock in the afternoon. They've been thinking hard all day processing lots of different information brainstorming and they are worn out. And that is the point in the agenda often. When you need the group to make some important decisions. In the virtual environment, there's no need to have that intensive long eight hour experience. You can take that eight hours or 10 hours, whatever amount of time you might've had at that retreat. Pace it over a number of sessions, two hours here, three hours here, and with a contained set of goals that you're trying to accomplish in each one. Then beginning each the next one with, this is what we did last time, and this is where we are in the process. But what I've seen is that groups really benefit from having a little bit of time to do one piece of the process and then process that integrated, to think more about it. Be able to kind of mull over the conversations that they had to then bring all of those new, all of that thinking into the next session. With a little more pacing over the period of time, I find that groups are able to get further quicker. In some ways it takes a little bit longer because you have a little bit of a gap between those two or three hour sessions, but in the same amount of meeting time, I'm able to get groups further with more clear and more refined goals than I might do if I were working with them in person. Pacing also allows strategic planning or other leadership groups to do refinement between the large group planning sessions with time, for back and forth. So people really feel like their perspectives have been taken into consideration. And then with the pandemic, of course, everyone has thought it just has brought to the fore how unpredictable our world is. And can you really plan in this VUCA world volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and I can't remember what the, a stands for (ambiguity). And it was always unpredictable. It's just more obvious now. I always tell folks that a plan is just a plan. It's not set in stone. They aren't tablets from on high. There's something that you created yourself, but the process itself brings clarity and alignment by creating an opportunity to talk together and explore issues together. Another thing that I'm seeing a lot about recently with people writing about and considering whether they're going back to the office, whether they're going to stay remote, the method they might do, a blended version is talk about that you can't have culture unless you're all together in the same office. And the truth is that any organization always has called. There's always an organizational culture, whether you've named it, whether you've explored it or not. It really more, a matter of, are you clear about it? Are you explicit about it? Are you, do you have a type of culture that you want to move towards? That that feels healthier, that you're trying to work. And just bringing everyone back into the office is kind of a de default. It's a default that allows that culture to kind of be there by accident. It allows folks to maybe not pay so much attention to it. I think one of the blessings in disguise is actually working remotely. That we really have to pay more attention to what the expectations are? How are you working together? What are those guide rails in terms of how much flexibility folks have and their schedules and, and how they're doing their work, what are they expected to produce in a particular week, et cetera. And so it's, again, it may be more of. Are the managers in your organization? Do they have the sufficient training and tools for how to, to manage in this remote and. And so in-person can be such a, just a substitute for giving folks the tools and training that they need to really build that intentional culture and manage well within a remote or a blended context. So this provides you with an opportunity to shift their culture in a positive direction and get everyone in gray involved and envisioning and working towards and creating that new future instead of just favoring the preferences of leadership and defaulting to. Whether you continue remote or go for a blended schedule, all you have to do is decide if you all have to go back to the office together. Think about what you've learned in this past year, past a year and a half. What do you want to keep? What do you want to let go? There's lots of opportunity there for being more intentional, more and more in clear and more explicit about the type of organization and how you want it to feel to work within your organization. Thank you for listening to this episode. I really appreciate the time you spend with me and my guests. Again, we're excited to be celebrating our one year anniversary and as with every episode you can find show notes and links and resources at missionimpactpodcast.com/shownotes. And you'll also find transcripts for each episode. I'd like to thank Nora Strauss-Riggs for her support in editing and production, as well as April coaster of a hundred ninjas for her production support. Please take a minute to rate and review mission impact on apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. It helps others find the podcast and we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. And until next time.  In episode 28 of Mission: Impact, some of the topics that Carol and her guest, Peggy Hoffman discussed include:
Peggy Hoffman is president of Mariner Management, an association management company which is home to two associations and provides an array of support and training to associations and most importantly member volunteers. Peggy has provided training and counsel to dozens of global, national and local membership associations over the past 30 years. She often draws on her own team’s research on volunteerism, member communities and association innovation. Peggy not only enjoys working with association volunteers but is an active volunteer for her professional association – including serving as a chapter past president – so she’ll draw from experience on both levels. Read her full bio at MarinerManagement.com and connect with Peggy on Twitter @peggyhoffman or LinkedIn. And ask her about triathlons, dance or living with three sons. Important Guest Links:
Carol Hamilton: My guest today on Mission: Impact is Peggy Hoffman. Peggy is president of Mariner Management, an association management company which is home to two associations and provides an array of support and training to associations and most importantly member volunteers. Mission Impact is the podcast for progressive nonprofit leaders who want to build a better world without becoming a martyr to the cause. I’m Carol Hamilton, your podcast host and nonprofit strategic planning consultant. On this podcast we explore how to make your organization more effective and innovative. We dig into how to build organizational cultures where your work in the world is aligned with how you work together as staff, board members and volunteers. All of this is for the purpose of creating greater mission impact. Peggy and I talk about why volunteers and chapters are the heart and soul of associations and yet a somewhat neglected aspect of working in a membership organization, how the role of geographically based chapters is undergoing so much change, and what implications the rise of online professional development has for local chapters. Welcome Peggy. Welcome to the podcast. Peggy Hoffman: It's great to be here, so appreciate you inviting Carol: Yeah. Should be fun. A fun conversation. We've been in the same circles for a long time and it'll, I'm really excited to dig into the work that you do in associates. Space of associations, but I really like to start each podcast with what motivates you to do the work that you do? What's your why? What, how, what drew you to this particular aspect? And we'll get to this in a minute, of the work that you do with organizations. Peggy: Okay. So I guess. I'm going to start by saying that once I stumbled into associations, one of the things that I gravitated towards was membership and specifically working with chapters. So I landed at a trade association that had these incredible state groups or regional. And I began working with them and realizing that there were just, they have so many challenges in front of them. So when we decided to start our own business, it was as a management company specifically to be a management service for chapters. So we didn't want any national organizations, but we just wanted to work with chapters in our area. And that business, it was amazing. I mean, they don't have big budgets, but they have big hearts. So naturally because of that, I've spent so much time working with volunteers because they were hiring me to be their staff. Right. So the wonderful journey of trying to support these geographic components of larger organizations meant really getting hands-on with how volunteers operate and think. And I don't know if that's just pretty exciting to work with people who are giving time. So I guess my, my, why is if I can support somebody who's giving their time, that's like a bonus. Carol: , the volunteer and the chapter, I feel like there's so much at the heart and soul of so many organizations, and yet I feel like it's really a neglected aspect of association management and it's so critical for member engagement. It's so critical for people to be able to connect with people locally. First maybe, for listeners who are maybe less familiar, can you just describe those two arenas, how you, how you define that. Peggy: Yes, that's a great question, actually. And what I really love about that question is that we are in this tremendous mode of change. I know we've heard that. But what's really interesting is there's so many structures within associations that are challenged and that challenge is leading to some really cool innovation. And when you talk about the bucket of volunteers and you're talking about the bucket of the bucket, we call chapters or components the same thing. What is a component in the context of what we're talking about? We're talking about the component of geography. Cause really components are a way of members connecting and it's usually around an issue and interest, a discipline or a geography. So we're really. We're focused more on the geography question. And so it's any entity that allows a subsection of members or key stakeholders within a membership-based organization to collect. So that means some of these groups are completely independent, but carry the same or similar mission name. Sometimes it needs an absolute integrated subsection. There's there, there's relationships where there's charters and there's mostly, but there's affiliation or groups. So lots of different ways of doing that legally, but at the core it's meeting the same member who could be met nationally. It could be. Locally. And sometimes the membership has contingent in. Sometimes it's not mean I can be a member of both or neither or a combination. So the chapter is a, is a, is a moniker. If you will. That may, that means that we're collecting a subsection of our members into that geography. The interesting thing is the traditional model, which was born in a time when we didn't have the internet, is the problem right now because we're, we've, with the legacy systems and for many of these organizations, the key work of it is done by the volunteers. Now we know that about associations, but the chapter level I think it was. The recent benchmarking it's you have to assume that less than half of the chapters out there have staff. So it is largely the will of the passion of volunteers and a volunteer is any stakeholder in an organization, membership based organization. That opps to give time freely and I mean also free. Yeah. Yeah. And I think most people think of chapters as those regionally based Entities. And yet, you can also slice and dice memberships often through an interest around a particular topic, whether it's whether the organization calls some special interest groups or communities of practice or cohorts, there are different ways that people describe that. But, and, and, and in each case there, that volunteer component is just so important. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's really, really interesting because of one of the dynamics that- What's really interesting about the comment that you just made about this idea of the coagulating. Issue interests, discipline or geography is that one of the changes that is slowly happening, it needs to happen with more with more Gusto is this idea of not siloing off the geographic components from the other ones, you'd see pretty much the communities of practice, the SIGs, those things that have been more baked in and the chapters have oftentimes can be an arms length. And what we began to understand is that the models. percolate to the top for many associations, not all are going to be the, the, the less structured geographic components, which means they're going to begin to act even more like the other components. Carol: And so interesting. I did, of course the pandemic and everything moving online just, just changed everything overnight. And I did an event for a regionally based association. So one that is the Mid-Atlantic of the thing, the Mid-Atlantic facilitators network and they were doing webinars. So of course that has no geography limits to it. And it was just a very pertinent topic, right. At the beginning of the pandemic of how to facilitate effectively online. And they had people from around the world and this was a local association. So in some ways it feels like some of those things, maybe aren't as relevant as they used to be. And of course, People are still gonna want to be able to meet in person and, and, those geography challenges, we're not going to always do everything online. Peggy: It’s both, but the blurring of the geographic boundaries is huge. It's it's. It's going to be, what's going to be the catalyst to either kill a chapter or have a chapter thrive, but it's also the catalyst for more competition and we know how nonprofits sometimes butt heads. And I think we're, we're, we're in a situation where that can happen. So the savvy association is going to jump out in front of it right away. Right. And say, okay, how do we begin coordinating the services, our programs, or our, our chapters or components are offering in a way that creates congeniality, right? Bridging all of it for everybody versus feeling like you're in a state of competence. Exactly. Exactly. And I think we do know that the Delta variant aside and other elements aside, we do know that people are going to get back together again, which is actually delightful and, and, and, and. Gonna be well received by, by many folks, but we also think, and Carol, this is the interesting thing. We think that it's going to change the nature of getting together for chapters. In other words because I can get online education so much more readily. And in the case of the one you just talked about, I can be in an online thing. That's perfect to many of us, but get the perspective from, from a different, different area. Right. Then maybe the importance of the chapters is less about education and more about the other elements, whether it is how do we grapple with a very local issue or how do we do networking or how do we do career development or career pathway development, or how do we, how do we really reach the students? Right. So it could shift some of the priorities for our geographic components, which I. It's not a bad thing at all, but we have to be aware of it. Carol: I know for me thinking about going to in-person events the bar is just way higher for what we're actually doing in person is the event actually designed to leverage the fact that we are in the same room together. And if it's not, I'm not going to travel two hours, cause even in a G, even in the DC area, it's going to take me an hour there, be there. And then an hour back it's half my day. so the bar for me is just way higher. Peggy: And so now think about that because of the implication there, and I don't think you're alone and I'm certainly the same way. So there's at least two of us in this world. Right? So here's the thing: think about how we are currently resourcing and training volunteers. Because it's still largely volunteer. And even if it's not volunteer, if there's a, if there's a skeleton staff for a chapter, it's often an admin person, right. So how are we resourcing and training them for that new reality? We've been talking in some of the trainings I've been doing, because we do a fair amount of the chapter leader, training chapter staff and chapter volunteers. We've been talking well, at least I've been beating the drum for at least two years on. You've got to do something different at your events. You've got to create events that are experienced. You've got, you've got to stop thinking that I can just fill a room and, and in class, in classroom style and have somebody, screaming, scream at you. Lecture, you Carol: talk nicely to you, but I haven't, so Peggy: bam, I get now you're absolutely right. It becomes way more. So am I leveraging, I liked the way you put that. Am I leveraging the fact that I'm in person on this event design? Yeah. And I think it's, it's not just a matter of going back to the way it used to be, because, maybe those networking events worked for a few people, but they actually never worked for a lot of people. So how can we think about those things differently? How can we help, help people have conversations? have, give them a little bit of structure. I mean, people had learned how to do this in, in the online space, through zoom, et cetera. Just a little bit, just a prompt question to get people started can really be helpful. Exactly. Exactly. So it's good. It's going to be really interesting. It's going to change. It's going to change how we train, how we resource it's going to also require in some ways, a refresh to the volunteer pool. Right. And that's such a critical thing because I think it's one of the biggest ones. Big challenge. Carol: I don't know if the biggest challenge you can tell me with any volunteer-led organization or one that depends a lot on volunteers is that oftentimes those refreshing recruitment cultivation of some pathway to leadership they, most groups don't, don't have it, don't know how to do it. And so then they wonder why, the 20% are the, are doing the 80. Peggy: Exactly. And that is one of the, definitely one of the top. Challenges for these member components is getting the volunteer workforce that has been a problem that's been really growing in the last I'd say five to almost 10 years. And, and the, the, the. Challenge is now is that because we're in this murky area of what really is the value prop at the local level, it's harder to articulate why it would be great for you to volunteer for this organization. So we've just put things on top of each other. Now, all of this makes of course, Carol, this sound like doom and gloom. On the other side of things there is there's real opportunity for local volunteers, local chapters, local members, and the COVID is one of the coming out of COVID. One of the silver linings is we saw some of those in action, right? We saw, for example, I'm in Texas and this is not, this is not an exception by any means at all, but in Texas, one of 'em AGCS, that's the general contractors groups, did this amazing pivot and went from this basically, education. Forced development to a source for PPE and set up and turn their office into a collection zone and, and an incredible member value point. Then you have, you have some folks out in Ohio for the dental hygienist and that group Basically got the most important legislation or regulatory changes around the protection of, or of dental hygienists on the job. And then another one of their chapters actually was managed on Facebook to get a vibrant post of yours, the temp job that you, that you need filled and post that you're ready. And they did this incredible moment, matchmaking for folks in the area. So what we're, what we're seeing is that being local to it's like it is just like with health care, it's just like with everything being local became the ability to answer the immediate need of a member. So. The real question is do we, is it time to take those checklists of you did this, this, this, and this, and throw it away and begin saying what the member needs at the moment? Because I think honestly, we saw it and I think chapters can step up because they're driven by volunteers. That's the huge thing. That's the passion that allows them to pivot. If they've been given the permission and some resources. Yeah. There's often, I feel like there's often a tension between a regionally based or a locally-based chapter and the national organization. And, maybe some of those checklists are, are part of it. Why would you say you often see that, or at least I've certainly experienced it in the organizations I've worked in that tension between the two. Well, I think it's, it's really interesting. How are we just, so in, in terms of the work that Marriner is doing we are just, we just began this next iteration of the chapter benchmarking study. And we started with two CEO round tables, virtual round tables. Brought CEOs together to have a conversation around what is this thing about chapters? And, and, we basically were asking the question you just asked. Carol: Now we did start by saying, what are the orthodoxies around chapters that are just so, what would you say some of those are? Peggy: So that was the, that was the, Chapter four, the third rail chapters are our political minefield. The problem is that you've got these groups and often too way too often. The leaders that you have sitting up here, making decisions come from that group, and while they put the national or the global hat on, they never take off the chapter hat. So. They see that they see through a lens that is a little bit clouded, a little bit myopic to a certain degree. Right. And so if you start to say something needs to change, well, my chakra was barred or I, and, and meanwhile, you're talking, you're having to convince volunteers to vote members to vote on change. And they don't like to do that anyway in too many cases. It's politically fraught. And so it's easier to kick the can down the road than it is to make a substantive change. But the other critical element is these CEOs bless them. Could not with one, maybe two exceptions. Could not articulate the value of chapters because we have no data around what the chapters are bringing that we can put on our balance sheets. We can put in our operations, we have the expense side. Oh yes. Because we have. That's assigned to it. We might have a chapter leader conference. We might have a shared relationship. We might have a revenue sharing relationship around events or activities. but on the income side, we're not doing any good data collection and data analysis that shows us how that contributes to the value proposition? That generates those important dollar driven pieces, membership, acquisition, membership, membership retention fundraising goals, all those things. So, most of the CEOs have this political problem and they have no data. And so what happens is you get this, you get all these people in the room. Chapters are so important. I came up with it. I wouldn't have been a member or all that stuff. And so, that anecdote becomes the data and we all know, and if it is not data. So that was the key. The other orthodoxy which I thought was a sad orthodoxy is, well, chapters are good and they're mostly bad and that's just the way it is. And you'll live. And that to me is sad because that goes back to, I don't know what the ROI is and therefore, and it's politically difficult, so I'm just gonna live with this. And, and, and, and the assumption is it can't get better. So that's the other orthodoxy we have to live with. It's bad. We can't get better. And one, several members of these two CEO round tables said if they had their druthers, they would just ditch them. And so. Would that be an ortho, what that an, of a mindset it's going to be competitive because you're not in the game together you're surviving alongside, and even the most open-minded of the CEOs. And there were many open-minded CEOs in the effort of figuring it out. All of those really good, important answers didn't seem to, it seems so insurmountable. And so I'm just going to wait and hope that because I guess, because I see some good things, like 1 group said, when it comes right down to advocacy the states that have really rolled up, rolled their sleeves up and, and, and talk with us on a regular basis, we're able to make some significant headways.So they, so they do, they do glean onto that. But the competition comes because we don't know, and we're just living, living next to each other. The other thing is, there's nothing worse. Carolyn, absolutely nothing worse than having your leaders who have to make important decisions, be your members because they will whine the entire time. And so the members are notorious, they think they're not getting a good deal and members who are volunteering for chapters have that double, double down on that. And so they create their own negative language that pushes along this competition. Carol: And yet you gave a couple examples about how that locality of those chapters, they were able to just jump on needs that were immediate, that would have taken a national organization. There's so many layers of decision making and all of that. They were able to just move really quickly, especially because in this case, I think that volunteer. Group. It can either mean that you're moving incredibly slowly or yes, you can also move very quickly. Peggy: Right. And the other interesting thing is we did a so ma Marriner and bill highway the highway being a software tech company that does have a banking solution in this space, in any case. We've been doing a series of webinars, monthly webinars for chapter organizations. And I bring this up only because one of the things we keep doing is I say, we look for the bright spots. But we're looking for where our system's working. And one of the, and what, one of the pieces we did was the trickle up and what we were talking about was we were going at it and we were finding where there were successful national programs that actually had been born and bred at the local level. So. PMI is an outreach program and is a great example. The education I'm going to call the action. The education theater group developed this. They had when the floods came through in Houston and the schools were decimated, their theater props and programs were decimated by another group, another state nearby did a match list. Do you have something extra? There's a school there. It needs it. That program is now a school to school support program that went national. So, and, and, and you look at what the landscapes or landscapers have done. So in other words not only can they pivot quickly, but they can also be some pretty good R and D. And by the way, you can do a, you can do an ROI on all of those scenarios. Carol: Yeah, absolutely. And you've been doing some research recently on what you call the volunteer learning journey. Why, why would you say this is important for those who work with volunteers or our volunteers and trying to cultivate other volunteers? Peggy: One of the things that we have done so I'm gonna, I'm going to first point back to a couple of, of. Of good resources. One is the mutually beneficial volunteering study done in 2017 with the ASAE foundation in which we talked about the readiness of volunteers and that impact on associations, then we did. Now to a chapter benchmarking study, I alluded earlier to the fact that we're in the third iteration now, and we did the CEO's and we're going to be going into the actual survey piece just shortly. But yeah. In the two previous ones one of the issues that came up was volunteer readiness, right? And then we've also over the last 10 years I have worked with thousands and thousands of chapters through chapter training programs and constantly come back to volunteer readiness. And so one of the things that, and we did was a series on financial problems for chapters in which we have looked at fraud, security, risks, those kinds of things. And what's the, what's the, what's the bottom line behind that, the preparedness or readiness of volunteers. So you see this theme that, if the volunteer is the key workforce for the chapter programs, and we're not properly preparing them, what's the issue, how do we resolve that? Carol: How would you, how would you define volunteer readiness? Peggy: So I would define volunteer readiness. Excuse me. I would define a volunteer readiness based on their ability to successfully complete the job at hand. So I'm going to be treasurer of a chapter organization. Not only can I, do I know, how do I know? Do I know how the organization is financially set up? Can I read a peanut? Can I make good decisions? Can I make good financial decisions based on risk analysis? Right? Because I mean, I can spend this money and I've got these reserves, like it's been over here, there's just, how do I invest these dollars? And, and how do I. For example, let's look at, look at the pandemic. Cause the one group that we manage, I mean, the first thing we did was the treasurer and I sat down and we pulled up and we did what's plan B, how do we, what's our scenario planning for this year because we don't know how it's going to unfold. So scenario planning. So as a treasurer, when I, the first day I'm in that job, Do I have that set of skills and that ability, and if I don't have the exact set of skills, do I at least know? I don't have them and can seek, can ask the questions because you're not going to know everything you need for every particular. That's okay. Right. But do I know, do I know? So, so readiness is about my ability to do that job and not even stellar. I've just, I just call it success. Like if my goal was this and I'm a volunteer, can I get us to this? Would it be great to get here? Fine, but I'm ready as I get to where we have to get? Not where we necessarily want to get. When we started figuring out why are volunteers not ready? Or why do we get volunteers? the whole, the whole thing. And we need a president and nobody's hand raises and someone sneezes. Oh, good. Peggy. You're going to be president now you're president, but you're not ready. Right. But, there's no other choice. Right. So we kept looking, so all of these associations are offering varying levels. But, it's hard to get volunteers to, to really buy into that support. And that's when I saw something that Christine matters with the crystal lake partners. I had done it with, she had talked about learning journeys for getting beyond basically the concept of the journey map, which by the way, you've done some fabulous work on taking that, I think, and applying it to the learner. Is there a learner journey and I'm looking at this going, is there a volunteer learner? So she and I got together, we pulled together a brain trust of folks, looked at how they were doing it, looked at what we understood about volunteer readiness and realized that the missing piece, as we looked at this, is tying that training to the volunteer motivation. And that's of course what learning journeys do, right. They say, what, where is it? You want to go? What's your motivation for getting there? What, what, and so tie it. So that's really where it came out of. It was trying to find how to take these two issues? where's the, where's the puzzle piece that puts them together. Carol: And one thing that I appreciate, and we'll, we'll link to the resource that you're talking about. Cause it's really a wonderful piece on working with volunteers. And this could, this, there are so many applications to this. You did this within an association context, but I was looking at it and I haven't yet. On the leadership development committee of my congregation. Right. And so we're thinking about volunteer cultivation and how do we give people some baby steps and not say, oh, you're a new member. Let's get you on the board. No, we don't want to be in that position. And how do we help people take those steps? So I really liked how you broke it down with, maybe that first step. And I can't remember exactly what the categories were, but then, then. They need these couple of competencies and, or this interest. And so that's going to match to more of a micro volunteering or an ad hoc role. And, and I think that that is a hard thing. Where folks are. So organizations are so used to these big roles that people have traditionally had. And how do you break it into smaller chunks that are more manageable and in people's lives today? For a million reasons, folks just don't have the bandwidth that they have available. I don't know, 15, 20 years ago when people were able to step into a board role for three and four years and things like. Peggy: So there was a lot of stability in people's lives. Obviously, in comparison, a lot of stability, you were in jobs and there's a lot of middle management opportunities there until you were in jobs and you're pretty steady. And you didn't, you weren't looking to change jobs unless something really happened. And the employers there, they, they gave you a little bit more leeway on a lot of things. So volunteering and not only that, but there were generational things. So the boss had volunteered and been on the board. So it's natural that you're going to do that. Right. And lava fell, all those things changed, which is why there is the bandwidth issue. But I think the other thing that we completely underestimate is. Everything we know about volunteers, particularly what we do when we start looking at volunteers over the last 10 years. Okay. Everything we know is that there is this critical importance of connecting with what's in it for me. And I don't mean that in a negative way. Gotta go to my motivation and my motivation is going to be tied to something. I can see an outcome. And so much of our volunteering does not have a demonstrative outcome and it does not plug directly with the motivation. So we can't get people to be on the board because what it looks like is sitting in meetings and it's just keeping the organization going well, I don't want to just keep your organization going. I don't want to do anything. All of a sudden if, if, if we can start making, even that board position looks and demonstrates how there is an outcome we're going to get folks to do that? The reality is that busy people always have time but they have time for the things that match their motivation. One of the things I tell real quickly Carol is we were looking for a treasurer at the local level. It's a Maryland based chapter and we were looking for a treasurer and we were having. Difficult time. That's not an easy position to fill because there are, that's one of the board positions that actually has some key competencies, right? So there was an individual who I, who I knew could do this and would do a good job. And Talking with this individual and they didn't want any more board positions and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he just happened to say to me, “How come we didn't give out a student scholarship this year?” Cause we always gave that student scholarships and I said, I'm going to give it a student scholarship. Because, and I, and I went through the whole thing and I, it was basically a financial decision, right. And I said, we were there and we fell down here and here, and I just said free, frankly, the right treasurer would get this going and we can rebuild that account and we'd have the giving out student scholarships. And so the neck, I think it was the next day, got an email from him and said, okay, so when does a treasurer position begin? Why? Because now he saw a reason he was, and he did, he did. We got the student scholarship program back up and running. Carol: Well, yeah. And, to help people think through, especially in a professional context, what are some things that they're going to be able to learn through volunteering that they don't have the opportunity to do in their day-to-day jobs? So, thinking again, I mentioned my congregation and when I first joined people asked me to do lots of different things that I didn't want to do. So I was, I felt like I was like, no, no, no, no, no. So I was like, I got to figure out what I'm, what I want to say yes to. And they were doing their first strategic plan and I was like, Ooh, I want to do that. And of course, that's actually what I do now. Right? This was 20 years ago. And so in my day job, I have no opportunity to be involved in the strategy of the organization. But in this volunteer role, I was going to be able to be a leader. And develop, explore that and develop all sorts of skills that I just wouldn't have the opportunity in my day-to-day. So helping people, whether it's skills or Networking is just such a big amorphous concept, but how is this going to help you build and get connected with people who can help you sponsor you, mentor you and help you solve problems. But yeah, to take what these things are. Jobs or even smaller ones and how people think, well, what are the components that, that that I can connect to, that's going to move me forward, from that professional point of view or. I just moved here and I don't have any friends that I want to make some friends with and let me do that, through, through volunteering. Peggy: You know what, it's just like the fundraising when you first get called to give, let's say to in my case, my NPR station is WAMU. WAMU. And the first gift that you're asked is, is 25 bucks or five bucks or whatever. And then they, they wrap you up. And pretty soon you're an annual giver of a substantive chunk of money. And I keep telling chapters and national organizations that you, you, you, you gotta do the fundraising model and, and microbes. Get you into it. you had mentioned, you had referred to that, the pathway in which we talk about the emerging volunteer, the learning volunteer, and then you get into leadership. And one of the things that we saw in the mutually beneficial volunteering study, which actually reflected the results from the earlier volunteer study way back in 2008 that ASAE did, which is one of the, one of the. Five reasons for not saying yes is not seeing a picture, not seeing the pathway. And so part of that work came out of this idea of let's paint a password for let's paint. Let's paint the picture and demonstrate a pathway. And there's some really exciting things because if you take that pathway you see, for example, wraps, which is the regulatory professionals they've done this and they're not alone. Other groups have done this. I believe PMI is amongst them, but you take that pathway. And then you start doing digital badging based on that. Right. And now you're actually, you're actually connecting people to the, to a recognition that they can carry with them really from a CV perspective. Right. But then you take someone like NAGP, they're building out a as, as part of their learning management system and they're making some changes right now, but they're building it. Levels of training for volunteers at wraps is doing something similar. So you and I talked to one of the magicians who was looking, who just was looking at that model and saying, wow, you mean, we could do like many, many certificates, right? As I get through this level. So all of a sudden you see what that, that pathway does. It professionalizes the volunteering in our associations and nonprofits. And by professionalizing it, that boosts the motivation to get the learning and the education that you need to be successful in the job. So we're all we're, we're, we're coming at this from all these different directions. Carol: Yeah, for sure. So on each episode, I like to play a game where I ask one random icebreaker question. And since I think I've known you long enough that I can ask this question. So who are the three people you would want on your team? If there was a zombie apocalypse? Ooh. Peggy: Okay. Carol: Ah Peggy: Mark Shropshire who no one knows, except that he is my personal trainer. And I mean, strong and, and, and not, Sufficiently un-empathetic that he could destroy anything in the way. So that's good. So definitely, definitely that I'm gonna go with maybe a strange strange one. And I, I'm going to actually go with an association professional. I know Lindsay Curry and you might say, well, why, why would you pick her. I have never seen anybody able to get around a topic with such dexterity and in a way to come up with the question and I have seven feelings if they were, it was Zombieland. She has a way to get them to go now. What are you asking us there? And I need a really strong, another strong, no, you know what, you know what I'm going gonna, I'm gonna also go with my husband. And you might say why, and it goes, if something happens, I think I would just assume that it happened to both of us, but I would throw them out there first just to be on, to be doing the real side. But, having somebody close to you that knows you that knows your vulnerabilities and your strengths. And in that moment can say, can call on your strengths so that you can get past your vulnerability. I think that would be priceless. Carol: That's awesome. That's awesome. So what are you excited about? What's coming up for you what's what's emerging in your work these days, so, oh Peggy: My gosh. There is actually a lot of really exciting work. I'm going to mention three very quick things. One is the chapter benchmarking study because we have brought the CEO voices. And so we're going to do the CEO voice. We're going to do the traditional CRP. That's the component relations professional. That's the association staff position. And you can opt in to have us then go to your chapter leaders. So it's a 360, if you will approach a conversation around chapters, chapter values, chapter optimization. So we're very excited about that. We just launched the ASAE foundation Research, which is going with an incredibly robust brain trust of association CEOs. We're going to design the set of models that will work for associations for volunteerism. So in other words, we're asking the question. What is effective and what model brings out effectiveness for what organizations. So there's not going to be one mile. So, those are two kinds of research projects, but, but listen to those, those are like innovation, right? They're changing. The other thing I want to mention. Just getting started with camp to program camp is the California marriage and family therapist. We're doing a chapter coaching pro program, which I think is going to be really cool. I get a chance to work one-on-one one-on-one with chapters. So those were the, those are the three exciting things. But I, I want to, I guess I want to mention that. there's a balance in life. And so the other exciting thing that the other journey I'm on is I started in January learning titles. And when you put yourself in a place to learn something new and you can screw up with that, anybody like, you don't feel bad about it. it's just you during this learning space and it's a really, really wonderful mind, body centering thing, but also all of the elements about this there's There's w one of the elements is constantly keeping your knees bent and being grounded so that, you can move in any direction. Right. And giving in yielding, and yet being a spring strong anyway, enough of that. But that's, Carol: That'll help you with the zombies too. Yes. I love it. I love it. Well, Peggy, it was great having you on thank you so much. And we will definitely link to those resources that you mentioned. And then let us know when the newest benchmarking study comes out and we can include it for folks. So definitely appreciate all you all you have to offer. Right? Peggy: Well, thank you for your time today. This was a fun conversation. It's always good catching up with you. And it was fun today, too. Carol: Excellent. I appreciated the perspective Peggy brought on the volunteer learning journey. Whether your organization has chapters or has volunteers in other programmatic elements of your work, thinking through their learning journey could be really useful. We will link to the resource that Peggy’s group created about this and it provides a really useful framework for thinking about how to cultivate and develop volunteers. And how to have them move from volunteers to leaders within your organization. From a new volunteer that is just getting familiar with your organization and the work you do – what are the skills and competencies they need? How will your orientation and training program help them develop those skills? How might you be able to break down what used to be a large role into smaller more doable parts? Is it clear for someone wanting to get involved what the steps are? Whom they should reach out to? What support can you provide your volunteers as they become more engaged and encourage them to step into new and larger roles within your organization? Have you built a ladder people can climb? Or a pathway for them? The clearer you are able to make the pathway, the more likely people will say yes when you invite them into volunteering. Thank you for listening to this episode. I really appreciate the time you spend with me and my guests. You can find out how to connect with Peggy as well as any links and resources mentioned during the show in the show notes at missionimpactpodcast.com/shownotes. I want to thank Nora Strauss-Riggs for her support in editing and production as well as April Koester of 100 Ninjas for her production support. Please take a minute to rate and review Mission Impact on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps other people find the podcast. We appreciate it! |
HostI am Carol Hamilton, nonprofit consultant and podcast host. My passion is helping organizations cultivate healthy, inclusive cultures that live their values, fostering learning, creativity and results. Find me at Grace Social Sector Consulting and download free resources. Archives
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Grace Social Sector Consulting, LLC, owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of the Mission: Impact podcast, with all rights reserved, including right of publicity.
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