Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions, and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
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So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabbit fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Hey, Becky, what's happening?
Hey Jon, we are talking about whole leaders today, and I'm taking us back to this incredible conversation we had at the Responsive Nonprofit Summit hosted by Virtuous earlier this summer. And we really wanted to pull a bigger conversation around, how do we bring whole leaders into the sector? How do we grow them to grow our missions. And man, did we bring a fiery panel to help kind of unpack this for us?
Yeah. I mean, I love the people around this conversation are doing this work and coaching people through this work. So it's really an honor to introduce Diaris Alexander. She's been on the podcast on mental health week talking about anti burnout strategies. She's an impact architect to mission driven leaders. And Carolina Garcia Jayaram, she's the founding CEO over at the Elevate Prize Foundation, honored to have Virginia Almendarez back. She's the founder at Fund Strategy, and one of the most rabid We Are For Good fans pouring into this community. And Jonah Nigh, who is formerly the Senior Vice President of Development and Alumni Engagement at the New School, and he's now ever at Juilliard, so this conversation is going to be so rich. I mean, here's the deal. We believe that the greatest movements start from within, and that is why we've always made it a priority in our work. And anytime we have a platform to talk about how are we doing on the inside, we don't just show up externally. We show up as whole leaders. And so I want to start today's conversation just setting the tone for what we're seeing across the space. And I want to kick it to kick it to you first Carolina, because I didn't say this in your intro. But not only do you show up and amplify a bigger conversation about impact, but y'all fund like literally put money behind powering whole leaders and caring for whole leaders. And so I wanted to kick it to you to say set tone for what do you see across the space? How are leaders showing up today? How do you feel like they're responding to this moment with so much change.
The way that leaders are showing up now, over the past five years that we've had Elevate has been in large part what's informed this new concept of whole leadership. So we've seen them show up with an increasing amount of urgency around the issues that they're facing. Right? So our the winners of our prize are across issues across the globe and the and it's it doesn't matter what what they're facing, what issue they're facing. For all of them, there's a greater sense of urgency I feel. All of us feel this obviously, and as a result of that, they're being called to do way more than I think most leaders and CEOs have been called to do in the past. And so we have to help them meet that moment, you know, with different kinds of resources that I don't think have been readily available in the impact space, certainly for leaders for a long time. So that's what we're seeing. We're seeing just this greater urgency and fear of the future and the changes that are upon us, whether it's AI or, you know, increasing conflicts or whatever. You know, there's so many things to take us out of ourselves. So that's what we see a lot of.
Thank you for that. And I want to open up. Does anyone else want to get in here as we're tone setting? What are you seeing across the sector as we step into this conversation about how leaders are feeling, showing up right now?
Well, I was going to say, right? We're at a time when we can actually name it right? Name, you know, self awareness, name burnout. We so I think, you know, wellness has really been amplified in our sector, and we recognize that's important. So I think that, you know, post pandemic, it's like, you cannot not say it, right? You cannot acknowledge it. I also think that it also needs to be a conscious choice and a practice of wellness, right? So it's not something that is just going to happen to us. Someone else is going to take care of us, and it'd be passive, but it really we need to create these boundaries to help recharge us, so that we can feel energized and excited and do the work right that we're committed to do, because our lives are full and enjoyable outside of work, right? And I think the third thing that I've seen happening is right. So this, this conversation around technology and, you know, partly fears, but then I think that we also need to stop resisting it, right? Because I think technology is a voice that says, Let me help you. Let me help you work more efficiently, work you know, not as hard, right? So I think there needs to be some type. Balance between learning and being creative and strategic, even though we have these limited resources and not letting the tech burn us out, because it is able to help us be more efficient and effective and kind of like balance all the other things that are happening, which, you know, we have no resources for, but tech is there really to help us.
So good, and I love that Catherine's already started a hashtag in the chat. She's got fight the burnout. I want that trending because I want to see it everywhere. This is something we all need to do. Jonah, I wanted to kick it to you and see what you were thinking.
Sure, from the vantage point of, you know, fundraisers of color, there is a lot of burnout, there's a lot of retention issues. And so a lot of that is a result of long standing systemic issues in the field of philanthropy, with regards to money and power and how those two relate. And so I know we're going to get to that in a few minutes. So trying to find ways to be flexible, trying to give communities of color care where they are, and certainly remote work has helped that a lot. But there are, you know, there's a body of research, social science research, that shows that there's physiological, cognitive, mental strain and burnout, particularly on people of color, in fields that are predominantly white, and which is what our field is, it's 90% white. So a lot of my I'm a uni I'm a senior unicorn. I know I look impossibly young, but I'm actually quite middle aged, so a lot of my role and what, my exactly, it's a skim cream called Asian, but if you a lot of our role as senior leaders, I was just talking to my senior leaders the other day, is to de escalate. It is to be clear, concise, and that's our role as leaders, especially in the current moment that we find ourselves in.
Thank you for talking about that. Thank you for just naming it and claiming it, because I think this is such a bigger issue. We talked with Jonah about code switching on the podcast. I really encourage anyone, if this is a new conversation for you to go in there. It's something that can help us all grow. Diaris, what about you? What are you seeing right now?
I'm seeing people that are all across the spectrum, and I think we have to recognize that one is important to show people that how they feel matters, and that that can also vary day to day, hour to hour, week to week, project to project, and so much of that depends on who you're working for and with, as well as how you're approaching your work. So to Virginia's point, how we're leveraging tools like technology, how we're leveraging communities that help us dig into our own affinities and the things that really matter to us. To Jonah's point, our sector is a bit homogeneous, but there's so much diversity in terms of what we can do. And that's the thing that I love about recognizing resilience, which I try to talk more about endurance instead, I think this resilience kind of just forces people to think about, oh, you have to do this thing because it's hard and there's nothing you can do about it. It's just part of the game. But I love that we know that so many people are being challenged by burnout, challenged by stress, challenged by just being exhausted and fatigued with the world and their work. Then that means there's so many different ways that people are trying to solve it, and so many different things that we can learn to move forward.
Oh so wise. Carolina. Put a bow on this for us as we wrap up. Kind of this tone setting.
I love what you just said, and I also loved what Virginia said about it being a choice, because this orientation toward, like, the negative bias that I feel like we've increasingly gotten, you know, we're just seeped in as a culture, especially in the West, is, is not necessary, right? We do have the ability to reframe and to always find like greater spaciousness, greater opportunity, if we want to. But the sector, like Jonah was pointing to, is, this is not the tradition of the sector. The sector is all about. You know, they're not there's not enough there's not enough resources, not enough time, there's not enough people, and that doesn't have to be true. And so I think that idea that reorientation is in reframing is a choice that we can now make as a sector, and that feeling that we're almost at this tipping point where this is the way we have to go as a humanity to find connection, otherwise, we're looking at the precipice, right? We're seeing what's happening that, and we have a choice to keep with this negativity bias, or to find a way to orient toward positivity and solution where you're going to find a lot greater, you know, rest and connection.
Yeah, I think that that was so well put, because there's, I feel such an empowerment in what you all are saying. And I do think this is a moment in time. It is it is critical mass, and we do have a choice, and the more that we lean into diversity, we know this everything. When we make our world diverse, we make our work diverse, it invites more voices. It invites more people. It elevates there. I'm already helping your brand right there, which I Love so much Carolina. And so I want to really get into, like, the details of this. And Diaris, I want to go back to you, because you have such a brilliant anti burnout strategy. You've got this framework. And I would love for you to sort of differentiate for the audience, like, what is the difference between stress, exhaustion, burnout? What are, what are those key signs that we can look at that says we are on the precipice of burnout?
Yeah, so there, there's a lot. The most important thing is to always just check in with how you're feeling. So when the zoo or the meeting buffers when you have that extra minute, when you go to get a glass of water, like, use those moments and opportunities to just say, like, how am I feeling? Am I meeting my needs in what the resources that I have in this moment? And then, as you're doing that pulse check, which is kind of one of the pillars of my work, is sort of this just an awareness of how you're doing stress is typically like the psychological or the like psychosomatic with physiological reaction to a trigger, right? So that's how anxiety could feel, like you're being clenched, or you're feeling shaken, or your heart rate is rising, like all those things are important to how you're responding to stress. The important thing about that is that it's typically to a trigger, right? So there's an event you know there. It could be a chronic thing that's happening if you're living in that high crime area, or your areas are becoming a more more crime ridden. And that could be something it's also something that you might be experiencing as outsider in your group. So whether that's on sex, gender, race, a wide variety of things that can also create more stress with dealing with that, even as you have more resources, even as you get more senior, that can contribute to stress, the exhaustion part is, I think we understand that we're like, it's you need the vacation from the vacation. Like, your weekends never long enough. Like the the holidays sort of bleed together. You get a case of the Sunday scaries or the Sundays like that really is the exhaustion. It's fatigue. It is feeling tired beyond what you experienced as tired before, and also allowing yourself to see that that can change as your body changes as you get older, as you deal with other dynamics within your family, whether you're a caregiver, etc. And then exhaustion is also part of burnout. So burnout has three components, as recognized by the World Health Organization. One of those is exhaustion. Another one is cynicism, so like feeling less enthused or less connected to your work, and the other one is inefficacy, and that's where I typically lean in, because for many of those chronic high achievers, overachievers I kind of grew up with, we have to do all the things we have to do them all right, self efficacy and just the sense of I'm not doing as well as I could have or as well as I expect myself to do, that tends to also get people to spiral about, how am I seeing myself when you have so much of your identity into what you produce? So that's actually one of the areas that I'm most excited about, because as we shift with technology, with machine learning, with AI, with ChatGPT, with having more of a community, you can dive into more of those things. Because as to Virginia mentioned before, we're having a language for for talking about this, and we're creating more dialog about these spaces and burnout has several contributing factors that really that relate to those three areas, but I think the things we see most in a nonprofit work are workload. Right to Jonah's point, there's always so way to perceive lack of control, there's like rewards and recognition. Sometimes organizations are giving more to the stakeholders that they help, and they won't have that same value in terms of how they invest in their people that relates to community, and also just having the values alignment. So those are things that impact burnout.
Can we get some zoom style snaps and claps on this. I mean, that was so good, my friend. I think you teed really well into where I wanted to take this convo with Jonah, because he came on the podcast. And we'll make sure to drop the link so you can get the full conversation. But you said a couple things, my friend, that I want to lift Jonah and I kick it to you. But you said cynicism only supports the status quo. And I think what Diaris was saying too, like it's it comes back to power, like we don't feel like we have the power. There's this like learned and we need to unlearn this culture of helplessness. And you said that on the podcast too. And I think that there these things are kind of converging together, that we do have power. We need to claim that power. We need to step into some of this. Where does this lead you? I mean, talk about how this culture of helplessness in our field has become so prevalent, and what can we do to really flip it?
Thank you, and I feel like Diaris, you and I should probably end up working together, because you just when you just said, perceived lack of control. So that's what I talked a little bit about on the podcast, about the culture of learned helplessness in philanthropy, particularly when it comes to the notions of diversifying staff and power dynamics with donors. So, you know, one of the things that, I try to teach my senior leaders is exercise the agency that you already have. Stop asking for the agency you already have a lot of agency I should back up to. And just because we're talking about diversity and how I set the table what those terms mean, because we all have our own dei Dei, B, eisj, LMNOP, whatever the way I define those words, at least in the context of New York City and at the New School, and it's going to be different at every organization. But diversity is a fact. It just it is. We don't really even need to talk about that as a concept. What I'm more interested in is equity and inclusion. So equity is a choice, inclusion is an action, and then belonging, the word that we kind of get hung up on, which is really warm and fuzzy, is the word I think people like to run to because it sounds nice, but I'm not really interested, because you don't get to claim that that's just your your teams, your culture will tell you if there's belonging, because that's the result of the choices and actions you make regarding equity, inclusion. So in terms of the learned helplessness in the form of diversifying staff, as I mentioned earlier, 90% of our field is white. And so how many of us have heard, oh, gosh, it's really hard or but we just have to keep recommitting ourselves. Or how many written resolutions have we made read about this? How many hyperlinks to how to be an anti racist, have we, all, you know, been pushed through in the last four years? That's not it. That's not actually diversifying staff. Diversifying staff is actually not very complicated. It is hard because it's a systemic issue, but it's not actually very hard. It is about putting people of color in leadership, and then people follow because they see that you're living your values and you're not just talking about them. And then to your question earlier about burnout and remote work, I think one of the great tools we have now is that flexibility, right? Not asking communities of color to live in areas, communities where they're not safe, where they're not perceived to be safe. So those, that's it. That's it. That's how you diversify your staff, because there's hundreds of us, and, oh, by we also happen to be qualified. So that is, how about that? Right? So the notion that there's no pipeline, all that kind of stuff, is just, it's not true. The other piece power dynamics with donors. You know, I've been in this business 18 years. A lot has changed. You know, seven out of 10 Americans used to give to something when I started now, four out of 10 do a lot has changed, and particularly with how we relate to donors. The days of the donor always being right is over, right? I mean, yeah, mainstream media has picked up on the big cases like Sackler, Epstein, gifts of looted art, you know, quid, and certainly right now, quid pro quos with board influential, enriched donors trying to weigh in on, you know, political issues, particularly around policy, about protests, that kind of thing, which I know nothing about being on a college campus right now. But you know that piece of it is really specifically letting your or letting your staff of colors know you have their back, letting you know that you will walk away from a bad gift. Not all gifts are good gifts, and that just comes down to training, advocacy, the difference between sponsorship and mentorship, all that, all that kind of stuff. Because there's, again, back to social science. There's so much research showing that, you know, racism is literally bad for your health, and that it will, it'll have people leave, and then you won't be able to retain. So that's where I am.
He's just says, so as if he just didn't drop the most gold and wisdom right there. I saw the chat lighting up. I see the hearts and the claps. I just I think people are feeling seen. They are wanting to live in this world. We are wanting to work in this world and work in this ways. And I want to pivot a little bit into recognizing these burnout and really diving into some strategies for how we can help ourselves get out of this cycle and recognizing these signs that are in yourself. So Virginia, I want to kick it to you, and I want you to talk to us about survival tactics. Because I think historically as like a recovering major gift officer, I would just, and I think feel like many of us have the trifecta where type A, you know, I'm an Enneagram two. I want to care for everybody, you know. I also, I see somebody talking about, I work in a small nonprofit, and we do many things, and all the things, not just the one job description. So talk to us about surviving tactics, and get us to those thriving tactics?
Yeah, absolutely. I just want to thank Jonah for everything that he just said really and even bringing up the conversation around, you know, fundraisers of color and right, because I think this goes into survival versus thriving, right? Because, you know, our own. Belief system that we have, whether it is cultural, familial, you know, where we grew up, right? All of these things keep us from either being responsive or reactive, right? And just going back to the point about awareness and consciousness, right? I talk a little bit about my own journey of dismantling some of my own beliefs that were, you know, instilled in me, all of us, you right? We have these beliefs that are instilled in us at young ages, right? And I'm also talking about pivotal moments like before you were 18, that happened in your life that actually plays a significant role in how you show up right in the world. And, you know, I talk about it in my podcast episode 420 you know, a little bit deeper, but it's really, you know, anything from a response to, hey, you know, someone said that I couldn't get into a certain college because of who I was, right, a woman of color, or because a teacher embarrassed me, and, you know, pretty much crucified me. You know, at a young age, it hindered my ability to be risk taking or make a mistake, because then, like, right? What does that mean? Now, this kind of survival mode that I continue to operate in, it did have its benefits, right? So, high achiever and excellence, right? But that also correlates to needing to prove my worth, right? So that is when you're in that survival mode. So not until I was able to, like, really unpack that, and we can unpack these moments in our lives that have us to live in a world of reaction and surviving. You now have this awareness to make a different choice. It always goes back to this consciousness of choice. So rather than having to prove my worth and like, you know, raising my hand for everything, or staying late, because you know this needs to be perfect, or having it be of excellence and right, or, you know, even as a Latina, like what that all means, and having to say, you know, this is not the persona that I want you to look at me as, right? That survival thriving then becomes, I have my own internal metrics of what's going to make me happy and what brings me joy. Because when we're in survival, it's exhausting, right? And you're you're continuously volunteering for things and going to not doing what you want to do, but when you're thriving, you're true to yourself. And so leaders, and we're all leaders in our own right, we can dig and ask the question, like at a young age, when and why did I need to arm myself to survive? And how is that impacting me today, right? So, this work, this wellness work, right? It's not it's more than a notion. It's more than a nice whatever thought, but it's actually really doing the work. And I'm a big believer of having partners and therapists and coaches to help you do that work, because they're going to ask you the questions that you may be afraid to ask, and you don't have to do it by yourself, right? So, like, you get to, like, be in conversations with friends and trained professionals to really look at it deeper and bring you to a place of thriving instead of surviving.
I love our friends so much. You guys are so smart, I'm feeling such imposter syndrome, but also I'm feeling like I need to make some behavioral changes too, and I can see that there's some relation to that in the chat. So good Virginia.
I mean, all of this talk about well being, it's so interconnected to our ability to create thriving communities and thriving movements. And I love our iteration of a relationship with Elevate Prize, because we met Carolina on our journey, and they were making these beautiful investments to empower nonprofits to better tell their story through media and storytelling and putting their stories on fire. But when we caught up earlier this year, you know, they've expanded that investment into the well being and care of leaders. And I just think I want to give you the floor. Thank you. Yeah, we're just so inspired by how you see the power of having whole leaders that are showing up with joy and vibrance, and you've moved your investment in that direction too. So I wanted to talk about, what does that look like to get funding to happen like that, and what impact have you seen already as a result of that?
Oh, thank you, and thank you for everything you just said, Virginia and Joe and all of you. It's all so inspiring and so true. I loved one of the contributing factors that the Diaris was talking about, about investing like we focus on investing in the community and the people around us, but not in our own culture and our own team. So I came to Elevate this opportunity to build a foundation after three turnarounds of other foundations and organizations that were failing, and I turned them all around, which is great, but I learned so much you know about what is it? What are those contributing factors to what takes down an organization? And by the end of it, I was like, no more turnarounds. I'm ready to build something. But one of the most important things I I learned in those experiences was really building that internal culture first, and using that and staying really true to that so that it could serve as sort of a model, and dare I say, like inspiration for the organizations and leaders that are around us. And so it allowed us, from the beginning, to form these really vulnerable and love centered relationships with all of our winners, and approach philanthropy and granting, grant giving in a much more equitable way to say, you know, we're just humans over here, figuring it out alongside you. And it was always, and has always been, very responsive right to what they need. The prize, the main prize, has changed considerably in five years, really, because of our awareness of what our leaders are going through. And you can only have that awareness by building the relationship right. So it starts with that, so they can trust us. And, you know, go on to do so many incredible things, similar to what Virginia was saying an idea that I often think of is like, how we take things from state to trait, you know, these moments of spaciousness, or, you know, you have these epiphanies or these flows of creativity or connection. How do we have those consistently? How do you turn those into traits that we possess together as a team or community or what have you, and how does that extrapolate beyond that? So that's a long way of saying that the prize was always innovative from the beginning, because we were talking about visibility and shining a light on change makers, making good famous. These were actually not met with universal applause. I should tell you, a lot of people were very skeptical about what we
Give us names.
But interestingly, several of those skeptics are now our biggest fans, and they really believed at the beginning that, you know, it could be seen as exploitation, or it could be seen as, you know, fame is over there and we're over here. And for whatever reason, I won't go into that. But what's interesting to this point is that it built this trust when we started proving that visibility really did work and helped, you know, leaders have the tools they needed to scale, but through that, we were seeing, you know, suffering is a strong word, but I could say a lot of struggle. You know, a lot of what we're talking about here, within, within the organizations, the leaders, we were seeing a lot of really unhealthy transitions happening. And so we just felt it. It was kind of a calling that we felt, I think, as a team, and certainly me as a leader, to say, how are we in a position as a foundation to do what Jonah so beautifully talked about, in terms of, you know, challenging the power structure and saying, you know this, we're the ones who's holding the money. You guys are holding a million other things. So how do we bring it all together to fix these problems together? And a lot of that has to do with this whole leader approach, which is, you know, you can only show up and do this work if you're bringing it all to the table. It's true of telling your story. You know, the most compelling stories that we want to follow, whether it's Malala or Lewis Hamilton or whatever you're interested in in the world, it's because those stories are so vulnerable. It's really about those folks showing up completely. I think in the nonprofit world, we aren't doing enough to encourage that in leaders. Typically, we're asking them to just show us what's working. You know, just show us the future, plan, the strategy. So, you know, that's a lot of what are. It's really a work in progress. We're very excited to learn from the leaders who are coming to our next summit in a couple of weeks in Miami. We're bringing in everything from the great mindfulness and meditation teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo, who I love so much, and a lot of her Buddhist sort of practitioning, and then we have cold plunging and meditation. We're bringing a lot of that into the conference to see, to see how it lands, and to, you know, invite that in.
I am so thrilled that this is happening in the world. I truly, I don't want to sugarcoat this, but this is what we need, y'all. This is what we need there. This is such a conversation of care. I hope, as you are listening to this, you feel that there is a community of people who are rooting for you. I've got to go back to We Are For Good Core value number one, which is everyone matters. It's not your top donor matters. It's not your top board member matters. It's that every single human being is needed in this work. They need to be whole to be able to go out and do the work. And we have got to prioritize our staff and our internal teams to get to that wholeness. And I want to, and I want to talk about investing in that. And Diaris, I want to, I want to talk to you about this, because, you know, we've heard this quote several times on the podcast that your budget tells you what you care about, and you had this beautiful quote on our podcast. I'm gonna read it. It says your budget tells what your values are in terms of how you invest and also how you choose to spend your time and invest in talent. So talk to us about the suggestions you have for invest. Assisting in wellness, like leaders, people who are here, where do they start? What can they do today?
Yeah, thanks for the question. I want to shout out people being vulnerable and authentic in the chat. I know one person said they're having anxiety about not being whole enough now, I want to recognize that you can be whole in small moments you know, and think about, how do you expand that for your day and as a leader, whether you're leading a full team or whether you're leading your household or just leading the new plan in your life, there are a lot of things that you can do. And what I try to do is I have a capacity care plan that I try to build for myself and for my clients and in my work and plan is actually an acronym for me. So the P is pulse, the L is leverage, the A is activator, and then the N is network. So when I'm thinking about how you are approaching your work as a leader and how you're looking at investing in your talent, the pulse is really what's working, right? How are people feeling that looks specifically like? How are you spending money? What is literally on your budget? If you're spending all this in salaries, how much are you spending in professional development, right? How much are you spending to retain? How much are you losing in attrition that was unplanned like, what is your, your turnover rate look like, and then when you're looking at investing in your current team members, that also could look like a time audit. So out of your senior leaders, how often are they spending time coaching their direct reports or coaching people that are maybe a couple levels beneath them, how often are you sharing insights across the team to reduce silos, which is a big thing and a lot of nonprofits you can also look at like tech tools, like but it literally is. How are you spending your time? How are you spending your money? The leverage part, for me, is about action priority matrix, right? So what amount of effort gets you, what amount of impact? So you want to look to after you listen to people you can't just say like, I listened, I took I sent out a survey and not say anything about what you've done. Yes, right? That is not it. Show them that you're listening, which is like an active piece like this is not just a reactive thing. This is being responsive and proactive, right? So part of and hey, we're at the responsive conference, but part of that being responsive is looking for quick wins, what has a high level of impact and has a low amount of effort. That could be about putting the right people in the right seats, leveraging your tools in a different way, unlocking some some insights that you know people have. Maybe it's a new Slack channel that is, you know, sharing quick wins or sharing opportunities to celebrate, sharing learnings for your organization, and that really is about amplifying strengths, right? Everybody matters to your point, everybody has something to share. Everyone has something that they can lead in, but we have to empower and enable that through our culture, right? And so often, most nonprofit employees this is, you know, go, look at the fourth article. Are looking to move into your next position, you know, in the next couple of years, right? They're not looking to stay they're not feeling valued. We're seeing that with Gen Z. It's not that they are taking the lazy girl approach or doing that. It's really they're not seeing the return on the investment of their time, and we need to take that investment seriously as leaders, and we need to look beyond our network within our organization to see, how can we bring other talented people that we meet on panels and at conferences to speak to our organizations? How do we unlock the talent? How do we unlock the insights and make them really actionable moving forward?
I mean, my goodness, so many practical pieces. I feel like, you know, we want to make sure that we get to some of the chat, but I feel like you're already answering this, just some practical things that we can do through the lens of that answer. So thank you so much. I also want to, as we start to wind down, I want to bring us back, because I'm loving the care in the room. I love that the tone of this conversation. I want to talk about joy for a second, because we believe that this work is deeply joyful in a world that has so much pain going on, we can really come together on that. And Jonah, I want to kick it to you as our resident, also stand up comic like you got to follow Jonah, because he's incredible.
He is.
But I mean, talk to us about joy in this work. We've been saying it all year. Joy is such a vibe, you know, and we feel like nonprofit leaders. We're trying to align all these things. We're trying to tackle some of the hardest problems. But how do we find joy in this work? How do we stay centered around that and use that as a beacon?
Thank you, and thank you for the shout out at jonahnigh.com anyway.
I will drop that in the chat.
Drink when I'm home at the Broadway Comedy Club most Saturdays. That's true. But anyway, so yeah, so I used to be an opera singer for nine years, and there were directors that could set a warm rehearsal room, and there were directors that you took a deep breath before you walked in, and then you did the thing, and both created great art. Probably the better art, though, came from the warm room. Big surprise. So as a leader, you know, and for the other leaders on my team, I remind, well, actually, for everyone on my team, I remind them how you show up is part of your performance. So for fundraising, you know, we look at the scoreboard all the time. We're always looking at the metrics, but particularly for those who manage people, said, how you show up is part of your performance. If you're having a bad day, if you can't, you know, be forward looking. If there's a hint of a whiff of cynicism, I will say to someone, why don't you take the day off, you can't show up today. That's fine. Everyone's human, but we also can't have the poison of cynicism in our team any days. And for those who can't get beyond that, you know, for whatever reason, you know, we have to have a corrective conversation and just say that like this is is it possible for you to feel good about this place so and so it's easier said than done. But some of the tricks, I guess, that I do, the first, I think the biggest, is not just saying to your team, I got your back, when hard days come, it is showing them and so, and they will come and, you know, and for an instance where this was done for me, you know, a donor said something very racist to me, and the president at the time backed me up and said, you know, you don't have to work with that donor anymore. I was like, that's a very lovely thing to say, but actually, I want to take it one step further. I want to talk to this donor, and here's what I'm going to say. And it was risky and that, but it was one of our top donors at an institution, and I was backed up. I did it, and I tell that story to my team that's like, I will do that for you. I will coach you through those difficult conversations. I didn't lose the gift, but I did have to sit down with a donor and say something like, I'm glad we had the kind of relationship where we can discuss difficult things together. I mean, there's ways to ease into those converse, corrective conversations with anybody. The culture of celebration was also something I noticed was missing in some places I worked. And that doesn't mean a big, you know, pizza party at the end of the year. It means there's no shortcuts to spending time with your team, because that's just remarkable in and of itself, in real life. So, you know, and then also remote work being an option all time, so and actively sharing what I do on the side to make me a whole person. That's something that's fairly, I'm Gen X. I'm just borderline of millennial. That's certainly different than maybe my parents generation, or something like that, where your work is your work and your life is your life, you have one life, and like when you look at your calendar, one dean here said, isn't it all just one meeting where I got the action, and she's like, it's just one meeting. And I think about this as life, it's just one life. So I'm very open to my staff about, well, I'm going to be on a baking TV show, or I'm going to run America, whatever like that to be like, oh, if he can have this very fulfilling life on the side. No, it's just one life, but fulfilling part of his life, then maybe I don't actually have to expect that my job is going to give me 100% of my fulfillment on this planet. It's going to take more than that. So I think it's a combination of creating that ethos, just going back creating a warm rehearsal room, and then, and then the hard part of doing it every day, and if you can't do it that day, don't come to work. You know, take the day off. Because, I quote mad men a lot too. It's like, that's what the money's for. Y'all are paid to be here every day. So if you can't do it today, take a day off.
Y'all. If you're in New York City, please go watch Jonah on stand up. He's hilarious. Here, he's spitting truth here I just I see so many questions were in the last minute of this conversation, which is so sad. I want to encourage everyone to go connect with Carolina, Jonah, Virginia, Diaris. They are all on LinkedIn. They are all very active. Please direct your specific questions to them, because we don't want you feeling stuck. We don't want you feeling overwhelmed. I'm looking at the questions about toxic positivity, how to get our our teams back in center and get out of the rejection. We got to reject that cynicism and grab that joy. So as we're in the last couple seconds, I want to thank these incredible humans. Thank you for for being here, for the things that you've said, for the boldness that you have showed up with, and for the care and for all of you out there listening. Thank you for lighting up this chat and giving us some real talk, because it's going to take a choice. I think Caroline, Carolina, you said this, we now know, so now we have to make a choice. And so dive into this grab hold of your joy, grab hold of your wellness. You are worthy of so much more.
Just gratitude. Thank you so much. We'll see you back here at the conversation stage in like another 10 minutes or so. Thank you, friends.
