5 Ways to Support Leadership Development in Your Nonprofit
Are your leaders the best they can be? Or are there areas where they are lagging behind a little bit?
My guess is they're somewhere in the middle.
You probably have leaders who excel and leaders who struggle. And even those who excel probably have room for improvement.
So today we’re talking about why your team’s leadership skills might be lagging and what we can do about it.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
02:45 Unclear expectations for leaders
06:02 Lack of training and professional development
09:09 Ongoing support and reinforcement
10:52 Stress and burnout
12:48 External barriers outside of your leader’s control
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5 Ways to Support Leadership Development in Your Nonprofit
Pretty much everyone will agree that leadership skills are important.
Bad leaders result in:
Staff turnover
Miserable workplaces
Unattained goals
Confusion
Chaos
And so much more
So if bad leaders can impact the workplace that much, it makes sense that we want to invest in leadership development. And most of us do. Yet the 2024 HR Trends Report shares that only 32% of their survey respondents felt their office workers were highly proficient in leadership skills and competencies.
So what about that other 68%?
Well, they just might be your bad leaders. I’m kidding. Because here's the thing, most people aren't bad leaders. They just aren't capable and competent in the leadership skills you need them to have.
I've worked with nonprofits around the country to define the leadership skills that are important in their workplace and then to develop those leadership skills through training and leadership development programs. So I want to use that experience as we explore why your leader’s leadership skills might be lagging and 5 ways to support leadership development in your nonprofit.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
1) Setting Clear Expectations for Nonprofit Leaders
The first reason leadership skills might be lagging is unclear expectations.
The biggest killer of performance is unclear expectations.
People can't meet your expectations if they don't know what they are. I won't arrive at your intended destination if you don't tell me what that destination is.
Many times we just haven't made it clear what we want our leaders to do or not do.
What does accessible leadership look like?
What does it feel like?
What is it not?
So if we find that unclear expectations are the issue, what can we do about it?
We set clear expectations.
How do we do that?
Competency models are a great place to start.
Identify the skills you expect - those are your competencies.
Identify what these skills look like in action - those are your behavioral indicators. They show what proficiency looks like with each skill.
Here's an example:
You want your leaders to be more adaptable to change and to help their teams navigate change too. So you identify adaptability as a key competency for your leaders.
Now, what does that look like? How will you know when they are being adaptable?
Maybe it's that they are testing out new ideas and new approaches in their work. They're trying things.
Maybe it's that they're able to remain calm when things are unclear or ambiguous.
Maybe it's that they are adjusting their team's priorities, resources, deliverables, or timelines based on those changing needs.
Whatever adaptability looks like in your organization can be defined really clearly in your competency model.
Now everyone knows what that expectation is, and you can build that into your hiring practices, your goal setting, your leadership development initiatives, your performance evaluations, and lots of other places.
I create competency models for nonprofits, so I have quite a few podcasts on the topic:
Episode 51: How to Use Your Competency Model to Develop a Comprehensive Training Program
Episode 39: Ask These Two Questions to Identify Your Nonprofit's Core Competencies
Episode 20: How to Determine Which Competencies Are Right for You
Episode 19: One Nonprofit's Honest Opinion after 6 Months with a Competency Model
Episode 18: Four Reasons Your Competencies Don't Work
2) Training and Professional Development for Leaders
Another reason your leaders might be lagging a bit behind is a lack of training or professional development. Your leaders need to have the opportunity to attend training or professional development.
It might be training you create - this happens a lot in larger nonprofits.
It might be training you purchase and provide from larger vendors.
It might be a professional development stipend that you provide to your leaders.
Whatever it is, it should be tailored to those skills that you identified as important. If innovation isn't important, you most likely won't spend time and money developing an innovation training for your leader. But if collaboration is important, you'll want to make sure you're building those skills. And training is a great way to do that.
So what do you do if you find your leaders are experiencing a lack of training? You have a few options.
Professional development stipend: You can provide the stipend to your leaders and they can find professional development that will help them develop in this way. This is great because it gives them autonomy in how they use the funds. But it can be challenging to make sure what they spend that money on is aligned with the skills you need them to have.
Off-the-shelf products: This is great because it's likely already been tested and has results. But again, it's not going to be custom to your organization so it might not be exactly what you need and it might not have the exact proficiency or behavioral indicator that you're looking for.
Create your own training: Get your L&D team to work creating a custom leadership training or find a partner who can customize one for you. This is what my agency does, and we thrive in this kind of work.
3) Providing Leaders with Ongoing Support and Reinforcement after Training
Another reason your leaders may be lagging is that they don't have ongoing support and reinforcement after training.
Change is hard for so many reasons.
If you're familiar with change management models, you’ll know that we have to share
What the change is
Why it's happening
How to be successful with it
But we also have to tap into their motivations and help them sustain the change. Our training isn't typically enough to change behavior on its own. Once they are back on the job, we need to provide ongoing support and reinforcement.
If you find that this ongoing support and reinforcement piece is what's lacking in your organization, here are a few things you can do.
You can leverage a peer network so your leaders can rely on each other to solve on-the-job challenges that come up when they're back in their normal routines.
You can provide a coach or a mentor to help them brainstorm solutions to the challenges they face.
You can follow up with them after the training with reminder videos, resources, or tips and tricks.
You could offer incentives as they make the change. You can make it fun. Maybe there's a challenge, or you've been able to gamify it in some way.
These are all ways to help provide that ongoing support and reinforcement that's often needed.
4) Stress and Burnout in Leaders
Another reason why leadership skills are lagging is stress and burnout.
Worker burnout seems to be at an all time high. Gallup did a study and found that of their respondents, 52% reported that they had experienced a lot of stress the previous day.
Gallup also found that managers, your leaders, are more likely to be burned out than non-managers. They are feeling the impacts of stress and they are burned out.
So what can you do?
Take a step back and help your staff implement some stress management techniques. One example is encouraging short breaks throughout the day.
Check out these two episodes that provide some essential insights for burnout in the workplace:
5) Outside Barriers to Leadership Development
One final reason your leader's skills might still be lagging is due to barriers outside of their control. Sometimes we have systems or processes in place that actually prevent our new expectations from succeeding.
Let me give you an example:
I was driving to drop off my youngest child at daycare recently, and the roads were completely blocked off. Now let's say that part of my job was dropping off the child at daycare.
The expectations that I was given said to drive the baby to daycare, park in front of the daycare, and carry the child in. Clear expectations.
I understood those expectations. I had the training I needed. I knew exactly what I needed to do and I was capable of doing it. Maybe I even had the support and reinforcement I needed. As I'm driving along, I get to the street to turn and it's blocked off.
Now what do I do?
I can try a different path or I can park on a different street and walk farther which would work, but the expectation was to park in front of the daycare and carry the child and so an external barrier prevented me from meeting that expectation. It was outside my control.
While these barriers are often outside of the individual leader’s control, there are times when the organization can address them. We can change a process or reimagine a system. It's complex, but we can do it. And we can set our leaders up for success.
Those are the five reasons your leader’s skills might be lagging and how to support their leadership development. If you feel like your leader’s skills are lagging, do a little investigating to find out why. And then work to solve that particular problem.
To hear the full conversation I had on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 71.
The Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective
Do you wish you could connect with other nonprofit learning and development leaders?
I know what it feels like to want someone to bounce ideas off of and to learn from, someone who really understands you and your work. Imagine if you could have a simple way to meet people in the field, ask questions, and share information.
That's why I created the Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective – so nonprofit L&D, talent management, and DEI leaders can connect with each other quickly and easily in a virtual space.
When you join this community, you will walk away with a new, diverse, and powerful network – and a sounding board for your staff development needs.
So if you're ready to exchange ideas and collaborate with your peers, come join the Nonprofit L&D Collective.
