Anatomy of Nonprofit Leadership: Part 4

This is the fourth article in my “Anatomy of Nonprofit Leadership'' series. The idea of using the body as a metaphor for leadership came to me when I was invited to share insights with a group of women leaders in London last fall. While I find the metaphor fitting, I’m also keenly aware that every body is different, and full usage of each of the body parts I mention may not be available to every reader. While I bring my own bodily experience to this writing, I do believe that the lessons I share can be relevant to everyone. Read previous installments: + Leadership Brain, + Leadership Eyes + Leadership Heart.

*Note: This article includes mention of my time volunteering for a sexual assault hotline.

“Why are you unloading the dishwasher?”

A staff member asked me this, back when I was CEO at the reproductive rights organization PAI. She walked into the kitchen, saw me unloading mugs from the dishwasher and putting them into the cabinet, and thought it was a strange thing for a leader at my level to be doing.

I get it: to be effective as leaders, we’re rightly taught to focus on the highest and best use of our time and, for someone in my position, kitchen chores maybe didn’t fit the bill. And yet, while my time may technically be more expensive than someone else’s, that’s ultimately beside the point?— because part of the practice of leadership is to do the work of this organization alongside everyone else. And sometimes, that means putting away the mugs.?

When I talk about “leadership hands,” then, I’m talking about direct interaction with every part of an organization. I’m talking about rolling up your sleeves and walking the floor, and then continuing past the floor to the warehouse, and the dock, and the field offices, and so on. I’m talking about avoiding any kind of ivory tower and gaining a tactile, felt sense of what each part of the organization does.

That moment in the kitchen was years ago, but I feel as strongly about it today as I did back then. There is no room for divas in nonprofit leadership. Sometimes, in this sector, those who do programmatic work are treated as more important than those who set up the A/V tech for a conference session; but in fact, no one role is more important than another when it comes to our ability to function effectively, together, in service of our mission.?

In addition to unloading dishwashers, I have another example of hands-on leadership, this one from my time in Ithaca, NY, attending Cornell University. I volunteered for the Ithaca Rape Crisis Hotline, undergoing hours of training in order to take shifts on the hotline and support callers in what may be a moment of urgency, of danger, of processing, or of intense and vulnerable need.?

And train, I did! I read every book, every lesson, every follow-up article or rubric that was shared. But my leadership as a counselor was truly manifest when I accompanied a caller to the local hospital for a post-assault examination. In that moment, my hands held her hands, and I provided tender and conscientious accompaniment for the hours she needed me by her side. In the weeks that followed, as I continued to serve as a volunteer alongside my other “jobs” as a student and a work-study employee, I used my brain, my heart, my voice — all the parts we’ve talked about over the past several months of this series — but none so impactful and powerful as my hands on that difficult day.?

Like a theater, an organization’s success hinges on people doing an excellent job not only front-of-house, but back-of-house, as well (just imagine your favorite actor performing on a pitch-black stage because there was no one in the lighting booth!). What’s more, when leaders never witness or experience the back-of-house —?from accounting to events planning to IT support and office management — then their understanding of the organization they lead is dangerously incomplete.

Leaders without a felt sense of all parts of an organization are more likely to find themselves in a budget meeting making cuts with unforeseen consequences. Something is more likely to seem like a “nice to have” if you haven’t spent time on the ground with the people for whom that “nice to have” is the center of their work. The only way a CEO can figure out what’s truly “extra” or “nice to have” is by walking the floor.?

Early in my career as a CEO, I was invited to join a small group of other first-time leaders. They called themselves the WTF Group; I assumed this was a reference to the euphemistic initialism that can be used to express anger, disbelief, befuddlement, and first-time CEO confusion. “Exactly on point,” I thought, as we first-time leaders might mutter those three letters to ourselves on a regular basis as we navigate balance sheets, HR policies, board meetings, and more.

But in fact, in this case, WTF stood for Walk The Floor. The name is a reminder of what we need to keep doing, even after we’re promoted to the proverbial corner office: We need to walk the floor and see, hear, feel, and figuratively shake hands with what was going on at every level of the organization in order to serve its highest responsibility —? the mission — to the greatest and most impactful degree possible.

And, I’d add, we need to do so hand-in-hand with our employees, our board members, our partners, our funders and donors, and everyone else who makes achieving our mission possible.