Non-profits . Are you ready to spend less time on paperwork and more time making an impact ? Save big on Adobe Acrobat Pro , the leading PDF and e-signature tool built for mission-driven work . Apply for your discount now at adobecom . Slash nonprofits , slash acrobat . Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast . Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub radio podcast . I'm your host , megan Spear , and joined today by Kathleen Armstead , who's the founder of Sunshine Nonprofit Solutions . We're gonna be digging into a topic that I know every leader is going to want to hear , so I'm really excited for today's words of wisdom from Kathleen . So , kathleen , by way of introduction , tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your work with nonprofits and the type of work you do .
Speaker 2I'm Kathleen Armstead and I was in the nonprofit Head Start industry for over 25 years and then I left . As in the nonprofit industry , I was giving a lot of advice and consulting as just part of my job , and then I thought I could reach more people if I left my position and founded a consulting company , and that's what I did , and currently I'm writing a book called Leadership During Turbulent Times for Nonprofits , and so I'm really excited to share some of my findings and talk about what works and what I found out doesn't work , and most of those have been my own mistakes .
Speaker 1Got it . We'll definitely dig into a lot of that , and I think we can all agree that these are rather turbulent times . Leaders are facing all sorts of challenges this year , whether it's cuts to grant funding or reshuffling in organizations and all sorts of pieces that have come about this year that maybe we didn't expect . So definitely a good time for the conversation . Tell me a little bit about what drove you to write the book . What did you see as the biggest issue that the book would address ?
The biggest issue that I see is that nonprofit leaders have to have a number of diverse skills . They have to deal with people , they have to manage budgets , they have to connect with the community and then they have to advocate . And all of those sets of diverse skills . Very few of us are born with them and very few of us are allowed to develop all of them , and that's why I decided to write the book , sort of a compendium of how to get your skills so that they encompass all the things a nonprofit needs . And as part of that , it occurred to me as I was working that advocacy and managing people depend on a growth mindset and that new research has been very , very helpful in my own dealings with nonprofits .
Speaker 1So explain that a little bit . What does a growth mindset look like ? Because I feel like it's one of those words that gets tossed around a lot , Like if you just have a growth mindset but nobody really bothers to define what that is . So let's break it down .
Speaker 2Okay , let me break it down . Okay , a growth mindset is actually brought about from research with kids with 10 to 12 year olds is where it started . And a growth mindset embraces challenges and likes failure . It's not how to deal with failure , it's actively seeking it out . Because a growth mindset believes that everything you can grow all your talents , all your intelligence , all your sports skills everything can grow . We are not born with talent , we develop it , and so growth mindset began with .
Speaker 2How do we get children to not have a fixed mindset ? A fixed mindset basically means you think that you are who you are . So for girls who are 10 to 12 years old , they tend to say I'm not a math person , versus I have not developed the skills yet . And we as a society tend to reward those children who complete things quickly , those children who complete things accurately and especially accurately and quickly . Accurately and especially accurately and quickly , when what we should be rewarding is those children who struggle with something and then succeed . It's a very different way of looking at challenge and failure . Those people with a fixed mindset , especially kids , if they don't succeed at something easily , they think they're not good at it and they're not smart . So they withdraw from challenges , because challenges will show you up . And in adults I find that it's the imposter syndrome they feel like they're not really good at something , so nobody can find out their mistakes , so they hide it .
Speaker 1Um , so nobody can find out their mistakes , so they hide it . So my initial visceral reaction was that around the first sentence that you said there , around this idea of like , not avoid , not even just avoiding failure , but actually actively looking for it , everything within me goes oh no , I don , I don't want that . That sounds terrible . Can I please just grow without it ? Sounds like a much better plan to me
. So how do we ? Because I'm going to assume I don't want to paint with a broad brush , but I'm going to assume that most of the people listening would have the same reaction as I did , right ? So if that's our reaction , where do we start to change it ?
Speaker 2So most of us want to have a growth mindset .
Speaker 1Sure , it sounds like a great idea , but I don't want the failure that comes with it . Yes , exactly .
Speaker 2Okay , that was my reaction .
Speaker 1Yeah , I don't want the critical feedback , Normal human I would think yes it is the very first time you seek out failure is the hardest .
Speaker 2So you try something that you either have never tried before and have always wanted to try , or you know , perhaps your boss gives you something to try . And what you have to believe in yourself and this takes a lot of reflection , and for me it was a lot of journaling was my talents are not developed yet , and the yet is a perfect word . The other thing is looking at people who have a growth mindset . How would this person describe what I'm feeling ? So most of us get that anxious feeling in our stomach and in our brains . Yes , it's like you know , everybody calls it butterflies , but it's more like boulders knocking around in your stomach . The thing is , is to separate yourself from your performance ? Is to separate yourself from your performance , okay , and to congratulate yourself and reward yourself for every small step that you take and every time you seek out feedback , because growth mindset is about effort , intentional effort and seeking the feedback . What am I doing wrong In my college students ?
Speaker 2What they'll do when they get a bad grade on a test is they'll try and do the same strategy again . They'll highlight the book . They'll read the book again . That didn't work the first time for them . What they need to do is go back to their professor and say where am I wrong ? And that takes a growth mindset and that is developed by telling yourself I have not developed it yet . I'm new to this , I don't expect myself to have developed it yet . And this is an opportunity , not a challenge , but an opportunity .
Speaker 1That's so good Because you're right . What's the quote ? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results . If I keep doing the same thing , nothing's going to change , right ? But again , it's so much easier to just keep doing what I know , right . The challenge is embracing that new . So I guess my two questions and you can decide which way you want to go . First , one would be if someone is finding themselves maybe in a position where they are not the leader , they're in a department , they're working for someone , but they want to embrace this growth mindset to get them to the next level , where do they start , especially if maybe they have a leader that doesn't encourage that ? And the second would be on the flip side , as leaders , as heads of organizations , what can we do ? Culture wise to model ? Model that or make sure that we're building a team and a culture where failure is okay , so people have the freedom to develop that . I'd love to explore both sides .
Speaker 2Let me start with the leader , because some new research has gone on
. This research is actually on the ground observation . So there are three in fact in this research , but I'll only focus on one , and that research is at Xerox , which was a failing company , and it's much easier to see a failing company in the business world . They're not making money , it's very clear , and part of it was they had a leader of a fixed mindset , and a leader with a fixed mindset , especially in the corporate world , tends to surround themselves with people who are loyal , in other words , people who will support what they say .
Speaker 2What President Lincoln , of all people , did in his cabinet was he invited all his adversaries to be on his cabinet , okay , okay , figuring he would have a better growth mindset though that wasn't called that at the time but he put people around him who were just going to point out his defects in whatever policy . So that's what a leader needs to do is to have people on his or her management team that are predisposed to point out what is not going to work , okay . So this is how a leader starts . At Xerox , they started with that . That was the first step , but the second step was to start valuing people who made mistakes and learned from them . Not who just made mistakes , but those who made mistakes and learned from them . Not who just made mistakes , but those who made mistakes and learned . Okay , so their efforts got better and better . So what we reward , both in the nonprofit and profit world , is employee of the month , somebody who did something very well . Okay , that's not supporting the growth mindset it is a support .
Speaker 2It's not invaluable , but it's not supporting a growth mindset which will lead to far more growth in your organization . Xerox spent the first year with this kind of diverse people around them and , uh , modeling , rewarding and not punishing mistakes . As long as you learn from them and after the first year , they were in the magazine Time as one of the worst corporations . So it doesn't come about fast . However , within three years , by constantly valuing it , by constantly talking to their employees , what did you learn from that ? Whether it was a success or a failure , what did you learn ? What are you going to do different ? Who have you sought advice for ? And they made up their evaluations to mimic those questions . And every meeting started with . You had to start with something you were struggling with and what you plan to do , and then have people give you ideas .
Speaker 2After four years , they were like phenomenal . They had like tripled their bottom line and they had a retention rate of employees that was far higher than in the industry and people were happy . So there were , you know , a number of great things that went on . So , as a leader , it's first of all recognizing what it is , reflecting on it , spreading that you value it and then constantly questioning what are we learning and where can we go from here ? And where can we go from here ? It also helps to have somebody come in and train . This is what happens in the brain . You build more connections and we can see it now visually , see it on MRIs and what they call PET scans . What is up in the brain when you make a mistake ?
Speaker 1It's far more active than when you're succeeding . Okay , so I guess let's go back to the flip side , though , because if somebody is on a team and they would love to embrace this mindset , but they might not have a leader or manager who's down with this , go ahead and make mistakes , concepts . What can those folks do to kind of drive that from the bottom up ? Or are there ways that they can do it for themselves ? What would that look like ? What do you think ?
Speaker 2Read about people who have a growth mindset . You know great inventors , explorers , presidents , and seeing how they think about it . There are some books , especially in sports , that show coaches . Many of them have a growth mindset . Okay , john Wooden is a basketball coach at UCLA and he won 10 national championships and coached many of his players to go on to be pros , and the most famous one was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , and he wrote a book about John Wooden and explicitly talked about how John Wooden would coach his players .
Speaker 2Kareem took that information you know digression here . Kareem is my favorite basketball player of all times . He took that information to a team and , of course , he was the star of the team , but he wasn't always and he spread the word about how to embrace mistakes , how to learn from them , how to seek feedback so that you're better , how to practice that feedback and how to keep going back to your most strongest critic and get that information . And by simply modeling it and talking about it explicitly although it wasn't growth mindset at that time , but it was the same concepts talking about it explicitly . It's learning from my mistakes and learning from my successes and doing something different every day . 1% better Okay , it's not if I win or lose , it's if I'm 1% better in that practice in that next day , and that's something that employees can do when they don't have a leader . It is much more difficult to do it bottom up , yeah , but it does work , especially if you model and talk about it a lot .
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. Work smarter with cloud access , top-tier security and powerful editing tools designed for teams on a mission . And with special nonprofit pricing it's efficiency you can afford . Apply for your discount now at adobecom . Slash nonprofits , slash acrobat . I want to go back to something that you had said in the Xerox example , because I think there is , within the nonprofit space , something that we all struggle with is turnover and retention . There can be a lot of reasons for that . Nonprofit burnout is real and there are definite issues that need to be addressed , but I'm curious how creating a culture around this is impacting those two things specifically , because I know that can be . Such a challenge for nonprofit leaders is to retain that talent , keep them engaged and keep them moving forward . So how do those two things correlate ?
Speaker 2So growth mindset in a culture is very conducive to retention . It doesn't really do much for recruitment , okay , but one of the things we do is we hire somebody and then we hire them to see if they're a fit or not . Okay , so growth mindset will hire for a growth mindset , if you want it . In the culture . There was a famous ballerina and she became a master teacher and what she did was when she was trying to select who would be her student it was a very competitive program is she would put them all in a class and that was how she selected . The students were those who asked for criticism , those who were talented and really preened or really congratulated themselves . When she gave them positive feedback , she screened out . She was looking for someone who wanted to always improve , not someone who wanted to demonstrate their success , and that's one of the ways that , if you actually talk about growth mindset in the interview , you can screen for people you can look for , asking what was your biggest mistake ? What have you ever done that you really regretted and how did you deal with it ?
Speaker 2Nasa does that , by the way , really , yeah , they will not hire unless somebody has made a big mistake , because they're more concerned about learning from mistakes than actually not ever making them . But in retention , employees , both the nonprofit and profit sector , are saying it's too little pay for too much stress . The growth mindset reduces a lot of the stress . It doesn't do anything for the pay I'll have to be honest for that but it increases the retention rate , to be honest for that . But it increases the retention rate , reduces the fear , reduces the anxiety . Because if you know that you're going to make a mistake and that it's not going to be punished , you're more likely to try something that might work and if it doesn't work , you're more likely to improve on it until it does . And those little improvements make your job easier , make your clients happier and ultimately result in an increased retention rate .
Speaker 1Now , feel free to correct me if I'm wrong , but I would assume that creating that kind of environment being willing to share when you've made a mistake and what you've done about it , or like the example you gave before of coming to a meeting and saying these are the things that I'm struggling with , who's got some ideas All of those require or at least in my opinion , would require a level of vulnerability that can be really hard in the workplace , because we've been taught to not show that kind of vulnerability . We've been taught to have the happy facade , if you will . Do you have advice for folks who are looking to break down some of those vulnerability walls in their culture ?
Speaker 2Yes , yes , and it's very , very difficult . I had a client who was new to her program and she was the director . So , of course , being new , there was all this . This is how we've always done it . Sure , well , how they'd always done it had gotten them in trouble and that's why they had a new director , and she shared with them her initial failures as a director at another organization and she said to them I had encouraged her to do this , and she said this is by hiding my mistakes and by pretending it was all working well , I got in more trouble and she was actually let go from that previous organization .
Speaker 1Yes .
Speaker 2And as she's telling them . She said I was convinced that the way it was being done was the right way and I just needed to work harder . And when she left , she was without a job for three months , which is very , very difficult , and she did a lot of reflecting . And then , when she and I did not know her at that time , but when she came into this new place and she contacted me , we talked about it . I gave her some things to read , just some short articles , some short blogs and she started working on having a growth mindset and that first sharing of vulnerability actually turned her organization around and it happened . She could feel the room , the tension started to lessen as she was talking about her own mistakes and they were pretty bad mistakes and how she learned from them , and people are actually more receptive to that than we think they're going to be .
Speaker 1I would think so , but for some reason that doesn't feel like it takes away the nervousness of it , because I'm just thinking about myself . If I'm just thinking about myself , if I'm in a situation where someone is sharing a struggle like that with me , I feel deep compassion for them , I can empathize with that and I want to be there and help and support . But yet we just assume that people aren't going to behave like that towards us .
Speaker 2We do .
Speaker 1Yeah , we do .
Speaker 2And you know a lot of that is our culture . We're raised in a very competitive culture and you know , in school we all sit in little desks , we don't sit in a big table , so all of that is natural . That first time you have to take a leap of faith and I always recommend to my clients have somebody you trust with you , okay , and who can be visibly actively empathizing with you , okay , have them out in the audience going oh , that's happened to me and just know you have to like , believe it works . After it works , that one time you're convinced and you start seeing the results very , very quickly .
Speaker 2In school , especially with these 10 to 12-year-olds , they were very afraid of being bullied and being laughed at and being different . You know all those things as a preteen you're afraid of . And it's only the first time that they feel they always feel nervous . That will not go away . But it's only that first time that they feel they always feel nervous that will not go away . But it's only that first time that they're shaking . And again having a friend , having somebody being a cheerleader , you're doing a great job , you're helping
them , you're not just helping yourself . Yeah , I also urge my clients when they're going to share their story .
Speaker 1Practice in front of a mirror Practice .
Speaker 2Now we can do it with Zoom Just record yourself and you know it's hard , but you have to keep in mind it's worth it .
Speaker 1I love that . So tell us a little bit more about the book . When is it coming out ? When can we look for it ?
Speaker 2I'm anticipating that it'll come out in December . Okay , that's exciting , but it might be January . It's been slowed down because of all the turmoil going on in my world , in your world .
Speaker 1It will be called leadership during turbulent times and I do anticipate it at the end of the year or the beginning of next year that's awesome , very exciting , and if someone wanted to find out more either about you or your work , or connect with you a little bit more about this , what's the best way to do that ?
Speaker 2The best way is through my email , which is Kathleen C-A-T-H-L-E-E-N at sunshine , nonprofitsolutionscom . And that's all one word .
Speaker 1All right , perfect . So , as we wrap up today , the question that I've been asking everyone so far this year is if you could give one piece of advice to nonprofit professionals , whether it's maybe an encouragement or a piece of wisdom . What would you say to those folks right now ?
Speaker 2It's kind of a two-part to what I would say . First of all , I would say I know this is going to date me , but I grew up in the 60s and things were worse then and we lived through that . We not only lived through that , we thrived through that . So this is what we're going to do we look at these turbulent times as an opportunity to grow stronger , have a growth mindset . What can we learn from how people are treating us ? We will survive .
Speaker 1We will even thrive okay , and was there a second part to that ?
Speaker 2second part is be sure to develop a growth mindset in your culture . Grab the book mindset and grab anything around that , or Performance Paradox . Those are two great books about growth mindset and that will really help you look at this as an opportunity .
Speaker 1Fantastic . I love that . I am a giant reader , so I am all for any encouragement that says pick up this particular book . Excellent , awesome , kathleen , thank you so much . I really appreciated the conversation . It's some really good insights for leaders around this culture and especially in today's culture . Those are really helpful pieces . So thank you so much . Thank you for having me . Yeah , my pleasure . Again , my guest has been Kathleen Armstead , who is the founder of Sunshine Nonprofit Solutions . We appreciate you listening . We appreciate , kathleen for being here . My name is megan , I am the host of nonprofit hub radio and we'll see you next time .