Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for Startup, Small, and Growing Nonprofits

Matt Stockman (00:00)

Sooner or later, every nonprofit leader faces the same uncomfortable moment. You bring somebody onto your team because you believe in them. They care about the mission. They want to help. But over time, something just starts to feel a little off. Some deadlines slip, details are getting missed. The results are just not where they need to be. And now you're stuck asking a really difficult question. Is this a coaching issue? A communication issue?

Or did you simply just make the wrong decision about bringing this person on to the team? In today's episode, I'm going to walk you through a simple three scenario framework that helps you diagnose what is really going on when a team member is underperforming and how to respond as a leader in a way that actually helps people improve.

Welcome to the nonprofit launch plan podcast for startups, small and growing nonprofits. This podcast exists to help you build your nonprofit from the ground up.

on a strong, sustainable foundation by providing clear frameworks and practical tools and the real world guidance that you can actually put into practice. I'm your host, Matt Stockman. I'm a nonprofit growth coach and here at Nonprofit Launch Plan, we believe that every successful nonprofit has to be operating at peak performance in six critical areas, leadership, fundraising, marketing, programs and services, operations, and finances. So

On every episode, we focus on one of those six core areas to help you create lasting impact in your nonprofit without unnecessary complexity. Now, before we jump into today's episode, I want to give you a heads up if you're dreaming or you're in the early phases of your nonprofit launch, you're looking for clarity on your mission and vision, you're building your board.

You're doing your initial fundraising, you're figuring out what your MVP is. That's your minimum viable nonprofit program. This is a personal invitation to you to join me for my upcoming virtual Launchpad Workshop Essentials for Moving from Nonprofit Idea to Impact. It's three hours over three days where we will workshop your mission statement and your vision statement will define who your board members should be will drill down into your fundraising.

and we'll help you build out your beginning programs and a whole lot more. We'll talk about stuff.

that we're not really able to get into in the podcast, and a lot more. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, or you're just stuck in a dream for a nonprofit, and you're not really sure what to do next, but somehow deep down, you feel like you're supposed to make this happen. Sign up for the workshop. It's April 28 through the 30th. It's one hour each day. And try your best to be there live. That does make a huge difference for you to experience it with other people who are exactly in the same place in this journey as you are. But

will have access to the recordings as well. Sign up today. The cost is 49 bucks for the whole thing but space is limited.

and click on workshop to sign up. Now, if you're leading a nonprofit, one of the most important parts of your job is building and developing your team, casting a vision for the future for your team and shepherding your team. Even if your team is just one other person or a couple of volunteers, it

A team that is well shepherded is one that can actually execute the mission of your nonprofit, but your nonprofit can only go as far as your team can carry it. And sooner and later, every nonprofit leader runs into the situation, somebody on the team who you thought to be capable, just isn't performing at the level that you expected. Maybe they're missing details, or maybe deadlines are slipping, the quality of their work just maybe has declined a little bit.

or the level that they can consistently maintain is just less than what everybody else is able to do. They may just be off their game and sometimes it just feels like they're just not getting it. When that happens, a lot of leaders aren't quite sure what to do next. Do you give them space and hope that they figure it out? Do you step in and correct them? But how many times do you do that?

Do you change their responsibilities or do you start wondering if you just made the wrong decision bringing them onto the team in the first place?

So today I want to give you a simple leadership tool that I've used for a long time when coaching nonprofit leaders and working with my own teams as well. And I promise if you use this approach consistently, it will help you diagnose performance issues on your team a whole lot faster and it will empower you to approach your team member with the right mindset and the right attitude of collaboration to fix the problem

rather than discipline an employee, which ultimately means that you help your people improve. I bring this as a podcast episode today because I've got a client who's walking through this very leadership challenge right now.

This nonprofit CEO has a team member who is a wonderful human being. Everybody in the office loves this person, but they've struggled to meet the demands of the role. This person works as the accounting manager of this small nonprofit. And the CEO, the one I'm coaching is really in the rebuilding phase of the nonprofit. So of course, money is top of mind. And one of his ongoing issues with the accounting manager is her lack of ability.

to deliver the kinds of reports that he needs in a timely fashion. To his point, 90 days is too long to wait to know how you did on income and expenses at the end of any given month. So in his frustration at this situation, I walked him through this approach. There's three parts to it. We'll get into all three of them that helps him get to the root of the actual problem. And it will help you get to the root of the actual problem as well. Because oftentimes stuff like missing reports are actually symptoms.

And chances are if you've got a team member that's not performing even at 80%, whatever pain that is causing you is a symptom of a deeper issue. And solving that deeper issue is the key to everybody on your team winning. Think about the NFL for a moment. Most NFL teams have a star quarterback. I live in Denver, Colorado, and our star quarterback is the Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nicks. In football,

Star players can have terrible games. Quarterbacks who were supposed to dominate can one day just suddenly look out of rhythm. And when that happens, the head coach doesn't sit back and say, well, let's just hope he figures it out next week. No, the coaching staff gets together immediately. Sometimes during the game, they watch film, they diagnose the issue because too much is at stake to just hope the problem fixes itself somehow. Right away, the coach is diagnosing

the problem so they can apply the right solution. I would argue that in your nonprofit, too much is at stake to just hope problems with a team member fix themselves. When a team member is consistently underperforming, your job is not to react emotionally, but as the leader, your job is to diagnose what's actually going on. And that's where this little framework that I built comes in.

It all starts with honest communication before we get into the three parts. That's the important first step. You have to be willing to address the issue directly and swiftly.

Just like the NFL coaches not going to let a problem go on addressed for four or five games, you shouldn't either. Too many nonprofit leaders like to avoid the situation instead of solving the problem. And most of the time, the reason problems linger is leaders don't want to have the tough conversations. They don't like the confrontation, none of us actually really do or they don't know how to fix the problem. And the good news is this framework that I'm going to teach you in this podcast episode addresses both of these reasons.

See if this connects with you at all. Most leaders who are good leaders, they notice the problem, but they don't say anything. hope the person figures it out. They hope that next week will be better. They hope the situation just kind of resolves itself. But what I've learned after years of coaching leaders and teams is most of the time, the person has no idea there's a problem.

Instead, one of three scenarios is typically happening and depending on which applies in the situation you're facing, there's an action point for that person and for you as the leader. One scenario that is oftentimes happening when you see problems or issues is the employee is having an execution issue. In this situation, the team member understands their role. They understand the expectations.

They understand what success looks like they get all that but they're struggling to consistently execute at the level required or if they are it's so time consuming that they're burning themselves

Like they're getting what they need to get done, but it's taking every bit of their life and then some. This a lot of times is a skills issue. Maybe they haven't had enough training. Maybe they're still developing their confidence. Maybe they're overwhelmed by the complexity of their work. In this case, the solution is more coaching and more training. Think about how a sports team operates. When a player struggles with execution, the coach again doesn't just say, well, you should know how to do this.

They go back to practice, they break down the mechanics, they repeat the drills, they build the player's ability up step by step. that same approach applies to nonprofit leadership.

If someone is struggling with execution, it usually means they need more development, not less encouragement. Your job as a leader is to help them build the skills they need to succeed. Long time ago, I had a guy on my team that was able to perform his job, but was really frazzled because he was spending way longer than he should on tasks and responsibilities. From the outside, I could tell in about six minutes that this guy was working hard, but not smart.

So I invested in some development for him, some more skills training, so that he learned how to systematize, create processes, things like that, that taught him what it meant to work smart. And when he mastered it, he was happier because he got to go home at five o'clock every day to his wife and kids. And I was happier because his learning to work smart opened up more time and capacity for him to take on more.

So that's the first scenario, an execution issue. The second scenario I see often is a lack of understanding. In this case, the team member believes that they're doing their job correctly. But from your perspective as the leader, they're missing the mark. This is the situation I described at the top of the podcast. When the CEO I was coaching first had a conversation about the challenges he was having with the lack of reporting from the accounting manager,

he quickly discovered that the team member thought they were doing exactly as they were supposed to,

which highlights that situations like this are most often a clarity issue. Somewhere along the way, expectations were not communicated clearly enough, or success in the role was not defined precisely. And this happens a lot in nonprofit environments because roles are sometimes evolving and sometimes evolving quickly as nonprofits grow and scale up. Many nonprofit leaders assume that their team members

Understand what success looks like but assumptions are really dangerous in leadership if somebody misunderstands the expectations of the role They will very confidently do the wrong things and they'll believe they're doing exactly what you ask them to do So in this scenario, the solution is greater clarity from you as the leader you have to define success more clearly you have to articulate priorities

You have to explain what great performance in that role actually looks like. Sometimes that means walking through examples. Sometimes it means documenting expectations. It means having regular check ins to make sure their alignment stays strong. Back to the situation with my coaching client when it became obvious that there was a lack of clarity on the employees part about what was expected. I said to the CEO and I would to you as well if down the road you have to make a change with this person.

You need to be able to confidently put your head on the pillow at night believing that you did absolutely everything you could to make your expectations clear. What you never want to hear in a termination conversation is, I never knew that was part of my job. But the key realization here is this, if someone misunderstands the role, the responsibility for correcting that starts with you as the leader.

Okay, first scenario when you're diagnosing a challenge with an employee is they may be struggling with that execution. The second just talked about is the employee could have a lack of understanding. The third scenario is lack of strategic alignment. And this one is interesting. In this case, the team member understands the role, they're capable of doing their job.

But they believe that their approach is better than the one that the organization is using. Maybe they think the fundraising strategy should be different. Maybe they think the program should be structured another way. Maybe they think the communication style should change. this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes team members can bring good ideas, sometimes some changes needed. But when somebody consistently operates

Outside of the nonprofit strategy, it creates friction and confusion inside the organization. In this situation, the solution is not simply telling them, do it my way because I said so. Although you may want to say that the solution is explaining the why behind the strategy. perform much better when they understand how their work contributes to the larger mission. When a team member understands how their role fits into the bigger picture,

alignment becomes a whole lot easier. Sometimes they'll still disagree. But once they clearly understand the reasoning behind the strategy, they can make an informed decision about whether or not they want to operate within it.

Okay, now as we begin to land the plane a little bit on this episode, here's a few additional findings from the situation that I described with my client. What he uncovered was that...

With the accounting manager, there were elements of all three scenarios. And you might encounter that too. So he offered better software, more training, he offered written clarity about what expectations were reasonable on deliverables that they both agreed to. And at some point, he discovered that despite repeated requests to get reports in a particular format, the accounting manager was still delivering the reports not up to spec.

And when he pressed her on it, she really believed deep down that he should be looking at the data that she was providing rather than the data that he was looking for. And as it turned out, the data she was providing was easier for her to compile and took less work.

In the end with this person, he had to make a change. But when he did, she was not surprised or even that upset because of the fact that the CEO had walked her step by step through all of these scenarios, and the coaching for each, she ultimately came to her own realization that she was no longer a good fit for the nonprofit. In every scenario, the solution involves leadership from you.

not avoiding things, not just hoping things will get better. You hear me say it all the time. Hope is not a strategy.

in and taking action is a way to solve the problem. If the issue is execution, the answer is coaching. If the issue is understanding, the answer is clarity. And if the issue is strategic direction, the answer is clarity on what alignment looks like and why. But in every case, the path forward involves engaging with the person.

and helping them to get better. One of the most common mistakes nonprofit leaders make is avoiding these conversations. They notice the problem, they'll talk about it with the rest of the team, other leaders, they worry about it, but they never address it directly with a person involved. And like I said before, the top of the podcast,

nine times out of 10, the person who they're having the challenge with never even realizes there's an issue. when that happens when things aren't directly dealt with, one of three things can occur and sometimes all three of these. First, the problem continues. Second, the team member never gets the opportunity to grow. And third,

Your lack of attention to issues with this one employee sends a message to your other team members too, because hear me when I say this, your other team members know more about the reality of the situation than you think they do. And you're not addressing in a timely fashion this issue and in a clear and healthy way is the breeding ground for a toxic culture which you don't want.

Your team is one of the most important assets that your nonprofit has more so than money or a big major donor or your programs, your strategy, your funding, like it all matters. But the people who carry the mission forward every day are what truly determine your organization's impact. Your team is the major differentiator for your nonprofit. And because of that, they deserve you to lead well.

They deserve your attention. They deserve coaching that helps them improve and succeed and helps them love their job. And great leaders don't ignore performance problems. They address them with clarity and purpose. it for today's episode. If you're in the dreaming or the early phases of your nonprofit looking for clarity on mission and vision in your board.

and fundraising and your minimum viable program. That's what I call your MVP. This is your personal invitation again to make sure you join me for the upcoming virtual Launchpad Workshop Essentials for Moving from Nonprofit Idea to Impact three hours over three days, April 28 through the 30th where we workshop your mission and your vision statement. We'll talk about who your board members should be.

We talk about building out your beginning programs and a lot more. If you're feeling overwhelmed or just stuck in your dream for a nonprofit, but you can't get it off the ground. Sign up for the workshop April 28 through the 30th an hour each day. Try your very, very best to be there live. It does make a huge difference. But if you can't you miss a session, you will have access to the recordings as well. Sign up today the cost is just $49 for the whole thing. But space is limited.

nonprofitlaunchplan.com is where you go click on workshop to sign up again nonprofitlaunchplan.com and click on workshop. That's it for this episode of the nonprofit launch plan podcast for startups small and growing nonprofits. If this podcast is helpful at all to you, would you consider sharing it with another nonprofit leader who you think might benefit

Until next time, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Keep building your nonprofit wisely and keep making a difference.