#10 | Naming the Three Misalignments in Leadership

Most leadership dysfunction isn't a people problem — it's a misalignment problem. In this episode, Dr. Dan Freeman introduces the Three Misalignments, a diagnostic framework for understanding why smart, talented people can still create organizational chaos. The first misalignment, Quickness vs. Speed, draws from Dan's background in collegiate athletics to distinguish between moving fast and operating efficiently — arguing that urgency is often a signal of missing systems, not insufficient effort. 

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The second, the Source Question, challenges leaders to look past the presenting issue and find the root cause, using the analogy of a pulled hamstring that traces back to an untrained glute. 

The third misalignment reframes how leaders think about their people, introducing a distinction between rock stars — steady, reliable performers who thrive in place — and superstars, the high performers who need autonomy, growth, and room to run.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Executive Thought Partner Podcast, where leadership, strategy, and growth intersect. I'm Dr. Daniel Freeman, Executive Thought Partner. This isn't just a podcast about fundraising. It's about how leaders think, decide, and build systems that scale impact across nonprofits, higher education, athletics, and mission-driven enterprises. Here we explore major gifts, governance, culture, and the quiet decisions that determine long-term momentum. If you're leading something that matters and you want clarity with conviction, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Naming the three misalignments. I'm your host, Dr. Dan Freeman, and I'm ready to jump into this topic. As you can see here, I've got a nice little new setup behind me. So let's talk about these three misalignments. Most leadership dysfunction isn't a people problem, it's a misalignment problem. I want you to ask yourself where in your organization is someone performing well, but they're pointed in the wrong direction. That's what we're talking about today. So let's talk about what are the three alignments? The diagnostic framework for understanding why smart, talented people can create organizational chaos. So the first one, quickness over speed. This is an athletics parable that I've carried throughout my life. I want you to think about this. Speed is how fast you go from point A to B. Quickness is how efficiently you operate within a space. Urgency is almost always a signal that systems are missing, that people are running from point A to point B, not aware of who they're stepping on, who they're stepping over, who it's impacting, and really what the bigger picture is. And that bigger picture is not that you need to move faster. It's that you need to build systems that create quickness that allow you to operate within a space. An example that I really think about is that when I worked in collegiate athletics in my third role, I was doing a lot of events. And I oversaw hospitality on court for men's and women's basketball games, and I oversaw all the courtside seating. So I was always trying to figure out how can I make my job more efficient? How did I do that? That meant setting up a system where I knew at X time I was putting down our, you know, what you call playbills, right? I was putting that on each of those courtside seats. I was placing them on the tables. I was ensuring that all of the seats were properly sorted and evenly spread out between all the tables. I was making sure that all the tables looked clean. I was making sure the tables were ready for the food for hospitality down in the court. I did all of that at X time. I always made sure that that was three hours before, so that I could go do that. And then it was set. Now, if a basketball went over and hit it or something else, that's not something you can control. That's something you adapt and you update. So that was that first system. Now the second system was when it starts, when do I start letting people down? Do I have student workers that are helping me? And at what time should they be there? I also worked with sports information and sports marketing so that if they needed people for their on court activations for sponsors, or if they needed to get video of fans, it was easy for them to get it from the hospitality area. And it made those donors in that area feel special. So I built systems out that allowed for the quickness of task completion. So that way I could focus my real one-on-one efforts with the people hanging out there. The second question, uh, the second misalignment is the source question. And this is really important. This is another parable. A lot of my work has come from sports. The visible problem is almost never the real one. I used to tell this with my friends, I used to do it for myself, I used to tell my parents when I'd be helping them with things related to health issues. Like a pulled hamstring that traces back to an untrained glute, the presenting issue is usually a symptom. Our work is to find the source and address it there. In one of my most recent roles, I had a report who is a really great person and I really enjoyed him. There was a lot of pressure for me to make a change, but I wasn't going to throw them out and I wasn't going to make an irrational change. So I had to figure out why was this person not performing up to the quality that I had seen them do in other areas related to our work. And what I started to realize over six months was that some of the things we were doing were not the strengths of this person. They were not the strongest in organization. They didn't do well with lots of things going on around them. It was tough for them to find clarity and to redirect and refine in those times. But I started to realize that they did great one-on-one, really great at having conversations and being an advocate for the institution. So what did I figure out after having conversations with him that he would be a great ambassador and educator for students, incoming students. He was really great at that. They were a student themselves. So I looked at that and said, it's not what I'm seeing. There has to be something more. And when they were, they were transitioned over to another part of the institution, we had a conversation. And he finally admitted to me he had been really burned out from the last two years. And they had had some health issues and different things in life, which is normal. But they had been burned out. And that was the moment for me when I realized that's what it is. What we were doing did not fit for him. And the fact that he was burned out from it, so he's burned out in general. And then having to do the same things that burn him out, I mean, what is worse than that? So that's that source question, really figuring that out. The third one is the question that one of my mentors has asked me that I use all the time now. What am I called to learn here? This is the question that lives at the center of everything. It shifts you from victim to student, from stuck to mobile, from reactive to intentional. We return to it every season. Challenge and success alike. In our lives, we have so many experiences where we look at where we are and think to ourselves, I'm not happy. Why am I in this spot? What am I even doing here? And as leaders, when we get into these cycles where we're reactant and we're urgent, sometimes it's when we're getting towards the holidays and we're so close to burnout. And you have to ask yourself, what am I called to learn here? Have I just been trying to fly through things with speed versus being quick? Do I need to take this time to reflect over the holidays and think to myself, is this where I need to be? Or is it even more important where it's thinking about your experience? What are you called to learn here? Are you called to learn about a tough relationship and how to manage your way through that? Are you called to learn interdepartmental dynamics? Are you called to learn how to have a better donor relationship with an upcoming donor because you realized conversations you were having with a current donor were not successful or satisfactory? And as you reflected on it, you realized you needed to update that? Or is it outside of work? If you're a leader in work, you're most likely a leader outside of life, too. Maybe not on as large of a scale. Maybe it's not your specialty. But have you been called to take a step back? Have you been called to learn that you are not giving your kids the attention they deserve? Are you called to learn that your family is always going to be there for you and you've taken them for granted? What have you been called to learn? Now let's go to the next one. Let's let's keep thinking. We went through these three misalignments. I want to talk about how do you distinguish between performance and alignment and why conflating them is the most expensive mistake leaders make. Performance is set by KPIs, key performance indicators, and then on profit field, we call it metrics, and sales might be both of them. Those things are on paper, they're not real life, and we need to be frank with ourselves about that. But alignment when things fall into alignment, I believe that means that they fall into the values of who you are. The things we have to perform in our careers and in work do not always align with who we are. But if you can work somewhere and you can accomplish things in alignment with who you are, not the work that you accomplish, that's when things change and they shift. So I want you to think about that. Performance is KPIs and metrics, those are things to make money and help with sales. Alignment, the key performance indicators for that are your happiness, your family, your energy level, your mental and physical health, and more. And if you can do work that aligns in that area and allows you to have all of those things, that's what makes a great leader, because you're not just leading based on KPIs that you don't believe in, except for performance and money. If you can lead from alignment, other people with similar alignment are going to follow you. And that leads us into our next one: rock star versus superstar. Big distinction here. I love talking about this. Let's talk about how leaders misread talent types and build the wrong team architecture. Your rock star, that's the person who is killing it at their job. Person who's in their office, who's doing their work. Maybe they don't interact with everybody, maybe they do interact. But your rock star is the person who loves what they're doing, doesn't want to change it, and is happy being successful where they are. They don't need to be looking for another job. They may not even want a promotion. They may want to be taken care of financially, but they just want to be in that role. If fundraising is your job, this show is your edge. The Executive Thought Partner Podcast delivers real strategy, real decisions, real conversations and results. That sweet spot where theory meets the real world. Practical insights you can use before your next campaign or conversation. Hosted by fundraising experts like myself and my guests, backed by the team at Donorbox. Subscribe wherever you listen for the Executive Thought Partner podcast. You'll thank yourself later. And the other side of that is the superstar. Your superstar is your high top performer. That person is gonna grind. They are gonna grind not just for you, but for their career. They don't want to be in one spot. They want to move, they want to grow. And if you can't offer that, your superstar is gonna go because it's not about you. So it's really important to understand how are you leading them? Are you making sure that your rock star has the top technology, has the needs, is being paid to feel comfortable, has the support and the opportunities to grow and professionally develop. Because if you can take care of them with the bare minimum, which those things I just mentioned to me, those are the bare minimum, they're gonna be good. But you also have to make sure the people around them are not ruining that experience for them. Because you can have that person there for 10 years, but if you bring in the wrong person, you can mess up that whole relationship and they may consider leaving. And then what about your superstar? Your superstar. Superstar. We all know that. That's a little reference. Hopefully, some of you will know that. Um, SNL reference. So you have your superstar. That superstar, that's the person who is that top performer. That's the person who says, take off the leash, give me nitrous, and let me go. Let me get it done. That's the person you don't need to worry about them being motivated. You don't have to tell them to do anything because they're already doing it. Those are the type of people that if you micromanage, they are out. They're gone. And you're not gonna get them again. But if you take care of them well, when that top performer leaves, they're gonna tell everyone, hey, I had a great boss. They didn't micromanage me, they paid me well, they took care of me and they helped me grow because they knew that I was gonna grow up and out and that I would be an advocate for them. And you need to treat them like an advocate. If you want more people like them, you need to create an environment that allows them to thrive. And you need to have those rock stars around your superstars because those rock stars provide the sustainability and the consistency on the back end that allow your superstars to thrive and innovate externally. So it's really important you think of those areas. How do they affect you in higher ed, in athletics, in the nonprofit field, in the for-profit field, in banking, in entrepreneurship? Who are those first five employees in your startup? What are they doing and how are you taking care of them? Think about that in the nonprofit world. I'm not talking about your executive director. I'm talking about your fundraisers, your community engagement individuals. For-profit world, I'm talking about your corporate social responsibility people, your maybe assistant vice presidents, associate vice presidents, depending how your structure is. In higher education, those are going to be your executive directors who are just above middle management, but not necessarily at the AVP or the SVP title. I want you to think about how you are taking care of those individuals. So many people and so many leaders can't see what's right in front of them, and they don't reward the people that they need to, and then they've got to start all over. And you know what? You did that to yourself. If that's what you have to do. You don't, you should not be thinking, oh, I can't believe we lost this person, you know, thinking badly of them, whatever. Stop putting the blame on everyone else. You're the leader. The blame is on you. You are the person that decides what happens. Thank you for listening to the Executive Thought Partner Podcast. If today's conversation helped clarify your leadership or expand your thinking, share it with someone navigating meaningful decisions. Until next time, think clearly, lead intentionally, and build what lasts.