Want To Be A Successful Nonprofit Manager? Master These 3 Key Relationships First

What skills are essential for someone to become a manager at a nonprofit? Let us know your opinion in the comments!

If you’ve worked in social impact for a while, then you know that stepping into a nonprofit management role is an exciting and challenging step in one’s career! In addition to taking on new responsibilities, you have to shift how you view yourself and how others view you. As a manager, you have to manage down (your direct reports), manage up (your boss/bosses), and manage across (your colleagues).

In a recent survey conducted by ProInspire, an organization dedicated to helping social-impact leaders succeed, 50% of nonprofit managers said they did not have the knowledge, experience, and resources to be successful in their roles.

For a sector that is reliant on people power to get things done, this is unacceptable. As organizations, we have to do better to make sure our staff feel supported in their roles, whether they are nonprofit managers, direct reports, entry-level or executive-level, etc. As staff ourselves, we must voice our needs and take it upon ourselves to correct gaps in resources when we see them.

Whether you’re starting a new nonprofit management job, are taking steps to prepare yourself, or just want to shore up your leadership skills, I want to take a moment to walk you through a key part of being a manager, which is managing relationships. First, we’ll go through how to assess yourself—your skills and challenges—before you can efficiently manage others and your organization at large.

Let’s dive in!

Managing yourself

No matter where you are in your career, take half an hour right now (or, you know, later tonight) to reflect on who you are as an employee. Managing yourself involves understanding your strengths and weaknesses, controlling your emotions, and building on your ability to connect with others.

Understand your strengths and weaknesses

Identifying your strengths will help you figure out which tasks you should take on and which ones might be more appropriate for another member of your staff. Additionally, as you hire new people, it is critical to think about how they will complement your strengths and weaknesses, and those of the team at large.

To better understand your talents, start by sitting down with colleagues and asking them for feedback. What do you do really well? What do they consistently come to you for? Then, reflect on past performance reviews or feedback you’ve received to find out what you could be doing better. It can be hard to hear this type of constructive feedback, so here are some ideas of common challenges social-impact professionals face at work to help you reflect:

• Do you tackle projects too quickly and without waiting for proper instruction?
• Do team members often point out mistakes in your work, perhaps resulting from a lack of attention to detail?
• Do you tend to do tasks yourself as opposed to asking for help, leaving you burnt out on projects and unable to assist the organization in other ways?

Develop your emotional intelligence

Research shows that truly effective leaders have a high degree of emotional intelligence. As you move into a new nonprofit manager job, strengthen these abilities by increasing your awareness, committing to practice, and asking for feedback from colleagues. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, identifies five key skills:

• Self-awareness: knowing one's strengths, weaknesses, drives, values, and impact on others.
• Self-regulation: controlling or redirecting disruptive impulses and moods.
• Motivation: relishing achievement for its own sake.
• Empathy: understanding other people's emotional makeup.
• Social skill: building rapport with others to move them in desired directions.

Managing Others

The biggest change for a new manager is managing the work of other people. You don’t want to micromanage, yet you don’t want to provide too little guidance. So what’s the Goldilocks answer after all?

Communicate early and often

Communication is critical for a manager to provide the information needed to direct reports. There are myriad things for managers to pay attention to when providing feedback; for example, how to create an equitable environment for everyone to succeed, how to reduce instances of unconscious bias, how to help direct reports grow in their roles. To keep track of it all, we suggest getting started by following these tips from The Management Center:

• Start with the end in mind: Be clear about what success looks like for your direct reports. Is it proactively taking on projects? Brainstorming new ways to support your community, or the organization’s mission? Hitting or exceeding KPIs? Brainstorm together, or let them know what you and your leadership team are working toward.
• Provide context for the work: Answer the 5 Ws whenever you assign new projects: who is involved, what is important to know, where does this fall with other priorities, when does it need to be completed, and why this is important for the organization’s mission.
• Ask for a repeat back: Confirm that you are on the same page with your colleagues or direct reports by asking them to summarize the tasks they will take on, either verbally or through email.
• Check in regularly: Schedule 1-1 meetings with each direct report at least twice a month to provide regular feedback. Don’t forget to ask them for feedback, too! You’re a new nonprofit manager, so don’t expect to know everything off the bat. Asking for feedback yourself builds trust with your direct reports and lets them know that you’re in this together. 

Act like a coach

Great managers are really great coaches, and coaches surround themselves with people who are more talented than they are. They focus on providing context about what needs to be done, but not directing how to do it. Finally, coaches understand what people are good at, motivate them, and help them leverage their strengths.

Work alongside your team members, encourage them, and provide them with the support they need to develop their skills. When each individual player is strong, the team is more likely to be successful.

Like a sports team, a coach stays focused on the organization's mission and helps the team stay focused, too. Keeping your organization's mission in the forefront can boost the morale of the people working for you, reminding them that they are part of something bigger, and that their daily efforts are making a real difference.

For some resources to share with your team, encourage them to identify their communication style, work style, and/or leadership style and share their findings with the team (you should do the same!).

Managing Your Organization

New nonprofit managers often think their job will be easier because they have “power." In reality, managers need the cooperation of other people to get things done. Title does not translate to power, and real power comes from influence. Influence is driven by your behavior and relationships, not by the fact that you are a manager.

Build a productive relationship with your own manager

Managing up is always a critical skill, particularly in the resource-constrained social-impact sector where managers often have too much on their plate. As a manager, you depend on your boss for setting priorities, managing relationships across the organization, and providing resources (like the opportunity to have a direct report work for you). Just as you depend on your boss, your boss depends on you. Now that you are a manager, you represent the work of multiple people and are accountable for certain results.

Take time to understand your boss, including his/her decision-making style, and develop lines of communication. It will only make you more effective as a manager.

Strengthen your relationships across the organization

As a manager, you often have a new responsibility of managing relationships within the organization and externally. You are responsible for representing your team, sharing information and resources, and partnering with peers.

• Understand your peers’ needs and expectations: Learn about their priorities, success metrics, how they like to interact, and expectations they have from your team.
• Identify ways to support each other: What goes around comes around, so start developing mutually beneficial relationships early. 
• Develop personal relationships: Find ways to build informal relationships across your organization through lunches, meetings, and social interactions.

If you take time to think about how you want to manage different hats, you will find success for yourself, your team, and your organization even before becoming a nonprofit manager. This way, as you step into your new role, you’ll have the support you need to be successful.