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6 Things to Do BEFORE Your Nonprofit Leader Retires

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You live in a small town, and the community newspaper runs a frightening headline: “Mysterious Disease Strikes Town: One of Three Residents Will Disappear by 2017.”

You read the article, and the news is even worse than you thought. By 2020, scientists predict, two out of three residents will be gone. Look to the left of you. Look to the right. In five years, you will not see those two people anymore.

This news is real—only, the “small town” is the people who serve as leaders of nonprofit organizations. At least in New England, where I live, a third of them will be gone in two years, and almost two-thirds in the next five years. The numbers are similar nationwide.

But it isn’t a dread disease that will take them away. It’s retirement.

pass the baton

Passing the leadership baton

How can your nonprofit organization prepare for the epidemic of Baby Boomer retirement?

Here are three things your current Executive Director should do before he or she retires–and three things you can do as a Board member. Read my guest post on Tripp Braden’s Developing Serving Leadership blog.

 

Get People to Move Forward–Tell a Story!

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where you are going

Somebody has to lead

“The best way to get people to venture into unknown terrain is to make it desirable by taking them there in their imaginations.”

-Noel Tichy, co-author, The Leadership Engine

You get people moving by telling them stories.

Storytelling can be a form of leadership. So sit back and think:

  1. Where are you trying to get your organization to go?
  2. What’s the story that shows what the world will look like when you succeed?
  3. What’s your travel story about how you will get there?

Ready? Start! “Once upon a time…”

For more about telling the story of where you are going, read http://www.trippbraden.com/2015/03/31/lead-by-telling-the-story/

Lead Your Organization by Telling a Story

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tug of war

Get your people pulling in the same direction

Here’s a problem leaders face every day. You want to get something done. It will take everyone in your organization to do it.

How will you get them pulling in the same direction?

You could go around and have a heart-to-heart with each person in the organization. You could explain in detail the role each person should play and how they are supposed to do it.

That might work…if you have three people in your organization. In a larger group, you’d be spending a huge amount of time and you still wouldn’t know whether or not your people “get it” until you saw them in action.

You’d also be accused of “micro-management”—and your accusers would be right. Why tell other people how to do their jobs, which is something they might already know better than you do?

You don’t need to tell them how to do it. You need to make sure they know what needs to be done. And the best way to do that just might be through telling a story.

Find out how:

http://www.trippbraden.com/2015/03/13/who-is-the-hero-of-the-story/

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