Supporting social sector leaders who want to go from surviving to thriving at work

This is what a wise friend of mine told me yesterday when I said I was calling my Congressional representatives to register my opposition to the new administration's war on everything I hold dear.

I'm departing this post from my usual focus on workplace wellbeing. Instead, I'll speak about my own mental health and responses to what's happening on the national scene.

I'd love to know how YOU are faring in the face of all the chaos and damage to our sector and the whole country. I hope you're taking good care and hanging in there.

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Spoiler Alert: I hope I’m not giving away too much when I say the AppleTV+ hit thriller Severance is science fiction. Some of us may wish we could keep our work and personal lives totally separate. But it’s not possible.

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Do you find yourself saying yes to every request from your boss or coworkers? Do you work nights and weekends to get the work done?

I used to overwork a lot. I thought that taking on more and more responsibilities would prove that I was competent, dedicated and worthy of a promotion, a raise or just my current job. It wasn’t until I hit a wall hard that I realized I was no longer able to keep up that exhausting pace.

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For nearly a year, I’ve been coaching a nonprofit leader since her second month in a small direct services organization.

She was hired to lead an important department; it was the first time she’d supervised others.

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I started an intentional gratitude practice about 15 years ago. I asked a friend if she’d like to be my “gratitude partner."

We began daily email exchanges to the other, simply listing all the people, events and things in our lives that we felt grateful for that day.

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If you’re like me, you felt despair last week and more than a bit baffled how the election could have turned out the way it did. I know I traveled a long distance through a thicket of emotions.

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A student in my Nonprofit Management Certificate Course last semester asked, “Why are nonprofit workers paid so poorly?”

A clinical psychologist, she founded a nonprofit to provide subsidized therapy to low-income clients. In a discussion on nonprofit leadership, she said she’d

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I recently led a half-day workshop on staying well at work for 60 staff members of three nonprofits serving people affected by sexual assault, domestic violence and homelessness.

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Like you, I’ve been busy the last few weeks. Sitting down to share my thoughts about leadership, organization culture and workplace wellbeing has been challenging. More soon on what I’ve been up to—all good!

After listening to a recent podcast, I decided I just had to share it.

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After college, I worked as an entry-level staffer in a small nonprofit founded and led by an imposing, outspoken man decades older than me.
 
One day he came into the department where I worked to propose a sweeping change that would double our team's workload without adding new staff.

My co-workers agreed with me that the idea was terrible, but the head of our department wasn’t willing to challenge the boss.

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Last time, I shared several ways nonprofit executives can take good care of themselves and keep burnout at bay.

This post I'll talk about how to build and maintain a positive, healthy culture at work so staff feel supported to do their best work and stick around.

I just heard about the CEO of a small nonprofit who took a month off recently due to burnout. She'd been hospitalized before because of work stress.

Back at work and starting to feel overwhelmed again, she doesn’t see a way out and seems ready to, once again, sacrifice her health for “the cause.”

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I wrote last time about how burnout – and burnout denial -- are rampant in our sector.

A new book offers hope to prevent everyday stress from burning us out.

First, let’s be clear what "burnout denial" means. Burnout denial is the tendency we have to ignore, minimize, rationalize or otherwise deny that our bodies and minds are hurting from chronic work stress.

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I recently lost a good friend. Privileged on several fronts and super-smart, she had meaningful work, close friendships and warm collegial relationships.

But, like many of us, she risked her health by not managing chronic stress symptoms – which the doctors said contributed to her death.

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Among the reasons people come to me for coaching is to gain clarity before making a high-stakes decision.

Some need to figure out their next career move, when to leave a job, the best time to retire or whether and how to start a consulting practice.

How do you respond to work letdowns? Over the course of my long career, my initial reactions to setbacks have run the gamut from getting mad and feeling scared to beating myself up. I’ve also scratched my head and asked, “Huh? What just happened?”

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True or False: “If you love what you do, you’ll never burn out.”

Back in the day, I loved being a freelance journalist for magazines and newspapers. I’d get intrigued by a subject then get an editor interested too. To research my article, I’d follow every scent in pursuit of lightning-bolt insights.

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Echoing what my nonprofit management students and coaching clients describe, two recent studies paint a mixed picture of nonprofit leadership. BIPOC and white leaders alike are passionate about their work to solve important social and environmental issues, but often feel overwhelmed by their jobs.

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We may be perched on the edge of a radical shift in our relationship to our work. When Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to reduce the national work week to 32 hours for full-time pay, he noted that Americans work longer hours than workers in any other wealthy nation.

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Quiet quitting. The 4-Day Week. Slow Productivity.

How can we make work sustainable?

If you’ve been following my posts, you may know that I am obsessed with how people relate to their work. While I write specifically to social sector leaders, I’m really speaking to myself and anyone else who struggles to balance their passion for mission-driven work with taking good care of themselves.

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An early coaching client was a nonprofit leader who was feeling pinched between her boss’ exacting standards and a new employee who was having trouble settling in. During our sessions, the client identified ways to communicate clearly what was expected of her new staffer as well as training to grow her technical skills. Bigger challenges were the different personalities

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A colleague recently shared her secret to success as a long-time nonprofit leader: She errs on the side of kindness with her staff. On many occasions, she hired women who were several months pregnant after they’d been passed over by other employers.

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Ever wondered why some bosses are both more likeable and more effective? Their secret may be a cluster of skills known collectively as “emotional intelligence.”

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We’ve all been there. We’re speaking with a colleague, a friend, our child or our partner about something they’re uneasy about. At some point we feel uncomfortable or pressed for time. To end the conversation quickly, we offer insensitive advice, such as “Here’s what you need to do”.

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Last time, I introduced Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies (4T) framework -- the different ways we respond to others' requests and expectations, as well as our own. Here I’ll offer ideas for getting the most from our teams by customizing how we work with each person’s tendency. First a brief story.

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The start of a new year is a great time to consider ways to create new habits to advance our goals -- and an opportune time to learn new leadership skills.

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“Trust is the coin of the realm,” former Secretary of State George Schultz said on his 100th birthday. “When trust was in the room … good things happened. When it wasn't, good things didn't happen. Everything else was details.”

One of my clients told me that the chance to move up in her career had been a key reason for taking a job a few

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I led a session recently on preventing workplace burnout. Participants -- nonprofit executives -- understood the famous Peter Drucker quote: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Knowing it’s on them to set the tone of their workplace, they shared some of the ways they are promoting their employees' well-being:

• Invite the whole person to show up by including personal checkins at staff meetings

• Educate yourself so you’ll recognize signs of overwhelm and burnout in your team

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You may not have a boss who yells, bangs on tables or insults you. But you likely had one -- at some point -- who occasionally made you feel unsafe in other ways.

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