662: How an Executive Aligns with a Board, with Joan Garry

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
When I’ve traditionally thought about executives interacting with their boards, the most common first thought I’ve had is, well, it’s the executive’s job to keep their board happy. But that’s pretty limited thinking, actually. The most effective executives are really intentional about creating a framework for shared leadership. In this episode, key lessons from the nonprofit world on how to align better with your board. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 662.Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:42]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. I know virtually nobody who is a leader in any capacity with any level of success that doesn’t think about leadership at least a little bit in the context of partnership. None of us lead alone. None of us don’t have lots of stakeholders that are relying on us, and us in turn relying on them to be able to advance the things we care about so much in our organizations.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:23]:
Today, I am so glad to be able to welcome a guest who has such a wonderful track record of not only as an effective leader, but also thinking about leadership as partnership and how we can do better in our own leadership. I’m so thrilled to welcome Joan Garry to the show. She is an internationally recognized champion for the nonprofit sector and a highly sought after executive coach for CEOs at some of the largest organizations. Joan’s firm offers high end strategic advisory services with a unique combination of coaching and management consulting. She’s the founder of the Nonprofit Leadership Lab, a world class online educational membership organization for board and staff leaders of small nonprofits. As a columnist for the chronicle of philanthropy, contributor to Harvard Business Review and also to Forbes. Joan is a preeminent media spokesperson and thought leader on the role of the nonprofit sector in our society and is a sought after voice on issues facing the sector today. Joan was previously executive director of GLAAD, one of the largest gay rights organizations in the United States.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:31]:
She is the author of Joan Garry’s Guide to Nonprofit Leadership:Bbecause the World is Counting On You. Joan, what a pleasure to have you on.

Joan Garry [00:02:41]:
Dave, I’m really grateful for the opportunity to sort of chat about what leadership means in our world today. I often hear that there is a dearth of leadership, in our society. And one of the great joys of my work is that I, I See leadership in every nook and cranny of our society every day, and it’s inspiring. And I’ve learned a lot, so happy to be here.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:05]:
Oh, I am so glad to get to learn from you. I have known of your work for many years. I’m so glad we finally got connected. And as I got into the book and your work. I was struck by the chapter title of one of the chapters in your book, and the title is “Copilots in a twin engine plane.” And you’re obviously thinking of this from the nonprofit lens, but there’s so many lessons here for leaders broadly on just the relationship we have in partnership with other leaders. And you write, “In my experience with hundreds of nonprofits, it’s clear to me that the single most important indicator of a healthy nonprofit is the relationship between the staff and the board leader, the executive director and the board chair.”

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:53]:
What’s so significant about that relationship?

Joan Garry [00:03:56]:
So I I wanna tell you first that I came to the nonprofit sector after 14 years in the private sector. I spent a bunch of years at MTV, I was on the some of the original management team that launched MTV back when it had music videos. And then I was also at Showtime. So I had this experience of what management and leadership was like in the private sector, and I have learned about how it is different And in many ways, more powerful, in the nonprofit sector. And, for me, embedded in the DNA of a thriving organization, particularly true in a nonprofit, is this notion of shared leadership. That there is a sort of a posse in a nonprofit, a posse of leaders, paid and unpaid, who are working together as thought partners, as ambassadors, to invite people to know and do more for the work of that particular organization. And I have never really thought that hierarchy was a valuable construct, and it definitely did not seem to me that it reflected what happens in a nonprofit organization. And so my twin engine jet analogy is an alternative to a hierarchical org chart because I don’t think of the board as the boss.

Joan Garry [00:05:35]:
I think of the board as one of the engines. I think of the staff as one of the engines. Each of them working both independently and together. And that the folks that are most responsible for the ride, if you will, are the folks in the cockpit, and that is the ED and the board chair. And for me, a relationship that is built as a partnership rooted in trust and respect can preempt problems, can look around corners to see opportunities, and if something hits the fan, they are in the best possible place as partners to navigate that crisis.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:17]:
It’s such a really helpful analogy thinking about that shared leadership. And I was thinking about what you just said and what you wrote that if I was asked that question, like, what’s the most important thing for the success of a nonprofit organization? This is where my, mostly my experience in the private sector throughout my career bias would come in. I would think of things like, okay, funding and having a strong staff, but I wouldn’t have thought about that relationship as the most significant, most important thing, and yet so much of leadership these days, even in the private sector, is about shared responsibility. Right? We have so many more stakeholders, the traditional hierarchy of a lot of organizations. Yes, you may report to 1 person, but there’s so many stakeholders that everyone needs to be thinking about. And by the way, you mentioned your experience of going from the the private sector going into the nonprofit world, and you share a story in the book about just that first experience. Like, that first board meeting, you had some pretty big changes that happened that you had to navigate when you showed up in the nonprofit world.

Joan Garry [00:07:21]:
Well, we could start with, you know, sort of my drive to go into the nonprofit sector was really, I think, a drive that many people feel today, Which is a drive that says, really leaning in to a life that has greater meaning and purpose feels right to me, and it did then. I think that is especially true in our world today, in a post-pandemic world, and that’s what it was for me. Was for me about a very personal decision. My wife and I had 3 kids, and I felt like I wanted to do what I could to make the world a safer, more fair place for my kids. And I did not know. I didn’t know that that the organization I inherited was a financial hot mess. And went to my 1st board meeting, and the 2 people who, quote on quote, I saw it as my Bosses during the interview, I liked very, very much. And in fact, they were, I think, pretty instrumental in my decision to say yes. And they resigned at that 1st meeting.

Joan Garry [00:08:25]:
And much to my surprise and dismay. And the reason that they did is really important. They had a previous executive director who required a level of micromanagement that they did not believe I needed or that would set me up for success. And they felt it was important that I have new board leadership who could be a thought partner with me in a very different kind of way. And they were absolutely 100% right. And that’s when I began to understand this notion of, oh, okay. So I interviewed thinking these 2 people were gonna be my boss, but actually, that’s not what they are.

Joan Garry [00:09:09]:
Like, I have to be able to be self assured enough to talk to a board chair about what’s keeping me up at night, about the fact that I think I made a bad hire. Right, I have to have that kind of trust because these are really hard jobs. If you’re running a domestic violence shelter, if you’re advocating for the LGBT community, like, these are not easy jobs to do. Yeah. And so to be able to have somebody In that cockpit with me is of enormous benefit to be able to ask me questions. Are you thinking about this instead of that? And so it was that move from the private sector that made me realize, oh, okay. This is interesting. This is different.

Joan Garry [00:09:53]:
The other thing I just wanna say, Dave, and this is relevant to the private sector in the world we live in today. I don’t think hierarchy works in any organizations today, especially when it comes to Gen Z folks who are entering the workforce. Everyone is coming expecting to have skin in the game. And we have to start thinking about our staff, our donors, our vendors, as people we are in relationship with, where there is mutual respect and that there’s mutual value. There’s value from each side that comes as a result of those relationships. So the argument I’m making for shared leadership in the nonprofit sector is not isolated just to the nonprofit sector. We all have to think differently about what leadership means and what having a voice means, because people come to the work now really expecting to be heard and seen.

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:54]:
And just to reinforce what you’ve said, yes to all of that. And whenever I’m talking to someone in the private sector who works in a traditional top down organizational structure. And I ask the question like, who’s your manager? Who do you answer to? There’s an answer to that question, but then there’s always a and. This person’s technically my manager, and I have these 8 stakeholders who are really key to my work. Sometimes those are internal folks. Sometimes they’re external. Sometimes they’re a board. Sometimes they’re customers.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:27]:
And it’s even in a quote on quote traditional hierarchy of what we traditionally think of in the private sector. The actual relationships, the influence, the power, if you will, is so much more distributed now than it was 20 years ago. It a different world.

Joan Garry [00:11:45]:
Yeah. And a number of years ago, someone took on the job as the head of the girl scouts, and and she was interviewed. And, what is it like to be on top of such a big influential organization? And her response was, “I’m actually not on top of anything because the power really comes from all around me.” And I do think that, a, that’s true, and b, what is it what does that say about that leader? It says about that leader a certain kind of humble confidence. Like, I am in charged, but I know what I don’t know. There’s gonna be some vulnerability. I’m gonna be curious. I’m gonna be a learner.

Joan Garry [00:12:24]:
This is what people are looking for in leadership regardless of sector. Right? Is if I run a nonprofit organization, I wanna lead with my people.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:36]:
Yeah. Indeed. And that brings us to, I think, a really key point that you emphasize in your work and particularly on this point thinking about, of course, you’re often thinking about it through the lens of the executive director, the board chair, that relationship, those 2 people in the cockpit, especially. Starting well is so key. Whether that’s the new executive director showing up or a new board chair coming in when there’s been that transition starting well is so important, isn’t it?

Joan Garry [00:13:05]:
Yeah. It it totally is. The setup between the ED and the board chair, just like it would be at a for profit company. A relationship between an employee and a supervisor is exactly that, a relationship. Right, you don’t just get right to, here are the 12 things you need to accomplish in the 1st 30 days. If you start there, you miss something really important. You misunderstanding this person, this board chair, this executive director, how they work best, who they are, what are their personal values, what matters to them. Right? Remember that the nonprofit space is highly values driven.

Joan Garry [00:13:50]:
And so aligning your personal values to connect to your organizational values, Building a relationship that’s where you learn about each other. That’s how you develop trust. Right? And so I recommend a 3 hour conversation with the ED and a new board chair or when the ED is new, that wraps around that. Who are you? What should I know about you? When are you at your very best? How do you like to communicate? What does leadership mean to you? Right? How do you like to make decisions? Really understanding each other so that there are fewer surprises as you go along. And that is time that is infrequently taken in any situation, but certainly in the nonprofit sector, because there’s a certain kind of reticence to ask a board chair or a board member to do too much because they are volunteers. And to that, I feel very strongly that we are not taking into account the fact that the person has raised their hands to be of service, and most people who want to be on nonprofit boards want to do important valuable work. And I believe oftentimes we are reticent to ask them to lead, reticent to ask them to invest a lot of time because we don’t think they have it, or that that’s an imposition in some way. And I actually think that’s a mindset we really need to change.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:24]:
Yeah, and it sounds like it really does start with 1 or both those people, hopefully. But in this case, is you describe the executive director saying, this is really important because of the why behind why we’re doing this, the values, the relationship, the what we’re trying to achieve and framing that as the starting point for, let’s actually spend the time at the beginning of the relationship to clarify the how do we work together, the what do how do we make decisions, those kinds of things, because that relationship’s so key.

Joan Garry [00:15:57]:
Oh, it’s everything. An an executive director will very likely spend more time in relationship with their board chair than they will with their spouse or their pets or their imaginary friends at home.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well and it’s interesting that you use the analogy of aviation and thinking about 2 people in the cockpit. Those people have different titles in aviation, pilot, captain, copilot, but so much of it is working in partnership. There’s a whole practice around crew resource management and who does what in shared leadership in the cockpit, and it it comes right back to this.

Joan Garry [00:16:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. You think about this one, Dave. Right? Like, we all know the name Sully Sullenberger. He he he lands a 737 in the Hudson River. Right? And you gotta know that Sully Sullenberger would never have been able to do that and saved all those lives were it not for whoever his copilot was.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It’s really it’s it’s about partnership. Right? And so Yeah. This this 1st sit down, you make the recommendation. It’s a it’s a long meeting.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:05]:
It’s a 3 hour meeting of getting… what else does it sound like? Like, when, you know, the yes. How do we make decisions? Our values, is that all is that all, like, part of that 3 hours, or are there other things too in that initial stage that are are helpful to clarify.

Joan Garry [00:17:20]:
I think the other thing that’s very helpful to clarify in that initial conversation is to talk about who decides what things. Right? So, let me give you a couple examples, Dave. Right? Please. So there’s a clear line. If you look at an executive executive director, they are responsible for hiring and firing staff. And I’m talking with a client a couple of months ago. She’s about to hire a CFO.

Joan Garry [00:17:51]:
And she asks me, it’s my decision, but I don’t need to involve the board. Right? And I said, you don’t need to. You absolutely do not need to. And here’s a thought. Your board treasurer is going to be a bit of a partner with that CFO. Do you want there to be some voice from the treasurer. You know, maybe it’s not a vote. It’s not a vote, But maybe you want, you know, a board treasurer who might say, hey.

Joan Garry [00:18:22]:
I met I met your candidate, and I’m excited for you. And here are some of the things in meeting with that person that I think might help you in setting that person up for success. And I’m looking forward to working with them. A person that is not humble, that is not curious, that does not lean into partnership will say that’s my decision, and the treasurer will just have to actually live with my decision. I take a different approach because I actually I feel like it there are multiple partnerships within nonprofit organizations. So that’s what she did, and it worked out beautifully. And so that’s a sort of a, yes, it’s a bold line that this the executive director is responsible for and firing. And getting a point of view from a person who’s going to be working most closely with that person on the board might, in fact, be quite a good idea.

Joan Garry [00:19:20]:
On the flip side, a board may be very fed up with me because I have not yet fired Tanya. We’ve all determined that Tanya has to go, and I have not fired Tanya. Right? It is my job to fire Tanya. I can hear the tension and the pressure coming from my board, but it is my decision, and there may be all kinds of contextual reasons I have not yet fired, Tanya. I am expecting that at my annual performance review, it will come up that I fired that I either made a bad hire or that I fired Tanya too slowly. Right? So there there have to be mechanisms for me to be held accountable the fact that I didn’t fire Tanya, but I get to decide. Right. So that those are the kinds of things, and that’s just on hiring, which is just one, you know, one place.

Joan Garry [00:20:10]:
We could also talk about recruitment of new board members. I’m an executive director. I’m out and about. I probably am the single best source of prospects for the board of anyone on border staff. I should absolutely be fueling the nomination’s pipeline with prospects. Am I the decider? No. The board has to decide who joins the board. Do I have a ton of input and influence? Yes.

Joan Garry [00:20:36]:
Mhmm. But you don’t wanna you don’t you don’t want me to have all the influence. Right? Because there’s some we have we have nonprofit organizations where the executive director has way too much disproportionate power, and they can stack a board. You want it to be this relationship where Joan has met this person and they look good on paper. Let’s interview them and see if we see any red flags. So right. There is another example of places where yes, on paper, the board approves new board members.

Joan Garry [00:21:14]:
But you’re not gonna leave the executive director out of that process. You would do so at your own peril.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. So so key. Thank you for those examples. And as as I say, think about those, when that 1st meeting happens or maybe it’s a 2nd or the 3rd meeting, and it’s it’s clarity on the who’s deciding what. How does that emerge? Does it get down on paper. Is it a verbal understanding? I’m trying to get a sense of, like, how much detail do you go into kinda trying to look at those big areas of who’s doing what? Where are the nuances? Where are the shades of gray so that you really do come to a place where 9 months down the road, everyone’s still in alignment on those things.

Joan Garry [00:21:58]:
I’m a huge fan of starting with one thing. Right. If I’m a board chair and you just start to in this 1st meeting, we start to go through all these different things, like, I’m gonna have a head explosion emoji. Right?

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:11]:
Yeah.

Joan Garry [00:22:11]:
So I don’t want that. I don’t want that for me, and I and I don’t want that for my new board chair. And so using something as an example And playing it out a little bit can be a really good object lesson teachable moment for each of them about how did that work? You know, what could we have done differently? And then apply it to different components of the organization. Right? There are plenty of resources- I mean, I run a online membership site for thousands of nonprofit leaders board and staff called The Nonprofit Leadership Lab, and that re there are resources galore on exactly this because it’s something that I think is fundamental to a thriving nonprofit. So there’s, you know, you can find a resource that gives you a guide that says this gets decided by the board. This gets decided by the by the staff. This is where you want there to be input.

Joan Garry [00:23:04]:
This is where it’s quite gray. And those can be good starting point resources for you to develop your own cadence about these things. But I do think you can overwhelm because there are so many different components to running a nonprofit that I’m, as I said, big fan of, like, let’s try it with nominations first.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:25]:
Yeah.

Joan Garry [00:23:25]:
And then as you go along, let’s just okay. So what happens what happens, Joan, if the board is you know, has a meeting and they have all determined that you need to fire Tonya? How am I supposed to handle that? Right? And to, like, have those questions that are that are rooted in curiosity, that are rooted in deepening my understanding of what’s in my lane, what’s in your lane, and where there is crossover?

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:53]:
Yeah. I love that invitation to do it 1 at a time because if you try to do everything at once, like like you said, the head explosion. Right? And what I’m hearing you say is, like, let’s take one of these big areas, annual budget. Right? That’s something that the board and executive director are gonna be in the midst of in every organization of you cite an example of something. Alright. Here’s something 3 months ago or in last year’s budget that didn’t quite work or we ran into some conflict or we ran into a situation. And you’re highlighting that example and you’re using that as a catalyst to say, let’s sit down executive and board chair or whoever else the stakeholder is and say, let’s use that as an opportunity now that we’re past this situation to actually define what does this look like big picture for us as far as how we make decisions on this in the future because we know we’re gonna run into situations.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:43]:
And you do that and you have that conversation, and that’s like one clarity point. And then maybe at the next meeting, you’re talking about, okay, hiring. Right? And let’s talk about what worked, what didn’t in a past situation, and let’s come to clarity there. And if you’re doing that just methodically over time, you know, the new relationship, 3 to 6 months a year, that you eventually come to a place where you’ve got really good clarity on all of those areas, at least the ones that are most critical.

Joan Garry [00:25:11]:
I agree entirely about that. I also think that there’s something else about the relationship between the board and the staff that’s important to clarify here, which is what’s the altitude of engagement? Right. So I’ll just stay with my twin engine jet metaphor, and we’ll use altitude. Right? So one of the challenges that nonprofits face is that boards are not given the appropriate amount of orientation or education. And so board members arrive to board to board service believing that they are fiduciaries, which they are, but that shows up as risk managers, and that can lead to micromanagement. That can lead to I just need to be informed about everything because I’m providing oversight, and my job is actually to make sure that nothing goes wrong. I call that life on the tarmac.

Joan Garry [00:26:15]:
Some people call that my board is in the weeds, but I call it the jets on the tarmac. And there’s 2 other levels of governance. 1 is strategic, which is like the 10,000 foot view, and then there’s generative where you’re really thinking and imagining about what’s possible and visioning for the future of your organization. That’s when you’re up at 35,000 feet. And the truth of the matter is that too many board members, too many boards of too many nonprofits live in this risk management place on the tarmac. And one of the most important things that has to happen when you are setting this new relationship up to succeed is to make sure that the ED understands that they’ve got to actually engage and enrich their board at strategic and generative levels, so that they can really lean into the kind of the three-dimensional aspects of the nonprofit and not just the balance sheet, not just the monthly financials, not just the program metrics, but that they have a full view of the organization, particularly the board chair, so that they can be full participants and that when they open their mouths to offer guidance and ideas, they have context, they have knowledge.

Joan Garry [00:27:34]:
And so I think That’s just another piece of the puzzle here, Dave, is that we have to get our boards educated that Oversight does not mean making sure nothing goes wrong. I mean, it does, But it means so much more than that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:52]:
Yeah. That’s like the starting point. It’s not the Yep. I mean, yes, you have to be on the tarmac at some point, but, like, that’s not the point of the flight, right, is to get up in the air and go somewhere. And so this probably begs the obvious question, which is I’m the executive director coming in and I’ve got maybe a new board new board chair. Maybe I’m a new executive director coming in, and I know they’ve been on the tarmac. And that’s kind of like where the organization has been.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:16]:
When you see an executive director and a board chair get to a place where they start to elevate and find altitude. What is it that 1 or both of them do, the ones where this works really well that you see work to nudge them toward altitude?

Joan Garry [00:28:33]:
Good, great question. I I see the ED, the executive director, beginning to understand that the board is not following that person. Right? I far too of right. That’s why I call it twin engine jet as opposed to what I call a make way for ducklings board, where the executive director is leading and the board is saying, hey. Let me know if you need anything. I’m over here right behind you. And some types of EDs really like that. They like that framework.

Joan Garry [00:29:08]:
But it is when the ED begins to say, okay. What would have to be true for my board to operate at a strategic regenerative level? What would they need they don’t have? And what how can I provide that to them? How can I start to think about the board meetings differently So that maybe I’m bringing in a speaker? Maybe I’m doing a presentation on the challenges in a particular program area That I can actually engage them as thought partners who can ask me slightly tough questions. And it’s an interesting thing. It’s a combination of the commitment organizations make to educate their board members about what board service looks like, That it doesn’t just you you don’t if you’re just staying on the tarmac, you’re actually not doing a good job. And it’s about the executive director believing that the board has real value and that that executive director has an obligation to invest in ensuring that the board has what it needs to be full contributors and to be champions and ambassadors who can fundraise. That that doesn’t just happen. They have to be fueled.

Joan Garry [00:30:27]:
And I believe the executive director, that’s when you start to see it, when the executive director starts to stop seeing them as bosses to whom I have to simply provide a book report at each board meeting, but starts to think about a partnership where I have, how can I invest in my board so they can be those thought partners?

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:47]:
So much of this comes back to expectations and belief. Right? And I am thinking about what you said earlier in the conversation too that by and large, almost at anyone I’ve ever interacted with or and when I was on on a board that everyone shows up wanting to do something great, wanting to, like, help out. They believe in the mission of the organization. To your point, you know, people are showing up as volunteers. So the willingness just to stop and to say, here’s what I think this could be, this belief, this expectation of, like, the shared leadership at altitude starting there and setting that as an expectation from the beginning. Boy, that sets the tone for everything else. And then you can handle all the tactical stuff we’ve been talking about. But, like, that that big picture belief, if you start there, it’s huge.

Joan Garry [00:31:34]:
You’re so right, Dave. People join boards because they want meaning and purpose. They want To have value they believe they offer something because they have this pilot light that’s on for this organization. And if they don’t have it, you should not have recruited them to your board to begin with. If you ask somebody, why do you wanna join this board, and a person says, I wanna give back, move on to the next candidate because I want this I have 90 I live in New Jersey in a town called Mont Claire, there are 95 nonprofits. Right? I could give back in 95 different ways. Why do I wanna give back to THIS organization? Then I know that this person’s light it shining. And as an executive director and as a board chair, my job is to keep that light shining and, in fact, make it brighter.

Joan Garry [00:32:26]:
And I actually think our sector does often Through board meetings that are not engaging, through a whole host of things, we’re actually pretty good at dimming people’s lights. And once an executive director and board chair recognized their job is to make sure those lights are bright because you’re never gonna get somebody to go out and invite somebody to an event or come to this or engage in this or donate pro bono this if their light is not bright.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:57]:
I’d love to invite folks to do a couple things. One of the beautiful things you’ve done in your work is to put together a lot of the tactical pieces of that is you get into, like, alright, the how, like, establishing the belief, but also the, like, okay. Where do you start? How do you make decisions on each of these areas? Which place should be shared? Which place should other folks own. The book’s a great starting point. Also your website, I’d encourage folks to go there. The Leadership Lab, there’s so many resources for nonprofit leaders. For folks who show up there, anything they should know as far as a first step just to find find the right direction?

Joan Garry [00:33:31]:
Yeah. I mean so, you know, joangarry.com is sort of a central hub, and I have I have free resources. And then, our monthly subscription, annual subscription membership site. It’s been a really gratifying experience for me because it’s my way to sort of scale my philosophy and the coaching that I do to leaders all around the world, and we have supported over 20,000 leaders in the last 6 years since we launched, and it is a beautiful, remarkable, generous community. So it’s a pretty joyful work that I do.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:10]:
Indeed. Well, we’ll get links to all of that in the on the episode notes and in this week’s weekly leadership guide. Joan Garry is the author of Joan Garry’s Guide to Nonprofit Leadership: Because the World is Counting on You. Joan, thank you so much for your work.

Joan Garry [00:34:26]:
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to chat with you today, Dave, and thanks for the work that you do in really amplifying leadership in our society.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:34]:
My pleasure. If this conversation with was helpful, a few related episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode 586, how to involve stakeholders in decisions. Eric Pliner was my guest on that episode. We talked about how to approach a situation where you’d wanna get some input, maybe some perspective from other stakeholders. Maybe they have a voice or a vote in the opinion or maybe they can veto it. How do you think about that? How do you frame it and set expectations for what kind of influence someone else has in the decision you’re gonna make? Episode 586 for a road map on exactly how to do that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:16]:
I’m also thinking about episode 617 with Carol Kauffman, how to start a big leadership role. One of the reasons this question comes up of thinking about the relationship between an executive and a board is someone who’s stepping into that executive role or maybe CEO or executive director role for the very first time. In episode 617, Carol and I talked about what are some of the big key things you need to be thinking about as a executive or a top level leader stepping into a new role and where to begin, episode 617 for that. And then finally, you heard Joan make the invitation to build a relationship between parties and to begin that at the very start of the relationship. Nobody’s better on a framework with that than Michael Bungay Stanier, episode 635, how to start better with peers. We talked about his model of creating the best possible relationship. We looked at it in that episode through the lens of peers, but you can use that in any situation, a board, subordinates, clients, personal relationships, of course, many applications for that, all of that in episode 635. Of course, many other episodes inside of the website as well.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:27]:
If you have not yet set up your free membership, I’m inviting you to do that over at coachingforleaders.com. It’s gonna give you access to the entire library of episodes since 2011, but more importantly, the ability to be able to search by topic. You can access all the episodes on any of the platforms or on a Google search or wherever, but, what you can’t always find is how to be able to sort them by topic. That’s why we have the free membership set up on the website so you can easily find what you’re looking for right now. In addition, there’s a ton of other benefits inside of the free membership. All of my interview notes, my own personal library, access to my weekly leadership guides plus a bunch more. Details over at coachingforleaders.com. Set up your free membership, and you’ll be off and running with us on all the benefits inside the free membership.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:16]:
And if you’re looking for more beyond that, I’d invite you to learn about Coaching for Leaders Plus. There are several benefits inside Coaching for Leaders Plus, and one of them is an expansion upon what I do at the end of every episode. You hear me as you did today. Mention 3 or 4 episodes that I think would be helpful if you found this conversation useful. I do that at the end of every episode, but we’ve taken that a big step further inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus, looking at some very specific topics and detailing out what are the best episodes to listen to in order with relevant points, discussion questions, a video for me guiding you through those in detail, and a lot more perspective on very specific topics. Topic guides, as we call them, are one of the key benefits inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus. To discover more, go over to coachingforleaders.plus to learn more about topic guides and all the other benefits inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:10]:
Coaching for leaders is edited today, as it always is, by Andrew Koreger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next Monday, I’m glad to welcome back to the show Harvard professor Amy Edmondson. She’s currently ranked by thinkers fifty as the number one management thinker in the world. She’s back on the show to help us to grow when we’re wrong. Join me for that conversation with Amy next week, and I’ll see you back on Monday.