360-Degree Leadership for Nonprofit Professionals

By Shannon Peery

This Nonprofit Navigation session explores 360-Degree Leadership, including practical tools about how to lead, wherever you are within your organization. It is presented by Dr. Brent Never, director of the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership,

We often think of leadership relating to the person at the top. But leadership occurs throughout organizations, from the Executive Director to front-line staff to volunteers and everyone in between. Nonprofit organizations must develop professionals with leadership skills at all levels to deliver excellent services in challenging circumstances. Although not wholly endorsed by MCNL or Dr. Never, many of the concepts come from John C. Maxwell’s book The 360-degree Leader : Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization.

You can lead up, down, across and throughout your organization, from all levels. As leaders, by encouraging delegated and modeled leadership throughout organizations, everyone can function more effectively. This is 360-degree leadership.

Fundamentally, those in your organization want to know if they are valued. An element of effective 360-degree leadership is to serve all of your constituents. These include direct reports, funders, team members, board committees, administrative workers and clients. The guidance on how to be an effective 360-degree leader here can help you manage (and lead), care for and build relationships all across your organization.

Functions of Leadership

The ‘heroic leader’ astride the pinnacle of the corporation (Ex. Jack Welsh) is an outdated historical perception of leadership – of the 20th Century – that limits the view of who can participate in leadership. We should move beyond the ‘command and control’ understanding of leadership, away from a ‘manipulating’ perception into a whole-leadership empowerment.

Business and their cultures, historically, have had more defined roles and rigid organizational structures than nonprofits. Nonprofit organizations are usually flatter than corporations or businesses. Smaller ‘start-up’ nonprofits may have skeleton crews, constantly collaborating and coordinating. It feels like everyone does everything! As nonprofits grow, scale, and expand (in their lifecycle) more organizational hierarchies and position differentiation is necessary. Yet many small or medium-sized nonprofits have fluid communication and project pathways across departments.

The traditional view (Ex. John Kotter) defines leadership that copes with change through setting direction, aligning people, motivating, and inspiring. Never asserts that although this view of leadership still holds true and resonates, the 360-degree lens allows us to ‘broaden out our lens.’ According to the research of Yukl (2012) there are functions of ‘What Leaders Do’ that are not included in the traditional model.

Alignment between objectives and strategies
Task commitment
Mutual trust and cooperation
Collective identity
Organizing and coordinating activities
Encouraging facilitating collective learning
Developing people

This broader level of leadership, although less hierarchical and more fluid, can motivate our organizations, our staffs, our volunteers, and our supporters/funders in fundamental intrinsic and extrinsic ways.

Myths & Misperceptions

There are myths and misperceptions, old or fixed ways of thinking, that are not conducive to 360-degree leadership, such as:

Position Myth – Leadership is only from the top
Destination Myth – You have to ‘get to the top’ in order to lead
Influence Myth – People would follow me if I were on top
Freedom Myth – I’ll have freedom once I get to the top
All-or-Nothing Myth – If I can’t get to the top, I’m out

All myths have an element of truth, yet if you question yourself and reflect upon your organization, you can see where these myths are not true, and worse, are ‘culture-factors’ that can be corrosive. Adopting new and growth-oriented mindsets, which allow you to lead in creative and practical ways across all levels of your organization, free you from these myths & misperceptions.

The Leadership Loop

The Leadership Loop can be applied to all levels of leadership and includes caring, learning, appreciating, contributing, verbalizing, leading, and succeeding. In fact, these affective elements of the practice of leadership should be utilized leading up, leading down, leading across – and throughout your organization.

Leading Up

Leading up is towards your supervisor, your board, the funders, and the public trust (for nonprofits) to whom you are accountable. Some things to keep in mind when leading up:

Lead yourself first and foremost
Lighten the load of those above
Do more than manage!
Invest in relational chemistry
Know when to push and when to back off

Leading up within your organization helps to ensure alignment and communication from all levels, from board and other stakeholders, having continual mechanisms for feedback, then across and down.

Leading Across

Leading across is with colleagues, other department leaders, and amongst sector peers. Some key themes to keep in mind when leading across include:

Be a friend
Let the best idea win
Expand your circle of acquaintances
Avoid the office politics
Don’t pretend to be perfect

Leading across encourages success through organizational mission-alignment and facilitates the ‘lifting of all boats’ and the appreciation of valuable peers, mentors, and other staff.

Leading Down

Leading down refers to those staff, volunteers, and constituents whom you directly (or indirectly) manage. Consider these ideas when leading down:

Slowly walk the halls
Develop each team member as a person
Place people in their strength zones
See everyone for all that they can be
Model the behavior you desire
Transfer the vision
Reward success, don’t stop innovation

Leading down asks for an openness, awareness, and an intentionality of your own professional behavior in service of those who work with and for you.

Putting Together your 360-Degree Leadership Plan

You can begin applying 360-Degree Leadership today by planning your next steps.

Remember:

You can’t be everything to everyone – own this
Co-create systems that allow and encourage the practice of leadership
Acknowledge and reward great 360-degree leadership
Coach those who are not living up to the ideal

You can take practical steps today that will help you become a better leader. Allow yourself some grace and re-engage in the process of planning areas of improvement periodically.

People are Not Problems to be Solved

by Dr. Nicole Price

Many leaders are promoted to leadership because they are amazing problem solvers as individual contributors. In fact, when asked, no fewer than half of all leaders say that they are rewarded for problem solving even in their current roles. The challenge with this disposition to problem solving is that people are not problems to be solved.

Ron Heifetz, author and expert in this area, helps leaders approach people challenges — including the ways in which we communicate — in “adaptive” ways. This change in mindset is important because when seeking to improve the way teams communicate, leaders have to use different methods than the ones employed with technical challenges like problem solving. As we look to handle more difficult conversations, we have to honor basic human dynamics such as internal biases, emotional triggers, different approaches to conflict and communication in general.

In the difficult conversations session at Bloch, we will discuss ways to approach conversation issues that are not always easily identified. We will also explore how to use some conventional tools (that we know about but don’t always use) to stay engaged in difficult conversations. Choosing to do otherwise is wrought with consequences for our organizations and for us as individuals.

Adaptive challenges like improving the ways you and others communicate does not come with the Cliff Notes manual. It will take time. It will take practice. It will require evaluating your beliefs and some of the underlying beliefs (mental models) of others in order to move the needle in this space for us collectively.

We can start by working on our ability to have these difficult conversations. There are some tools for talking when the stakes are high. Joseph Grenny, Susan Scott and Byron Katie have shared many of them with us.

Come and explore why we avoid using those tools and ways to overcome those obstacles.

Nicole’s next Bloch Executive Seminar is Developing Your Executive Presence & Expanding Your Career on March 3-4, 2021. Register to attend her session and view other seminars to support your professional development at Bloch Executive Education.

About the Author:

Nicole Price, Ed.D., understands that if leadership is anything, it is personal, and that everyone can be a great leader. So she gets personal. Nicole’s transparency allows others to learn from her mistakes and helps them avoid the same pitfalls. Through leadership development, coaching, consulting, keynotes, and other resources, Nicole encourages and enables others to live their lives in excellence. Her energetic and engaging sessions leave participants with strategies and specific tools that they can apply right away.

6 Tips to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is the ability to be aware of your own emotions and the emotions of others, then use the information to manage yourself to build strong relationships. While you need to be technically proficient at what you do — whether you are an architect, attorney, engineer or business executive — it’s your emotional intelligence skills that will boost your ability to be successful. Oh, and it can help you improve relationships with family and others.

Here are 6 practical tips to improve your EQ:

1. Be “in the moment”

It’s so easy in our over-scheduled, high tech world to continually multi-task. Research is showing that we can become addicted to looking at our cell phones constantly. How often do you look at your phone when you are with others? Are you really “in the moment?” Ignore the urge to multi-task and stay tuned in with what you are doing NOW. Be there with others using all your senses and your brain. It might be surprising what you learn! You may find that conversations go more quickly when you are tuned in rather than distracted – thereby actually saving yourself time!

2. Recharge during the day

Find a way to take a break during your day and get away from the meetings and your office. This may mean going for a 10-minute walk outside. Maybe it’s just walking around the office and talking with people about non-work related topics. Or perhaps its closing your office door and closing your eyes to meditate and relax. Figure out what works for you and make it a daily habit. It can help calm and re-energize you for what you face the rest of the day.

3. Pause

Before speaking, particularly in an emotionally or frustrating situation at work, simply pause or count to ten. Allowing yourself some space may avoid an emotional outburst and instead give you a chance to craft a more productive response.

4. Do a 360 assessment

A 360 assessment allows you to receive feedback from your subordinates, your peers, and your boss. These ratings can be compared to your self-rating to identify areas of consistency as well as outliers. You can identify strengths and also areas for improvement. This will give you insight into how others perceive you in order to build your self- awareness, the foundation of EQ.

5. Be Grateful

This sounds corny yet when you are grateful it puts you in a positive mind-set. Try it… write down three things you are grateful for each morning, or prior to attending a meeting. It is nearly impossible to then be stressed out and on edge once you do this. This calming influence can help you control negative emotions thought the day and help you handle adversity.

6. Smile and Laugh More

Neurotransmitters called endorphins and the chemicals dopamine and serotonin are released when you smile. These are triggered by the movements of the muscles in your face, which is interpreted by your brain, which in turn releases these chemicals. Endorphins are responsible for making us feel happy, and they also help lower stress levels. The release of endorphins reduces the level of the stress hormone cortisol. So have fun and get benefits in return!

These tips seem simple, yet when used can be quite powerful. Incorporate some or all of these into your workday and you may find that you are calmer and better able to manage your emotions in a productive way!