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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Building Healthy and Effective Nonprofit Leadership Teams

By Leslie Bonner, Senior Consultant, Dewey & Kaye

Dewey and Kaye recently surveyed and interviewed 104 nonprofit Executive Directors and senior leaders who lead or are part of a leadership team. The primary goal of this research was to study the effectiveness, capacity and challenges of senior leadership teams in order to help build teams that foster growth and sustainable outcomes in their organizations.

Leadership of a nonprofit organization is a shared activity. To be successful and sustainable the organization needs more than one strong leader at the top; it needs a healthy, capable, aligned and strategic senior leadership team. 88 percent of survey participants agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: "successful organizations are led not just by an Executive Director or CEO but include a high performing and cohesive team of senior leaders." These teams at the top of nonprofits typically include heads of Programs or Services and functional leaders such as the heads of Finance, Development or Operations and range in size from 3-15 people.

In our research we define "Healthy and Effective Leadership Teams" as having all of the following characteristics:

• Shared purpose, goals and values with agreed upon measures of success and a shared plan of action.
• The entire team understands the big picture, their specific roles and decision-making authority and how one member's work affects other members and the organization as a whole.
• Works collaboratively as a unit with a high degree of trust and respect
• Has created effective communication processes that facilitate problem-solving, decision making and conflict resolution.
• All team members have high levels of technical, functional and interpersonal skills. Team members understand their individual and collective strengths, weaknesses and perspectives and they respect and value what each person brings to the team.

The report we will release in the next few weeks builds upon previous work that Dewey & Kaye has done on nonprofit leadership competencies and development, as well as our work with assessing organizational capacity and financial literacy, assisting nonprofits in succession planning and team development, and our work in Executive Search and transition management. Our report will incorporate the lessons learned in working with hundreds of nonprofit clients as well as data and comments from surveys and interviews conducted as part of this research. Along with key findings and recommendations we will provide a self-diagnostic tool that nonprofit organizations can use as a first step in building healthier and more effective leadership teams.

Our key findings below are not all inclusive of what it takes to make a team successful. They do, though, represent the challenges faced by many of the teams who participated in our research.

1. Big Picture Perspectives. All team members must have a big-picture perspective and demonstrate behaviors that span the organization's program and departmental boundaries. CEOs defined their greatest challenges with senior leadership teams as finding or growing team members with a holistic organizational perspective rather than a narrower program or functional perspective. All team members should be able to move easily from advocating for the needs of their program or functional area to finding solutions or creating strategies that best serve the whole organization.
2. Shared Direction, Priorities, Goals and Values. Clear and shared strategic direction, priorities, goals and values are the foundation for building an effective and high functioning leadership team. A direct correlation existed between organizations that rated their team's overall effectiveness as low and those that rated "common focus, direction, and values" as low.
3. Individual Accountability. Individuals who lack appropriate capabilities and skills can adversely impact the whole leadership team in areas such as morale, trust, conflict and, most obviously, effectiveness. Leaders and teams who tolerate a poor performer or do not hold all team members to a consistently high standard are rated as less effective overall.
4. Business Acumen and Other Needed Competencies. The competencies needed by all team members include business acumen, critical thinking skills, strategic agility, an ability to adapt to rapid change and a high degree of emotional intelligence. The individuals who make up the leadership team must understand the business of the organization and have the ability to balance the organization's mission and programs (what the organization does) with the business of the organization (how it does what it does in a sustainable way).
5. Effective Communication and Meetings. Creating effective communication processes (up, down and sideways) is a challenge faced by many teams. Leaders must determine, both within the team and throughout the whole organization, what type of information to communicate, to whom, and how often. Ineffective leadership team meetings and not enough time to brainstorm or simply discuss strategic issues were also cited as common team challenges.
6. Personality and Style Differences Valued. Personality and style differences are a problem for many teams and this is the lowest rated of 10 key issues on our survey. However, studies have shown that if this diversity is valued and used, it can lead to better decisions and more effective teams.

For more information on the research study findings, to discuss a leadership team assessment for your organization, or to share a comment about this article contact Leslie Bonner at lbonner@deweykaye.com. Watch for a link to the complete research report in our next Mosaic newsletter.

 

Dewey & Kaye