The Practice of Nonprofit Leadership
The Practice of Nonprofit Leadership
How to Solve Nonprofit Problems Without Doing It All Yourself
Struggling with staff who dump problems on your desk? Join Tim and Nathan as they share a game-changing leadership strategy: asking the right questions. Learn how clarifying open-ended, reflective, exploratory, and empowering questions can train your nonprofit team to solve their own challenges.
Boost critical thinking, build trust, and free up your time to focus on what matters most--leading your organization to success.
Perfect of new executive directors easy to empower their staff and transform their leadership.
The Hosts of The Practice of NonProfit Leadership:
Tim Barnes serves as the Executive Vice President of International Association for Refugees (IAFR)
Nathan Ruby serves as the Executive Director of Friends of the Children of Haiti (FOTCOH)
They can be reached at info@practicenpleader.com
All opinions and views expressed by the hosts are their own and do not necessarily represent those of their respective organizations.
Open-ended questions are my favorite questions to ask because they really get to the nitty-gritty of whatever the issue is. That you're trying to solve A question like how would you solve? This gives your staff permission to start solving their own problems and will ultimately free you up to focus on your job as executive director.
Tim Barnes:Welcome to the practice of nonprofit leadership. I'm Tim Barnes.
Nathan Ruby:And I'm Nathan Ruby. Well, Tim, I've got a little quiz for you this morning and I'm going to even make it super easy for you. We're going to make it a true false. So, right off the bat, you've got a 50% chance of getting it correct. Are you ready? Let's do it. Okay, here we go. As the executive director, every time one of your staff or volunteers come to you with a problem or issue, you should immediately solve that problem for them. True or false.
Tim Barnes:Wow, I'm going to say false.
Nathan Ruby:Well, Tim, you're a pretty smart guy. I just assume that you always solved every problem for all of your people. Isn't that what leaders are supposed to do?
Tim Barnes:Well, sometimes I mean, leadership is about making decisions but sometimes it's really better to let your team, your staff, work through the problem themselves instead of immediately kind of just solving it for them.
Nathan Ruby:Well, congratulations, tim, you got it correct. You got an A-plus for today, good job. Congratulations, tim, you got it correct. You got an A plus for today, good job. So today we're going to be talking about questions and how, over time, if you train your staff and volunteers to ask these questions, they can start solving problems on their own, which will make life for you as an executive director so much easier. So, tim, why don't you lead us off today and walk us through a couple of positive outcomes that your team will experience if you start using questions on an active and often, basis?
Tim Barnes:I think you know I've got to say, Nathan I think learning to ask questions and ask the right questions is one of the most powerful things an executive director can learn and implement in their leadership, because when you ask the right questions, you shift the focus from solving the problem for your team to your team doing it together. This process, I think, then builds confidence. It strengthens their own problem-solving skills and actually ultimately leads to better outcomes for the organization. So here's some of the things that come out of this. One is just developing critical thinking. You know, when you ask open-ended questions, you prompt your team to think more deeply about the issue at hand. Instead of telling them what to do, you ask them to explore the problem, consider different angles and come up with creative solutions, and this taps into their full potential and increases their ownership of the problem. It also, you know, to be honest, it also really keeps a level of engagement of your team. You know, people tend to become more invested in solving a problem when they feel like they're actually part of the solution. Now you show respect for their ideas and value their input, and when people feel heard, they're more likely to contribute in meaningful ways. And another great point is that you start to develop trust. As you ask thoughtful questions, your team will begin to see that you're someone who isn't focused necessarily on having all the answers, but you're walking with people and creating this collaborative environment where everyone can contribute, and it makes them feel more confident in their own abilities. They actually feel like you trust them to give input into these areas, and I think the last one is you help them develop problem-solving skills. They begin to rely on their own judgment, their expertise, which is incredibly important for their growth and for the long-term success of your nonprofit.
Tim Barnes:We tried to develop this at one of the organizations I work for. We talked a lot about being solution-oriented and the idea was, when you come and you run into a problem or an issue and you show up to the leader, it's so much better if you're coming with a solution and say what if we try this and then let's have some conversation around it, as opposed to well, we got a problem, what are you going to do about it? It changes the environment and the focus so much in so much more positive way. I think. Why don't you walk us through some different types of questions and how they might apply to nonprofits and how, as leaders, we can get better at asking these questions.
Nathan Ruby:Here are a few types of questions that you can use with your team to help get them thinking on their own and making life a little bit easier for you as the executive director. All right, Our first one is called clarifying questions, and these are great for when you need more information, and these help you get a better understanding of the issue before trying to dive into solutions. So, for example, you might ask can you help me understand the challenge from your perspective? Or what's the specific obstacle that we're facing here? So these questions will help you gather context obstacle that we're facing here. So these questions will help you gather context.
Nathan Ruby:And often, when a staff or volunteer brings a problem, it may not, as the executive director, it may not actually impact you. So an example of that is let's say that your finance person is having problems with their computer running really slow. Now, I don't know about you, but if my computer is not running lightning fast, it takes about oh I don't know a quarter of a second for me to get upset. My tolerance for slow computers has gotten pretty short. And so your staff person comes to you and says hey, my computer is running slow, but my computer is running fine, and so it's easy for me, and it's probably easy for you, to minimize or gloss over that issue because it's not directly impacting you. So a clarifying question will help you better understand, but it also might help your staff person better describe what the issue is. So, for example, is this a hardware problem? Is it happening on all the time? Or maybe it's just happening when your person has the finance software open. So maybe it's a finance or maybe it's a. Maybe it's a software issue or, if you're, if you're doing your finances online, uh, maybe it is that you know the online portion. That's the problem and not the hardware itself. So you can't solve the problem until you really understand what the core, root problem is. So clarifying questions will help you to bring that out, to dig that out, what the real problem is, All right.
Nathan Ruby:Next is open-ended questions, and open-ended questions are my favorite questions to ask because they really get to the nitty-gritty of whatever issue you are trying to solve. A question like how would you solve this, whatever issue you are trying to solve, A question like how would you solve this, gives your staff permission to start solving their own problems and will ultimately free you up to focus on your job as executive director, you could ask questions like well, what's the easiest way to fix this? Or what are some possible solutions to this issue? What would a successful outcome look like for us? So these are type of questions where you're taking the process of solving the problem and kind of putting it back on your staff person, putting it back on the volunteer and getting them to think through this problem, as opposed to you just launching off into whatever you know, whatever solution you have.
Tim Barnes:Are we trying to get to the place where our team doesn't come to us, or are we trying to say, no, we still want them to come to us, but we want to solve these things together? What's, what's your thought around that?
Nathan Ruby:You know that is a great question, tim, and I'm going to give you a great answer of. It depends, you know, I think it depends on your level of comfort with your staff and with your volunteer. So, if you have someone who you really trust and let's make this example kind of facetious, but let's say you have a program person that has been with you for 15 years and knows everything about it Every you know the ins and outs, the ups and downs, everything about the program I would want them to start solving problems that I don't even want to hear about it. I want you to solve. I trust you, I know that you have the ability to do this. You know, if it's like a, a, a class one problem that is going to make a massive impact, okay, as a leader, as an executive director, I want to know about that.
Nathan Ruby:But if the, if the toilet is overflowing, I want that program director to take care of that themselves. And maybe let me know at at the weekly you know our leak weekly one-on-one. Oh, by the way, you know, the toilet overflowed last Tuesday but I took care-one. Oh, by the way, you know, the toilet overflowed last Tuesday but I took care of it. So I think that would be for a long-time experienced staff person. I think if you had somebody new then maybe you know, until they proved themselves that they were able to go through this process and make good decisions, I probably want to know a little bit more, to have them coming to me a little bit sooner until I had a level of trust in them. So I guess it depends on the level of trust that you have on the staff person. I don't know how would you answer that question, tim?
Tim Barnes:Yeah, I think what you're saying is really good. It is very dependent on the person in the situation, and I think we're going to talk here in just a second. Questions are good not just for when someone has a problem or when they're coming to you with an issue. It's also good as clarifying. When someone shares something or they come to you with a solution, then you can use questions to begin to clarify what that solution looks like and some of that. We're going to talk about that in a minute. So we want people to be more solution oriented, but we always want to feel, too, that we can have these conversations and we don't want people just to go. I don't want to bother, nathan.
Tim Barnes:No sometimes we kind of need to be a part of that.
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, exactly, and that's a great point, because you don't want to be a part of that. Yeah, exactly, and, and that that's a great point. And cause we don't? You don't want to foster a uh, uh, uh, what's the word? I'm looking for, a culture to where you're not approachable or your staff is afraid to come to you. That that's not the. That's not the.
Nathan Ruby:The intent here. The intent here is to, through, through using questions, helping your staff feel comfortable enough and feel empowered enough which we're going to talk about empowering questions in a minute but feeling that they have the capacity to solve some of these things on their own. Or, at the very least, like you said in the beginning, Tim to hey, we have this problem. Or, at the very least, like you said in the beginning, Tim to hey, we have this problem. Here's the solution, or here's what I think is the solution, and it makes life so much easier for the executive director if you have five people coming to you with solutions, or at least a suggestion of a solution, as opposed to coming to you and dumping a problem on your lap and saying, okay, boss, let me know when you get it figured out. Yeah, that's, that makes for a long day.
Tim Barnes:Yeah. So the question with an open-ended question. When someone comes to you, you go, oh, we got this problem. The open-ended question might be well, what do you think we should do? You know, so you're putting it back and you ask that enough. Eventually they'll come and say, hey, we have this problem and here's what I think we should do.
Nathan Ruby:And then you can begin to talk about it. Yeah, yeah, and that's that. That's all of a. I don't like the word training, but it's kind of appropriate here.
Nathan Ruby:Is is about how you've trained your staff. Have you trained your staff to rely on you to fix everything, or have you trained your staff to rely on themselves to? If they can't fix it, if they could fix it, fix it. If they can't fix it, at least come to you with solutions. Because a lot of times you know this is frontline staff that are frontline volunteers. They're the ones that are working with the finance. You know software. They're the ones that are doing the intake at the front desk. They're the ones that are mowing the yard with a lawnmower that is half broken, is not working right. You're not doing that, so a lot of times you don't even have the perspective to really be able to solve the problem. You need them that are working with this every single day. They're the ones that probably have the solution, whether they know they do or not. Okay, all right.
Nathan Ruby:Next is reflective questions, and these are useful for helping your team learn from their experiences. And, for instance, what have we tried before that worked or didn't work, or what lessons can we take from our last project. So these questions help create opportunities for reflection and growth. And here at the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership, we have a question that comes up all the time by Tim, and he says it so much that I've actually called this question a Tim special and that question is what does that look like?
Nathan Ruby:Um, every time we are talking, you know future for the podcast and, and what, how, what changes we can make and how we can make it better, I will guarantee, I will bet my paycheck that Tim will ask what does that look like? And and and I think what it does for me, cause I spent so much time at the 30,000 foot level, or even the 50,000 foot level, that the details and how do we actually operationally get that done. That is not something that comes natural for me, and and Tim thinks a little bit more operationally than I do, he thinks way more process than I do, and so it is a good way for Tim to get the two of us to come down to the 5,000 foot level and actually talk about okay, if that's the direction we want to go, how are we going to actually do that? What does that look like? And so it's a great question and helps us move forward in trying to solve our problems that we have here at the podcast.
Tim Barnes:And I think it brings us our strengths together, Both the idea we need, the vision we need to be thinking out there, but we also need to think about okay, if that's what we're going to do and that's a great vision, how do we play that out? What's that going to require and are we willing to do that?
Nathan Ruby:You know so yeah, yeah, and I think another portion of the reflective questions, we all, as leaders and nonprofits every one of you, tim and I have experienced this, and if you haven't experienced this yet, you're gonna uh, is some form of we've already tried that and it didn't work. Uh, is some form of we've already tried that and it didn't work? Um, or the opposite of that is oh well, this is the way we've always done it, and that is, if you haven't heard that or some derivative of that. It's common and I think reflective questions are an opportunity to take when that comes up and it's like well, okay, what, what specifically didn't work about that? Like, well, okay, what specifically didn't work about that? Or okay, well, we've always done it this way. Have we ever talked about doing it different? What are the limitations of how we do it? What are the opportunities If we did it differently? What are some of the opportunities that we could take from that? And that comes for me.
Nathan Ruby:I'm not anti-event. Uh, when it comes to events, that is, that's not my first uh. You know, when somebody says, oh, let's do this, let's do this, I'm thinking, oh gosh, please, let's not. Um. So it's not that I won't do events, but they've got to be very specific and there's there's some very specific things. They've got to be very specific and there's some very specific things and so, but I have to be careful on this, uh, and exploratory questions would help me.
Nathan Ruby:Uh, okay, we used to do a golf outing. Um, well, actually, that's a good example. We did a golf outing several years ago. That was a monster golf outing. Uh, it was over 80,000 a year of revenue it brought in. It was fabulous. But we had two local business people who were awesome and they drove it. They were the ones that made that happen and when they decided not to do that anymore, I didn't have the resources, the staff resources, to continue it, so I cut it. Now I had to replace the revenue and I did that through other ways.
Nathan Ruby:But recently we've had a volunteer step up and say, hey, I want to do a golf outing and it would have been easy for me to say, no, we tried that before. We lost our volunteers. We're not doing it again. But volunteer wanted to do it and I said, well, as long as you do it and I don't have to, that's great. And you know we're two years into it. It's growing. We had a great, great success last year. We're going to do it again this year, so it's you can use exploratory questions on both the um I you know we've always done it this way side and also on no. We used to do that and it didn't work, so we're not going to do it again. It helps you to make sure that you're not missing opportunity when it's right in front of you.
Tim Barnes:So we talked a little bit about reflective questions, kind of thinking about what that might look like. Exploratory questions is maybe you're focusing in on something and then so let's explore, explore that. If we do that, what does that look like? It's a little bit of a different perspective than reflective question, right?
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, I think reflective probably, as I'm looking at the two words here, reflective probably is looking backwards. Right, what happened? Maybe that's a debrief. You know, this has happened. Those are questions around that, and then exploratory would be looking forward what if we did something new? What if we did something different?
Nathan Ruby:And I think for this a lot of times at least, when I'm asking questions in this category, a lot of times it comes up to vision and mission and values. Is what we're trying to do? Is it fit with our vision and mission and values? And those tend to be places where that comes up. So, you know what? What other resources, what other resources or support might we need? How does this decision align with their mission?
Nathan Ruby:You know we had an issue on our team come up recently, um, that as a team we talked about it, uh, and we had pros and cons and everybody had. You know, yes, this decision is good and these are the good things about it and, yeah, those are great things, but these are the cons, and we were kind of struggling back and forth as a team. And then I asked the question because we're working on some new values right now and I asked the question how does this align with our new set of values that are going to be part of the strategic plan. And I'll tell you what, tim. It totally changed the conversation. The pros and cons that we had were still the same pros and cons, but the value or the emphasis or the weight some of the cons disappeared because of alignment. If we did this, then it would align better with our values. So it was amazing how the conversation instantly changed as soon as we brought in okay, how does this align with our values?
Tim Barnes:Well, we have one more kind of questions, right.
Nathan Ruby:We do. And the last one is empowering questions, and these are crucial because they allow your team to take ownership. And I think the biggest thing as a leader, as an executive director, that I think the best thing you could do for your staff is to help them start taking ownership, both on the good things, but also on the struggles, on the problems and on the issues that you're dealing with. So, asking what resources do you need to solve this, or how can I support you in this process? You are shifting the responsibility back to your team and reinforcing that they have the capability to make these decisions, reinforcing that they have the capability to make these decisions, and I think, if this has not been a part of the culture in your organization, and the first few times you try this, you're going to get some pushback.
Nathan Ruby:And I remember when I was a young leader and this was oh my gosh, tim, this was a long time ago and the executive director that I was working with, I can tell you I can't tell you what well I was wearing a suit. I don't remember which suit I was wearing, but I can remember that the chair I was sitting in and everything about this, the first time I got this question back to me and it was like I don't know. I don't know, I don't have an answer to that, because I'd never experienced that before. And so the first few times you try this, you probably need to be prepared for, instead of asking a question to your staff and pushing them out the door to work on it themselves, you're probably going to have to work through it with them and go through the process a few times, but I think you know two, three, four times of doing this. Pretty soon, your staff, your volunteers, are going to get used to and they're going to be trained in how to do this and they'll start doing it on their own.
Tim Barnes:You know, I think the level of questions and the kinds of questions that you ask are a big part of what kind of environment you set, what kind of culture you set for your team, asking those kinds of questions where you're saying I do trust you and I do believe that you can make some of these decisions, and you also aren't just throwing them out there. You're saying, hey, how can I help you, how can I support you? So you're saying I trust you, but I'm also there to walk alongside of you, as opposed to asking the question, what were you thinking?
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, yeah, that's a good question, exactly.
Nathan Ruby:It's like what type of an idiot decision was that you want? You want to shut your staff down and have them come to a screeching halt? Yeah, make comments like that, and they will just stop and wait for you to make a decision. And then, all of a sudden, you've got a whole staff of people that are doing nothing until you come along behind them, and that is no way to lead an organization.
Nathan Ruby:And another thing that might help you in this transition, as you start moving to asking more of these questions for your team, is to actually give them a list of questions and say okay, next time that you have a question like this or a problem or an issue that you're trying to work through that you need help on, here are three questions I want you to ask yourself and answer before you come to me, and if you could solve the problem in those three questions, then you have permission for me to go ahead, execute on that and solve the problem.
Nathan Ruby:Or if you ask those three questions and you're still struggling, okay, then come to me and we'll sit down and we'll talk through it, and that I think that will start to move your staff, your volunteers, into this model of being able to take at least some of the lower level issues and solving them on themselves, which then allows you, as the executive director, to be doing your work, to be doing the things that you're supposed to be doing, because nobody there's, only the work that the executive director should be doing. The donor contact, the board contact, the vision, the mission, those are only things you can do. So the more time your staff, your volunteers, spend solving problems, that gives you more time to staff your volunteers spend solving problems that gives you more time to be focused on what you're supposed to be doing.
Tim Barnes:So I think these are great and, just as a reminder, we've talked about asking clarifying questions, open-ended questions, so that it gives people a chance to work through them. We've talked about reflective questions looking back, thinking about what's happening and exploratory questions so what would happen if we do this? And then empowering questions, which really begins to build trust and gives opportunity for our team to start making some decisions and start seeing that they have what they need to solve some of these problems as well. And we also see that questions can set the environment and can set how we do things around our organization, the culture that we have.
Nathan Ruby:Well, thank you for listening today, and can Tim and I ask for a favor? If you have ever gotten any benefit from this podcast, would you be willing to share a review on the platform that you're listening to us on? Let us know how the podcast is benefiting you. If you would like to get in touch with us, our contact information can be found in the show notes. That's all for today. Until next time.