10 Things Nonprofits Should Do When Developing Future Leaders
Getting qualified candidates into the nonprofit leadership candidate pool can be challenging, so we tend to start thinking about our internal candidates. They already know and love our mission so it's logical to want to advance them into these open leadership positions.
But are your future leaders ready?
In this episode, we're going to explore 10 things nonprofits should do to develop their future leaders and build their internal leadership pipeline.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
00:58 Are your nonprofit’s future leaders ready?
02:36 10 Things nonprofits should do to help build their leadership pipeline
15:36 L&D can help develop your nonprofit leaders
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10 Things Nonprofits Should Do When Developing Future Leaders
75% of nonprofit leaders are planning to leave their positions in the next five to ten years.
75%
That's the stat reported by buildingmovement.org.
We have almost 2 million nonprofits in the US alone. That means we're going to see a lot of open leadership positions that can be hard to fill. It can be a challenge to get qualified candidates into the nonprofit leadership candidate pool.
So we tend to start thinking about our internal candidates. They already know and love our mission, so it's logical to want to advance them into these open leadership positions. But are they ready?
Are your future leaders ready?
What does it look like to be a leader at your nonprofit?
Is it clear?
Is it defined?
Do they have the skills they need?
If you answered with anything but an excited, YES, this episode is for you. We're going to explore 10 things nonprofits should do to develop their future leaders and build their internal leadership pipeline.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
1) Discover the Size of Your Leadership Pipeline
Do your nonprofit's future leaders want the job?
Now this might seem a little unusual, but ask your future leaders if they even want the job.
“Are you interested in pursuing a leadership position in our organization?”
If they say yes - then you know who your potential candidates are for this leadership development program.
If they say no - we can ask them why. You might just discover other things that need to be fixed in your organization before you invest in a leadership development or high potential program.
If they say no, that is incredibly telling and it can help you solve for other things that might not be the first thing that come to mind when you start thinking about developing your future leaders.
2) Identify Competencies for Staff Development
When you think about the skills that your nonprofit leaders need, you might have some things that quickly come to mind. And they might be accurate. But are they also going to be the skills that are needed in the future?
Spend some time really thinking through the skills that are needed both now and in the future.
You can do this through research. There are a lot of studies out there around the skills that are needed to be a good leader and to be a leader in the future of work.
You can do focus groups and interviews internally to get a sense of how the organization is working and what skills people are relying on. What does it actually look like inside of your nonprofit?
You can look at things like your strategic plan and your DEI commitment. Look at things that are already documented in the organization and see what skills are bubbling up as potential areas of focus for your organization and for your leaders in the future.
I talk a lot about identifying skills when I talk about competency models. If you want to learn more about how to identify skills for now and in the future take a look at these competency model episodes.
Episode 79: Taking an Asset-Based Approach to Competency Models
Episode 51: How to Use Your Competency Model to Develop a Comprehensive Training Program
Episode 39: Ask These Two Questions to Identify Your Nonprofit's Core Competencies
Episode 20: How to Determine Which Competencies Are Right for You
Episode 19: One Nonprofit's Honest Opinion after 6 Months with a Competency Model
Episode 18: Four Reasons Your Competencies Don't Work
3) Create a Leadership Development Program Rather Than a Training
Design a program, not a training.
Training can become a little bit of a bandage solution. When another department head has a challenge, often they come to you for a training. But when you're talking about developing your leadership pipeline, you really need something more than a training. It can't just be a one-stop shop.
You're going to need to think about it more holistically and create a full leadership development or high potential program. This might include some training, but it also includes other things like:
Resources
Toolkits
Coaching
Peer learning
Project-based work
All of these things help us build those leadership skills that we're going to need. And they help us practice those leadership skills so that we're more ready to implement them. So design a program, not a training.
4) Include a Leadership Assessmentt
Include some sort of skills reflection or formal skills assessment and pair those results with an individual development plan.
When we're able to more accurately reflect on what skills we're bringing and what skills we might want to continue to develop, we're better able to invest in our own development. That gives us autonomy, self-determination, and direction within that program.
When we're able to incorporate some sort of assessment process and some sort of planning process, it provides a lot of autonomy to the learner so that they have some control and some buy-in to what and how they're developing their skills over time.
5) Offer Contextualized Practice in Skills Training
Offer contextualized skills practice so it's relevant and practical.
We often talk about how we need to practice or we need that hands-on component if we're really going to learn a skill, practice a behavior, or create that behavior change that we're looking for.
And so we do always think about that and want that.
Here, I'm just narrowing that down a little bit more to say, we want it to be contextualized.
The person in your leadership program may not necessarily already be in a role where they're going to be implementing those skills in real-time on the job. And so inside the classroom, whatever that looks like, we really need to make sure we're contextualizing the skills practice.
We're helping them connect it to things they're already doing but also contextualizing it for what they might be doing in the future.
The second piece of that is - what can we bring on the job? And how can we help them contextualize that practice on the job?
6) Consider the Well-Being of Your Future Nonprofit Leadership
I talk about well-being quite a bit on the podcast. I just find it to be such an important factor in how well we're able to lead and learn. It's not something thing that we often think about or consider when we're talking about a leadership development program or a high potential program.
You're asking your participants, your learners, your future leaders to invest additional time and effort outside of their regular day job so that they can develop themselves for this future position.
We think about it as such a huge opportunity that provides a huge benefit to the learner. And that is true, but it's also extra work.
It may be hard for participants to balance all of their current demands with this new set of demands within this program.
Think about their overall well-being:
How can we help them balance those things?
What can we do?
What can we provide to make sure that they are still in a place where they're not going to reach burnout?
If they reach burnout before they even get to that leadership position, chances are, they're not going to get to that leadership position, at least not at your organization.
So really think about how you can help them balance all the things that they're going to have to balance during that program and how you can help them just be well in the process.
You can find more of my well-being episodes here:
Episode 80: How to Add Well-Being to Your People Strategy
Episode 67: A Well-Being Approach to Leadership Development
Episode 38: Dealing with Corporate Burnout? One Easy Way to Manage Stress as a Nonprofit Leader with Jessie Pagliari
Episode 30: Why Well-Being Is The Secret Sauce to Change Management with Mandy Sharp Eizinger
7) Build Relationships Among Leadership Development Program Participants
This is really important because it helps participants build trust and vulnerability within the group.
This means:
They're better able to try things and fail.
They're better able to learn from each other.
They're better able to bring their own experiences and share those experiences with each other.
They're also building relationships that they can take with them outside of that program. So when they are your future leaders, they now already have good relationships, strong relationships with other leaders in the organization.
This is really important, long term for the organization, but also short term for their learning in the process.
8) Nurture Allies Throughout Your Nonprofit
This is about relationships that go beyond just the participants.
Think about who else in your organization they are going to need to have good relationships with and how we can help nurture those relationships so that they are forming those allies as they get ready to take on that leadership role.
This could be done with things like networking, where you've got some planned events and maybe you bring in a panel discussion of some sort.
They're able to meet and get to know some of the other key players in the organization, leaders who may still be there when they move into their leadership roles.
It may also mean having them identify a sponsor as they go through that leadership development program.
Who is it that is saying, “Yes, this person is a future leader. They have what it takes, I'm going to support them, I'm going to help them, I'm going to guide them, and I'm going to be there for them.”
That is another great way to build an ally in the organization.
9) Train Your Nonprofit’s Hiring Managers
This might not be what we always think of when we're thinking about building our leadership pipeline. But train your hiring managers on what to look for.
Who is going to be responsible for hiring these future leaders?
It depends on your organization and what level of leadership you're building your pipeline for:
Maybe you're trying to build out the VP level and so you need to train your C suite on what to look for.
Maybe you're building out your C suite and so you need to think about your board.
But whoever it is that's hiring, train them on what to look for because if you don't, they're going to look for what they've always looked for, which might not be what you need in the future.
We want to have this unbiased hiring process, we want the skills that they've been learning and developing to shine, so we really have to think about the hiring managers too.
How do they need to approach the interview and hiring process so that they know what to look for when they're looking for qualified candidates?
This is really important, and it's really important if you're looking to have an equitable hiring process as well.
10) Measure the Success of Your Leadership Development Program
Maybe this goes without saying, but we want to know that the leadership program you're creating is successful and that your leadership pipeline is full.
We want to know that you have the leaders that you need in the future.
Are people coming out of that leadership development program being promoted?
At what rate are they being promoted?
Are they successful in those roles?
What is their time to productivity?
How long does it take them to settle into that leadership role and be able to operate In a good, strong, effective way as a good, strong, effective leader?
If they complete the program and they don't get promoted, why is that? What happened?
Is there something you need to change about the program?
Is there something else, some other kind of support, that you need to provide them?
Are they leaving the organization?
These are the types of things that we can measure. And we can use that to say:
Yes, our program is successful.
Here are the things that we can change to make it more successful in the future.
So those are 10 things we can be doing to make sure we're building our leadership pipeline.
Your people are one of your biggest assets. And you need strong leaders to lead your nonprofit now and in the future.
As L&D, we can help develop those leaders. We're in the people business. So we can be strategic and intentional about what we create and how we design programs that will best support those future leaders.
To hear the full conversation I had on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 92.
The Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective
Helping to change the world for good is hard enough as it is. Finding good support shouldn’t be difficult, too.
I know what it feels like to want someone to bounce ideas off of and to learn from, someone who really understands you and your work.
Nonprofit L&D leaders have been overlooked for too long. You need a place where you can meet like-minded talent development pros, learn from industry leaders and tech vendors, and find the support you need to make a real impact.
Thankfully, great nonprofit support is no longer hard to find or financially inaccessible.
Welcome to the Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective – the only community specifically for nonprofit talent development professionals.
When you join this community, you will walk away with a new, diverse, and powerful network – and a sounding board for your staff development needs.
So if you're ready to exchange ideas and collaborate with your peers, come join the Nonprofit L&D Collective.
