This is my tenth podcast episode.
Not a big deal for the seasoned pros, but for me it has been a journey filled with steep learning curves, hours experiencing frustration, self-doubt, and generally questioning why I am bothering.
I offer a podcast to expand the reach of my services– I want a national clientele of nonprofit women Executive Directors.
I have a clear vision of where I want to go but the path there is difficult, and I feel the outcome is only partially in my control.
So, I have been consumed with mastering perseverance and learning what it takes to stay the course.
The Oxford English dictionary defines perseverance as ‘persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.’
Perseverance, so necessary to be successful as a nonprofit ED
Daily hard work with a clear goal in mind but so many difficulties and delays in achieving success .
Today’s episode will look at ways as a nonprofit leader to strengthen your ability to persevere.
You can hear the full episode and read the transcript at relishyourrole.com/10.
Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review.
Suggestions to Help Your Persevere
I have learned a few things over the past few months while trying to scale my business from a word or mouth consultancy to a national resource. I offer these suggestions based on my own experience, and I am still learning.
Be Agile
You have to be agile- if you have developed one strategy to reach your goal and you are not getting any traction, you have to be willing to try a different approach.
Fearlessly look at whatever metric you have chosen to map your progress. Use that information to assess if you need to retrench and find a different way or add a new approach to move forward.
It is humbling to acknowledge your strategy is not working but if you are motivated by your goal, you owe it to yourself to think through other options to reach your objective.
I thought my personal network would be enough to get the word out about my sole focus on coaching nonprofit women EDs. After all, my network had provided me with a lucrative consulting business up to now. However, it was obvious after a few weeks that that strategy alone was not going to get me where I wanted to go.
So, I started a podcast and am spending time making deliberate posts on LinkedIn as a way to get my name out there. I am also doing all the networking, offering of training and other methods to get known nationally. I have to constantly be guided by analysis of my outcomes and change things up to get the results I want.
You have to be agile and be willing to switch approaches, that is perseverance.
Ask for help
It is next to impossible to reach your goal without help from others. You may need technical support, a favor to gain access to a decision maker, learning from others who are traveling a similar path. The help you need may be emotional support to have someone listen to your frustrations and self-doubt.
Sometimes getting out of your head and having someone to bounce ideas off of is the energizing lift you need.
Trying to do things alone increases the burden. It is easier to preserve when there are others you can lean on.
Create Benchmarks
Create benchmarks- whatever your goal is, starting a new program, re-organizing your staff, undertaking a new policy initiative, create sequential benchmarks to help identify and celebrate progress. These benchmarks should capture mid-point goals for your incremental steps.
Big change is daunting, and your perseverance can get eroded if you only focus on your end goal. Creating midpoint benchmarks keeps the process from being overwhelming.
If you do not see progress, it is easy to get discouraged and give up.
Think through meaningful incremental benchmarks and make sure to track them and celebrate when they are achieved.
If you are trying to re-organize and receive Board approval to do so, acknowledge it, if you need to raise an additional $100k to make it work, celebration the identification of potential revenue, if you need to reconfigure your leadership team and learned of a useful model, use that benchmark to measure your progress.
I have shifted using the number of new clients as a benchmark to looking at an incremental goal of increasing the number of followers on LinkedIn. I see progress quicker and feel I have some control over my ability to reach that benchmark. Most importantly I see how that incremental step leads me to my bigger goal.
Remember Your Why
Remember your why-it is easier, although not easy to keep going in the face of continual difficulty and delay if you continually remind yourself of your greater goal. Losing faith and giving up is an attractive alternative to feeling you are banging your head against the wall when you forget the larger motivation for the change you seek.
Remembering your why helps inoculates you against some of the self-doubt and exhaustion which comes from persevering. Keeping my purpose front and center in my mind keeps me going.
I don’t always like this process, perseverance is a tough lesson to learn, but in the end, I think it has made me stronger, more patient and more focused. It has reminded me daily to recommit through my actions to my goal.
You can do it an