Brooke Richie Babbage (0:00)

I know you're not working as hard as you are in your nonprofit to stay small and keep struggling. You want to have real impact, spark change and lead a team that feels like it's moving forward with purpose. But to do that, you need a strategy and a roadmap. I have a new quiz to help you. Take two minutes, answer six questions and get a simple custom roadmap that tells you exactly what to focus on next so you can grow your nonprofit without chaos. Go to Brookerichybabbage.com gameplan Are you ever frustrated by that one person on your leadership team who is supposed to be operating at the director level or the C suite level but isn't quite getting the job done and you can't figure out what the problem is? This is actually really common and today I'm sharing a simple but powerful three part conversation that will help you diagnose the root of the issue so you can have the leadership team you actually need. Welcome to the Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast. I'm Brooke Richie Babbage. I've been in the social impact game for 25 years as a social justice lawyer turned two time nonprofit founder and leader turned growth strategist and coach for leaders around the country. I grew my nonprofit from me and an intern in a tiny closet to a high impact seven figure organization. And along the way I learned so, so much about how to build an organization that has real impact and how to do it without burning out. In this podcast I share the nuts and bolts of all of it so you can do that too. We dive into the mindset, strategies and tactics of how to scale a high impact organization and how to do it in a way that's truly sustainable. So almost every executive director, actually probably not almost every executive director that I have ever worked with has at some point faced the challenge of managing a leadership team where not everyone at the director level or at the C suite level is operating where the executive director wants them to or where they really need to, right, to help move the organization forward. And the problem is it's not always clear why. A lot of times the reaction is to say this isn't the right person. And that's often rooted in fear, right? Hiring, especially if this person is new to the role, either they've been promoted internally or you've hired them from externally. People you get nervous, right? You're like did I make the right choice? And so very often the knee jerk reaction is to assume that the issue is about the person's competency or fit for the Role. But that's not always the case. Sometimes it is, more often than not. What I have found is that the root of the problem is some combination of three things. And I'm going to talk through those three things today and how you can sort of suss out which of the three things is driving the lack of role fit, the lack of performance at the level that you want. I use something that I call the Leadership Performance Matrix. It is really simple, but I have found it to be a very powerful way to get to the bottom of whether someone on your leadership team is set up for success and if not, how to fix it so that you can actually have a director level team, a C suite team that is supporting you as the executive director in moving the organization forward, holding what they're supposed to be holding, owning what they're supposed to be owning, and really, as my dear friend Kemi says, holding top with you. So this framework, the Leadership Performance Matrix, the goal is to give you sort of a thoughtful, structured, simple analysis of what's really going on with the person on your team before taking steps like maybe restructuring roles, letting people go. I know that that can be really paralyzing for folks, the idea of having to fire or hire or move people around. And a lot of times when I've walked people through this matrix, they realize, oh, actually the person's fine, we just need to clarif, move things around, et cetera. Right? We can work with what we have and actually get where we want to go without drastic measures. So that's my goal, right? Leadership Performance matrix is to help you get where you want to go with your team without drastic measures. So let's talk through this matrix. This is a tool to use when someone on your leadership team is not meeting expectations. It almost always comes down to a problem in one of three areas. Clarity. So there's a lack of shared understanding of what success for that role looks like. Motivation. They're clear about what success looks like, but they don't truly want to do the work right. They're not bought into the definition of success. And this can come from lots of places or ability. They lack the skills or the resources or the infrastructure support to execute effectively. So clarity, motivation and ability are usually at the root. One or some combination of those three are at the root of a problem where a leadership team is not meeting expectations. Now, each of these elements, each of these things has to be there for peak performance. So let's break down each part of the framework and how you can apply it. So for each of these areas of focus, you want to structure your conversation. This is designed to be a conversation with the team member, want to structure it as a series of questions. I find that questions both get us out of the telling mode. Right. Our goal is not to tell them where you think the breakdown is. It's for us to learn and understand both what is going on. Right. What's the. Why is there a gap between what you're doing and what I need you to do? And you will also learn about your team member. Right? How they work, what they need, how they show up, et cetera. I also think that questions, particularly in a management relationship, help the person you're talking to. You're asking to own the process of diagnosing and responding to whatever the problem is that you're talking about. Okay, so let's talk about each of these elements one at a time. So the first is clarity. This is a shared understanding of what success looks like in that role. When the people on your team know exactly what's expected of them, how success is going to be measured, and how their role actually contributes to the organization's priorities, goals for the year, mission, generally, how it fits, then they're much more able to move forward with confidence and focus. They are able to, as you want people at the director level to be able to do, have the authority and the autonomy to make decisions. That's really to own and make decisions. That's really what you're trying to get them to do. And so clarity about the scope of their work, the scale of their work is really, really important. Without it, even the most capable, skilled, competent people are going to second guess their decisions. They're going to misprioritize tasks, they're going to spend time on the wrong things, they're going to keep knocking on your door, proverbial or real, to say, hey, what do you think about this? Will you check this? You are going to feel like you are still holding the weight of strategy, of vision, of planning for them, because it's clear in your minds. So a couple things that are not clarity or that don't solve this problem, a job description. So let's say you're talking about someone that you have just hired or that's come onto the team very recently and you have given them, you know, their job description and in it it has a hopefully clear description of what the role is and the deliverables. That's not actually what we're talking about here. What the people on your leadership team need is a clear understanding of what success looks like for the work they actually have to do, job description is going to be broader than what they're actually working on. What you need to do is filter the job description or make sure that the job description or their understanding of the role generally is contextualized within the work plan for the year. So everyone on your leadership team has to know what are the organizational priorities for the year? Generally, what are the organizational goals for the year and how does the work that I'm doing fit? These are the things I need to accomplish this year for my role to be filled successfully. This is what you, as my manager, as the leader of the organization, this is what you're looking for from me. This is how you want me to show up. This is what your expectations are, this is what your needs are, and it's very specific to the work that they have to do that quarter or that year. So I wanted to highlight that having a well crafted job description is not going to get you all the way there. We're really talking at the level of work plan okrs, right? Outcomes and key results, specificity and precision are really, really clear. This is also where you want to share. In addition to what success looks like and goals, priorities, et cetera, this is also where you want to make sure that you have shared any intangible expectations. So what does being a leader at your organization look like in practice? What does it feel like? Are things like collaboration and listening and managing the people that report to them, showing up for their team in a certain way. These are parts of how you are measuring their success in this role. So that clarity is really important. And the guiding question for this part of the conversation, and I always recommend starting with clarity. The guiding question is, can you articulate to me what success looks like in this role? Right. And what you're looking for is signs that they maybe seem uncertain about their work priorities and goals. You're looking for signs that the work that they're doing, the way that they articulate success, doesn't actually match what you would say. And you're looking for gaps in their ability to make decisions. Right. Maybe they are defining success up to a point and you are comfortable with or would like them to make decisions beyond that point. Right. The scope of their authority and autonomy is bigger or broader than they are articulating. Because that last part, that gap, is where they're going to seek reassurance. They're going to come to you with questions. Right. So closing that gap and making sure that they have the full authority and autonomy that you want them to have and what that means and what they are accountable for. So if you find that there are gaps in clarity, that they're articulating a different definition of success or a smaller scope of authority and autonomy than you have in your own mind, there are a few things that you can do to fix it. You want to define clear outcomes, not just tasks. This is another difference between say a job description, which is sort of deliverables and work and a work plan. What are the outcomes, the end results, what does great look like for their role? You want to make sure that this is all written somewhere. I'm a big fan of writing things down. Written expectations, written goals, OKRs, definitions of success reduce ambiguity. And third, I always love using what we call a playback test. Right. So at the end of this part of the conversation, just ask them to play back. So now how would you describe success right now? What are your understandings of my expectations for this role and how you show up as a leader? What did, what did you hear me say? What is your understanding of this part of the conversation? Okay, so that's clarity. The second, once you've checked that box, right, and everybody's clear. So you know the problem isn't lack of clarity. The second thing you want to look at is their motivation, and this is the murkiest one because you have to rely on the person that you're talking to's ability to self reflect and their willingness to be honest and upfront with you about motivation or lack of motivation. You can have the most skilled person on your leadership team. You can have the most clarity in the world. But if they don't feel personally invested, at best, you're going to get a bare minimum. You're going to get people who feel stressed when it's maybe out of alignment or the amount of work that they have to do, they're going to burn out much more easily because there's a lack of alignment or investment with the work. At worst, this can show up. And I've seen this a lot as disengagement, right? Just an odd, you know, missing deadlines, haphazard work, just total disengagement. So the key guiding question here is, are you genuinely excited by and invested in these outcomes? Right. So we are clear about the outcomes, the end results, what success looks like, what's exciting to you about this? Are you invested? Do these mean as much to you personally as they do to me? Right? I've articulated my definition of success. We are clear about that. Do you see yourself in that why do you want to achieve those? And that is a really important part of this puzzle because it has to be meaningful to them. That is really. Clarity is, is really important. But motivation drives the work, the energy, right? That's where you get the, the leaning in, right? That's the all hands on deck, the work that has to be done. So when motivation isn't there, when lack of investment is something that you are seeing, it's going to be really hard to get that person to own the work because they don't own it really in their heart, right? They don't feel it. So some of the things you're looking for here, signs of like a motivation gap, are folks are doing the bare minimum. They are on the verge of burnout, but it is not necessarily clear why. And this is a tricky one because different people burn out different in different ways. They hit their walls in different. For different reasons. But I've had an interesting number of conversations, more than in the past, but recently, an interesting number of conversations with leaders who are feeling like they're getting feedback from one. There's one organization where it's two people on their leadership team that they're just like really, really overworked and there is a lot of work. But in both of these organizations that I'm thinking about, the leaders are like, yeah, it's not that bad, right? And they feel really bad because obviously you cannot disagree with what someone else is telling you is their reality. And part of the reason that the folks on their team could be feeling burnout is and in one instance they've had this conversation and this absolutely was what was. What was driving this or causing this. There was a real misalignment between what was on the person's plate to do and what they really cared about doing. Right. They had come into the organization in one role with one set of responsibilities. And their role has sort of morphed over time. Right? I bet this sounds familiar to many of you listening. The role had morphed and this new role that they were settling into just isn't what they woke up thinking about in the morning. It just wasn't as exciting. And they hadn't really had a space to say that because there had never been a formal shift or redefinition of their role. And so they were sort of struggling to care, to put it. To put it really frankly. And so when they had this conversation, when the leader had this three part conversation and they got to the motivation part, what actually came out was that the person was feeling not so much outside of their comfort zone, but just their zone of alignment, right? And so they were able to have a conversation to bring them back into alignment. And it meant that the leader needed to think differently about her org chart or her role chart. But that was okay because she really valued this person on her leadership team. And once they realized what the root of the like disconnect was, the person actually stopped feeling quite as burned out and drained. And they were, they are now able to work much better together. Setting the right priorities and goals and focusing on the right activities is the only way to make sure that you're not wasting time and money as you grow. That clarity is what we do Inside the Next Level nonprofit. You get a step by step growth plan for how to grow your budget, build a strong team, and increase your impact in the next 12 months. Plus you get expert guidance, thought partnership coaching and hands on support to execute. From professional development for your team to discounts on work with incredible consultants. Apply and let's see if we can help you build a stronger organization in the next year. Brooke Ritchie Babbage.com Next Level Nonprofit so here's how you address this, right? First you want to set the whole conversation up as a safe space and as a space where you can both be frank and honest with one another. Kind and firm is what I always say. Say what you mean and say it kindly and you can have an honest conversation, right? So you want to be able to basically say, look, if X, Y and Z is an A plus version of this role, we both understand that. Do you want that? Do you want to do what it takes to get there? Why? What part of this feels intrinsically motivating to you? The other thing you want to do in this part of the conversation is get really curious. This is one of the reasons that I like framing. This is a series of questions. What about this is exciting to you and what about this is draining to you? Because not every part of what we do is going to be intrinsically motivating. And that's just work, right? That's just part of achieving an end goal. But knowing and having space for the folks on your team to say to you, I love 90% of what I do, I get it, I'm working hard. But this 10% stuff, right? And so if there are a week or two where the 10% is more of what I'm doing, you might notice a difference in how I show up. And I'm working on it, right? If you can have that frank conversation and they can say that to you at least you understand and can lean into solutions together. And then third, if you need to, like the leader that I shared the example of adjust roles when possible, right? You want to get the most joy and purpose and motivation out of the folks on your team because people who are working from a place of alignment and joy work better, right? Impact is easier, it feels better. This is mission aligned work. And so if people are feeling out of alignment and you are able to adjust your role chart so that they can be more in alignment, so everyone on your team is as close to alignment and intrinsically motivated as possible. So then the third piece of the framework is ability. And just like with the other two, you know, you can have some combination of clarity and motivation, but people are going to struggle if they don't have the skills or they don't have the resources. And that sometimes is organizational to execute like they just cannot do the thing that they have been asked to do. So once clarity and motivation are clear and the order is important here, right? Once you've checked the box of clarity, check the box of motivation, then it's time to assess whether there's actually a capacity gap. And if there is, the solution can be anything from targeted training or coaching to restructuring responsibilities. You also want to look at structural solves or structural supports if that is at the root of the problem, right? Better tools. A person is not getting the work done because too much of their job is manual. Right? This came up in an interesting conversation a couple weeks ago where someone on the leadership team was like, look, more of my job needs to be automated. It should be automated, but I am stuck doing A, B, C and D and that takes hours of my week. So I'm not able to step into the strategy role because this tactical stuff isn't taken care of. And we don't have to hire a new person. We just need better systems. Right? So the clarity was there about what she needed to accomplish in her role. She was totally on board, but she didn't have the structural support to get there. Right. So this piece is really important because we can either go right to skills and ability or we might push on something like motivation. We might push on, you know, work planning so that the clarity's there and not address skill gaps because they may not be as immediately obvious, particularly when we're talking about a leadership team level person. I find looking at infrastructure and coaching to be really, really important. Both of those feel messier. Right. It isn't as simple as you need to learn how to use spreadsheets. And so we're going to get you a training, but what you're doing is building the capacity of the person to step fully into their role. And so the question here is really simple. Do you have what you need? Right. Some of this is going to require the person you're talking to to reflect on their own skills and skill gaps. And I think this intersects really well with the kinds of performance evaluation structures that span throughout the year and really encourage people to reflect back to their managers where there are skill gaps. So you're asking here, do you have the skills? Do you need training or coaching? Do you need infrastructure? And if you remember at the beginning of this episode I said one of the benefits of a question based conversation framework or structure is that it really puts the onus on the person that you're talking to to own the change. This is one of the places where this is really immediately obvious, right? You are saying to the person, I need you. Since you are clear about what an A plus version looks like and you're in, right, you want to do it. I need you to identify the gaps, tell me what you need in skills and resources so that you can perform at the highest level, right? So that you can hit the A plus that we've talked about. So a couple of things I want to highlight here before we wrap up. First, when you're talking about ability, you want to differentiate between knowledge gaps and capacity gaps, right? Do they need more training or do they need more infrastructure and support? Are they simply overburdened? So that's a really important thing to distinguish between. Second, you want to think about how you can coach them, help them through reducing bottlenecks. So some of ability gaps have to do with spending time on tactical low value tasks instead of their core strengths. What kinds of skills training resources can the organization provide to remove those low value tactical tasks from their plate, right? Because again, we're talking about director level folks, they should be able to do the tasks. But generally speaking, people on your director level team, your directors, your C suite, strategy, planning, direction, vision, if they're doing these low level tactical things, that is very definitely an orange flag at best, usually a red flag that we want to get those tasks out of their way. And again, that's a structural support that they need. And finally, and I mentioned this, think about things like coaching and mentorship, some of the intangible capacity building that actually can fill in gaps around things like management, how to think about ownership, how to exercise authority. These are things that absolutely benefit from training and focus, targeted training and focus and support and often show up in the form of coaching and mentoring. So that's the three part sort of framework, the leadership performance matrix that walks you through a conversation with the folks on your leadership team to help diagnose and begin to address problems in performance and how people are showing up and making sure that there's alignment around expectations, motivation and ability. So I hope that this was helpful and I will see you back here next week for more Mastermind. Thanks so much for joining me this week. If you enjoy this podcast I would love for you to leave a rating and a review. I read every single one and they really do matter. I also share extra tidbits and resources building on what we talk about here in my newsletter Leadership Ford 32 1. You can sign up by texting the word impact to 6686 and finally, definitely check out the links and resources that I mentioned in this episode@brookrichybabbage.com podcast. See you next week.