Executive Coaching, Leadership Training, and Personal Development
A key topic among fundraising leaders is how to ensure that your team gets important things done without feeling like you are micro-managing the process.
In fact, fostering a culture of accountability within your team is a key skill for all managers. It aligns perfectly with the coaching style of leadership.
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We all hear so much about the “fight or flight response” to stress. However, lately I have been reading more about the “tend-and-befriend” response developed by Dr. Shelley E. Taylor of the University of California, Los Angeles. This refers to the evolutionary behavioral response of managing stress by caring for offspring and seeking social support. Dr. Taylor explains that women are more likely than men to look to others for support in times of stress. In the modern work world this means that women create, maintain, and use social networks—especially friendships with other women—to manage stressful conditions.
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Most leaders, managers, and administrators do their best to avoid risk and minimize uncertainty. It’s understandable. Taking risk is scary, and it is in our nature as human beings to want to control situations for predictable outcomes.
Sadly, tons of energy and lots of money is wasted organizations on this “controlling” activity. And, very little is ever learned, nor is much accomplished that is worthwhile by playing it safe.
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As a fundraiser, you are naturally curious and a great listener. You spend time and energy getting to know your donors and thinking about how to cultivate these vital relationships. Furthermore, you are evaluated and rewarded for your ability to create meaningful relationships with donors, volunteers and board members.
This external focus and the busy pace can sometimes make you forget how important it is to cultivate relationships with colleagues. Especially relationships with people in other departments, such as research, communications or finance. And sometimes this is compounded by the fact that these coworkers have different styles and personalities than you.
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The “Yes, And” rule is a guideline of improvisational comedy that suggests a participant should accept what the other person has created (“Yes”) and then add something to it (“And”) ~ Source: Wikipedia.
When you stop and reflect on this, it really is a philosophy for life and work. How many times have you been in a meeting where someone suggests a new idea and someone shuts it down with a statement like: [Read more…]
As humans we have a universal desire to be seen and acknowledged. Let’s begin with a definition. Acknowledgements are different than compliments. “I enjoyed your presentation” is a nice compliment, whereas “you have an ability to take complex information and present it in a clear and meaningful way” is an acknowledgement. It points to who a person is being rather than what they are doing. A good acknowledgement is also about the person and not about you. While it is nice that you enjoyed the presentation, the second statement has power because it shows the strengths and skills that were being displayed by the person during their presentation.
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Andy Hill wrote an excellent book entitled Be Quick–But Don’t Hurry with the legendary John Wooden, his former basketball coach at UCLA. For any manager or leader, Hill’s book is well worth reading. I did so for the first time over ten years ago. I came back to it again recently and find that it still holds up. I am especially interested in Wooden’s central motto, “Be Quick, But Don’t Hurry”. According to Hill, the primary physical attribute that Coach Wooden looked for when evaluating a player for the UCLA basketball teams was quickness. It’s hard to imagine a college or professional coach drawing that same conclusion today. [Read more…]
This morning a memory popped into my head from my earliest days as a fundraising consultant. It was one of my first meetings with my Vice President and I was expected to present a plan for a client project. I came to the meeting with several suggestions (but no definite idea) about how we could proceed.
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Gratitude is “a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness, and appreciation for life.”
~ Robert Emmons
In The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky talks about how research is highlighting the multiple benefits of gratitude. These include increased self-esteem, better ability to deal with stress, and increased social bonds. In other words, people who are consistently grateful are happier, more energetic, more helpful, and empathic.
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Over the past few weeks, I had a few conversations with leaders I know about dysfunction on teams. Sadly, this dysfunction is a common occurrence that, in my experience, often arises from a fundamental fear of conflict.
It’s a theme that frequently arises in my coaching work with leaders. Especially fundraising leaders. The fear of conflict is often initiated and promulgated by an insidious saboteur known as the “Pleaser.”
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