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Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
Why Your Team May Be Having a Buy-in Problem
00:29:48
In this episode of the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast, host Dr. Rob Harter is joined by leadership coach and author Dave Garrison to explore a ...
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- [00:02]
Rob Harder
This is Dr. Rob Harder with the Nonprofit Leadership podcast, Making youg World Better. What does it take to be an effective nonprofit leader today? What are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest obstacles? How should nonprofits fundraise in an economy that is constantly changing? All of these reasons combined led me to start this show. And it's my hope that through this series, people can learn not only what it takes to be an effective nonprofit organization, but to hear from effective leaders who who are successfully making a positive impact in their communities. We hope you enjoy the show as together we hear how they are making their world better. Welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Harder. Thanks so much for joining us today. Today we're going to be discussing an urgent issue that's actually been growing for quite some time, but after Covid, it just grew exponentially. And that urgent issue facing leaders today is the Buy in crisis. This is the crisis that impacts us in so many, many different ways. And there's a lot of different things that are causing this to happen and be even more of an urgent issue. It's generational shifts, it's evolving employee expectations, certainly economic disruptions that are going on right now. All of these things combined are really making it harder for teams to get engaged and staff members to stay engaged with their business or their nonprofit organization. And the author of the book the Buy in Advantage is my guest today. His name is Dave Garrison. He's a business strategist, leadership coach, and he's author, of course, of this book called the Buying why Employees Stop Caring at How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Give Their All. Dave does all kinds of work with nonprofits as well, and he does really have a global perspective. He's helped thousands of leaders re engage with their workforce with practical and sustainable solutions. He's a big believer in building trust and ownership in high performance. And so what we're going to talk about today is, number one, what is this Buy in problem? Do you have it in your nonprofit organization? And if you do, how do you resolve it? How do you turn it into something perhaps that can be turned around for growth and innovation for your nonprofit? It's a really fascinating conversation and as always, love having you tuning in. Thanks for being here. Now, onto the show. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox. DonorBox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Well, welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. I've got Dave Garrison with us. Dave, thanks for taking time out to be on the show today.
- [02:33]
Dave Garrison
Rob, thanks for having me. Absolutely.
- [02:35]
Rob Harder
Now, I'm excited about this conversation because you do so much. You do work in the business world, but you're also involved in the nonprofit sector. And it's all about leadership and leading your team. Well. And so maybe to start with, you've got a new book coming out which I'm going to talk about here in a bit. And of course you're going to share. But let's talk about what people call the buy in problem, because I know that's what your book focuses on. So let's start with that. Perhaps you can give some context for my listeners. What is the buy in problem, first of all? And why has the buy in crisis among employees become so urgent and even widespread now in 2025 compared to, say, previous years?
- [03:11]
Dave Garrison
Yeah, it's a great question. So let's first of all just give you a really graphic example of the buy in crisis in the town you live in. We have a high school stadium where Friday night lights light up and the parents show up and everybody's engaged. They bring their heart, their soul, their guts, their glory. They bring everything to the stands at the Friday night Park City High School Miners games Monday morning, go to work. All that stays in the parking lots. And we just say, what would you like me to do? And I like it here and hey, let's have a coffee together. And it's like, what happened to the passion? What happened to the full person? You know, our bodies are actually wired with three brains. We have the brain in our head that we're taught about. We have the brain in our heart and we have the brain in our gut. What would it be like if people brought Friday night lights passion to the workplace every day? Profit, nonprofit, it doesn't matter. That's what the buy in advantage looks like. However, the crisis is that for the last 30 years, the Gallup data shows that people show up at work and on a net basis, only about a third of the people are really bought in. The rest are showing up. And it doesn't mean they're not polite, doesn't mean they're not happy. They might appreciate you putting a ping pong table or you do Friday lunches for free. That's all wonderful, but it has nothing to do with buy in. What accelerated the buy in crisis was Covid when people worked from home, when they had more time to think about the role of work, they said, you know what, there's gotta be more to it for me because my life is short and we're seeing a lot of change in the world and people didn't have to drive to work. And they said, well, what am I doing this for? So shift number one was the COVID reconsideration. Shift number two is generational. So I heard as recently as today. Well, you know this younger generation. Well, they said that about us too. So get over it. What's important to this generation is having an impact and aligning with a sense of purpose with people they want to be with. Three dimensions. Sense of purpose, easy for most of our nonprofits, easy because we're purpose driven. However, having a sense of impact takes different leadership skills. And then creating a community where people really enjoy being with each other takes leadership skills as well that we've never been taught. We. We'd never seen them. So how are we supposed to out of thin air, start employing skills we don't know what they are? So the book, the Buy in Advantage is really about giving leaders those tools so they can DIY buy in.
- [05:54]
Rob Harder
Yeah, I like that. And it's so interesting, isn't it? Post Covid. Now, the reality's hip every sector, nonprofit for profit, et cetera. So let's talk about how do leaders in nonprofits know if they're having a buy in problem? Like, and then. So if that's number one diagnosis here. And then secondly, what are some of the hidden costs that might not appear on their financial statements that show they're not bought in in terms of their staff?
- [06:17]
Dave Garrison
Yeah. We have seven different warning signs. Let me give you an example of a couple of them. Meetings start late, run over and wander. Those are three warnings. Those are three. That's only one warning sign. But it's all about meetings. Another is people are continually leaving for a quote, unquote, better job, where better job is a code for I don't like it here. And it's an indication you have an issue. There are other warning signs that include losing major donors. So in the nonprofit world, that's a warning sign. And you can say, well, that's because they fill in the blank. But those are three kinds of warning signs of things are not going our way and we should be paying attention. We may have a buy in problem. And one of the things we would do is recommend that listeners use this checklist of we have an assessment tool that'll be both online and in the book and use that tool and ask their team to fill it out so you can get a common view of what's really going on. Because my view as a leader is very different than the people that work with me. Got it.
- [07:30]
Rob Harder
Love that. Okay, super. Helpful. And we'll make sure we put that in the show notes as well. Okay, so in what ways have generational shifts maybe evolving employee expectations? Obviously, there's major economic disruptions recently. How have all those combined to make employee engagement more challenging than ever?
- [07:47]
Dave Garrison
From your experience, employees are more aware of what it is they want, and they're more willing to make changes for less money. And what I mean by that, if somebody is really bought in, the data shows that it takes about a 30% pay raise for them to leave. And yet what we have conditioned ourselves to believe as leaders is people change jobs for money, and it's all about money. And it's actually not all about money. People will leave for less money if they believe that the purpose is more aligned and their ability to have an impact is greater at another joint, or they have more freedom in how the work gets done, which means they can set their schedule. One nonprofit leader complained to me, this employee doesn't want to start work till 9 o' clock. And I talked to and you know, our office opens at 8. And I talked to the employee and I said, hey, here's what your leader said. What's up with that? And she said, I dropped my kids off of daycare. That's number one for me. So if they don't like it, I'll go somewhere else. So the question is, how do you provide flexibility at work, still get work done? How do you set up an environment where people can have an impact without bringing the business to a halt, without making it a chaotic situation? And how do you take advantage of your purpose in motivating people?
- [09:08]
Rob Harder
Oh, I like that. That's good. Well, I know in your book you're going to be talking about this in terms of kind of diagnosing your particular organization, whether it be a business or a nonprofit. It seems like there are sometimes systemic issues that are built into an organ that may be causing some of this. So that's my next question. Are there other systemic factors perhaps, that could be causing even the most successful leaders and the most successful nonprofits to still struggle with their staff buy in today? What have you found in that one?
- [09:33]
Dave Garrison
Yeah, systemic issues are, for example, not really having a clear process for identifying how we want employees to match our purpose and values as opposed to match our skill set? So we'll do a lot of interviewing for Skillset. Oh, they've done bookkeeping for five years, so they're going to be a good bookkeeper. The question to be asking in the interview process, and you'll get that person, but then there'll be turnover. So you create turnover by not having a system for clearly identifying the skills and the attitudes of the people you want to hire, number one. And that is a part and parcel of not having a process for asking behavioral based questions. Hey, here's how we're changing the world in our nonprofit. How do you see yourself in it? What does this mean to you? Well, here are some of our values. Can you tell me about a time when you were challenged employing that value or tell me how you live that value in your life? So let's interview people for alignment with our purpose and values and let the resume speak to do they have the skills or not? That's important, but it's not important in terms of predicting who's going to stay. And so the cost of having to re interview and retrain is not just the hours involved, it's the drag on the organization because people have better things to do.
- [10:55]
Rob Harder
Definitely. Well, one of the things I like about your approach is you're going to really put some measurement data, or measurable data, I should say, into this book. So maybe you could share a little bit about that. What are some of the financial and organizational impacts of high turnover, missed targets, perhaps poor performance because of at the root, it's really disengagement. Could you give us some measurable data that really, again, nonprofit leaders and board members for that matter, could really measure to say, hey, there's something off and it may go right back to disengagement.
- [11:24]
Dave Garrison
It's like a trick question because unfortunately most of us don't ask about that data, nor are we that aware of the data because it doesn't always show up in the P and L as cost of low buy in. It never shows up as a line. And you don't see it on the balance sheet. What you see is our contributions were down. The store that we've set up as a charity is not making as much money or had less traffic that we see. So I think if I was a board member or an executive, I would want to take a look at turnover trends. I would take a look at sick days. I would take a look at things like employees showing up late for work or having long lunches. And as importantly, I would look at qualitative data, which is what is the experience of the employees. So I would ask people questions like hey, and I'm assuming a trusting environment, but I would say, hey, I'm really curious. You know, it's after church and you're going to the coffee after church. And somebody says, hey, what's it like there? What is it? You're going to tell them to describe what it's like here. And what do you think people, what do you think would keep people here? What kind of people do you think would be attracted to our place? And you're going to learn a ton about your organization and your opportunities.
- [12:47]
Rob Harder
I like that, that's a great one. That's a good opportunity. So I challenge my listeners to look for those opportunities right in their own organization. Particularly if you're a board member listening, I think that's a good way to go about it. Okay, so when it comes to solutions now, there's certainly typical and traditional solutions such as more benefits, perks, other incentives that people often give to their employees to keep them. You're find, I mean that are they're no longer effective or not as effective as they used to be in creating genuine employee engagement. So what would you recommend if you can't pull those levers, what are the other things that work better?
- [13:22]
Dave Garrison
Yeah, if we go back to the it's not about money. Let me tell you a quick story from a for profit company. But I think the same is true regardless of sector. They did a survey of employees who left and they said you can only choose one reason. Here are 100 reasons. And my boss's poor communications was tied with wages on why they left. And then they went back to their bosses and they said, bosses, can you tell us why you think this person left? 100% of the bosses said wages. And so we don't know what employees are experiencing. And the story we make up is it's about money, it's about the ping pong table, it's about the Friday lunches. And it's not. And it's not that money is not important. It's not that Friday lunches aren't appreciated, they are. But that's not what buy in is about. Buying in is about the ways as a leader that you allow people to share and apply their unique experiences and insights. You know, I'm a pilot and one of the things I learned as a pilot is you have a six. And the six is what you can't see. See. And my six is different than your six. And so, Rob, together we can see things more clearly than either one of us alone. And in the book we talk about this concept that all of us are smarter than any of us. And if you believe that, then the question is what systems can I employ to capture all the best thinking without bringing the business to a Grinding halt or saying this is just a we're going to vote for the, for the idea most of us agree with, which is, you know, interesting. But that's bringing us to the lowest common denominator. It's not about consensus, it's about getting the best thinking using really tight criteria. We talk in the book the buy in Advantage about drama free problem solving, drama free problem solving. And that is that requires a leader to be really clear on what the desired outcome is. What is it that we want to experience as a result of whatever decision we make and then talk to the team about what's the problem getting in our way of that. Which is different than the leader saying, I think I have a solution. If you start with your solution, you're cutting my experience out of it totally. And the organization is blinded by your six different than that is. You know, I've given this some thought and here's some criteria. Where's the checklist in my head for what grade looks like? I'm curious to know what you think it is. And I'll give you a real world example of this very, very talented CEO is referenced in the book. Came back from a board meeting into an executive team breakout. And we're sitting at a five star hotel, ironically in Park City, Utah. And he says, hey, hey, before we get started, I'm thinking about adding somebody to the senior team. And I looked at the faces of the other members sitting in the room and they were all sort of, what do you mean? It's like when you bring a new kid home from the hospital and the older kids say, what's this all about? At first it was exciting and now it's like, what are you doing? And so I said, do you have somebody in mind? And he said, yes, I do. And I said, before you tell us, have you given us a lot of thought? And this leader is very thoughtful. I knew the answer would be yes. And it was. He'd given a lot of thought. And I said, I'm really curious to know not who the person is. What did you consider? And he said, here's what I considered. People who work hard, people who think differently than the people on our team today, people who are respected in the organization. And I said, awesome. And I said to the team, okay, if our desired outcome was to add one person to the team, take a minute and consider on your own what other things would be on your checklist of selecting that right person. And they quietly wrote down their own ideas and then I had them shout them out. And we came up with about eight criteria. And then I said, okay, given these eight criteria, start giving me names. And they gave me about 10 names. So I looked back at the CEO and I said, okay, do you want to tell us who you had in mind? And he said, no, I want to give it some more thought. Because he had the benefit of additional criteria from his team. So all of us smarter than any of us, and he had the maturity and the wisdom not to have the need to convince his team that he was right.
- [17:53]
Rob Harder
That's a great example, actually. That's really, really helpful. We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofit's donations? Well, look no further than Donorbox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations, and simplifies giving for your supporters. With Donorbox, you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations, and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is www.donorbox.org. okay, so maybe this is to build off of that. Say you're a board member and maybe there's trouble on a nonprofit team, the executive director, CEO doesn't see it, is not getting this feedback that you're talking about, doesn't maybe, maybe they believe on paper about, you know, we're smarter as all of us versus just one of us. What would a board member do? How would a board member, you know, be able to manage a situation like that with an executive director that perhaps has some blind spots and is not helping, you know, the team really move forward?
- [19:12]
Dave Garrison
Rob, I smile because I've been on the board and I've encountered those situations. And what I can tell you not to do is to tell the executive director, we've got a problem and you need to do something about it. That's not the way we're going to really address this issue. Instead, it's to say, I'm really curious to know in a one on one to say with the executive director, I'm really curious to know, what do you look for that indicates to you that we have a healthy team? So ask the executive director, in effect, what is on your checklist. And I'm going to say, if the executive director does not agree with your initial assessment, they have an unhealthy team, they're using different criteria. It doesn't mean they're right, you're right, or anybody's right. So what you do is validate their criteria and then as a board member, say, would you be willing to consider some additional criteria and discuss your additional criteria and then ask the executive director to think about it and have a follow up conversation so they can consider it. And the other thing is, as painful as it is just for financial reasons and ego reasons, bring in an outside resource because you, you do not want to be in the position of being a board fix it person because you're going to be less effective in providing leadership and input to the executive director.
- [20:32]
Rob Harder
That's wise. No, it's a great, great idea. Great suggestion. I think that's wonderful. Obviously you do that work. Exactly. So you, you've done that many times.
- [20:40]
Dave Garrison
Okay, call Dr. Rod, call Dr. Rod.
- [20:42]
Rob Harder
I don't know about that. We both, you can call both of us. Right.
- [20:45]
Dave Garrison
All right.
- [20:45]
Rob Harder
So for my listeners, how can leaders turn the challenge of high staff turnover into opportunities for growth and innovation? What I'm looking at here is like, you can see something that could be really difficult. Maybe the executive director finally realizes, wow, we have a lot of turnover. This is not good. But maybe you could turn that into an opportunity for growth and further innovation than to reestablish in a sense the organization or the business for that matter. How would a leader do that?
- [21:10]
Dave Garrison
I would think about it this way. One is accept the fact that it's not necessarily money, the odds are it is not money, and then accept the fact you do not have the answers and it's not up to you, executive director, to come up with solutions. So if, and if we can get past those points, which are sometimes hard because of ego, and you know, I have the most experience here and I know more than any of my team members here, then I think it's a matter of using the process of saying, look to your team, the costs of turnover to us are enormous. It's stressing all of us. So I'm curious to know, if we were to create a dream world where our turnover fell in half, what problems would we be overcoming? What is causing the turnover in your mind? Giving them a day or two to think about it, then come together and just list out all the problems that people come up with and then ask them to prioritize. If there were one problem we could address that would make the biggest difference, what is that problem, and then go to town creating criteria, coming up with solutions, and using the drama free problem solving system in the book, you can DIY it. I'd also, you know, I'd have the team members do the assessment that's in the book and collectively identify here are issues. Because it's not about pay, it's not about anybody's ill intent, it's not about. It's not a good organization. But people have expectations from the experience of the organization that are not being met. But what are they? We don't know, but we can find out.
- [22:54]
Rob Harder
Love that. No, that's great. Excellent. And maybe you've already kind of done a little bit of this, but could you give us another example of a leader, or an organization for that matter, that has really successfully turned around their staff engagement issues using the Prince principles that you put out in your book?
- [23:09]
Dave Garrison
Yes. There's a company that this is in a for profit segment, but the concept is absolutely dead on. He approached me, really experienced leader, and he said, look, I am being asked to make a significant increase in my profits. And I've looked in every corner, I've cut every expense, there's nothing else I can do. What do you got for me? And I said, what's your turnover rate? And he said it was something like 50 or 60% a year. And I said, let's cut the turnover rate in half using tools that we talk about in the book. And in his case, it was basically using this tool of discovery sessions where we asked the people doing the work, how could we do this more simply, how could we do it better? How could we do it more easily? What's getting in our way? And ask the people doing the work what their opinion is and ask them to be responsible for making the changes different than, hey, you give me your ideas, I'll consider them, I'll evaluate them and I'll implement them. This is not what this process is. It is. I trust you, I trust your experience, I trust your wisdom. Because everybody has experience to offer whether or not they know anything about your nonprofit. They've got life experience, which is valuable. So ask people how we could do it better. You know, in Japan, after the first week on the job, the Japanese companies will ask the new employee, what can we do better?
- [24:36]
Rob Harder
Oh, that's interesting. Okay.
- [24:37]
Dave Garrison
After a week, you don't have to wait five years to be an experienced person or have a title or be the director of philanthropy or anything else. You can be there a week and you see stuff. So how do we tap into that? And so addressing the turnover issue is really addressing the buy in issue. Addressing the buy in issue is recognizing people want to have impact, they want to contribute, they want to be heard, and it costs the nonprofit nothing.
- [25:05]
Rob Harder
That's good. Well, I like that. That's great. Well, okay, let's get to your book. We've referenced your book many times. Maybe talk quickly. How did you go about deciding to write on this topic itself? What prompted you to write the book that you did?
- [25:18]
Dave Garrison
Yeah, great question. The long answer is it's been eight years in the making and I wrote something I thought was a masterpiece. It was the best book ever written a couple years ago. And my coach, everybody needs a coach. My coach said it's a really good book and it's about five books in one. Let's pull it from the publisher and let's rewrite one book. And what we realized was during COVID Covid was accelerating this buy in issue that had been around for a couple of decades. And I had met a lot of leaders on the journey who were doing things to address buy in. And those are the stories we put together and the principles. And so what I really wanted was a DIY manual that was timeless. It's not about COVID it's about leaders journey to generate buy in to create game changing results. And so I really wanted a how to manual. And so I was really fortunate to be connected to amazing editors, a great publishing, great distribution company, and it is now going to see the light of day in June of this year and be an audio book and also in the Kindle edition. And so I'm excited for people to get it, read it, but most importantly, put it to work. It's not about selling books, it's about changing the world. And that is, that is a true statement.
- [26:43]
Rob Harder
I love that. A lot of truly, I love that that resonates with this podcast. You know, our goal is to, you know, inspire others to make the world better, you know, wherever world they're serving. Love that. When you did your research, what was the biggest surprise as you put together this book?
- [26:58]
Dave Garrison
I think a surprise was that there are about a quarter of the leaders I would talk to who get this intuitively. And the others, About a third of the others were on the fence. Yeah, maybe I'll try it. And a third were, nope. My job is to tell them the answers. They come to me with a problem, I tell them what the answer is. That's the way it works around here. It's worked fine for us for all this time, and it's still going to work. And there were people, there were probably a third of the leaders we talked to in successful organizations who said, no, thank you, not for me. I've got this. And when we hear the words, I Got this. We run because it tells us they're not interested in tapping into the genius of others and they do not believe that all of us are smarter than any of us. So the journey was let's do a DIY manual.
- [27:49]
Rob Harder
Uh huh. That's good. Well, that's excellent. Well again, how can people connect with you if they'd like to connect with you and or get the book? You already mentioned that you've got it in many places, but how best can they. Is there a website perhaps link that you want to give? People can check it out. Yeah.
- [28:02]
Dave Garrison
They can go to www buy inbook B-Y-I n b O-O-K.com and they can download a sample chapter and they can learn more about the book and where to get the book. You can connect with myself and importantly my team who makes the magic happen at www.garrisongrowth G A R R I S O N Growth G R O W T h dot com and we love to hear stories of success. Please share stories of success. We'd love to hear about that. We love to see people change and achieve potential they didn't think was possible. That's the jam.
- [28:40]
Rob Harder
Yeah, love that. And I know you're active on LinkedIn. I know we've recently become friends. So that's another spot they can look for you is LinkedIn and that's found a lot of people have done that when it comes to business work. Well, Dave, thanks so much again. Thanks for writing the book, thanks for sharing your insights on the podcast, and thanks for all you're doing to really make organizations and leaders better.
- [28:56]
Dave Garrison
Thanks for having me. And please take the first step to generating Buy in.
- [29:02]
Rob Harder
Hey friends. Well, I wanted you to know that this podcast can be found on itunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google Podcasts, and wherever you listen to other podcasts. I also want to encourage you to like subscribe and share this podcast with others. This will actually help us get this great content out to more nonprofit leaders just like you. You can also join the nonprofit leadership podcast community, find other resources and interviews of past guests, all on my website, nonprofit leadershippodcast.org well, thanks again for listening and until next time, keep making your world better. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox, DonorBox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.