Grasp the Hands of Others and Hold Tight
We keep our heads up, our chins out, and our eyes level, whether in the office, at board meetings, in conversations with our staff, immersed in critical review with our finance team, in public, in partnership conversations, with funders, with evaluators, with management and auditors.
We stay late, we turn out the lights, our staff have our personal number and use it, and often so do our volunteers. Our board members are treated as valuable and as friends, regardless of what we initially thought of each of them. We talk them up to our staff and we talk our staff up to our board. We build bridges and protect the fragile until they are not longer vulnerable.
We smile, we're gracious, we ask for support for the organization, dollars for our programs, and friendships for our mission and purposes. We ensure there is enthusiasm in the building, that hope is a regular resident, and that staff and volunteers know they are contributors to saving the world through their connection and work with you and the organization.
We may lead at the masthead and but yet we need to have our feet on the ground and everything we do and create must feel as though it is the work of many hands, hearts and minds.
But our dark secret is the number of nights we drive home after everyone else has left the office, or late after an evening meeting, our hearts thick, our tears streaming quietly down our face as we live with the slight and constant fear of failing. Late nights over the laptop, spreadsheets blurring, the weight of our mission, our board's confidence, the validity and viability of our programs, balancing time and constraints, funding proposals, business and strategic plans, delicately stepping through landminds and pushing through barriers, we hold success all too often in our own ten fingers, in our exhuasted brain.
Who shares this need of a constant state of readiness and strategizing better than other leaders of nonprofits, all facing in today's environment the same strictures, the very ones listed above in bloody detail? Did I mention medicaid regs, tightening foundation funding, on top of escalating details and governmental shortfalls?
So here is the third suggestion --- find two other leaders of nonprofits in your region and form an informal executive director support group. Yes. Start with coffee and a bit of a chat, before building up to the big stuff. Do come up with agreements among each other, even if tongue in cheek on confidentiality, but definitely recognizing that what is shared over coffee stays with the coffee. Don't pick just anyone. If you are the leader you are used to sniffing out and instinctively knowing who clicks and who doesn't with you. It could be like a "co-op" of baring one's soul and building up another's.
You don't want this to be a co-op of fifty. You are not asking for personal advice or who is giving out money this week. You sincerely want to build friendships with folks who can understand when a board member gives you a headache, when your valuable staff member begins to get flacky, and when you wonder if you are losing your nerve in this buisness.
It's your own clique you're putting together. And if you are new in this field, under 5 years, you must have already wondered about the leaders in your community who know each other well, who cluster together at meetings or share information behind the scene. Somehow they know something that you don't, are comfortable with funders when you are not.
You need this little clique of your own and so do those two or three others you can catch the eye of at a collabortive meeting. Think of something, quick. What little topic can you come up with to give a purpose to a meeting. Or just say to one or two of them, let's have lunch.
Yeah, start it simple, but keep it going. Good things take time to develop, but you know already that the first step is the most critical one you can take. Becuase you move forward.
Good luck and email me if you'd like to start one on-line.
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