Everyone wants to work with a visionary leader. Someone who inspires and motivates.
At some point in your role as an Executive Director, whether you have been there for years or have newly taken over the reins of the agency – you begin to form a vision of how to grow your agency’s impact.
This vision helps you power through those days when you are up to your neck in the tedium of running a nonprofit.
Once your vision begins to gel- how do you get your staff, your board, and your partners to buy-in and make it their own?
How do you find that sweet spot where you have your ideas clear enough that you can share them, but flexible enough to incorporate the responses and enthusiasm of others?
It is an art more than a science and today’s episode will explore approaches nonprofit Executive Directors should consider when sharing and shaping their vision for their agency.
You can read the full transcript at https://relishyourrole.come/29
Building a Nonprofit Vision
Visions have different gestation periods.
Your vision may be crystal clear and detailed, or just an initial sense of what could be.
Having a vision for your organization does not happen overnight. Something may slowly percolate in your mind and begin to take shape as you participate in community meetings, talk with clients, or attend a conference. Something gets your mind clicking.
Many times, a vision develops in response to changing conditions in your community, or you just experience a personal “ah-ha” moment.
But your vision, regardless of how well-formed it is, cannot live just in your head. For your vision to become a reality it needs to be embraced by others and in the process of engaging others, that vision will no doubt undergo some changes.
Sharing Your Nonprofit’s Vision.
Maybe your organization has always defined itself as an agricultural education program, but you see it as a way to foster community belonging. That is a new vision and will require changes in many aspects of the agency.
How do you get others to see what you see and get excited about the possibilities?
The process of sharing a vision and watching it change as others react is scary and may make you frustrated or possessive.
You have thought through where you want your organization to go, and how it defines itself. Those thoughts may feel too precious, and you have gotten too closely attached to them to risk having them change based on the reactions of others.
It is natural to be protective of your vision, but it is not an effective way to make change.
If you want to see success as a leader, you need to effectively share your vision and ideas.
Identify Groups with Whom to Share Your Vision
Identify all the groups whose buy-in is most necessary for what you see in your mind’s eye to get adopted.
Getting Community Stakeholder Buy-In for Yor Vision
It is natural to start with your staff, but perhaps community representatives are the best place to test out your thinking. You may have blind spots and those with a bit of distance from the daily workings of the organization and represents the community you want to serve will have useful perspectives.
If your vision entails a fundamental shift in agency focus you may need to start with your Board and begin the education with them on why your vision makes sense.
Getting Board Buy-In for Your Vision
I had a client whose vision for her organization was truly youth-led. This change required a new program model and new staff approaches. These changes had budgetary, community, and staffing implications. Having the Board’s buy-in to the new vision was crucial.
Getting Staff Buy-In for Your Vision
Having your staff buy into the vision is also essential for its success. You want them to embrace your vision with both their head and their heart and be fully committed. They may be threatened by the suggested changes, and you have to bring them along and see their meaningful role in making the vision a reality.
Staff need to have a sense of their place in the new vision in order to support it and do their best to make that vision a reality.
Developing advocates
Regardless of what group you start with, don’t try to ‘sell’ your vision. Talk about what honestly excites you.
Start with the why and not the how.
Look for confirmation of the conditions that prompted you to develop your vision. For your staff, community partners, and your Board, start with discussing the rationale and the big picture before you jump to planning the details.
If you can focus on the why of your vision, it will become clearer to others. In the process of conversations, your vision becomes clearer, and others become excited by what you are proposing.
They can then add their ideas and begin the process of flushing out the details.
Without buy-in into your vision, at the first obstacle your ideas will be abandoned.
Taking the time to get others to understand and support your vision strengthens the final result as it now makes use of many perspectives.
Time and time again I have seen the greatest skeptics of change become the fiercest advocates if they are given the chance to react to the vision and make suggestions that more closely align with their personal experiences.
You gain advocates for your vision when you can articulate what you are working towards and bring them along with you.
Adopting a Vision is a Long-Term Process
This is not a one and one process.
Before you can implement your vision, you must communicate it internally and externally again and again
As the agency leader, you are responsible for making the linkages between your vision and your organization’s operations.
You continually model your vision and continue to refer to it as you attend to operational issues of the agency.
The goal is a shared understanding of the vision with your staff, the community, and the Board after they all have had multiple opportunities to react to the vision and make suggestions for its refinement.
Once everyone is on board with the rationale and general context of the vision (using the earlier example of opening up a working farm as a multi-facet resource for the community’s more vulnerable citizens.) you can begin to lead the process of thinking through all the implications of making this shift in vision.
What does it mean for Board representation?
How does it impact fundraising?
Do your partnerships shift?
What does programming look like?
Are your staff adequately trained?
When you get to the implementation phase you can see how important it is to have the input and buy-in of all of your stakeholders.
It is not unusual to find once you start implementing your vision, things you thought were true may need to be revisited. Things are rarely straightforward or happen without implementation bumps.
With widespread support for the vision, you can handle the obstacles as you have the support of all the important constituency groups. You can face anything.
Again, hard work, over some time, but you can do it and I am here to help.