Practical Inspiration for Nonprofit Leaders
As a nonprofit leader you will often find yourself in the middle. The middle can be exhausting, with stakeholders on both sides pulling you in opposite directions or using you as an intermediary to telegraph their displeasure to the other. This can take the form of two powerful board members with opposing visions for the…
I stumbled upon a precious lesson in a gritty industrial town in Northern New Jersey. It happened many years ago, in a plastic bag factory, to be precise. I was visiting the owner, a donor to the organization for which I was executive director at the time. After handing me a check for our humanitarian…
A fantastic nonprofit professional I recently encountered described struggling to integrate two valuable parts of herself at work. She is a person of extraordinary work ethic and accomplishment. She works systematically and thoroughly, never missing deadlines or quotas and always remembering to “dot the I’s and cross the T’s. She is also incredibly creative. She…
Build your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses. This two part formula will take you a long way toward becoming the best professional you can be. (Yes, I did say weaknesses, not challenges. More on that here.) Our innate abilities express themselves through hard-won skills. A college roommate of mine was a classical guitar major. An…