Episode 29: Leadership and Location - Does it Matter?

Welcome to another edition of “Around with Randall”. Your weekly 10 to 12-minute podcast and making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. 

Thanks again for joining me here on “Around with Randall” -- excited about today's topic. We deal so much in this COVID world and the craziness that the last year, a little more than plus, has challenged us, with so much tactical today. It's going to have a tactical piece as it does at the end normally, but we're going to deal with a little bit higher level thought process and that's around leadership.

So, something happened this week that brought me to kind of like the 60% mark and then I read an article in the New York Times, that kind of carried me the way to my thoughts on today's podcast, at least the subject thereof. Let's start with the article written by Francesca Donner, “What Makes a Good Leader and Who Gets to be One?” There was a series of interesting thoughts on what she writes as research and information around leadership, and that leadership is changing. For those people who might've played football at a younger age, it's kind of some of the same thoughts we hear in that, or in other sports, that used to be leadership was primarily around listening -- don't talk, just do, as you're told. It was about this idea of out of hierarchy that someone's more important and thus they dictate direction. Leadership models are becoming more sophisticated and frankly, probably more people-centered. They now serve around this idea of empowerment that the leader should probably listen more to the opinions and the thoughts of others. It's not about who holds the power as it used to be, but it's more about what's best for the group, the organization. How does everybody elevate their game? Elevate their performance? 

I said many years ago that if I was ever asked to write a leadership book, that it would be the shortest book in history. It's interesting because I've always believed that there's two and you'll hear the mirroring of the article with maybe some of my thoughts, two ways to look at it. You can either stand on someone's shoulders and press them down or press a group down to make yourself taller. In the end, everybody shrinks because the weight of the leader pushes everybody down, or you can stand underneath your people and raise them up in a way that allows them to be more successful. If everybody seizes this opportunity, then everybody sees success. Everyone rises. This article talks about these particular similar thoughts in great detail.  

In the same way, I'm having some interesting conversations with clients. As our world becomes more normalized. I won't say we're going to get back to normal. Maybe we'll get back to regular, whatever that is. We've realized that we don't need the same kind of physical office constraints that we once did. We were able in philanthropy, particularly gift officers, but foundations also, or development offices, advancement offices, were able to succeed and to be successful without all being together all the time. We can build relationships with donors without having to be in a centralized office. So, a couple of things have happened in the last week or 10 days. I had one healthcare client tell me that a university in their area is beginning to push on their people, their fundraisers, that they are going to require them to be in the office five days a week. It's not a major metropolitan area, but they're now beginning to hear rumblings from colleagues at this university who are saying, why are they being so irrational? Why don't they trust me? Don't they believe that what we did last year was great and they were successful and we could replicate that? This is much more convenient for me in some very positive ways.

I have another client who many, many, many months ago required their employees to come in and it caused some real issues with some of the staff. I've lived through this, but I did so, well before COVID and I didn't even realize it. I give a lot of credit to a colleague who really opened my eyes. I'm someone who gets up every morning, takes a shower, and you've listened to the podcast, you've heard me talk about routine, gets in the car, gets my Diet Mountain Dew, and goes to the office. I work out of an office, it’s how I work best. When I was a leader with a lot of people reporting to me or up through me, I had someone who came to me and said, this group of individuals wants to work from home. It's a larger metropolitan area. We would get much more out of them if they didn't have to drive the 60-75 minutes, one way to the office. My first reaction was no. I don’t want to do that. I don't believe in that. This colleague really made me think about, was this about me or about them. In the end, I said, well, let's try this, and let's measure productivity. This is well before COVID what I learned was I was wrong. This group was infinitely, infinitely, more productive, more successful. If they didn't have to go to the office every day, they were happier. It was a benefit that didn't cost the company anything. But in the end, provided the company with everything.

I took that example along with this article and along with what I'm hearing from clients and others to think about leadership. As we normalize offices are going to be looked at differently. Whether you are in a university, healthcare, social service, arts and museums, zoos, particularly in philanthropy, we have more flexibility because if we're building relationships, most of those relationships aren't inside the organization, they should be outside. Well, if they're outside, why do we have to do this from a centralized place every single day? The challenge is going to become what is it that leaders do to attract and keep talent. In fundraising, particularly major gift officers the average tenure is somewhere between 18 and 20 months. It is unbelievably expensive for us to continually turn over people. It costs us money. We've talked about this in other podcasts and the dollars there's dollar studies out there about opportunity loss, but it costs us an enormous amount just to replace them. Then there's all the opportunity loss that happened when they weren't there and all the relationships that we don't have anymore or that have been compromised.

So, what's the tactical in all of this? Well, the tactical falls into two categories today. One, if you're the leader and one, if you're the employee. While the issues might be similar, the vantage point, and what can be done is dramatically different. Let's start with the leader, the employer, the boss, the manager, whomever. First and foremost, let me start off by saying I certainly understand that you may not have enough authority to make this determination on your own for the organization. Good example, if you are in a health care system, the health care system is making a ton of decisions, or at least in looking at them right now to what they're going to do with all kinds of employees. Nurses are still going to have to take care of patients. We're not talking about frontline clinical personnel. We're talking about people that don't normally see the patient onsite for healthcare needs. If you're in education, it could be accounting or HR or finance, or a myriad of other things that aren't student-facing every moment of every day. And you then can, if you're another in another industry, you can look at it that way. You may not have the authority to make the decision for your entire organization, but there are probably some things you can do. Number one is communicate. And I think of this in two directions, one communicate to the leadership that does make that decision and says, I don't want to lose really good people and we've proven we can work from home. How do we work together to create the right policy for the entire organization that supports what we need in philanthropy? It's also communicating to your employees, to the people you manage and lead. Here's what I'm trying to do. I don't have the authority to make this determination on my own, but I'm going to advocate.

And do you ask what your employees need? What they want? Are you a vessel for their concerning communication to the places where those decisions are made, back to that leadership? Are you listening?

Leaders also are going to have to have conversations about this may change our accountability, our communication. It's going to be a conversation around how do we make sure you have the tools necessary? It's also going to be communication around there are some types of activities we need you on campus or in the hospital or in the office. Also, realizing that you have a responsibility every once in a while, most likely, to put your eyes on somebody every once in a while, and being open to communicating with your team about what that looks like. The leader’s really quintessential question though is whatever you choose. If you were to choose to really force people to come back to an office where it's not necessary every day, is this about you and what your comfort level is versus what their comfort level is? 

I've got one client that I work with where the CDO is not that technically savvy. That puts a real strain on this kind of decision-making process and what I would challenge and have challenged this individual with is maybe you need to become more adept at things like zoom and how the CRM works and how much you can do by not being here so that you have a comfort level.

You learn, so that you can be a better leader, to better understand what your team is going through. Leaders, you need to be listening and building a relationship with the people you work with every day in two directions. Number one, those who make the decisions and those that you represent. Are you listening and advocating? Are you talking about what's appropriate? Number two, are you doing this on the basis of what's best for you or everyone else? Do you need to learn some new skills? We all need to continue to learn. We should never be satisfied with what we know today. We should always want to know more tomorrow. 

The employee, you have some things you can do that are tactical in this regard. You can advocate for what you think is important, but I would ask you, number two, to be reasonable. You have to know that the employer or the organization hopefully is doing its very best. If you ask for the moon, you may not get off the ground. Be reasonable for what you ask, but do ask --advocate for yourself. At the same time, you also have to realize at the end of the day, the employer can make that determination. If it's not one that you'd completely agree with, that's something you're going to have to deal with, but good employers, good leaders will listen to their teams and do the very best they can to find a middle ground that works for everybody.

Lastly, if you do have the opportunity, invest. Invest is not necessarily monetary. It could be a little bit, but you're going to have to make sure your Wifi is good. You're going to have to make sure you have good security on your internet connections. You're going to have to abide by whatever the organization requires, which is something else that you have to realize that there may be some costs with this. If you work from home permanently or more often, because technology and cybersecurity is more and more important. There may be a day where an employer says you have to have your own dedicated Wifi network. You can't have kids on your own Wifi network because it opens the door to your computer, which opens the door to our system. I'm not sure that that's happening anywhere, but I have a feeling it's going to if it hasn't already. You may have to invest in space, be professional, have a space that looks professional. I'm not saying that kids don't come running into a picture. I have two kids myself, and sometimes on a call they'll step right into the frame and it's okay. We all have to learn to be a little bit more understanding of what people's lives are, but you need to do your best to be professional. 

Lastly, be open to the metrics, be open to accountability. Do the things, be able to show that you're doing the things that are important to your success and to the organization's success. This is going to become an interesting conversation because I talked about those clients, the one in which they had a local university saying they all have to come back in. They're actually hearing from some of those gift officers that maybe we don't want to work there. If one or two of them are really, really good, is this an opportunity for us to increase our staff? So not only is there the issue of leadership, but there's also the issue of finding great talent from those who may not have as much flexibility or their leaders don't listen to them. Take the opportunity, advocate for yourself as the employee. And listen, if you're the leader, it's not about hierarchy. It's about the common good. It's about accomplishing something which leads me right into where I always finish.

We are doing really remarkable things in this industry. It's been fun to watch clients be unbelievably successful, to adjust their tactics and to raise more money, and bring in more support than they did in years past because in many cases in healthcare and education have been totally upended and people want to help. By building the right opportunities, we get to be people vocationally called to this, to be people who can help those who need assistance.

I want to remind you, please, if this is helpful, subscribe, leave a comment for the podcast and forward it. Scary news -- I've been informed because I've been recording these both audibly and visually there's now a YouTube channel where you can watch the podcast. So we're posting those as quickly as we can. We're a little bit behind, but we're going to catch up pretty quickly. Send me an email, hallettphilanthropy.com is the website and you can send me the email at reeks@hallettphilanthropy.com, if you disagree with me, or send me an email at podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com , if you have a subject matter, you'd like me to talk about. 

Don't forget about the blogs I'm posting two or three a week, 90-second reads, just very quick. What's going on in the industry? Something that might trigger you to consider a thought about the nonprofit world or the work in general? 

I conclude every week with my favorite all-time saying, “Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened.” The great thing about who we are and what we do is we’re people who make things happen for people who are wondering what happened. We should take advantage of that every day, knowing we can change the world. If we do our part for our non-profit making it better in our community, making it better for people who need help.

I hope you feel that way every day. And if you don't, take a second and think about the things you've done to make the world a better place through the work you're doing in your nonprofit and I hope it gives you a chance to bring a smile to your face, create a little energy to get that next thing done for whatever your organization's doing next. I'll look forward to seeing you next time here on “Around with Randall” and don't forget, make it a great day!