Happy New Year! How has January started for you? Here, we’ve been looking back as well as forward, as a podcast we recorded in October has just been released. Director, Helena Sharpstone was interviewed by the rather fabulous Kenneth Foreman and James Wright, curators of the Do More Good podcast series. It was fun looking back at career highs and lows and to discuss our thoughts on what good management looks like, how to develop resilience in this ever-demanding world and why selling and fundraising aren’t really that different. Do have a listen and tell us what you think!

Click here to listen online


This month we feature a guest blog by one of our masterclass attendees, Reinier Spruit.  Reinier applies his thoughts on building teams, to fundraising, but honestly, his wisdom gained from attending our session could be applied to any discipline.  Read on and consider how this applies to you and your team.

 

This is how you build the best fundraising team.  In October at the International Fundraising Congress, I attended the masterclass run by Helena Sharpstone and Jhumar Johnson entitled “Leadership essentials and building inclusive, resilient teams”. Theory and practice were beautifully brought together this afternoon. It was once again confirmation that fundraising results are completely dependent on the great people who work in our organisations. From how good those people are at their profession, how those people work together and how they are brought together by the right management and frameworks.

I say it often: the Head of Fundraising is one of the most important ingredients for successful fundraising. Perhaps the most important ingredient. The Head builds bridges up and down, hires the right people, sets an ambitious course, prepares the rest of the organisation to be successful, and… builds the best fundraising team. A team consists of several individuals who work together towards a goal. The combination of all these fundraisers as a team should lead to a better result than if you were to add them together separately. In other words, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

During the masterclass, Helena and Jhumar introduced Patrick Lencioni's book: 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team'. One element shows that trust is the absolute basis of any well-functioning team. A lot can go wrong due to a lack of trust. Members of teams that lack trust hide their weaknesses and mistakes from each other, hesitating to ask for help or give constructive feedback. They draw premature conclusions about the intentions of others without attempting to clarify them. They don’t recognise and utilise each other's skills and experiences. And they may hold grudges, dread meetings, and find reasons not to spend time together.

But the other way around is also true. Members of teams with a lot of trust in each other admit weaknesses and mistakes. They ask for help. They accept questions and input about their responsibility. They give each other the benefit of the doubt before coming to a negative conclusion. They take risks when providing feedback and assistance and appreciate and make use of each other's skills and experiences. This leaves them able to focus their time and energy on important issues, not on politics. They offer (and accept) apologies without hesitation, look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group.

When we talk about fundraising, we often talk about response rates, revenue, retention, data-driven and donor-orientated fundraising. But attention to the dynamics in your fundraising team is just as important and, in many cases, an absolute condition for achieving results at all. This is only possible in an environment in which people feel safe. Psychological safety [in a work environment] means feeling safe to take interpersonal risks, express your opinions, disagree openly, raise concerns without fear of negative consequences or pressure to cover up bad news.

That sounds great, but how do you create that safe environment as Head of Fundraising? In theory this is not very complicated. Treat others as they want to be treated. Welcome curiosity, because asking questions is very healthy! Promote healthy conflict, because a good discussion works wonders. Give everyone a voice, because every voice matters. Position failure as a real possibility, always give the benefit of the doubt, and put yourself in someone else's shoes.

How much attention do you pay to your amazing fundraising team?

Many thanks to Helena and Jhumar for a great masterclass!

In October we’ll be heading to The Netherlands to speak at the International Fundraising Congress.  One of our workshops is on how to become Fundraising’s most wanted – or any team’s most wanted for that matter.

In a world driven by people power, some people stand out. You know that person who walks into the room (virtual or real) and you just think, “You. We want you”? You don’t even know their skills or experience, but they have a vibe that puts them in demand. What’s their secret? Actually, they have three: a high-performance mindset, an approach the unites rather than divides, and more than just a bit of backbone.

There are a number of ways in which you can develop a high-performance mindset.  One way is to consider how you add value to your team and always have this in mind when you contribute. Are you a strong listener, do you ask searing questions that get people thinking, are you full of ideas and won’t give up until you find one that fits the bill?  Maybe you’re an ace problem solver who sees obstacles purely as things to overcome.  Team members with a high-performance approach, value all these attributes and more.  They work out what comes naturally, make best use of it and then apply themselves to develop a level of competency around the rest.  They come to the team with offerings not just requests.  It’s a bit of a cliché to talk about a “can do” attitude but if you can find ways to say yes more than you say no (within reason!) you’ll always be in more demand.

An approach that unites is all about valuing difference.  Do you seek out people who are similar to you? It’s natural and human to want to do that, it makes life easy, gives us a good “shorthand” with our colleagues and feels comfortable.  But you’re in grave danger of falling into group think.  Difference makes us think, sometimes it makes us uncomfortable, but in the end, you are more likely to innovate which propels you to the dizzy heights of an in-demand contributor.  Team members who look to welcome different approaches, experiences and backgrounds to the team, not only create a fertile ground for ideas, but they are also more likely to move seamlessly between teams, creating strong relationships as they go.

How’s your resilience at the moment – feeling sturdy or wobbly?  Understandable if it’s the latter, given all the challenges the world keeps throwing at us.  When it comes to strengthening your backbone, you could do worse than read up on the work of Carol Dweck and Growth Mindset.  The idea that you make your own luck and that talent and skill are far more about hard work and effort than they are lucky genes, just about sums up the Growth Mindset.  She talks a lot about “not yet” – the idea that you haven’t achieved something yet, won yet, smashed it yet – being a healthier approach than writing yourself off at the first sign of failure.  Coaching yourself to think “not yet, but getting there” is a great way to stoke up your resilience.  It’s a hopeful and positive approach that acknowledges the value of putting the effort in and that good things come to those who work hard.  Teams like that.

We hope to bump into you in the Land of the Tulip next month as we have lots more to say, but in case you don’t make it there, we’ll save you a Stroopwafel and record some of our sessions for you to listen to for more ways to become everyone’s most wanted.

Next month we’ll be heading north of the border to deliver an opening keynote at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising’s Scottish Conference on Fresh Thoughts on Leadership.

But really – is there anything new to say about leadership?  Well, we think there is and here are three thoughts for starters.

Firstly, leadership is a mind-set and a set of actions and behaviours, not a job title.  So, if you’re about abandon this blog because you don’t think you’re a leader, stay for a minute longer.  You don’t need a team or even a project to lead.  Leading can be about the way you bring new ideas to a conversation, notice things others have missed, pick up on an emerging theme and convince others to try an alternate approach.  We work with a number of clients who consider their “key influencers” across the organisation, every bit as key to business success as their leaders and managers. You are a leader, you just have to realise where, when and how you do it, to make the most of it and challenge yourself to step up.

Secondly, leadership doesn’t have a particular profile.  It used to.  When we first got into this game, leaders were easy to spot.  You led from the front, directed, demonstrated and knew how to address the crowd – and if that wasn’t your style, you didn’t get the job.  This is a dated view of what you now need to lead and our world (in case you hadn’t noticed) has changed.  Nowadays, leadership largely means 3 things: authenticity, good self-awareness and the ability to access all areas.  We no longer play a role; people want someone genuine they can relate to and who they believe gets them.  We don’t want people we have to make excuses for – we want them to know themselves well, accept feedback and work on the warts.  If the old-style leader description sounds like you – that’s fine – those things are still needed sometime, just not all the time.  Leadership also means listening, adapting, enabling and coaching.  At times it means being relationship focussed, at other times, task focussed. There is a place for looking ahead and a place for dealing with what’s in front of you.  The point is you need to spot what’s needed and adapt. Again – no one needs the title of leader to do that.

Thirdly, leading and change go hand in hand. You don’t just want to have a tolerance for change, you need to rather like it.  Because it’s going to be there whether you like it or not.  Leadership thinking embraces change and prepares for it, supports others to be prepared but also realises the impact of fast and constant change (welcome to 2023) so considers how we balance nothing staying the same with helping ourselves and others to look after themselves and avoid feeling stressed all the time.

Notice we said thirdly and not finally.  Because there’s so much more to say.  But for that you need to journey to The Dear Green Place aka Glasgow. If you’re already going, we’ll see you there.  If not, there is still time to bag a ticket.  Especially when you consider leadership is also about staying up to date, with fresh thinking. And when the leaders in the room are identifying themselves, you’re one of them putting your best foot forward.

Hello All. We first put this piece out in 2020 during the early part of pandemic.  Three years on, we noticed a renewed interest in it, with lots of you clicking to read it on our website.  It seems to chime with people in the light of the latest set of challenges the economic and political world is throwing at us.  So, we’re running it again – we hope you find it of value second time around.

Bravery and courage are central themes in so many books and films we have grown up with.  The lion in The Wizard of Oz follows the yellow brick road in search of it, Shakespeare’s Hamlet calls on it to avenge his father’s murder and Jo March, in Little Women, bravely fights gender stereotyping to make her own way in life.

Leadership has always been associated with bravery but never more than now.  As we enter the next stage of this new world, the pressure is on to maintain high performance, often in the face of significant challenge, profit and income shortfalls and uncertainty about the future. So maybe now is the time to think about what being brave really means in your role and how it may be different from relying on bravado.

First, some differentiating definitions:

Bravery is defined as courageous behaviour and character, whereas bravado is described as a bold manner intended to impress or intimidate.

You can see the problem here.  Bravery is all about substance.  It inspires belief and trust in leaders.  Bravado may be motivating and exciting at first but lacks weight if not followed up with evidence, action and consistency from those who employ it.  As the quote says – we need a backbone, not a wishbone.

So, when the pressure is on and whether you lead an organisation, section, team or project, how do you remain brave and avoid the bravado trap?  Here are 3 ways.

 

We aren’t born brave – or maybe we are and life bashes it out of us.  Either way, being brave is a choice.  It’s scary at times, requires energy and effort. It means you feel the weight of responsibility to lead people relying on you to set the direction.  But it is rewarding too and what we need from our leaders right now.  Anyway, what’s the alternative – fake it til you make it?  You may not make it.

 

It has been said that competition makes us faster but collaboration makes us better.

Collaboration means everyone can contribute: you get to use all the experience in your team, not just some of it.  Not only does a collaborative culture enable you to ensure opportunities and risks are more transparent and manageable, it also makes work more enjoyable and satisfying.

Yet some organisations subtly discourage collaborative working even though they talk loudly about wanting it.  Individual targets, lack of cross-departmental communication and rigid decision-making processes encourage people to compete and play their cards close to their chests.  When your team members only look down at their own work and never glance to the left and right to see what others are up to and how they could add value, it is death to collaboration.

So, if you want a more collaborative work culture, you have to make some changes.  We know - we’ve seen clients of ours make those changes.  It doesn’t happen overnight and it does take repeated practice, but with time a collaborative spirit starts to spread.  Here are some actions that definitely make an impact.

That’s not the whole story but it’s a start.  We work with teams at all levels to help them develop collaborative working.  It’s an art and a science, but luckily, it’s not rocket science.

A month of 4-day weeks due to national holidays (in the UK at least) is both a joy and a challenge.  The joy of the extra day off and the challenge of getting 5 days’ work activity in to 4.  After a particularly heavy week of meetings (for us and I suspect many others) it’s worth reflecting on our meeting behaviour.

It has been said that table manners make it easier to be welcomed to any table.  The same could be said of meeting manners.  And we seem to have forgotten ours. Sometimes.  Maybe a bit more than sometimes.

Have you been at a meeting recently and experienced any of these:

Not only might you have seen them, you may have done them too – it’s hard to be alert and attentive at your 6th consecutive meeting of the day with other tasks needing your attention.

Let’s tackle the aforementioned online meeting bad habits.

Cameras off – it’s the equivalent of coming to an in-room meeting and sitting with your back to everyone.  You might be able to hear everything but others don’t know if you are engaged or feel they can connect with you.  If everyone there has “face fatigue” from so many meetings, consider a conference call instead where no one can see anyone and the expectation is different.  Engage with your voices instead of your faces.

Cameras on but disappearing from view – is almost always down to long, long meetings with no breaks.  Bring back the human element and break up long meetings with a chance to exit left for coffee, a loo visit and to pat the dog or feed the gerbil.

Eyes on other screens – agree a one device rule so everyone dispenses with the others, in the same way a well-run meeting in a room would dictate.  Ditto to taking other calls, although a note in the chat to say when you have to unavoidably step out for a minute goes a long way.

Non-participation and looking bored – where the latter applies, we should cut some slack.  Some people aren’t bored, they just have that kind of face when they’re concentrating.  Also, if we were in a room together, we wouldn’t be endlessly staring at each other’s faces as we do when we’re on a virtual call.  Non-participation, however, is different.  Let’s set our meetings up with as few observers as possible.  Everyone there should be able to play their part (and that includes speaking up at some point) or have the right to question why they are on the attendee list.

Late entries and early exits - whilst in-person meetings are not the answer to everything, they do seem to acknowledge we are human beings – with pauses, breaks and gaps built in for people to breathe before they go on to their next activity.  We’ve been banging on about this in our blogs since late 2020 and we can confirm that clients who have adopted our “15-minute rule” or similar – not running meetings back-to-back – have seen more energy and engagement at gatherings as a result.

It helps if you and your fellow meeting colleagues make a commitment to behave on the screen as if you were all in the room. So, game face on, elbows off the table, no chewing with your mouth open and let’s tidy up our online meeting etiquette.

 

As a manager, it can be tricky to get the balance right in your management style.  You want to be supportive and helpful to your team but you also want to stretch them.  Research has shown that high-performance teams share a common mind-set.  They are fully committed to supporting each other and they are prepared to challenge too.  They do both because it leads them to better places.  A supportive mind-set encourages listening, valuing the contribution of individuals, being inclusive, building trust, a good atmosphere and genuinely caring.  A challenging mind-set encourages constructive debate, questioning, feedback, agreeing stretching goals, taking responsibility and holding self and others to account. It's a combined approach that’s hard to develop and maintain but is the only one that consistently delivers high performance and results.  All this needs to come from and be role modelled by the team’s leader.  So, if you are one, what example are you setting and if you’re not a manager but an important member of the team, what are you contributing?

Low in both

When there’s little support or challenge, the only place it leads to is apathy.  The team does just enough to stay out of trouble, but it never invests in relationships or truly commits to the work.  If you’re in a team like that and you can influence it, great.  If you can’t – get out.  You’ll learn little and achieve even less.

High in challenge, low in support

 This leads to a stressful team environment.  You have the push of the challenge without the pull of the support, so you start to create a team where everyone looks out for themselves, results are short term and development is random.  This sort of team energy works for some, others will fall by the wayside.  Either way people are in survival mode, which means you get into bad habits and long term it won’t get you the best results.

High in support, low in challenge

 This is a great big gooey hug of a team mind-set where relationships are prioritised over results.  As a manager you encourage care and kindness, as a team, you’re on each other’s side 24/7.  It sounds good and it can feel good to be part of, but it lacks the challenge that pushes people to achieve more, find better ways, ask powerful questions, say what needs to be said and develop along the way.  Teams in this shared mind-set can kid themselves they are high performing.  They rarely are.

High in both

If consistent high performance is what you strive for, this is where you want to be.  It’s easy to talk about but tough to do and requires real commitment from everyone.  How do you know when you’re in it?  You feel free enough to have the autonomy to act and connected enough to commit fully to the team’s results not just your own.  You also feel a bit scared sometimes.  You’re part of something really good and you don’t want to be the weak link.  So, whether you’re the manager or a member of the team – you step up.

There are many practical ways to develop a high support/high challenge team mind-set.  If that is where you’re headed but you need some extra ideas on how to get there quicker, talk to us about how you can lead your team to consistent high performance or be in a team that doesn’t accept mediocrity.  We’ll happily spill the beans on what it takes and we’ll support and challenge you to get there.

Human beings love to categorise, don’t they? When we talk about generations, we are usually referring to our family, who fits where and how we can trace them back. Or we use it to complain about their music.  When marketeers talk about generations, they mean people grouped together sharing birth years spanning 15-20 years who share certain characteristics.  Based on the work of Neil Howe and William Strauss, the Generations help us understand people’s attitude to life, leisure and society and have an interesting application to work.

What were your early career drivers? If you’re a leader whose first thoughts are ambition, climbing the ladder, becoming a manager, responsibility and recognition, then there’s a good chance you occupy a different generation to the people you are now managing and the teams you now lead.  Perhaps you are a Baby Boomer managing Millennials or a Gen X leading a team of iGens.

Our work world has understandably changed in the last three years and people now don’t want what they wanted before. Younger team members have their own set of drivers and include prioritising health and wellbeing over ambition. Older team members who took early retirement after the pandemic may well be on their way back in to work, having discovered they can’t make the finances stack up for a longer later life.

A lot has been written about The Talent Challenge and The Great Resignation and it’s depressing. The good news is there is a lot you can do to counter these trends.

The key is get inside the heads of the people you’re trying to recruit and retain and find ways to appeal to them. This involves thinking differently  about what you can do to attract good people and keep them once you have them, during one of the biggest challenges ever faced in our work lifetime.

What got you here really won’t get them there anymore.

Humans eh?  You think we’d have cracked this giving feedback thing by now.  We start with the best intentions – give it often, be open to getting it back a bit too – yet when the pressure is on, we forget to make it a priority and fall back on pointing out the flaws in a rush and staying quiet when people do a good job.  We also worry that we have don’t have the right to give feedback – to team members, colleagues and bosses. Not only is it our right to give it, it is their right to expect it and to give us feedback in return.  It just needs to be done with a modicum of skill, compassion and common sense, especially when it comes to negative feedback.

The first thing is to examine your motive.  What compels you to want to give negative feedback in the first place?  A genuine desire to help someone grow and develop, the need to stop someone who is behaving in a way that is holding them back and a wish to tell someone something don’t do well and the negative impact it has so that they can change what they are doing for the better. These are all honourable motives and likely to result in constructively delivered feedback.  A compulsion to get something off your chest or to take someone down a peg or two are less honourable (though understandably tempting at times) and more likely to lead to destructive feedback - and in the short term certainly, will do more harm than good.

Once you have your motive sorted, the next thing is to know the go-zones and no-go zones for negative feedback.  Stay away from feedback directed at someone’s personality and values. No matter how much of a wordsmith you are, this kind of feedback feels personal and is tough to change and so fits in to the no-go zones for feedback.  Then there are our attitudes - our approach to and views on things - and our behaviour - the outward signs of our attitude.  These are the go-zones for negative feedback.  They concentrate on what we are doing, not who we are, are easier on the ear and more likely to be acted upon.  It's the difference between telling someone you desk share with (a real possibility these days with more flexible work spaces) that their messy papers, Post It note pandemic and non-existent filing make it impossible for you to work and can you both sort out a better system - constructive - and telling them they are a messy slob with no idea how to organise themselves and would they do this at home? - destructive.

A lot has been written about techniques and structures for feedback. Take them with a pinch of salt.  In some cases, it would be a start just to get people doing feedback at all, let alone trying to weave it around some fancy process.

In particular, beware the unsubtle ones like the Praise Sandwich (and yes it has another title too). The idea is to sandwich some negative feedback between two bits of positive feedback thereby softening the blow.  Guess what?  We all know when it's being done to us and it tends to get used when you have only wafer-thin crispbreads of positive feedback to act as bookends for a massive wedge of negative filling. "Thank you for turning up to work every day - just about everything you do in your job is rubbish - but I really like your earrings."  An exaggeration but you get the idea.  Better to say what needs to be said, check how the person feels about it and what their view is and then look ahead.

Finally, there is an element of getting your own house in order when it comes to negative feedback.  You may be skilled at giving it, but how elegant are you at receiving it?  Before you unleash your negative feedback on unsuspecting staff and colleagues, do a quick check that you too can receive feedback with grace.

Ken Blanchard refers to feedback as “the breakfast of champions”, so yours needs to be digestible and if not palatable, at least useful and constructive to the person you give it to.  That way, they may even return for seconds.