Building Effective People Managers: A Comprehensive Guide for Nonprofit Leaders

Nov 17

how to build effective people managers in your nonprofit

Do you ever feel like you have to constantly babysit your team instead of focusing on your own job? It's like you can't take your eyes off them, so you always find yourself in their work and in their decisions, double-checking everything.

If that's your case, then this episode is for nonprofit leaders like you. I'm bringing five lessons from past clients and past podcast episodes to help you build high-performance nonprofit people managers.

This way, you'll get to finally operate as the leader and executive you are, and not the babysitter you've been forced to be.

▶️ Key Points:

0:01:20 What teams that need babysitting look like

0:04:14 Building trust

0:05:09 Providing clarity

0:05:55 Building skills

0:06:59 Developing your leaders

0:08:08 Using coaching techniques

When Nonprofit Growth Outpaces People Development

Episode 160 of Learning for Good addresses a pain point felt by many mission-driven leaders: the sense that while the nonprofit organization is growing, the people within it are struggling to keep pace. It is common to find oneself repeatedly fixing the same problems, or wondering how to build staff who are confident and capable enough to truly lead, rather than simply executing tasks. For many, the traditional training approaches—simply telling people what to do and how to do it—have proven ineffective.

The challenge of fostering consistency and reliable performance can often feel personal and demanding. Speaking from personal experience, raising three children has provided insight into this challenge. My youngest, a three-year-old, serves as a perfect, albeit exhausting, example: I refer to her as my "wild card." One moment, she is incredibly sweet and loving, the first to offer hugs, and genuinely caring for others. The next moment, if my eyes are momentarily diverted—perhaps to load the dishwasher—she might draw all over her sister’s notebook. Leave her alone for a few short minutes, and a book may be torn to pieces. She requires constant supervision, or "babysitting," because her behavior is inconsistent. However, I know this is temporary. I am teaching her and guiding her, and as she matures, she will make better choices.

The core problem, unfortunately, is that many nonprofit executives find themselves working with teams that require this very same level of "babysitting." The executive feels unable to take their eyes off the staff, unsure of what they will or won’t do, resulting in the executive constantly intervening in the staff’s work and decisions. This prevents the executive from operating strategically, the role they were truly meant for. The pressing need is for the teams to mature so that the leader has the necessary time and space to think and to lead. If this description resonates, this episode is specifically designed to bring forward lessons from past clients and podcast discussions to help in building people managers that are self-sufficient and do not require constant oversight.

It is time to let out a sigh of relief. The pathway to achieving aligned, efficient, and consistent teams is about to become much clearer. Organizations frequently approach us seeking team workshops because people managers are struggling, inconsistencies are widespread, and the executives lack the time to be strategic. This scenario presents an excellent opportunity for problem-solving, which involves peeling back the layers of organizational structure to find both the pain points and the opportunities for growth. This process allows for the creation of a clear roadmap designed to relieve the organizational tension they are experiencing. If this sounds like something you need, complete our form and we’ll be in touch with next steps.

Five Key Actions to Develop People Managers and Align Teams

While specific tailored support, such as a performance diagnostic and plan, is available for building teams that are aligned, efficient, and consistent, there are five key actions that executives can begin implementing today to foster high-performance teams.

Action 1: Prioritize Building Trust among Your Nonprofit Teams

The foundational step toward building independence and high performance is to prioritize building trust, both with teams and among team members. Trust is not merely a soft skill; it is a critical driver of organizational performance. A Forbes article cited a PwC survey that discovered that a significant 61% of employees reported that their ability to do their job is negatively impacted if they believe their employers do not trust them.

Trust is the essential ingredient that allows teams to collaborate far more effectively, feel confident taking smart risks, and innovate successfully. Trust allows the nonprofit executive to deliberately step back. When trust is high, less oversight and micromanagement are required. Even if the executive believes trust already exists within the organization, dedicating time and effort to strengthening this foundation is vital.

Action 2: Provide Clear Expectations for People Managers

The second action is to provide complete clarity regarding roles and expectations. People cannot perform consistently if they do not know what is expected of them. They need to understand what success looks like in their position and how their individual role connects to the larger mission and overall picture of the organization.

While this may sound obvious, and executives may feel that clarity is already present, the reality in many organizations is that confusion and chaos often arise from unspoken rules and undocumented processes. This lack of written or verbalized expectation forces nonprofit executives to step back in frequently to "save the day," often more than they would prefer. The strategic counter-action is to become absolutely clear, communicating expectations consistently, and providing ongoing, regular feedback to ensure that staff truly grasp the expectations set for them.

Action 3: Build Relevant People Manager Skills

The third action requires a slightly longer-term commitment: building relevant skills for people managers. I often see nonprofit teams struggling with core skills such as communication, collaboration, and effective decision-making. These are skills people managers are required to use daily, yet many organizations have never invested significant time in building these capabilities or defining what they look like in practice within their particular organizational context.

While staff members may possess some inherent level of communication skills, the executive must define and train for what effective communication looks like in their specific organization.

Workshops serve as an excellent mechanism for building these necessary skills. As people managers improve their abilities in communication, collaboration, and decision-making, the necessity for the nonprofit executive to become the bottleneck for every single decision diminishes. This allows the executive to allocate their time to tasks that only they are uniquely qualified to do. The ultimate goal is for the executive to spend their time in their "zone of genius," ensuring that all other aspects of the organization can operate smoothly and efficiently without their constant intervention.

Action 4: Turn People Managers into Leaders

To achieve organization-wide consistency and efficiency, the fourth action focuses on turning existing people managers into capable leaders. Nonprofits need a comprehensive leadership development program specifically designed for this conversion. It is a frequent challenge in nonprofit settings that individual contributors are promoted into people manager roles, often without receiving the real, structured support necessary for this new position. The expectations in a people manager role are fundamentally different from those of an individual contributor.

The consequence of this promotion gap is that managers often lack confidence and capability, frequently leading to burnout. This gap also results in inconsistencies and widespread challenges within the organization. By building a comprehensive leadership development program, managers are converted into genuine leaders, not just adequate people managers. This development drastically frees up the executive’s time in multiple ways. When middle managers lead effectively, they are equipped to handle team-level inconsistencies autonomously, making a significant positive difference for the nonprofit executive.

Action 5: Use Coaching to Support Ongoing Leadership Development

The final key action is to implement coaching techniques to support and improve ongoing performance over time. The typical approach involves the executive giving directives or solving problems for the staff. Instead, a coaching approach utilizing strategic, open-ended questions should be employed across the organization.

A few highly effective coaching questions are derived from the situation, behavior, and impact (SBI) model. These include:

What is your perception of the situation?
How are you responding to the situation?
What is the impact of that response?
What is the best possible outcome from here?

Using this coaching model allows the executive to uncover what is truly happening and what the potential impacts of various actions might be. This method successfully shifts the responsibility and capability development back onto the people managers. By coaching and guiding them using these techniques, performance issues are addressed directly and effectively. People managers are able to build necessary skills over time because they are actively involved in the process, which is essential for lasting development.

Lessons for Learning & Development Teams

Your executives want to step into the strategic role they were hired to do. If they are constantly pulled back into the day-to-day decisions other people can make, they won’t have the time or capacity to do that strategic work.

As an L&D pro, you want to show up as a strategic business partner. You want to bring value and show your worth. This is an area you can shine.

These five integrated actions—building robust trust, ensuring clarity, developing relevant skills, intentionally building people managers into capable leaders, and utilizing consistent coaching techniques for support—will transform your nonprofit’s people managers.

And this will position you as the smart, capable partner you are.

If you are in a nonprofit L&D role and you want to operate more strategically, join the Nonprofit L&D Collective and get access to a supportive network and opportunities for professional learning and growth.

To learn more about developing people managers so your executive team doesn’t have to babysit them, tune into episode 160 of the Learning for Good podcast.

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