29: 5 C's to Leading Your Nonprofit with Confidence

Leading with Confidence Series #1 of 12

Welcome to the Leading with Confidence series where we will dive into the various challenges and opportunities to lead your team with more conviction and clarity. We will talk about executive presence and how to build confidence while navigating your organization each day.

In this first episode, you'll learn the 5 C's framework.

Even strong nonprofit CEOs and executive directors can find themselves quietly second-guessing decisions, replaying conversations, and wondering if they’re getting it right. 

This episode challenges the idea that confidence is something you’re supposed to already have - and instead reveals what truly creates confidence over time.

If you’ve ever felt capable on paper but unsettled in the moment, this will help you see your leadership in a completely different way.

Key Takeaways:

•  Why waiting to feel confident first keeps you stuck 
•  What most leaders misunderstand about courage 
•  How real capability is built (and why it matters more than you think) 
•  The missing piece that helps you hold your ground under pressure 
•  A simple exercise to reconnect you with proof that you can handle more than you think

If this episode resonated with you, join our email community of Executive Directors and nonprofit CEOs who are leading with more confidence, unifying their teams, and transforming their cultures. You’ll be the first to hear about new resources, conversations, and opportunities to support your leadership journey.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Nonprofit CEO Spark, the podcast for bold leaders ready to navigate growth and change with energy and confidence. I'm Marcia Beckner, Nonprofit Founder, former Executive Director, and Culture Stratist with nearly 20 years in the social impact world. Each week, I help nonprofit leaders stop spinning out, set boundaries, and design inclusive cultures where all staff can thrive. If you're ready to reignite your leadership without sacrificing your well-being, hit subscribe and let's spark your next chapter together. And in this series, we are focusing on one of the biggest challenges leaders face today, which is leadership self-doubt, and all that comes with it. You know it, and I know it because I feel it as well. People-pleasing tendencies, the fear of being misunderstood, how to move through that so you can lead with real conviction in your day-to-day decisions and with leading your people forward on a team that is united. So let's dive in to this first episode in the series called What It Really Means to Lead Your Nonprofit with Confidence and Conviction. So I'm going to start with something I see all the time with nonprofit CEOs, executive directors, and other leaders. And if I'm honest, I've experienced myself. It's that moment where you're in your leadership role, you've worked hard to get there, you care deeply about the mission, and yet there's this quiet question running in the back of your brain. Am I the right person for this job? You make the decisions and then you revisit them. You say something in a meeting and then you replay it later in your head and second guess every word coming out of your mouth. You wonder if you've moved too fast or not fast enough or handled something the wrong way. And what's tricky is that from the outside, everything may look completely fine. Your team sees you as capable, your bored trusts you, but internally there's this layer of second guessing that just keeps showing up. So today I want to talk about what that means to lead with confidence and conviction, and more importantly, where that confidence is actually created. So I want to give you a new way to think about leading with confidence. A few years ago, I came across this framework from Dan Sullivan. He's an amazing entrepreneurial coach, he's written tons of books, and this specific framework stuck with me in a way that most don't. He talks about the four C's of confidence, and they build on each other in a very specific order. Number one, commitment, two, courage, three, capabilities, and four, confidence. So confidence is the result of that process of three making a commitment, having the courage to act, building the capability, and then you get the confidence. There's a misnomer out there that you're either born with confidence, or either you have it or you don't. And that's just not true. Anybody can build confidence. And so when I heard that, I thought this is exactly what I see in strong leaders, but I also realized it was something missing in nonprofits specifically. So I wanted to add a fifth C to his four C concepts, and that's certainty. Because confidence is powerful, but certainty is what allows you to hold your ground when things feel uncomfortable. So let me give you an example from my own life that I still think about today. I grew up in Anaheim, California, and swimming was just something we did for fun on the weekends or at the beach. And in middle school, I joined a rec team, a rec swimming team. And it was pretty casual, it was fun. I probably swam like once every weekend and saw the same group of kids every weekend for a few hours. And then, you know, when I was going into high school, I was a freshman, I was 14 years old, and I decided to join the high school team. And let me just paint a picture for what practice looks like at my high school. So growing up in Anaheim, our you know, swim team season was in the winter. Our practices were before school. They were at 6 a.m. and it was freezing cold. So you think of California like it's warm, right? At 6 a.m., it's in the 40s, it's in the 50s. If you're that's warm on a winter morning, and you have to get up and it's dark outside, and it's cold, and you gotta put on a swimsuit, which is so awkward and awful for most 14-year-olds anyway. So that was definitely not my favorite part of swimming. But we needed to show up at that pool every day at six o'clock. And I would walk into that environment with very little confidence. But here's what happened. So going back to Dan Sullivan's four C's, I started with commitment. I showed up every day, early mornings, cold pool, lap after lap. And then came the courage because I had to be willing to be bad at it, to be seen learning, to be slow, to not know what I was doing, you know, how I was acclimating in this high school, and still get in the water anyway, in front of strangers that became my teammates, but you know, it's weird and awkward at first. And then over time, over the next few weeks, over the next couple months, I started building capabilities, learning each stroke, freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, working on flip turns, building endurance, understanding how to pace myself. And after months of that, I had built just enough confidence to hold my own in races. Not to be the best. I was not, not even close, but enough to keep going. I could tell I was progressing, and that in itself started building confidence because I remembered where I was, where I started. Now, here's where it gets interesting. At the end of the season, during our last swim meet, the varsity team had someone call in sick, and they needed someone to fill in for the 500-meter race. Now, that is the longest race that you can do. That is a 20-lap race. And what I also learned, like when I was swimming, is that there's sprinters and there's endurance racers. So the sprinters are the ones competing in the 50 and the 100 uh meter races, and that was like two to four laps. And I was awful. I was never a good sprinter. And but I was good at endurance. And I've kind of taken that lesson with me throughout my life. Like I can really hold my own for the long term. I have a lot of persistence. Um when things are hard, I just like keep showing up day after day, and I will eventually get it done, but we'll probably not be the fastest in the room. And that's okay because endurance racers have their place as well. So I was tapped on the shoulder because my coach knew that I was a good endurance racer. And she said, Do you want to swim in the varsity meet for 500 meters? And I was scared to death. Initially, I said, No, absolutely not. I cannot be a 14-year-old girl that is swimming against 17-year-old women in my mind, the seniors. And um, all the self-doubt came rushing in. I'm not good enough, I'll make a fool out of myself, I'll embarrass my teammates, I'll embarrass my friends and family who will be in the bleachers. I've never done this before, I'm gonna be bad, all of those things, right? And so, you know, I don't know what happened, but I must have had some delusional thing say, you know what? Just do it. Your team needs you, your coach asked you. She must have some level of confidence that that you'll be good enough in this race. And so I said yes, uh, not because I felt full of confidence, but because I had already done the first C, committed to the process. Number two C, I'd shown the courage to be bad at the beginning. And number three, the third C is I built the capability through practice because the fact was I'd been swimming 500 meters a day for months, not in a racing capacity, but in the practice facility. So I thought I'll give it a try. Now, quick side note before this race, our team had what we called a shaving party. If you're not part of the swim culture, you may not know what that is. So just imagine a bunch of swimmers at the side of a pool about um like going into a race. We had bottles and bottles of shaving cream and razors, and we shaved our entire bodies. So this is because you know, hair on your body can be a drag, even if it's just little peach fuzz on your arms or whatever, or on your back, we shaved our legs, our arms, and we shaved each other's backs, and we had the best time making a mess with this with the shaving cream. But this really does improve your times. There we were, a bunch of teenagers by the pool, shaving each other's backs and preparing for this big race. And then the moment comes, and I'm standing on the block. It's a 500-meter race, standing on the block with seven other seniors and me, a 14-year-old freshman. My heart was racing. I was second guessing, I was so mad at myself. Why did I say yes to this? And we're all bent over on the blocks, waiting for the shot.

unknown 9:49

Phew.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

The buzzer goes off, and we dive in. And I focus on one thing, stroke after stroke, lap after lap, flip turn after flip turn, the 20 laps finally come to an end. Was I the first to the to the end? No, I wasn't the first. But I did, you know, end at a respectable time. So I didn't don't think I embarrassed anybody. And what I didn't anticipate was like a huge burst of pride that I took the chance on myself to do something that was hard, to do something I knew I wouldn't be uber successful in right away. And that feeling has really stuck with me. And that's why with Dan Sullivan's like four C's, commitment, courage, capabilities, the fourth is is confidence. It's not something you're born with, it's something you work towards. So that's the point I want to bring back to you. So let me ask you this: where in your life have you already done that? You have your own stories. I know you do. We've all lived long enough that we have so many stories of jumping into the pool and not being sure if you're ready and just like putting in the work. And I know you've done this over and over in your life and in your career. So this is where my fifth C of certainty comes in. I want you to not think about building confidence as much as building certainty. So write down those experiences, like the example I gave you with the swimming. What are your experiences? And really pour over those, all those things that you've accomplished in your life. Come to the table, come to your next meeting with the certainty that you've already done hard things. I know if you're a nonprofit leader right now, you've already done hard things. You have picked work and missions that are like nearly impossible to solve. You're working on society's biggest problems. That is an enormous win. And we are so grateful that you are doing that work, and that's why I'm here to support you in doing the work that makes the world a better place. Here's your bold move coming out of this episode. I want you to sit down in a quiet, uninterrupted space for 30 minutes, either early morning, this weekend, at night, and create a win list, not a resume or a list of responsibilities, a list of moments where you show the commitment, the courage, the growth capabilities, and the follow-through. Times where you stepped into something uncertain and came out stronger. Because confidence grows when you build that certainty. And certainty comes from evidence about your own lived experience. If you've been second-guessing yourself lately, remember this. You don't need more confidence first. That's too elusive sometimes. You want to reconnect with your commitment, your courage, your capabilities. Then you'll get the confidence and make sure to tie that confidence to the certainty that you've already succeeded doing hard things, and that's who you are. If you found this episode helpful, you'll love being part of my newsletter community of mission-driven leaders. I want to encourage you to go to culturecares.com, download my free guide called Four Strategies for Nonprofit Leaders to Reduce Burnout, Unify Your Team, and Build a Culture That Lasts. Thanks for listening to today's episode of Nonprofit CEO Spark. If you're ready to turn burnout into boundaries and build a healthy, happy culture where everyone, including you, can thrive. Visit culturecares.com to learn how I support nonprofit organizations like yours. If this episode brought you value, share it with a fellow leader navigating stress and overwhelm. And remember, you are meant for great things and you don't have to burn out to prove it. Until next time, keep leading with courage and confidence.