I am back after an amazing three weeks away from the world of social change. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my job and the ability it gives me to work each day with incredibly inspiring, passionate, and driven social changemakers.
But as I’ve said before, time away is absolutely critical to feeding your soul and making you a more complete, interesting and effective person. I am so grateful to the amazing guest bloggers who wrote incredible pieces for the blog while I was away (you can read their posts here).
One of the benefits of giving your brain a break is new insight. It occurred to me while I was away that there is a big difference between social change efforts that just exist and those that reach the tipping point of achieving real social change. I work at the nexus between the two because nonprofit leaders often come to me when they hit an inflection point. They desire a big change — to move out of the status quo and take a big leap — but they don’t know how to get there.
Sometimes they make the leap, and sometimes they don’t. And the difference often comes down whether or not they possess (or cultivate) these traits:
Vision
Those nonprofits that make it have someone (or a handful of someones) who are the cheerleaders for the change they seek. These are the people who are constantly reminding board members, staff, donors about why change is necessary and all of the great things that will happen if they continue with the hard work. To achieve true change you must have a leader who can see the ultimate goal and rallies everyone together to get there.
Confidence
To take a big leap (scale your solution, rebuild your board) you must have the confidence that you can do it. And you need the confidence to convince others to join you. You have to “fake it ’til you make it.” Some leaders are really good at this, others are not. It amazes me how important confidence is and how many in the nonprofit sector often lack it. You must fight the fairly normal state in the nonprofit sector of supplication and instead make confident demands for what it will take to achieve the change you seek.
Fearlessness
Related to confidence — but different — is a necessary fearlessness. A nonprofit leader I worked with several years ago wanted to dramatically grow her services, and she knew she needed a bigger, more networked board to get there. So she had to get over the fear of asking for new connections. It is terrifying to ask someone to help you in new ways, or to ask for something you’re not sure the other person is willing or able to give, but you don’t get anything unless you ask. The path of change may be really difficult, or it may force you to make hard decisions. But if you want real change you have to face those uncertainties head on.
Diligence
Changing minds, changing systems, changing habits is really hard work, and you must be dedicated to seeing the change through to the end. I know that the daily work of your nonprofit is already hard work. But I’m talking about a different kind of hard work. It is the hard work of explaining to ineffective board members why they have to resign, or letting poor performing staff members go, or educating donors about how they are holding your organization back, or creating new performance management systems. I have found that those nonprofit leaders who are constantly fighting the urge to settle back into the status quo are the ones who succeed.
It’s not enough to want a bigger, better, more effective organization. You must cultivate the vision, drive, confidence and fearlessness to get there.
Photo Credit: Stuart Anthony
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