Episode 239: What do we need in a Philanthropic Leader: Not just Experience and Age, for Sure
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.
A sincere thank you to you for joining me, Randall, on this edition of around with Randall. We elevate ourselves, hopefully a little bit today to talk about the hiring process. And I'm really talking about chief development officers. I think we can spend a little bit of this time together talking, speaking, thinking about maybe analyzing what we should be looking for in our philanthropy leadership.
I think tends to be too often it's not the right things. I also believe that if you're a larger organization, this could apply to the number two or the leader of the philanthropic team. Smaller organizations. It might apply a little bit more to the executive director or CEO president. I think it depends on the size and scope of the roles.
But when we talk about finding your lead philanthropic leader and I'm on record, it says right over here with my book that the CEO, particularly in large organizations, is the chief fundraiser. They're the ones who need to be a part of this process and engaged. But I'm talking about the person who is responsible for it day to day.
And that may shift depending on size and scope and sector of the nonprofit world. Why am I talking about this? Well, over the last maybe six months to a year, I've had experiences, clients, non-clients, friends who have gone through a leadership change. Maybe they were the leader. Maybe they were the new leader coming in. Maybe they were someone looking to be the leader.
Maybe they were in the organization and someone got hired above them in terms of hierarchy to and that position of being a philanthropic fundraising leader. And all too often when I start asking questions about what are you looking for? What are they looking for? What was being sought? I get, in my opinion, the wrong answers. Why is this a problem?
We tend to look at this in the wrong terms because I think of four specific things. Number one is, is that we are looking for someone who is a fund raiser rather than a leader. And most of the podcast, in terms of the kind of the, the specific aspects, the tactical that we try to talk about each edition, an episode here of the podcast is going to be focused on that differential.
What are we really looking for? Is leadership, not a fundraiser. Now with that said, we want both. But if you just hire the fundraising without the leadership, you aren't going to get to where you want to go. Number two is, is that we tend to look at resumes. And the most dominant factor is years of experience. I'm not advocating hiring people with no experience.
But if all you do is look for the years of experience, I'm looking for a minimum of 25-30 years. What about that young and up and comer? And in particular, I have to be candid, I had the privilege and pleasure of seeing one of my three mentors this last week. And there was a lot of and I had to drive a couple of hours both ways to get there.
There was a lot of reflection in my time in the car, about a young 2526 year old professional that this individual saw in me to become a chief double officer with no experience. What about if all you look for is experience? What you end up with is losing all the leadership skills that someone might actually be able to hone and build, because I don't think I had them to grow into, too, to really foster an environment that can be uplifting for everybody.
In that same vein, around years of experience, I also say in classifiers, why this is a problem is we look for the name of where they've worked. It's the big name and we'll keep my thoughts out as to where big names are and or not. But I get frustrated because, well, you don't have that particular experience and I if we focused more on who the person was and what leadership they could bring to the table, we wouldn't worry about so much of where they've been.
If it's the name that everybody's looking for. The third is is that past roles don't necessarily reflect individual performance. And I'm not talking just about fundraising. I'm talking about leadership that a lot of times, particularly in large organizations, people can scoot along some and may not actually be on the hook for the responsibility that comes that should be there, that indicates their true nature of success.
And as a result, we tend to look at these past roles, titles, things of that nature as clear indications of success. And I'm not sure that's actually true. The fourth and final reason is that we tend to, in this industry, give the same people who may not be built for some of these opportunities based upon the big names, the 25 years of experience, the fact that they are maybe a fundraiser but not a leader, or that maybe they're not connected to the idea of what leadership traits are.
We recycle them. They get this job and they get that job, and they get that job. You like. After ten years as somebody not figured out that this is not their area of expertise, maybe they should just be a major gift officer, which is not a bad thing. That's different than being a chief Development officer. All of this leads us to what we begin to think about and look at.
Part of the reason I think I'm enjoying today's podcast, hopefully valuable to you, is that it is. And I talk about maybe stealing from Star Trek sitting in the chair. You can tell someone, if someone has sat in the CTO chair because they don't think about philanthropy in the same way, because they're not thinking about fundraising, they're thinking about all kinds of collateral, connective tissues that philanthropy provides beyond just money.
How it fits into strategy and all kinds of things we'll get into in a moment. I'm looking for when I think of as we'll get to in a moment and the tactical, the six things that I think are most important, they are fostered by my experience in three different organizations, being the chief development officer and being on the hook for the budget, the staffing, the outcomes, the communication, the connections that are necessary, the idea of fitting into a larger leadership team in a meaningful way to become a viable partner in this process.
At the end of the day, we'll talk about this in terms of number six, in terms of how you think about the organization. But I want to start our tactical here. I heard once someone say that the best philanthropic leaders are, if we use health care as an example, are health care leaders who specialize in philanthropy, not a philanthropy leader who works in health care.
You could juxtapose that to a higher ed leader who specializes in philanthropy, or the chief domain officers that we need and want to see themselves as a vital part of the executive team and an executive and an expert in a content area, but an executive with the better principles of the organization as a whole. When they see that seal, that then we begin to get into what's possible.
And hopefully today we'll talk about some of the six areas that we want to find in our leaders. So, let's start at the top. We move into our tactical. The six things we're looking for a high level chief development officer. Chief philanthropy officer is the idea number one of relational intelligence. And I mean this on two frames.
Number one is the relational intelligence when it comes to donors, but maybe more importantly, how they read the room and connect with people internally as leaders. If an organization is functioning at a top level and philanthropy is a part of it, then that chief landscape officer, their connection to the Chief Finance Financial officer, the chief Medical or provost, if it's education or the H.R. or the board, even though they should belong to the CEO, how they interconnect with them.
This idea of intelligence is being able to read and build trust. And yes, if they're doing it really, really well, they're carrying a maybe if we think about a mid-level mid-sized nonprofit, they may be carrying anywhere from 10 to 35 prospects that are obviously the top level. They're probably helping or supporting the C, the chief executive officer, whatever title that is in there.
Couple three, five, ten, depending on the size of the gifts. But they're building those relationships. But it's more about the internal understanding of the connectedness there a clear communicator. They know tone in in complicated political meetings that are in executive group meetings, if there's politics and power, they understand tone when to push, when to pull, when to keep quiet, and when to follow up later versus being verbose in the meeting.
These relational intelligence, it's almost a higher level emotional intelligence because they build them into the relationships, and the trust that's being built are quintessential to fitting in, to the larger group, to bringing philanthropy to the table of the executive leadership. And by the way, that could be for an academic medical center or a health care system where you're dealing with, you know, billion dollar systems that could be a nonprofit like a food bank.
How do they fit into the larger picture, and what will they do to create, to understand trust by being or create or having a high level of relational intelligence? Number one. Number two is probably my favorite. I'm not saying it's most important, but it's my favorite is that they're intellectually curious and they have a thought process or series of questions around system thinking.
These are the people that come in the door and are constantly asking the question, why does it work? Why have we done it this way? There's nothing more frustrating for a team when someone comes in and says, well, when I was here, we did it this way, I the circumstances were probably different or the frustrating on the other end is, well, we've always done it this way.
And so I'm looking for the leader that will ask the question. Why is it done this way? What has been the history? What have been the positive? What have been the negatives? What have we improved? What have we changed? I have a friend who's going through this conversation around chief new chief development officer in an organization. And she is happens to be kind of at the higher end of the overall leadership, but not the chief job, an officer, the new chief told officers coming in, basically, that commentary has been, well, I already know all of this, and they worked half a country away and a completely different environment in a different part of the country
that has different priorities. And you hear those things, you think, oh my gosh, this isn't going to work because they're not willing to be curious. The intent we're looking for is someone who accepts what's there and is willing to ask the question and then thinks about how to improve it rather than just, well, we got to change it.
To what I know. One of the things I'm most proud of when I think about my consulting and I use this all the time, is that what I do should be sizable and scalable. I have a template for most things that I do great for patient conscious builds, feasibility studies, a campaign council coaching. There's some framework around it for trainings.
But the key to, I think what I hope is success is that I start with that template and I want to improve it based on what they think they need so that we come together. And that's really the essence of what a great leader should do. You could ask them in the process, can you critique something that you've run into and how you improved it, and find out if they improved it, whether or not they just changed it, or whether or not they're just taking credit.
Intellectual curiosity of how things work in systems, things process is critical. It's good process. Good system thinks positive curiosity leads to improvement. Number three is that they have a sense of resiliency without being defensive. If leaders and this is true of Chief Hillman officers, particularly when we think about them asking for larger and gifts, higher end relationships, if they're not failing some of the time, then I don't think they're pushing the envelope enough.
So can they handle that rejection? In the same regard, they may want to think about change. Well, do they accept feedback, push back in that process, and do they handle staff turnover with composure, particularly if they're new? Got another friend that's going through a situation with the chief, one officer who's come in. And I kind of think there's going to be a mass exodus and getting to know that particular chief department officer, not a client, just as a helpful source that I try to do when I can.
I get the sense this is not going to go well because they're going to take it well. And that leads us to the second part of resiliency without defensiveness. No matter what the circumstances, they accept the responsibility. They don't patch it off and blame somebody else in every job that I've ever left. And that includes at the end of coaching, each one of my kids teams at the end of the year, I look at the parents kind of at the field or the court wherever.
Nothing really spectacular, but I pull them all together and say, thank you. I'm honored to have coached you. I hope you've had a great time. We are not here to win gold medals. We're here to have fun and learn and get better and and learn great life skills. But then I say what I follow and this is what I've done in every job I've ever had is that I comment, hey, if I've ever failed you, if I've ever disappointed you, if I didn't live up to expectations, I apologize.
It was never my intent. I want people to know that I own my mistakes. That and I make a million of them. The old joke I always use, which maybe is not all that untrue. I make more mistakes every day than most people do in a month. You have to be find the leaders that are willing to admit those mistakes, and you can test for that by asking really simple questions.
What is the biggest failure you've ever been involved with and what you learned from it, and why were you responsible for it? In my case, that opens up a Pandora's box of options to choose from, but I don't think you improve as a leader until you've failed as a leader. You don't get better until you've made mistakes and learn from them.
That's really what we're interested in. Moving on to number four, do they have what I think of as strategic empathy? Can they combine the unique concepts of heart and logic in the right way? And I just don't mean with donors. I mean with staff over around challenges with the boards. Particularly with maybe the CEO, their boss, can they prioritize sustainability of the relationship over time rather than short term wins?
I almost equate this to what I'm very fortunate to have, but a terrific marriage. I'm more interested in the long term nature and process of my of my relationship with my wife than I am winning every battle. First of all, I'm going to lose 98.5% of them insured. But number two is I'm more interested in what we're doing together as a couple in a leadership of a family, as parents.
Well, that parallels what I really am looking for in a chief development officer. Can they combine the logic the moment to say, look, this is what the data is telling us. This is what we need to be thinking about. Have we thought about this in the past? How does this work with the emotion when things need to change, when things get tough, when we've got to make cuts, when our budgets are going down, whatever.
Figuring out whether or not they have the interest in the long term relationship with the CFO, with a donor, with the board member, with the chair, with the organization, that strategic empathy is critically important. And you can do this by maybe just asking, how have you changed cultures in the organizations that you've worked and more importantly, how have you sustain those relationships?
Interesting question to get into how someone thinks strategically and about that empathy component number five is what I think of or call creative leadership. Can they lead different people? Not everybody is the same. But yet sometimes leaders think they have to treat people that way. Remember the old story that I heard once about Jimmy Johnson, the three time Super Bowl coach?
It pains me to say national championship football coach, because he beat us a number of times. When he was at Miami. He was with the Dallas Cowboys for a number of years, where it's famous College Football Hall of Fame pro football thing. He is sitting in a meeting at the beginning of a year and somebody fell asleep.
And it was not I can't remember the person's name, but if somebody I really, I'm not sure I ever heard of, and he went up and cut him, which means he fired them on the spot right out of the meeting room, they didn't get a chance to get on the field. You're out. That got out to the press, and in that, one of the reporters said, well, what happens if that had been Troy Aikman?
Troy Aikman is the three time Super Bowl champion who led the Cowboys. Grew up in Oklahoma. Played great football in college, actually at UCLA in the last two years of his career. And that makes me sad, too, because he beat us, once out there that if he fell asleep, the star fell asleep in the meeting room.
What would you have done? And he looked at the reporter like it was a stupid question. Creative leadership, treating people and the differences that they have, realizing what people need, he said. I have taken him a pillow and asked him if he was okay. He says you assume everyone needs to be treated the same. I treat people the way they need to be treated so they can be their best.
Yes their boundaries. I'm not arguing that, but you have people from different generations, different experiences, different tech levels. You have different job descriptions. You have some people growing into their job. You have some people exiting or toward exit of their career. You have young people, you have older people. You have people with cultural background differences. Maybe you work in an organization that has people from different countries, and certainly there the issues of different race, religion, other things.
Can a leader creatively build a consensus around a group of people that are different and build enthusiasm internally toward the goals and their fundraising goals? And not everybody's treated the same need to be treated fairly, honestly and ethically, and I would argue morally, but I treat people differently. I think about an experience with probably the best gift officer I ever oversaw or manage, or whatever term you want to use, where she came in at different times because she had a long drive into work, but she was raising 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 to $10 million, like slot machine.
Somebody once asked in my office, why did she get to come in? Like I said, because she raises more than all of you. And she asked if she'd come in later because it's a convenience, that she can be more efficient and it has an effect for productivity. Not everybody sees the same creative leadership. Can you ask them the question, how do you build a culture?
What do you do? What are your priorities when everybody's a little bit different?
The last is number six. And this one I think is very tactical. I believe that chief length to be officers have to have a business acumen. They have to be able to read a balance statement, a profit loss statement, cash flow statement. They have to understand strategy of the of the organization and why things work the way they do.
I know that they're not the CFO and or the finance department, and I'm not asking them to be an accountant or no, no, FAZ B rules the rules that dictate how accounting works. But if they don't have that understanding, it's really hard to fit them into strategy and the long term understanding of the organization. I'm sensing and seeing this more often in a place like Health care, as we see increasingly higher amounts of dollars being restricted through the reimbursement process, I've got a lot of chief philanthropy officers that can't articulate what this means from a business perspective.
How does the hospital work now? Higher Ed's a little easier tuition state dollars if you have those philanthropy, maybe some grants, but health care's complicated. Then you have the issues or challenges that are coming from reduced government funding and being able to explain that. All too often, our chief philanthropy officers don't have the depth of business experience knowledge, not experience knowledge to be able to articulate why things are being done the way they are.
The greatest blessing I was given in my career when it comes to this area was Glenn Fosdick, my boss at the Nebraska medical center, and he told me, your job is to be a health care executive, right where I started here before we started this. It's not a philanthropy executive. I need you to understand what the hospital is.
I sat through the finance meetings. I sat through the I was voting member of the strategic planning committee for the organization. I was forced and then loved and now appreciate that I understood health care. I can sit down with a CEO or a CFO and talk about this at their level. Not as experienced, not as knowledgeable, certainly not as wise.
But I'm not out in the field if you don't know and you're aiming to jump up into this profession wherever sector you're in, know the business so you can talk about it with your staff, with the donors and the others who are trying to figure out how this all works. These are my six a sense of relational intelligence, intellectual curiosity and system.
Think a resiliency without a sense of defensiveness, strategic empathy, creative leadership. Bring people together and a business sense or understanding of the organization and the sector. You do those things, or you look for those things. You will find the leaders you're looking for. And yes, they should be able to ask for money and build relationships. But I'm more concerned about these six if I can check off the fact they understand philanthropy.
If we can do that, we have a winning proposition. In the end, we need to ask the right questions. And by the way, a couple red flags. If you hear things like, hey, they're over focused on metrics and not the bigger picture. I'm not against metrics, you know, I'm for them, but that's all they talk about. They can't talk about any of these six things in context.
That's more of a tactical leader than it is a strategic leader. Maybe they talk about me and I instead of us, and we and they I want the ones who look outward, not inward, that they blame their own staff, their other problem, their problems on other people. Red flag. They speak in tactics and not in framework. Think about it this way.
We did three events versus we created a pipeline. And here's how we did it. And the last thing is, is they don't ask in-depth questions. Not easy questions, in-depth, hard to answer questions. All of this is to say is we need better leadership because that's going to elevate philanthropy in the organizations. And some sectors get that others don't.
At the end of the day, we got to figure out how to be better at what we do, and we need to look for the right people to be leaders. They can integrate into the strategic leadership teams, the organizational leadership teams. As an organizational leader who has a special understanding of philanthropy and brings philanthropy to the table and then leads that team to the success the organization needs.
That's what I view and envision as the best leaders who understand and lead philanthropy. Don't forget to check out the blogs two per week at hallettphilanthropy.com, watching it on RSS feed right to you. And if you'd like to, you can reach out to me at podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. Challenging moments in our world. A lot of uncertainty and insecurity. And in doing so and realizing it, we have a responsibility in philanthropy to step forward, to serve those that seems to be an increasing number of people who need help.
Don't forget my all-time favorite saying, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen. And there are those who wondered what happen. We are people. You're someone we need to be more of the types of people that make things happen for the parts of our community and individuals were wondering what happened and doing so makes you a leader.
And hopefully today you picked up some things that you might think about for yourself, for the people you work with, for your leaders. That will allow our nonprofit to excel, to serve that gap between free enterprise and nonprofit, where the whole is that we need philanthropy nonprofits to live and to succeed. I'll look forward to seeing in the next time, right back here on the next edition of Around With Rent.
Don't forget, make it a great day.