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Leading a nonprofit is a bit like being in the red zone on a football field? The Red Zone is where teams win or lose, depending on their ability to select and execute plays that move them forward across the goal line.
On today's episode, Tim and Nathan discuss nonprofit leadership activities that can make a difference and move the organization forward. Some activities discussed are those only an Executive Director can do, activities that build build personal capacity, activities that bring cohesion and momentum to a team, and activities that feed the leader's personal energy.
These red zone activities are inspired by the thinking of Todd Henry in his book, The Accidental Creative...a great resource for nonprofit leaders. You can find the book here.
The Hosts of The Practice of NonProfit Leadership:
Tim Barnes serves as the Executive Vice President of International Association for Refugees (IAFR) and can be contacted at tim@iafr.org.
Nathan Ruby serves as the Executive Director of Friends of the Children of Haiti (FOTCOH) and can be contacted at nruby@fotcoh.org.
All opinions and views expressed by the hosts are their own and do not necessarily represent those of their respective organizations.
Welcome to episode 95 of the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership. I'm Tim Barnes And I'm Nathan Ruby. Well, we appreciate you listening today, and I just want to remind you that here at the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership, we spent a lot of time talking about the nuts and bolts of leading a nonprofit to help your organization accomplish its mission, but we're also committed to your personal growth and development as a leader, and that's why we make sure to include episodes focused on just that topic, like today, which is what we're going to look at Now. I know we're in the middle of baseball season here in North America And in fact, nathan, you and I are going to be headed to Chicago this weekend to watch a game at guaranteed rate field between the White Sox and the Cardinals.
Nathan Ruby:Yes, we are, and, as you probably know or might know, tim and I are both Cardinals fans, and so we're going to trek up to the Big Windy and see the White Sox and Cardinals play, and unfortunately they are playing so badly, both teams, that they may actually both lose at this game. But we'll see. We'll see how it goes, tim.
Tim Barnes:Well, at least we'll have time to hang out, play a lot of podcast episodes, right, if nothing else?
Nathan Ruby:We could still have a productive day, even if our team doesn't win. We'll be good, that's true.
Tim Barnes:Well, baseball season, but I've been reading a book that has some leadership insights from the football field, in particular that area known as the red zone area on the football field. Now. The book is called The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry, and I kind of say it is really challenging me in a good way in so many areas And I think it has a lot to say to nonprofit executive directors. And I'll make sure that, as we talk about it today, i'm going to put a link to the book in the show notes, because I think you would really benefit from taking some time to read it.
Nathan Ruby:Okay, so for those of you who may not be quite as up to speed on football as some of us, the red zone is an area on each end of the football field that starts at the 20 yard line and goes to the end zone. So that is a 20 yard area, and it is a known statistic in football that if you are in the red zone, the offense when you have the football. If you're in the red zone and you don't score, or you don't score often enough, it's very difficult to win in the NFL without a high efficiency rating in the red zone. And in fact in last year's Super Bowl, if you remember, it was the Kansas City Chiefs versus the Philadelphia Eagles. And in last year in the NFL season, tim, i don't know if you know this or not, but the Kansas City Chiefs were number two in red zone efficiency and the Philadelphia Eagles were number three in red zone efficiency. So you got to score points when you're in the red zone, and if you're into football at all, you kind of know that That's a common thing to know, and so I get that part. But, tim, i'm not exactly sure what this has to do with nonprofit leadership, so help me out there a little bit.
Tim Barnes:Well, i'm glad you asked me to talk about this because I'm pretty excited about it. But Todd would say in his book red zone activities are those activities that really make a difference and generate forward momentum during a particular season in which you find yourself. So we all go through seasons in our life. We have some what I would call meta seasons that go on for a while, such as, you know, parenting small kids. that impacts your commitments, impacts the things you do. It's that season that you're in, nathan, and I have moved on from that season. We have adult kids, which brings a whole another set of circumstances.
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, yeah, it's not easier, it's just different, tim.
Tim Barnes:Correct. So it's a season in our life that impacts decisions that we make and commitments we're able to follow through on, or there's micro seasons, like you know, like the time of the year. You know we're in summer here in North America, so maybe it's impacting some of the things you do, or even seasons, like you have a go through a particular focus. What's important is to identify those activities that are relevant to the season you find yourself and both you know, both as a leader and as an organization. So the season that I'm in as a person, as a leader, what are the activities, what are the decisions that I should be focused on or where we at as an organization? And so it's important to take time to identify the activities that are relevant to your season.
Nathan Ruby:Okay, all right, i got it. That's I get it. I see where we're heading here, so let's jump into that and see what those red zone activities look like. But before we do that, tim and I would like to ask a favor, and what we would like to ask is could you do one or two things to help the show? And one is would you be willing to leave us a review, on whatever platform that you're listening to, and the reason that we, that we're asking for that is when the algorithms, when they, when they pick up data, they pick up websites, they pick up podcasts and they rank higher on the list it is one of the algorithms that they use is reviews left about the show, and so I know it's it's kind of a strong ask, but we would really love it if you could just drop a few sentences of well, and I would. I would hope that it was a positive review, but you know, if it's not a positive review, that's okay too. You could tell us what we could do better. But you know, even a sentence or two would really help that get the show out there a little bit more, help more people to find out and more people that could benefit from it, just like it does you. And then the second thing, and this I don't know if this is more important. Maybe it is if you could just tell, simply tell a friend or a colleague about the show and a simple hey, i'm listening to this podcast, i get some value from it. I think you would too. The number one way to increase a show Tim, correct me if I'm wrong, but the number one way to increase the size of a show is through word of mouth, and so if you could help us with that, we would really, really love that and would be very thankful for that.
Tim Barnes:Okay, So let's jump back into the red zone activity discussion. What we want to do is we want to focus in on some of the qualities of the activities that we should be doing in our seasons and what makes them red zone activities. So let's jump in. The first one is activities that you can uniquely do or add value to because of your position or your expertise, and those things help move the organization or a specific project forward. And it comes down to, you really are the best person for this situation. So what activities that you can uniquely do or add value to because of your position or expertise or experience? So, as executive director, there are some things that only you can do because you are the executive director. I remember having a conversation with one of my bosses that I worked with and he was great. He had such a servant heart. He was the president of the nonprofit organization, but he always was ready to jump in and help. And one day he goes. I think I just need to grab my shovel and go out and shovel the snow out in front And we had maintenance people. We had people that that was their job. And I just remember saying to him hey, can I just remind you. You are the executive director, you are the president of this organization, so you need to be going doing president things like raising money. But, nathan, you connect with that. That there are some things that only executive directors could do to bring value to the organization.
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, absolutely, and it is hard sometimes even for me, and I have to remind myself as well. To stay in your lane is not necessarily the right phrase, but it kind of is. So I do not have a strong, detailed finance background And so in the organization I lead, our finance director meets on the phone every week with our treasure. That's a conversation that takes place And it is a and I'm invited to that conversation. It's a standing, it's a standing call, and so I am. I'm invited to be part of that call, obviously because I'm the executive director no-transcript. Sometimes, when I need to, when something is happening that I need to be on the call, i am on the call, but I would say 90% of the time I'm not, because that is internal. I deep finance conversations that that are between the treasure and the and the finance director and I don't need to be on there. I trust my finance director and the treasure to get done what needs to be done, so that you know when the financial statements come to me, then I make decisions, my, my, i know how to read a financial statement and then I make decisions based on what the financial statement says. I don't have to be involved in the detail behind creating it, if that makes sense. So you know it. And while they're talking deeper finance stuff, then I'm, you know, making donor calls, which is where I need to be, because I'm the only one that could do that. So, yeah, you know, for smaller organizations, where you know we don't have a lot of staff and you're it, well, okay, that's a little different. You have to, you have to do what you have to do, but always be making critical decisions. Is this something that I need to be doing, or is there somebody else that could be doing this besides me?
Tim Barnes:And it has to do. Oftentimes there are things that That only the executive director should be doing to bring value, and that could be again representing your, representing your organization, at meetings, showing up in some of those places where you can talk specifically about it. Not only are there executive director things, but there are also things because of your expertise and, nathan, i think you bring an incredible expertise in fundraising that's been your life to your organization And there could be things that you you bring because you have an expertise in that. You know, i know, in our own organization, are our, our executive director, our president Had had his own website company developing websites and do things like that, so he's brought a lot of value to that area. Not every executive director coming into our organization would say, yeah, i'm the website guy. Because of his expertise, he brings value To our organization because he's had that expertise, brings that expertise to us.
Nathan Ruby:You know another area for that, tim, a lot that the falls in the executive director lap of smaller organizations is IT. Because you know, typically you don't have in a small nonprofit, you don't have somebody with heavy IT experience not saying it doesn't happen, it could, but pretty typically it doesn't And so that you know that that role's got to fall to somebody. And so you know I find myself doing a lot from from my, for my own stuff and for some of our key volunteers and some of our staff Of you know I'm sitting around Google saying, ok, how do you do this, how does this work? and and you know again it, either find a volunteer to do that or you spend the money and outsource it. But you know, that's just, it's just another area of if you, if you do have expertise in that, you do have a background, you have some skills in it, then maybe it's OK to keep that on your plate because you know you can, i do know how to do this, or I do know how to do that and I can do it quickly and I kind of enjoy doing it, ok, ok, well, that's, you know some of that's OK. But if you're trying to support, you know, 17 users, then that's you know. Then you need to let somebody else do that. But if you're supporting one other person, ok, then it probably makes sense. If you're, if you have an aptitude that you keep that on your plate again, you have to make critical decisions on that.
Tim Barnes:So, when it comes to things that you can uniquely do or add value to your organization, one is that you do executive director things. Second is that you may have expertise in an area. And the third one is you may have experience in areas like maybe you've you've been involved in in leading a crisis, or maybe you've had a lot of real estate Experiences, so you're able to step in and bring some of your experience. If you use a nonprofit trying to figure out, hey, where are we going to locate? do we need to get a new office? do we need to buy a property or all that stuff, but think about what kind of experiences that you've had that you can actually bring in and value to your organization. So these are red zone activities that their activities that you uniquely can bring or add value to your organization to move things forward either the organization or maybe a specific project. A second red zone kind of the activities are activities that increase your personal capacity to generate ideas, and these are activities that oftentimes we jettison. When we're in a busy season, we don't take the time to continue to build our personal capacity to generate ideas. One of those is just studying being you know, being committed to be a lifelong learner, and that's so important, so important. Nathan, you know I meet people that it's like, hey, you know, i've got my degree and I've done whatever, i'm good, and they never take time to continue to grow and understand life and how that's impacting their leadership, and so that is an activity that needs to be a part of your schedule and your study.
Nathan Ruby:Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting, tim, especially the last, i'll say, five years maybe it's been 10, but certainly in the last five years the number of colleges and universities and even junior colleges that now have nonprofit degrees and you come out with, you know, a bachelor's in nonprofit. I don't know exactly what they call it, but you know you can go and learn to be a nonprofit leader from the book, right? You know, you read the book, you take a test, you write a paper, you get an A and now you are ready to enter the market and be this great, effective nonprofit leader. And you know that type of study, book study, is important. I'll call it textbook studying, tim, that studying the textbook gives you a good base and a good underpinning foundation of knowledge. But oh my gosh Tim, you know, once you take that leadership role, sometimes the textbook just throw it out the window because people don't react the way that they do in the textbook. And you know people react based on their own stories and their own baggage that they carry and what's going on in their life. Studying is this dynamically changing environment that changes constantly. And you know reading and studying and that continual lifelong learning, gosh Tim, it is so important in nonprofit leadership that if you're not doing it as part of a normal ongoing routine, you're probably falling behind.
Tim Barnes:And not necessarily talking about oh, i'm going to go back and get a degree, but it's just. It's basically. Is there a point in your day, every day, where you're reading something, something that's connecting you to the world? There are so many courses, there's so much opportunity, but the important thing is you need to be developing your capacity as a leader and to understand the organization that you're leading. So study is a really important part of your regular schedule.
Nathan Ruby:You've got to know a lot, a little about a lot, and in the areas that you don't know, that's how you figure it out is you know you read, whether it's books or websites or podcasts, tim.
Tim Barnes:Hey, what a novel idea, right? Well, spending time studying and growing your knowledge as a lifelong learner. A second thing is and I've been challenged about this recently is having what would be called purposeful ideation, and that's the idea of putting a quote, unquote idea time into your schedule. You know, we get so busy with so many things we don't have time to think and to come up with ideas And to have a 15 minute or 30 minute slot in our schedule. Maybe it's once a week or maybe it's once a day. You know we just don't take time to actually think about hey, what could we do in about this? What are the issues I'm facing? What are some ideas that even just taking time to begin to write some of those down is really, really important. It's snowballs. You begin to come up with all kinds of ideas. And as a leader. That's a capacity we need to have.
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, for sure. And it goes back to the first point on what are some of the things that your position, your expertise as the executive director that is, your job is to be looking. Part of your job is to be looking out in front and of what's happening now, out, you know, a week a month, six months a year. You've got to be, you've got to be paying attention to that. And now you may have volunteer, key volunteers or staff, part time staff, contractors, whatever their job is right now, what's happening right now in whatever area that they're working in. And your job is right now also. But you've got to be building time to where you are thinking about what's coming, what questions should we be asking, what areas do we need to be addressing down the road? And if you don't build in time to just sit and allow yourself the freedom to do that, things will come up and catch you unaware or bite you and you have no idea what's coming. And if you had spent some time thinking about these things, it may not have snuck up on you.
Tim Barnes:Well, along with that, nathan, a third thing is just what we would call intelligence gathering. So, as the executive director, you should be having some time to look at the trends, where the trends in nonprofits, particularly in the area that you're focusing on, or even the challenges that nonprofits are having or around the topic that you guys are focused on, and so that's important as well. So where is that happening? Which then helps lead you to ideas. But these activities that we're talking about are activities that increase your personal capacity to generate ideas, to be able to make decisions, to see out in front of us. A third type of activities are those activities that provide cohesion or creative traction for your team, and again, your team may be the board that you work with. It could be that, if you have staff, your staff team or maybe your volunteer team, but these are activities that help bring those team members together and create traction, creative traction to be able to move forward. So one of the best things that you can do as an executive director is to, on a regular basis, clarify the objectives of the organization and the priorities so that people know oh yeah, that's what we're trying to focus on, this is where we're going. These are the things that have the important part of our organization right now. Looking for opportunities to clarify the objectives and priorities are really, really important. A second thing is the activities that clear the obstacles for your team. What could you do as executive director to open up space for your team members? So maybe your team members leading a project and they're just stuck, maybe they don't have the right tool or the right information and maybe you can make that happen. You could talk to the board and say, hey, we need to spend money in this area because that will help us move forward. Or hey, here's some things you can read, here's an industry update or whatever. Can you, as a leader, clear those obstacles that are holding your team members back in doing the things that you need to get done?
Nathan Ruby:Sometimes, tim, the obstacle that's holding your staff, your volunteers, back. They don't feel like they have permission to take that next step, to make that decision, to move forward. And a lot of people, if you're an executive director or if you want to be an executive director in the future, making decisions is something that's part of the job, that's what you have to do, but that doesn't come naturally to most people, and most people have worked in an environment where they're told what to do again and again and again and again. And so if you're leading a small nonprofit team, you really want to give your team everything that they need to be successful, and sometimes the biggest obstacle that you can clear is just saying, hey, this is your project, this is your event, this is your thing, here's what we're trying to do. We're trying to do one, two, three, four. Go. Here's my blessing, go. And sometimes all they need is just that encouragement to yes, make decisions, and if it's wrong, we'll fix it, but don't worry about it, go. And sometimes that's all they need is that encouragement.
Tim Barnes:Another thing, another activity that you, as an executive director, can do is celebrate successes. Spend time When somebody reaches a milestone, when you get to this project you've been working on this project for a while and it actually comes through and you're seeing success celebrate it. Look for those opportunities to celebrate Individuals, celebrate Goals, met, all that. That. That's a regular rhythm, regular activity that you do. Or even providing also providing team activity Those times where you can bring your team together outside of work, maybe take them to a ball game or invite them to your house and have a barbecue or whatever. But that builds the cohesion and keeps people moving forward with some of those simple activities.
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, and remember, celebrate success publicly. I mean if you have somebody that's did something great or did give that publicly in front of a team meeting or in front of the board or whatever. And the other side of that is if something didn't go right and we've got to address something that's done in private, never negatively address an issue in a group of people. That's all done privately, one-on-one. But when you're celebrating success, boy, that's public, that's for everybody to know.
Tim Barnes:Last set of activities that we want to talk about are activities that feed your energy, And we talked about this a couple of episodes ago, a little bit with Jack Grapple when he was on our podcast. But there are some things that feed your energy. One is adequate sleep. You guys need to be getting your sleep, Nate, and I remember I was part of a several years ago as part of a service club We met every Friday morning. For some reason, somebody got this idea and they started a after midnight club And it was a badge of honor if the night before you had gone to bed sometime after midnight because you were hustling, you were working, And so you know, if you went to bed at 3 am and you were up at 6, man, you were part of this incredible club And I was just like how stupid is that? Because we're finding more and more and more that adequate sleep is so important. Your brain needs that time to recreate and do some things.
Nathan Ruby:And Tim, i'm going to start the 9 pm club, maybe 8.45.
Tim Barnes:Well, we all have our rhythms. You know, i'm a morning person. You know others are. you know, i think, nathan, you're probably a later night, you know not that late, not midnight. But we have our rhythms and we understand that. But you need 7-8 hours to really continue to have the energy you need to lead well, and so making that a priority, making that an activity that brings energy to you, is really important, you know. A second one is just we've talked about this again exercise and movement, not being staying in place all the time sitting at your desk or doing whatever. You need to exercise, you need to move, you need to take a walk, yeah.
Nathan Ruby:It is easy for me, Tim to. I could sit all day, I could skip meals sometimes if I'm really working on a project, something that I'm really focused on. And you know, all of a sudden it's, you know, 4 o'clock in the afternoon and I've literally sat in my chair all day long. And I use my watch I've set it, you know, so that it goes off. It's time to stand up, It's time to move, And I set my hours of the day to where I'm taking some time every hour to. Even if I just walk around the office or the house in circles, at least I'm moving something.
Tim Barnes:That's really important to. You know there are your watch or other. You know your computer, your phone, whatever. You can set reminders to stand up and to take a walk for five minutes or do whatever, But that's really important to kind of keep you energized, keep your energy moving through you, as well as drinking enough water. We typically walk around dehydrated, and so water is really important in the energy field as well. Another thing and this is really important to Nathan and I, but even your spiritual practices. You know you need to feed your soul and that you know could be whatever. It could be meditation, it could be prayer, it could be, you know, reading scripture or doing whatever. You're feeding your souls Really important to give you the energy to keep moving forward. The last part of this I will say also is, i think, looking for those life-giving activities, those activities that actually bring you life, and you need that to keep moving forward. And it could be. You know there are people that I spend time with that just they bring me life, they are, they're encouragers, they ask good questions, they get me. You need to spend more time with those kind of people, or maybe there are places you know for me, i love the mountains. The mountains bring me life. So any chance I get to spend time in that way Or maybe there's interest, maybe you like to do art, or maybe you maybe ride your bike or do whatever But it's something that just brings you, brings you life, and those kind of activities are really important to make sure they're in your schedule as well. Putting focus and effort into these sorts of activities that we've talked about can really make a difference on the trajectory and the impact of your life as well as your organization, and, as we always say, it can feel overwhelming as we've looked at all these various activities, those activities that where you uniquely bring value you add to your, to your organization. Or activities that increase your personal capacity to generate ideas. Or activities that provide cohesion or creative traction for your team. Or activities that feed your energy All those are important. You don't have to do every single one of them today, so just grab one of those. What one is really stood out to you when we talked about. It kind of triggered something that's like, yes, i need to do that. Start with one thing and slowly begin to add these into your life and into your leadership as you add into your organization. They're really important. They'll bring impact. They'll move you forward. One closing thought in the same way, it's important to identify your key red zone activities. It's also important to identify those activities that you might describe as being ineffective or unproductive, or even impairing you from being the leader you need to be, and you need to take some time to take shears to those and prove those activities out of your life. They could be distractions, it could be bad habits or it could be activities that aren't necessarily bad, but if there are activities that have taken over your life and they're stopping you from being the leader you need to be, then it's time to move those out of your life as well. So look for those activities that can help you move forward. Remove those activities that are stopping you from being the leader that you need to be.
Nathan Ruby:Well, thank you for listening today. If you are benefiting from what is being shared on this podcast, tim and I would like to ask you to share a review. On whatever platform you're listening to us on, let us know how the podcast is benefiting you. If you would like to get in touch with us, our contact information can be found in the show notes. That's all for today, until next time.
