A client was recently appointed as an Interim ED of her organization, while awaiting her Board’s decision about the permanent appointment (for which she was a candidate). She asked me this question in an email: Can you provide a brief description of the role of an Interim Director? This was my response: An Interim ED… click to continue reading
Leadership
There are six types of leadership in mission driven organizations:
- Community Leadership: How much influence does the organization wield, over which issues, and how well positioned is the organization in its community/service area?
- Sector Leadership: How much influence does the organization wield, over which issues, and how well positioned is the organization in its field/sector?
- Leadership Culture: the normal behaviors of leaders; what is expected, praised, rewarded, and taught.
- Collaborative: the leadership consistency and presence provided by the senior leadership team and other leadership groups with shared responsibilities.
- Governance: The scope, style, and intensity of leadership provided by the Board.
- CEO/ED: the capability, style, focus, and energy provided by the top leader.
It is useful to see these six as individual topics and opportunities, as well as an integrated system where each influences the others. In national cultures where leadership is thought of more commonly as being about individuals and through a hierarchical lens, the bottom two in the list draw the most attention. In those where leadership is thought of more commonly as a collective responsibility, the middle two draw the most attention.
How Should We Measure Success?
At this writing, a Google search on nonprofit impact returned “About 85,500,000 results.” There’s a whole new industry of Impact Evangelists. There’s a reason for this, of course; recognizing and measuring success and progress requires attention. An organization’s assumptions can become invisible and its methods stale. As in all human activity, we can get self-focused,… click to continue reading
Who Should Do What?
Principles for Distributing Responsibility between Staff, Management, and Board Board members are temporary, part-time volunteers with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints. They are informed by prior experiences and experts (and wanna-be experts, and spouses, and friends, and…). Twelve Board members can have twelve differing views on their own responsibilities. Staff members usually have career paths and… click to continue reading
A Consumer’s Guide to Leadership Coaching, Part 2
Making a Choice Part 1 set the context and identified the challenges in the coaching marketplace. Part 2 provides four guidelines for assessing a coaching referral, the common mistakes that leaders make when selecting coaches, and how to assess the first meeting with coach candidates. How to Get Yours – Four Guidelines A mentor once… click to continue reading
A Consumer’s Guide to Leadership Coaching, Part 1
How to select a coach without help from Yelp It’s Not Getting Any Easier Leadership is complex, difficult, often confusing and usually exhausting. This has been documented and discussed for the past three decades, and continues unabated. Simultaneously, we continue to expand our expectations of leaders. Each year brings another set of best-sellers that adds… click to continue reading
Visionary Leadership
We all crave it. A visionary leader who, with confidence and optimism, provides an inspiring picture of a shared future that solves many of our problems and provides hope. Someone who is smarter, wiser, more courageous, of independent mind, above the fray, and charismatic. With these qualities in place in our leader, we can all… click to continue reading
The Challenges of the Scientist Leader
As a scientist with leadership responsibilities, you face a number of unique challenges. Success creates these challenges; the more leadership responsibility you are given, the more they become part of your life. Let’s start with four of the challenges that impact the lives of scientist leaders I’ve worked with. 1. More Leadership = Less Science… click to continue reading
