When Everything Feels Important: Prioritizing in a Very Different Environment

Tammy Leone, Executive Director of Cape Kid Meals, joins Colleen for a candid conversation about stepping out of a structured corporate environment and into the complexities of nonprofit work. Even several years into the role, Tammy reflects on how different the day-to-day reality feels — with limited structure, competing priorities, and many voices to consider.

As she works to advance important initiatives, Tammy shares what it takes to prioritize, make decisions, and stay focused when everything feels important. This episode explores the challenge of navigating a very different environment — and how to build clarity and confidence along the way.

Episode Show Notes

• Cape Kid Meals website: https://capekidmeals.org/
• Strengths Profile assessment: https://www.strengthsprofile.com
• Introspective strength affirmation cards: https://www.introspectivecards.com/
• Have a question or want to suggest a guest for the Strengths Catalyst Podcast? Email Colleen (Colleen@strengthcatalyst.com) 

You can get your own set of the Introspective Strength Cards online at https://www.introspectivecards.com/

Transcript

0:05

Hello and welcome to the Strength Catalyst. I'm your host, Colleen Baseli. This podcast explores real challenges nonprofit leaders are navigating right now and how they can use their strengths to move forward with more clarity and confidence. Today's guest spent many years in a structured corporate environment before stepping into the complexity of nonprofit work. She came into this conversation trying to think through how to prioritize, how to lead with many voices in the mix, and how to keep things moving when everything feels important. If that sounds familiar, this conversation will give you a practical way to think about it. Let's get into it. Danny, welcome. So let's set the stage. You made a significant shift from a noteworthy corporate career into nonprofit leadership now. And that's probably not just a job change in many ways. So I'm curious for you to share like how did this shift to nonprofit leadership role come about for you? Sure. Like you mentioned, I was in the corporate world for gosh, over like 25 years. And I did some volunteering here and there at the children at my kids' school. I had learned about a program that was providing food in a couple of schools in Dennis called Cape Kid Meals. I started just volunteering because I really believed in what they were doing. And I kind of fell in love with their whole mission of getting food to kids. And so I found myself getting more and more involved as volunteers tend to do. You start off just I'll help once a week. And then it goes into, well, there's some things that they may need help with. Maybe I'll do a little bit more. So I can honestly say, you know, my background in corporate was very comfortable. It's where I felt really useful and comfortable. And switching to nonprofit, I learned, I've learned a lot. I still'm still learning. Um and it's definitely a shift. It's definitely a shift because you're going from selling products or services to selling vision and mission. Let's set the stage a little bit deeper. And can you share what uh services Cape Kid Meals provides and the population that you serve and kind of how the whole thing happens? So Cape Kid Meals, um, honestly, at its essence, is a program that provides food for children who are at risk of going hungry. What we do is we partner with schools and they will identify the students in their schools they know that are typically using the school meal resources during the week and may be at risk of not having enough um food during the weekend. And so our original program was weekend backpack meals, where literally we provide meals that go in a backpack home to children. And then we have branched out to school snacks. We have found over the years that many of the children that we support and uh children that we don't support, but have a different type of a need don't are are not able to bring in snacks from home. And think of your student athletes, think of you know, kids during, you know, the little kids during art break or during intermission between their course, their classes, when their friends are all getting a snack from their backpack and they didn't have anything. We rolled out school snacks a few years ago. We used to really focus on the younger children, so elementary age children. That was really the program was sort of set up for. What we realize is as children get older, unfortunately, the hunger doesn't go away. It's just the way to address it, may need to change to be modified so we can support older students. So the other initiative we work on and provide is school pantries. We install pantries in high schools so students can access food and take home products that they know that they they and their families will like, and they also know how to prepare. You know, we've got listeners across the country, as well as some outside the US, and I assume most, if not everyone,'s heard of Cape Cod, and they think of Cape Cod um probably mostly as a summer beach destination, but clearly you have identified a need in this community. Can you talk just a little bit about what you've learned as you've become more and more involved in the community about the need uh on the Cape? Absolutely. So the majority of people here at Cape Cod and it sort of conjures images of beaches, you know, affluence, you know, beautiful homes, and that exists, of course. But we also have, you know, over 200,000 people who live here year-round who work and live here. And our cost of living is, I think, the highest in the state. The housing market, unfortunately, probably like many other areas in the country, got exasperated during COVID. Lots of folks from out of town, you know, either came here on summers only or hadn't been here before, were able to come and snatch up homes and we're working remotely. And we've just we have we kind of have a crisis right now with our expenses and our housing. And it's created this perfect storm of not having the ability to have enough. The first thing that most people will say when I'm talking about this is this is Cape Cod. How is there a need? You know, we do have many families who support the tourism business. So we have a great tourism season, you know, end of April, you know, all the way through October sometimes, but then there's a shoulder season where work has gone away. Restaurants can't stay open, you know, five days a week, or or a lot of the businesses do shutter for this for the winter. And so that has another domino effect. So that's really why the need is here. And it's also hidden. It's nothing you can tell, it's not visible. People can't look at children on the Cape and say, tell them they're hungry, which is why we have and rely so much on our school partners. You know, they're the ones who really know the children, they know what their families are going through, and they're really able to help figure out the best way that we can support them. And it's also confidential, just for listeners to know Cape Kid Meals will never know the names or any information about the child. We just know at each school how many children we're providing a service for. Wow. All right. So you're you're satisfying obviously a very important need, and you have a very important role as the executive director of Cape Kid Meals. As I was thinking about our conversation today, one of the things that came to my mind is that new chapters of leadership often require strengths that we haven't fully used before. And when we have growth opportunities or upgraded performance expectations for any of us as we climb the ladder in our career and take on new responsibilities, that can be challenging, extra challenging, like you, when you shift industries or you shift functions. So, my first question is when you first stepped into the new environment of Cape Kid Meals, where did you feel most stretched as a leader? I'm laughing because I feel like I think you're stretched in every direction as a nonprofit, whether you're the leader or you work on the team. Uh, nonprofits are known to be resource-light. You don't have a big infrastructure. And I personally started out as the first employee and was the only employee for a few years before I was able to hire someone else. You go from a corporate background where there's training and support and all sorts of things, supplies, office supplies. I mean, it sounds funny, things that you take for granted. And then you go to a nonprofit, and it is you really have to wear multiple hats. And depending on the nonprofit, um, there's also an emotional component. You know, you're addressing a very critical need, in our case, food for hungry children. So you have that emotional constraint or I'd say challenge, and all doing that while making sure that you're addressing the most important thing is fulfilling your mission. Uh all right. So, since we're talking uh in this podcast about strengths, I'm curious to know you were looking at a strengths profile report. So you took an assessment before our conversation so that you would have a list of your strengths in front of you. And you're looking at a list that shows you the strengths that you perform well, and you are have reflected on which strengths that you perform well you are able to use, which strengths that you perform well you haven't used as much. So I'm curious as you're thinking about and looking at your list, what strengths did you rely on most when you were initially adjusting from the corporate world to the nonprofit scenario that you were been describing? I would say um strategic thinking and equality. And the reason I say those, strategic thinking, that was something I did in my past life in marketing and consulting. And you were always looking at the bigger picture, stepping back, what do we need to do? Where do we need to focus our energy? That is literally what you have to do, I'd say almost on a daily basis in a nonprofit. You have to constantly be thinking of where am I today? Where do I want us to go? How do I do it without going outside of our lane and duplicating things that exist? Like you're always you have a lot of things you're considering all the time, I think when you're growing a nonprofit. And that's what we are doing essentially. We've been growing it. Um, I got involved just for a little history when there were we were only in two schools, we're now in 53 schools. Wow. By the time I got involved, there were 77 children being supported. Now it's 2,400 children being supported weekly. It's been a very gigantic growth for us. And so strategic thinking that again goes on in the corporate world all the time. Um, I think that's something that I definitely was able to rely on as I helped, you know, work with the board and try to come up with ways to continue to grow our program while keeping sustainability at the forefront. Um, and obviously making sure we're also delivering the program in the best we best manner we can. So kind of keeping those balls all going at the same time. Uh, the other thing is equality. You know, I I definitely see so much value in getting feedback. I'd like to hear everyone else's opinion in the room of where they think we should go or what how how can we do this better, or what should we be doing? They're going to bring in something that you haven't thought of. When you mentioned equality and you brought up the word feedback, uh, it reminded me of the prep work that we did before um this conversation today, when you were sharing with me that giving feedback is also a strength that you enjoy. And it comes pretty naturally to you because you believe, as I think most people do, that pointing out positive things that people have done well is tremendously helpful to them, but also providing developmental feedback is something that will help people improve. And as I think about feedback as a strength, and I work with many, many, many people over the years who find that quite draining or they're fearful of providing feedback. Um, and you, as someone who, as you just articulated there, you know, know the value of feedback. It's such a gift in your strengths toolkit. Was there more structure in the corporate world in terms of um structured performance evaluations, structured timing for it, formats or expectations from HR people, levels of people have to approve the feedback? So one of the biggest switches or changes, I'd say, in terms of providing feedback in the corporate world versus nonprofit, is in the corporate world, you know, you have processes in place and you are working with the HR department and you have expectations and goals that have been set really at the corporate level that you're then now having these conversations with your employees on. In the nonprofit world, especially in my experience, we didn't, we don't certainly don't have HR. We certainly don't have any processes in place, or we do now. We're we've developed goals and stuff, but you are primarily working with volunteers. They're not staff, and that is a mind shift that you have to kind of get over. I mean, we have the most I said before, and I, you know, genuinely mean it. I I've never met the most amazing group of people that come here. It really like could you can't believe the people that are so dedicated and come here. They could run this organization, they could come in, turn the lights on, and get everything out. And one time I remember early early on when someone's like, Oh, um, I can't deliver. And I remember thinking, what do you mean you can't deliver? That's you, you have to deliver. You said you were delivered. This is your day to deliver. And then I was like, Tammy, that's a volunteer. And it is, it I had to stop myself because oh my gosh, they don't have to do this at all. They can, they can never come back again, they can do whatever they want. I will just being very honest, in the beginning, it was a definitely for me a shift where I had to remember that these incredible people decide to spend their free time helping us. And so it's and also just trying to make their experience valuable. Their time is so valuable. They could be anywhere, they could support any organization, they could go and do anything they chose to come to Cape Kid Meals to volunteer. So it's in our best interest to make sure that they feel valued, that they are so appreciated, and that when they're here, their time is well spent. They can really get more even aligned with the mission and the vision and they understand what we're doing. And it just builds that compassion and they don't they want to come back every, you know, week after week. And that is a good measure of doing something and spending enough time and energy on fostering that type of an environment, especially in nonprofits, when we all rely so heavily on our volunteers. Very big shift that will happen if somebody's listening who decides they want to leave corporate. And we started this uh conversation talking about feedback. And so taking it back to strengths, are are there any strengths that you have that are less or used, that are unrealized, that you might be able to use even more or in a different way in order to continue or to even enhance your ability to provide feedback or andor your ability to motivate the important volunteers that support Cape Kid Meals. Um, so one of the unrealized strengths that you know came up on my profile that I think definitely helps me in this, you know, role is gratitude, just really being able to take the time and pause and be grateful for everyone that shows up, especially obviously I'm talking about our volunteers and how they are willing to spend their time. And are there other strengths that you have been using confidently and energetically with your volunteers, or any other strengths you want to use more with your volunteers? Um I think connector was one of the strengths that came up. So just, you know, providing an opportunity for people to come here and connect with each other and learn, you know, we've had people come meet friends, you know, here volunteering just from coming at the same time and getting to know each other. We've, you know, we've seen over the years people like creating their own little friend groups or, you know, meeting to come or going for coffee after. I think, I think it provides sort of a springboard for people who have shared interests in a nonprofit. And then that could lead to them having, you know, something shared outside of the nonprofit. So I think that's been something really interesting to see and wonderful to see that come out of it as well. All right, let's shift our feedback conversation a little bit. So there's um giving feedback, that's really important. But as an executive director or for anybody in a role of authority, receiving feedback is something that is important and oftentimes sadly lacking, especially the more senior you get, the less feedback that you receive. I'm curious to know how does feedback help you as a leader? For me personally, getting feedback, I like to get feedback to say, okay, yeah, this looks good. I think this makes sense. I think we're going the right direction, or I think that was a great report or whatever. It does help for you to feel like I'm doing the right thing. I'm spending the energy and the time on the right thing. So for me personally, it's something I actually look forward to, probably more so, probably want it more so than I than other people, maybe. Um, it does make me feel good when I know we're doing we're doing the right direction. I also appreciate, you know, if someone feels gives me feedback of something that, you know, I'm need to be mindful of, you know, I'm okay with that as well. It's very important to as a leader to understand your strengths and weaknesses and, you know, and really try to understand if you're not giving or delivering what is expected, then let's work on that. So I think positive and negative feedback is very important and definitely important. I I think personally, I think when you're in a position of growth like Kid Meals' is, it's very important to get that kind of feedback as you're growing and moving forward. Feedback when you're in a nonprofit comes in many forms. You're gonna get it from we have our stakeholders, are much, it's a much larger group of stakeholders than in the corporate world that are having opinions and thoughts of how and what we're doing. You want feedback, you also sometimes are getting it from a lot of different areas. And it's how do you take that information and put it all together in a big bowl and figure out what to do with that and make sure that you're answering as many of the things that you that you can, um, and also not go down a rabbit hole because you're gonna get some feedback that could take you down a whole nother rabbit hole because you think, oh my gosh, I'm hearing it from so and so. So I think feedback in itself, given the amount of places you get it from when you're in a nonprofit role, also can be a challenge. All right. So let's take that. So, with that challenge, where you've got a tremendous amount of feedback and plenty of other priorities on your plate, how can you use uh your strengths to manage through that feedback and make the decisions of how you want to proceed or not with the feedback you've been giving? Which of your strengths are gonna help you have been or could help you even more with that feedback filtering? I think first comes judgment in my mind, sort of just taking it all from where it's coming from, understanding there's gonna be feedback from certain segments of the stakeholders that are gonna probably rise higher than others just because of the necessity of trying to address different things because we're constantly juggling here. So that would be some of the skills that I would probably use and kind of just analyzing, taking a moment to take a step back, realize, read through it, understand it, and then come up with a plan of which ones we need to address and in what priority. What might be any room for improvement for you in doing that prioritization and filtering and considerations? Um, not spending too much time overanalyzing. I can definitely overanalyze. I can definitely look at something and spend too much time drawing conclusions from it. Um, and I have to really catch myself and just, you know, try to get the information, understand it, and move on as opposed to going over and over and over and over it. And how do you catch yourself now? I don't really know how I do it. I will just be all of a sudden acutely aware that I've spent an inordinate amount of time on something I really shouldn't be doing. And I need to figure out if I can delegate it or if it's something that doesn't need that much time and attention. Um, I also am, I'm sure everyone has this. There's certain things you like. I have some stuff that I love to do that if I have the time, I'll spend more time on, even if I really shouldn't be. So catching myself in that as well, you know, is also something I have to be acutely aware of. One of the main values of approaching one's leadership from a strengths perspective is because then you can be that much more strategic and intentional in how you use the many tools, many strengths that are required when you do your job. So I'm wondering if there are any strengths that you haven't been necessarily using to enable you to be intentional with the feedback and with your actions and where you're spending your time and how you're prioritizing and incubating. You know, what could you be using strength-wise more intentionally to help you more often than not get yourself out of that over-incubating uh loop that is distracting you from other things that could be better use of your time? So it's an unrealized strength. And I also think it's something that I'm challenged with. Um, and it is self belief. It's, you know, in leadership, in any leadership role, at the end of the day, you have to be, you need to be confident. That's definitely a big one for me is taking a step back and being confident in my own self and having the belief in myself. That, yeah, I can do this and I and I am doing the right thing. You make a mistake, that's fine. You learn from it. The science behind strengths tells us very clearly that our self-belief is grounded in the knowledge and use of our strengths. I won't ask you to repeat things you said before, but I just want to highlight that I suspect your self-belief that you, as you just suggested, need to rely on is there because you have high standards. You have a really strong work ethic. You, as you said in the beginning, are very focused on equality. And you know that you um are good at and enjoy strategic thinking. You have sought and offered feedback, et cetera. And knowledge of and awareness of using our strengths is exactly what provides the foundation for that self-belief, which is why I often say to people with whom I work, one of the best things you can do for yourself to be as confident and as intentional as possible is to keep that list of strengths that you have right in front of you. You know, where you look at your schedule for the day, perhaps, and you say, all right, which strengths do I need to bring into that two o'clock meeting with the volunteers? And I've got to prepare this afternoon for my next board meeting. Let me look at my list. What strengths do I want to be sure that I'm very intentionally using in that activity? Because as you do that, not only are you going to feel more confident going into that particular activity, but you are going to deepen your self-awareness and you're going to form neural pathways that are going to make it easier and easier and easier for you to have the versatility and the depth of use of your resources as is necessary to manage an important nonprofit like Cape Kid Meals. And that applies to everybody that's listening to this here. To me, that's the most, that's the reason I love being a strength coach, is really to help people build confidence in themselves. That's at the end of the day. That's really what it's all about. You and I both have a set of introspective cards. And these are a deck of cards that each one has one of the strengths on it. And on one side of the card is a quote, and the other side of the card is a question related to that particular strength, like those we've been talking about here today. So what I want to do is just randomly pick one here, and let's just see what the universe calls out for us. I'm going to pick a card randomly from this deck I have here, and I'm going to read it aloud, and then I'm going to ask you if this has any relevance to what you want to do even more intentionally as the uh leader of Cape Kid Meals. So the card I pulled out here is optimism. Okay. And the quote side says, a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. And that's from the wise man Winston Churchill. And the question on the other side of the card related to optimism is how can I maintain a positive outlook and inspire optimism in others today? Yeah, I mean, I think trying to be optimistic in the perfect world consistently would be an ideal state for me. I definitely am somebody who will look for solutions. I'm famous for saying, you know, come to me with some ideas or thoughts, not problems. I'd rather have you tell me there's a this is a problem, but these are the four things that I'm thinking we could address that problem, versus I have no idea what to do, but this is what's happened. I am somebody who definitely loves to look for a um a solution and try to maintain, you know, some level of positivity in most situations. I think it's like a choice and a mindset. The only reaction we can control is our own reaction. You know, I can choose to come into something and be very optimistic and positive, or I can choose to look at it a different way. Well, maybe you can take the optimism card, right? Put it on your desk. Because that's that's that's what the value of a strength assessment or a card, you know, or a post-it note where you wrote the word optimism on it and you stick it on your laptop, you know, those are all just little triggers to remind you to use your strengths and be the best version of yourself. All right, all right. So my last question. So if Cape Kid Meals had a strengths profile of its own, what strength would you say that the organization embodies really well? Cape Kid Meals is unique, I feel like, in its ability to constantly evolve and adapt. We've had to uh overcome hurdles over the years that we've grown. And I think we lead with yes, you know, we lead with we'll find a way that we can do that, we can meet that need. I don't know what would come from what what would uh applies on our on our strength list, but I think at Cape Kid Meals, we're very, very, very clear on our vision and what we're trying to do. And so I think that helps uh steer us constantly. And we we really try to keep that at the forefront. And we're so small of an organization that we're very adaptable. Like we can we can pivot very quickly. And I that's the one thing about nonprofits that I also love and I love the specific about Kid Meals is you don't have the bureaucracy and the red tape. You don't have to go through six layers for approval. You see a need, you know you can meet it, you adapt, you uh address it and take care of it. Creative solutions to problems and uh being able to be again lucky to have the amount of support we have from our volunteers, obviously from our donors, uh, our board, everyone who's involved, the staff, to be able to adapt quickly and make decisions and and constantly, you know, take care of the the kids that have these needs. And it is, it's it's literally all about the heart and the passion that people who are involved have for this organization. That's also why we're able to do what we do. As a pseudo-representative of the residents of Cape Cod and as a president of Cape Cod myself, thank you, Tammy, really, for the very important work that you are doing for the children and the families and the livelihood of Cape Cod so that it can continue to be hopefully a place where people who live there year-round can feel supported by the community and happy to call Cape Cod their home. Thank you so much, Colleen, for your help and your input. And this has been very um eye-opening and helpful. So I really appreciate it. As you listen to Tammy today, you may have recognized something familiar. The challenge of working in an environment where there are many priorities, many perspectives, and no simple way to sort through them. What stood out to me is how she's learning to balance two important instincts: taking in input and considering others while also trusting herself enough to move things forward. And that's where her strengths come in. Her ability to think strategically, to include others, and to approach things thoughtfully aren't just qualities. They're tools she can rely on as she continues to grow into her role. So, in the show notes, you'll find a link to her nonprofit Cape Kid Meals, um, to the strengths profile assessment that she took, and to the introspective cards, which are a simple way to stay connected to your strengths every day. So, thanks for listening to the Strength Catalyst Podcast, and until next time, keep leaning into your strengths and using them wisely.