Tuning Up Your Nonprofit Team!

com or career blind spot podcast but you can check that out on the website and i also in the context of pharmacy just spoke for azpa a couple months ago so i’m going to put a little spin of non-profit now i’m not a non-profit expert hence but you could be a nerd too you just need that one i should i actually need new glasses i might have to use it yeah i’ll send you a pair but regardless if it’s a non-profit a for-profit a sports team a bunch of boy scouts girl scouts whatever it is any group is is trying to accomplish something that usually requires people that you usually requires a certain amount of resources and or money so we’re all like really trying to do the same thing role objectivity is kind of step number one we don’t hire people to tap their full potential or make them happy in the workplace anyway we hire them because we need a job to be done there’s an objective of the role okay that’s that’s where i wanted to break it down so it literally means what is the objective of your role so is that in the job description like where where would you find that yeah it is and usually and i don’t want to get too harsh here but if you like the badass i’ll keep going with it you can tell me down boy but usually it becomes a needle in the haystack of a job description and even leaders and the most dedicated people sometimes they’re the worst at missing the point of actually i’m hiring this executive assistant or this development i need this main thing to happen there’s all this stuff that goes there but i need to cure cancer you know getting a degree all these things matter but if we don’t make a dent in this universe or or the metric the widget move we have a problem and so that’s where most not just people but the people in charge the leaders we’re unclear what is the most important thing um like think about like a like a babysitter you well you know we might want our babysitter to have our kids in bed by nine or teach them chinese i don’t know something but most parents are like just don’t let them die keep them alive that is your role objectivity but if you’re alive exactly but if you’re like a teacher or i’m sorry if you’re hiring a tutor that objective keep them live but it’s also like they gotta pass math or whatever it is so role objectivity is everyone probably when things are out of tune everyone has a different finish line it’s kind of like hey you and us you and i want to go on vacation to the beach well you want to go to san diego i want to go to los angeles pretty close right maybe not if we’re really trying to go together and land the plane or launch so roll objectivity is the most pragmatic and it’s really simple not notice it’s not objectivities it’s right one thing and i’m not saying there’s other things that aren’t involved but if you’re not clear on that one thing then the rest of the job description can become this busy complicated convoluted mess and the other part going back to 2000 to 2020 things change that one thing sometimes or maybe it’s the same finish line but now we have a detour so if you want your team in harmony or if they’re out of harmony and they’re not doing their jam jobs that’s where i i always start is what’s the point of their job and very often the person doing their job is has a very different i’m going to la but my boss wants me to go to san diego close enough right yeah yeah so i have a question especially when it comes to nonprofits because we exist for a mission right so is our mission that role objectivity like let’s say that it is to you know eradicate hunger isn’t that everyone’s role objectivity or am i off that’s that’s a that’s a great question and this is i would gladly for people to tell me no but for since it’s my topic um it is important that the the nonprofit is clear on like how are we trying to do that eradicate that’s a big hairy audacious goal and i i get the reach should i exceed the grass but if you’re not clear on are we trying to go to l.

a or are we trying to get to the moon okay then it’s this big big thing of you know world peace okay that doesn’t sound terrible but and here’s the reality you have volunteers or do you have people who actually you’re paying money if i’m paying money to someone i want them to get the one thing done um and you know right now a little off-center but keep me interesting i just came from a naturopath which is different than covered insurance like that stuff better work or at least i better be fooled so yes the organization should be clear on that objective because that’s everyone coming along but every time you hire a especially if you’re paying them money uh but even a volunteer you gotta know like it’s like what think of a band you know are they playing the triangle they train the two but they need to know the specific thing and if you’re unclear if you’re just expecting them for their good will right that’s going to burn out it’s not going to work yeah i love your passion it’s it’s definitely coming through so move us into individual empathy i’m curious what this means for you here yeah um and actually i’ll go back because they’re all together but always as an example even though i like to um do my own yard work imagine if i or you have ever hired someone to mow your lawn but they’re like well but i really love painting cool but i only want my grass mode that’s roll objectivity you have to be clear on the person that you’re expecting to do an awesome job what is that what’s the a plus what’s the c minus or the passing grade um individual empathy is like oh i got someone who’s like a natural artist and they’re awesome and the reason they’re mowing lawns is they’re trying to pay for art school or trying to fund their materials empathy that’s another term that i think we all have or that we all are capable of but most of us really only say suck at doing it but we underestimate at how daunting it is to be empathetic a little silly here but anytime someone cuts me off i live in downtown phoenix it’s easy to get mad but i just tell myself well they have diarrhea i was making up my head but i’m like it doesn’t make sense to be uh angry at everyone but individual empathy going back to the workplace nonprofit is not treating everyone the same unless it’s that you’re actually trying to think that they’re different people that they in individually you’re taking time really it’s a redundant phrase empathy is unique custom but it’s really like you have this team and maybe all of your team are doing great except you got one squeaky wheel you got one toxic maybe one dirt burnt out person why are you making excuses and pointing your finger or are you actually thinking hey it’s a single mom or this is a dad who blah blah blah or this is a single person who you know is not where they were they thought they’d be in later in life it’s not your job to play therapists but if it’s their job to make all the sales calls and they’re not doing it it’s to really think well who do i have here are they even cut out for it do they want to do this you know is can i actually coach them is it salvageable but it’s stopping and thinking like the role objectivity is the most cold objective thing individual empathy is the most subjective thing is subjective right and i guess for that i would fall into are we being empathetic are we enabling the victim mentality yes yes and it’s here’s the thing it’s not being nice individual empathy isn’t being nice and polite and in fact if you have someone that i say hey how would any time this happen to the workplace hey how is so-and-so oh they’re nice that immediately is oh so-and-so doesn’t carry their weight um as opposed to oh they’re a jerk and they i’m like oh they probably still do something but maybe they’re rough around the edges though they’re nice it’s kind of like saying hey i love you like a brother or a sister you know you don’t want to hear that but again if you’re the conductor you’re the person in charge you want your team to do their job you got to look like why isn’t this person or is it what is it going to take for them to do a good job why did they come everyone comes for a paycheck everyone goes to work for money happy people go to work for a different thing it’s not my belief your boss’s job to make you happy but if you’re a smart boss you at least try to make them less miserable but they need to do the job first and so it’s a chicken and the egg sort of thing and is that where pure respect comes into because i’m feeling like all of this really like kind of flows together yes it’s really it’s a russian nesting dolls you know what those are yes you take one off and another one’s in there you just yeah it’s like the same thing and so my industry team development coaching eq is based off of a lack of pure respect and most people won’t admit i don’t respect uh jared or juan but it’s usually not i don’t have an issue personally with her it’s the job that you do or i think you should be doing and so this is the reverse order most people are complaining about most leaders are like they just won’t get along or they don’t blah blah and so what i realized is oh the problem is that smaller nesting doll all the time that someone either doesn’t understand or isn’t clear on their job or someone else’s job because let’s say jared you’re you’re a badass with your job you do your role but i’m me and you aren’t getting along okay and basically it comes down to that i’m not doing my role really well and no one’s taking the time to say hey juan you know you’re nice but blah blah blah pure respect and this might be harsher words but basically you have a lack of respect for me or i have a lack of respect for like wow you’re really carrying your way you’re awesome i’m not carrying my weight and so i go back to sports i don’t like to make too many sports analogies but they don’t have to be friends yeah oh my gosh yes each other and so pure respect is around the it’s about almost peer slash role respect and a lot of us don’t trust our peers actually when it’s uncomfortable when it’s out of harmony we don’t trust each other and sometimes we’re wrong maybe you think my job should be up here but really you know i like going back to pharmacists pharmacists make good money pharmacy tax make different money and that’s not wrong but it’s like hey realize they see you up here you know they’re here like are you guys trusting of those roles or is there some tension sure wow so i’m curious did you what what sports did you play i i grew up playing baseball because my mom loved it and rebelling i i ended up becoming an umpire to make some assigned money during college it was just so boring for me like i could play but but basketball i loved um and that was my main one yeah well i love the sports analogy and my co-host of course julia patrick she also loves sports and often brings in sports analogies um but i love what you said and how you related it to sports because as a soccer player i grew up as a soccer player um and also i’ve coached right and so it’s really about we don’t have to get along on the team you know like we don’t have to get along on the team but our end goal is this so we need to work together for this end goal and i see that often and i’m curious one if you could talk to us about how you know maybe even um with a with a pandemic the covid pandemic you know how have you seen this shift with all of your topics that you’ve talked about today what have you seen really in the workforce that the the people who are considered bad bosses or this or like not the admirable leaders but their employees are still being paid are severely under credited with being clear on role objectivity that hey we have a job to do and we can still pay you or provide insurance or whatever that they don’t get the credit however but the people who really do the individual empathy and hold people accountable like i love it and this is unfortunate but i love it when someone gets fired or actually they let go but in the most respectful honest and early way of hey we hired you because of this this and it doesn’t seem like you can do it and so we really want this to work but here’s what we’re going to do we’re going to give you you know two weeks notice or a month that doesn’t happen very often but what that tells me is that’s a leader who is focused on the business but also treating someone like it’s holding people accountable um i keep starting to say this phrase not to open a different topic but like fire your your your if your medical provider isn’t helping you out like you can go somewhere else now finding that other person is daunting but a lot of us just stick with someone because that’s the expectation so in 2020 what i’ve seen is those people who are doing that are reaping the rewards like hey business is down employees say hey i’m going to slash my paycheck or i will need to you can’t you can’t force loyalty and so if you really want those the the team that’s going to have your back when the s hits the van that that’s happening more but also the other people who at least are clear on objectivity they’re still employing people so it’s one is not i guess one is better than the other but if you really want a team in harmony i think i was going to say this earlier but empathy is hard and exhausting i understand why we don’t do it all the time especially if we’re stressed out if i’m in pain why am i going to worry about your pain um so any leader who can get results and makes time to care about their people to get results that’s hard and i’m willing to help them so that’s kind of a big answer here but those are the like two classes of leaders that are still surviving the old school and the new school yeah and i would say when it comes to empathy and i’m curious you know your perspective and view here is i would stereotypically say that the non-profit community and the non-profit leaders are also very empathetic individuals right we are the individuals that um you name it we’re in it’s an all-in kind of culture or from my you know existence and and perspective um so how have you seen if you can um share about how like empathy shows up in the different sectors of what you you know you have experience in and i would love to see if you’ve seen a difference between yeah and i would i would have to say like and doing are two different things and so you know it’s one thing to say hey i want to help immigrants or homeless people whatever but to start a non-profit that does that all of a sudden you’re in a different venn diagram than most people okay um and but even then empathy my definition of it which most people do disagree is not just oh i feel for you oh i want to help you but it’s like you almost could like jump back in time and realize oh they did have diarrhea on their way to work but most of us don’t do that and so i think just because you’re a nice person who cares about a cause doesn’t mean that you’re as empathetic as you could be the example i’ll give is just because you have an suv that full tank can get you all the way to la on one tank doesn’t mean you’re driving it there doesn’t mean you’re going on adventures and so to me a good a truly empathetic person and i don’t count myself with this all the time it’s a it’s a muscle gets results too it’s not just i care for this person i also realize oh this person’s hurting and they can’t help me in the way that i need help right now it’s like when a parent that you have like a teenage son right almost 11.

okay well maybe he’s already there but like i’m sure there’s times when like i don’t know he falls and scrapes his knee and you want to go and you know mom him repairing him but versus also the you know what he needs to figure out how to bounce back up and dust himself off to me that’s empathy the one where you go and i’m not saying it’s not but to really know like look if this person’s going to become the person or the performer they want to me that in terms of the industry i don’t think i don’t know what i’m trying to say exactly the i feel like we’ve gotten pulled in two different directions if you’re for-profit it is now cooler and more hip to kind of care about your employees but we still kind of put it on the surface doing it is a different thing and the employee is almost worse if you say it but then you don’t back it up versus just saying like we don’t really care about you but as long as you do a good job here’s your job to me i think that’s a better mission statement than saying we care about you and not doing it but i believe the i can’t say that i’ve seen one industry be better at it but to me it always starts at the top there’s nothing new there and any any leader who is also very aware of numbers in the reality of tangible things and who’s more empathetic to me i think is doing much better today but again that’s also that’s a daunting task like we’re talking about like not drinking coffee or whatever like that that requires extra effort so i can’t narrow it to one area actually i can’t i’ll save my brain to save me if you have a good team working from home you’re empathetic and if you don’t it’s not that it’s not a good team but like it people say oh i can’t trust people working from humble i’m like okay well you’ve hired the wrong people then right and so if you actually have a high performing team that’s remote there is empathy somewhere in that group if not amongst all of your team because the other thing i don’t think i quite touched on those three things uh role objectivity um individual empathy pure respect it’s not just the leader doing it it’s all the people that the guitarist knows that the drummer and blah blah blah so yeah working from home leaders you have to have empathy otherwise it doesn’t work yeah that is so fascinating and i do still think you’re a total badass and would still nerd out with you for hours so maybe we shouldn’t go for coffee but like i don’t know our favorite watering hole where literally maybe there is water and not coffee because we’ve both talked about that i am curious as we start to wrap up today’s conversation for the episode one you talked about you know checking your passenger in the seat and that you don’t just check this passenger or you don’t just check your rearview mirror once this is an ongoing thing what does career blind spot teach when it comes to doing this ongoing thing with our teammates um yeah it starts with yourself actually a pro mode and you need to edit this out but i have a book that’s coming out called in a new work mindset it’s my first book it’s very short hour-long plane ride um but it starts with um culture is a choice sort of made by leaders those are paraphrase of the chapter but like if your leader doesn’t have a good relationship with their job with the objective of their role you could still have some superstars but it’s it’s going in just like if a parent has x y and z issue the kids are going to deal with it now there’s no flawless thing but you’re setting an expectation of how to take care of yourself and very often we get bosses managers good business people leaders not always and so what career blind spot teaches is that like look if you’re if you want more uh loyalty respect or whatever out of these employees here are the ingredients but every time they look at you and you’re mad because they’re smoking in 90s commercial where’d you learn how to smoke i learned it from you dad you know like it’s it’s a bookend leadership is a booking that the people who go in between but you set the tone and so that’s what i teach over and over it’s a personal accountability issue and so people who say hey i can’t hire people don’t want to stick around i hire lazy people or the people i keep hiring i’m like why are you attracting losers i’m being mean on purpose but i’m making it about them i was like maybe these aren’t the right people for you but if you want the right people well then you need to do something different so i always like to point the finger at the person who’s pointing the finger it’s always your fault if you’re trying to do something but in an organization a career blind squad is trying to teach is that we all have blind spots the boss probably always wasn’t the boss and therefore their job changes and i’ll end with this when you’re a parent i’m not one i’m not one hope to be soon um but you have the baby first baby job description mom or dad ding now in two weeks that job description just changed a little bit keep the baby alive but all the things five years old 10 13 20 30 you’re always a parent but the job description keeps changing but it’s on you of how what kind of parent you want to be and you can’t force your kids to do this or that but setting that example is way better than lecturing and hoping they change this has been phenomenal and you know all of your topics of conversation have really just been mind-blowing for me and you will be an amazing parent so as soon as that job title changes i know that you are up for the job uh juan kingsbury founder and talent strategist with careerblindspot this is exactly where you can find one uh careerblindspot.

com we’d love to know more about your book when that comes out we actually have here on the american nonprofit academy a book list and i would love uh for julia and i to put your book i heard you uh say it’s not quite ready but it’s almost ready we’d love to add that to our book list so um so i hope that you will keep us posted and of course thank you and of course thank you to all of our presenting sponsors you see their logos right in front of the screen again they exist for you to do more good so they are here to pour into you into your mission-driven goals and i hope that if you haven’t already please do find them uh they are here to lift the energy in our world and to help you solve your community problems if you haven’t checked out fundraisingevents.

tv with mr jason champion make sure you do that that conversation and episode is everything from i hope i can do julia and jason write it’s from barnes to ballrooms and golf to gala it’s a little hard for me to say that but i love how they always combine this uh you know kind of spectrums but one wow i i am just wowed and i really would love to meet you in person uh you are a high vibing energy uh that i would love to just you know kind of go back and forth with on this conversation so again so grateful that you have joined us today live for this broadcast and of course if there was anything juan said that you want to go back to and uh revisit of course this will be fed into the fabric of the american non-profit academy juan thank you so much i appreciate you you are welcome thank you been a privilege and an honor thank you absolutely and to all of you that have joined us today i hope that you’ll join us again for tomorrow which is as i check my calendar yes it is a friday so it’s asked and answered and tony bell will be joining me tomorrow and until then please stay well so you can do well thanks everyone and enjoy the rest of your day you.