At GLP, we believe that staying abreast of new ideas, trends, and information is essential to visionary leadership. This newsletter seeks to help leaders cut through the noise and find resources that are worth reading. Visit our website to explore earlier editions!

Achieving Excellence: August 2023

August means you may be grabbing at the last days of summer, retreating with your team, or gearing up for that “back to school” energy so many of us feel -- whether we work in schools or not!

As you approach September with (we hope) renewed energy and enthusiasm, we hope you find these resources on excellence in leadership thought-provoking and inspirational. And please, let us know what you’ve found this summer that gives you fresh perspective!

Governance Excellence

Thanks to invitations from schools, not for profits, and associations, GLP is happily leading many professional development sessions with trustees and leaders. Our feeling is there is a lot of clear “rules” and overly general (and even outdated) advice offered to boards about what they should and shouldn’t do, but too little practical and nuanced guidance to help boards navigate challenging terrain, support leadership, and achieve the sophisticated and complex work of great governance. In this section, we offer a couple of resources that help expand our understanding of how boards and leaders best advance their organizations.

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Having worked through many founder’s transitions, we can attest to the wisdom of this article from Stanford’s Social Innovation Review describing the dynamics of the relationship between a visionary founder and their founding board. 

What’s particularly interesting? We observe that the vulnerabilities that take root in a founding board can play out well beyond the founder's tenure-- and the warning signs may resonate with many trustees or leaders who navigate governance challenges today.

In other words, “founder’s syndrome” can extend and persist through many iterations of leadership. Solutions lie in boards coming together to reimagine their purpose, role, and function. GLP’s philosophy is mirrored in the quote below from the article’s author, and in her subsequent recommendations:

 “Think about a nonprofit organization as a twin-engine jet: Each “engine,” the board and staff, must function well independently and in partnership, with the board chair and staff leader in the cockpit leading the organization’s journey together.”

Next up, while this HBR article dates back to 1996, it stands the test of time and speaks to realities we navigate in our consulting and assessment work with boards. While not named explicitly, the authors speak to the need for boards to function as high performing teams: 

“A board’s contribution is meant to be strategic, the joint product of talented people brought together to apply their knowledge and experience to the major challenges facing the institution.

What happens instead? Nonprofit boards are often little more than a collection of high-powered people engaged in low-level activities.”

Trustees may recognize they are not optimally engaged, but the authors note that in these cases board self assessment ends up being relatively misleading, and, as the authors wryly observe:

"Too often, trustees assume that organizational success proves that the board has performed well, even when there is little evidence that the board played a significant role, and even when staff members say privately that the success was achieved despite the board."

We coach boards to reorient themselves as leadership teams with governing responsibilities forged in shared purpose --working in partnership with senior leaders. This means organizing to do the right work, setting collective goals, and committing to regular assessment and development.

Finally, we offer this blog post from the GLP archives on what it really means to be a trustee! And yes, while we agree you are technically a volunteer - our first piece of advice to board members is to recognize your governance responsibilities actually make you an unpaid professional!

Imagine what might be if your board

works to its highest potential? We'd like to help!

Leadership Excellence

At GLP we talk about leadership as a way of being -- “inside out work” that manifests one’s mindsets, abilities, and behaviors. The next few resources explore the important intersections between mindsets and the associated skills and behaviors leaders demonstrate to achieve excellence. 

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Our summer reading list is out and you can find it in our June Edition, but we’d like to add this book from McKinsey, titled CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest. Three McKinsey partners researched the attributes of 67 highly effective CEOs that “outperformed” others. They synthesized their findings into six "mindsets" that elevate these leaders across the board.

The link presents you with engaging videos to define and describe the 6 mindsets that distinguish their leadership. If you don’t read the book, do watch the interviews and read this short summary from Inc. Magazine! These mindsets can benefit all kinds of leaders in all kinds of organizations - whether you are in the CEO seat, supporting your CEO, or aspiring to the role. And because leadership excellence is also governance excellence, we highlight this quote from Reed Hastings at Netflix: 

“The board really needs to understand the business, and helping them to do so is something that a CEO should feel it’s their duty to do—board members need to know the market, the opportunity, the threats, the internal players, the external.”

Next, translating mindsets into behaviors, and developing the skills you need to succeed, takes intentional work and disciplined practice. This article from HBR is super practical -- offering, in essence, checklists to drive your productivity so you can realize the value of mindset and leverage your best skills. Interestingly, the relationship between productivity and excellence is most powerful when you “know your why” (back to CEO Excellence and the Six Mindsets) and can act in alignment. 

Finally, stories, conversations, and people who share a sense of purpose are always at the center of great leadership. This Forbes article, summarizing an essay written by Jack “Farva” Curtis of the U.S, Navy, speaks to the humanity of leadership -- and reminds us that it begins with relationships.

Team Excellence

In addition to board education, this summer has been a time for leadership retreats. We love facilitating the work of teams, and spend lots of time thinking about what it means to be a team and how to become the best team possible. Check out our June 2022 Blueprint on "Retreats, Leadership, and Team Building" and this week’s blog post for the first in a three part series exploring that question. Stay tuned for more -- and until then, here are a few more resources to help you achieve teaming excellence!

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Building on Jack “Farva” Curtis's advice to focus on people first, unified by purpose, we highlight this HBR article: High Performing Teams Don’t Leave Relationships to Chance. 

How can leaders create conditions for relationships to flourish -- resulting in higher engagement, less burn-out, and greater collaboration? You’ll see many similar nuggets of wisdom here to ensure you connect people to each other -- and everyone to the goals and the mission of the organization. The key insight is that trust and collegiality matter profoundly -- and yet they are only part of the equation. Shared purpose is the second ingredient for high performing teams. Build them simultaneously and continuously.

What if the team is suffering? Low energy, burn-out, and uncertainty can, at times, undermine even the best leadership teams. 3 Ways to Reenergize Your Team When Morale Is Low recognizes that while today’s work conditions are markedly better for most than they were in the past century, the reality is the complexity and disruptions of the modern age continue to present challenges -- particularly in the knowledge economy. The authors focus on three action items leaders can implement to nurture teams --Revitalizing, Repairing, and Refocusing -- and provide practical tips to accomplish these vital aims. Finally, the authors remind leaders to do what so many of us often neglect:

“Just as on a plane, we are instructed to put on our oxygen masks before we can help others, we must help ourselves first. Your ability to energize your team will depend on whether you can stay sane, calm, and energized yourself. There’s no substitute for working on your own wellness, and managing yourself is a critical pre-condition for managing others.”

How are you revitalizing, repairing and refocusing this summer? How are you helping your teams do the same?

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