48: Book Recommendations
If you’re new here, Leaving Well is the art and practice of leaving a place, role, title, or thing with intention and purpose, and when possible … joy.
Resources and articles mentioned in this episode:
To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/
To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.
This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
Transcript:
The one constant discussion had with folks who work at nonprofit organizations in the human services / community organizing / social justice space is about caretaking and #LeavingWell. However, most people don’t identify the theme as such, or know it yet. This podcast episode is going to share some of my favorite books that touch on these topics (and more). You will be able to find links to each book in the show notes, including links for both Bookshop and Amazon.
When you shop your favorite new books using my links, it helps cover the costs of producing this podcast! You’ll also find a link in the show notes to Buy me a Decaf Coffee which also supports this podcast.
Ok, let’s dive in.
The popular videos of Nicole Olive and Vu Le always feel so incredibly appropriate (as you can see in the comment section of nearly every nonprofit related video they create) because they are bringing to light issues that we all know to be true, and have experienced ourselves. If you haven’t seen either, I’ll link a few of my favorites in the show notes - they are GOOD!
I’d like to offer, however, that even though I find them funny, I also believe we have just as much responsibility for the environment and culture in nonprofits as those who we point fingers at, typically the executive directors, board of directors, and funders. I offer the radically candid suggestion that we decide, we shift culture, and we create transformation. While it feels good to complain together about toxicity in our organizations, or we feel seen and acknowledged for what we’ve gone through, when we see a skit or comedy around the topic, it doesn’t support upriver change in the system and world we’ve all pledged to change for the better.
In Radical Candor by Kim Scott, she defines radical candor as caring personally, and challenging directly.
Caring personally is the antidote to robotic professionalism and managerial arrogance. Caring personally is not about memorizing birthdays and names of family members. It’s about acknowledging we are all people with lives and aspirations that extend beyond those related to our shared work. It’s about finding time for real conversations, learning what’s important to people, about what makes us want to get out of bed in the morning and go to work - and what has the opposite effect. Challenge directly helps build trusting relationships, to enable a reciprocal dynamic.
I will state clearly here that I’ve yet to work in or with a nonprofit space that has had the safety, or organizational norm to hold space for radical candor. At the same time, I will offer that we - one at a time, in each of our organizations - must begin taking the posture of “we decide, we shift culture, we create transformation”.
“Health and wellness must happen in the workforce, first” -Jaiya John
“We are responsible for each other’s wellness, regardless of position. Staff is not powerless, but powerful in their duty to support and care for themselves and their leadership. Whatever we are practicing and experiencing, we will administer. Service capacity is an outcome of investment in workforce wellness. We can keep looking for a magic potion to change our reality, or we can simply take better care.”
Written by Jaiya John, the book Your Caring Heart: Renewal for Helping Professionals and Systems is on my highly recommended list for frontline staff, outreach providers, those in human services, or as Jaiya describes:
A helping professional is defined as someone who provides support, directly or indirectly, to others who are in significant need. If what you do affects vulnerable lives, this book is for you. And, if you are an administrator, an executive, then you, my friend, should care about agency, worker, and leader wellness because this absolutely determines the bottom line (fiscal), the top line (political), and the real line (social, generational outcomes).
In Jaiya’s book, he addresses the same concept of caring for each other that Kim did in her book. Taking an in-depth look at the idea of mutual care as necessary for those in helping professionals, the benefits can include (but not be limited to):
Staff feel safer and more relaxed
Staff operate at a higher level
Staff are freed to apply their gifts
Less days lost to unwellness
Greater efficiency and higher morale
More trust, effective communication and understanding
Less misunderstanding and conflict
Staff and leadership feel more empowered, validated, and supported
Stronger teams and teamwork
Minimized impact of stress and trauma
Less staff and leadership turnover
Stronger culture and continuity of values
As you read that list, what else comes to mind for you? What do you think of when considering your current work environment, or those you’ve had in the past?
The most poignant opportunity I see for culture change is in the realm of transition and grief. If more of us - regardless of position or title - took an attitude of caring well and caring personally whenever a transition or leaving happens, I know an incredibly powerful shift would happen.
Systems that don’t hold space and permission for grieving become depressed places of chronic, unreleased grief. Working with others in your cause brings grief. People change their positions, are promoted, leave the job. Formal leaders transition away. Those left behind feel abandoned, even lost. We grieve these various relationships and their influence, which is a good thing. A reflection of the meaning the relationships have to us. A testimony to the bonds and journey. Healthy grieving celebrates the memories, even the challenging ones. It is a storytelling river that goes on for years. Our relationships become legend, and in becoming legend, serve as mortar for the foundation of a relational system.
Change is inevitable, and so are necessary endings. We naturally fear change because of the unknown and disruption, however transition can be - when acknowledged and support is offered - a healthy and potent opportunity for growth and foundational structure.
“Service capacity is an outcome of investment in workforce wellness.” -Jaiya John
Think about the last time someone left an organization or project you were working on. Or think collectively about each time it’s happened. Did it go smoothly? Was it challenging, but supportive? Was it transparent and carried out with helpful communication?
The concept of caring personally aligns with so many tenets of #LeavingWell. Part of the genius of #LeavingWell is that you can put the framework into play long before you plan to transition to the next project, role, or organization.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary . . . If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” -Thoreau
In putting the foundations under those “castles in the air”, the correlation to the nonprofit world is to intentionally design your legacy, to take care of your imprint. To affect the climate.
“Three points of vulnerability exist in your work life: when you enter, while you exist, and as you leave. As you enter, you bring both beauty and baggage. Your greatest duty at work is not to survive but to affect the climate.”
So what can you do about radical candor, caring personally, and leaving well? Not caring for each other is a habit, so then, the opposite must be practiced and ritualized so that it can become a habit.
Care Personally:
Start a conversation with your direct report, or someone on your board of directors, or a peer / colleague, and ask them to share a bit about their life story.
Listen (truly listen) for the connection points of their experience and history to the mission of your work, or the values of your organization.
Verbally acknowledge the correlation you’ve drawn, and name their impact and contribution to the legacy of not only their name and work, but that of the system change you’re working together towards.
Mutual Care:
We are responsible for each other’s wellness, regardless of position.
We can keep looking for a magic potion or wand to change our reality, or we can simply take better care.
If your organization has recently had a transition, or one is looming, offer to host a casual gathering of your peers. From Jaiya: “craft an agenda of laughter, cleansing tears, remembrance, broadening of perspective, and lightening of heart.”
Make a list of the amazing teachings, skills, value, and culture components that you feel that person could “take with them” as they leave (or past tense, if it’s already happened).
Where are there gaps, as that person transitions from the project or organization? Where are the opportunities for those who are staying to take up those identified items?
Talk candidly about the legacy of those who have left in the past. Examine opportunities in your own work life to proactively design your own legacy, even as you process and grieve the exit of others.
Where are the opportunities for each of you to contribute to the future health of the organization?
*page 115 of Jaiya’s book has an amazing section on how to advocate for wellness in an unwell system! Page 117 is a beautiful lesson on grief in the workplace!
“Over 4000 people have worked on this mission. There’s no one person who can really get their arms around the whole thing and say ‘I understand everything about this vehicle’.” -Steve Squyres (who led the Mars Exploration Rover Mission)
Just as one person is not wholly responsible for the outcomes and success of projects and organizational impact, one person leaving is not the end of the world or a disaster for your projects or organization. However, ONE person can start the revolution and shift in our systems around caring for one another. I challenge you to find the opportunities to care personally and care well for each other during transition (whether happening currently or in the past), identify the areas where you need to decide, where you need to shift culture, and where you need to act in order to create transformation.
Ok, one more from Jaiya. He also says this in his book: “Retention has roots. Those roots precede a worker’s experience with an agency, and begin with the societal story of what it means to serve those in need. Stories told in school and during professional training that introduce students to theory and practice without providing any context for visceral, generational oppression and trauma, is a story that sets up workers for failure. Failed expectations. Failed efficacy. Failed identities.”
Leading For Justice: Supervision, HR, and Culture. Rita Sever
“People obtain supervisory roles when they are good at their core function but are NOT necessarily good at, or trained for, management of people or projects. What is the Supervision Strategy?” -Rita Sever
There are a common and typical core set of struggles that every single client shares when we set out to begin our work. Culture, HR, and how to manage the people who make up the teams and heartbeat of the organization.
Regardless of the size of the organization, how long it has been in existence, and whether it is led by a founder director or a successor director, the reality is that none of us have a full and complete understanding of how to manage and supervise people.
In the book Leading for Justice: Supervision, HR, and Culture, Rita Sever covers literally every aspect of these typical gaps in capacity and beyond a strong recommendation to read her book, you can also listen to my podcast episode in Season 3 with Rita where we discuss the key elements of her knowledge and expertise.
Job Descriptions - Typically, leaders approach job descriptions as a one-time activity, only to revisit them when the organization is facing a hiring situation. One of the exercises I navigate with my clients is to view job descriptions as living documents, and to also create opportunities for staff to review and provide feedback to their job descriptions on a regular basis by implementing them into a concept called stay interviews.
In Rita’s book she states:
“Job descriptions can be a road map that offers clarity and understanding. When a job description is thoughtful and comprehensive, without being restrictive, then each person understands the parameters of their role, the depth of their responsibility, and how their work interrelates with all the other work of the organization. They can use this well-hewn document to clarify their priorities and boundaries.”
When we only look at job descriptions when someone is being hired, it removes multiple opportunities to build trust and efficiency inside our teams. Many culture missteps and organizational challenges are prompted by a lack of understanding between team members as it relates to what everyone’s duties and responsibilities are. Imagine introducing a group review of job descriptions in your organization, where everyone walks away with a better comprehension of how their role intersects with others in the company! This also breeds beautiful situations for cross-collaboration and improvement of work quality and delivery of services.
Values - if you’ve spent any time with me, you know that values are a huge part of my personal life, as well as my work with clients. We can all easily spout off our mission and vision right? What we are here to do, how we do it, and how we’ll know when we’ve accomplished our goals.
Yet, when I ask organizational leaders about their values, I often receive blank looks in response. We do not practice or operationalize our values, and it’s a massive miss for your organization.
“Support for organizations forms a three-legged stool: mission, vision, and values. When people don’t pay attention to all three components of this stool, things get out of balance. When an organization lacks a clear focus on its mission and vision, its destination can become vague or transitory. When an organization does not pay active attention to values, the organization can lose their integrity and sense of identity - or even become hypocritical. All three legs are necessary to support the work. What are the values of your organization, and how do they show up? If you can’t answer how an organization’s values are implemented, you need to look at what is implemented, and see what the actual values are.” -Rita Sever
So what do you do about this, if your values are murky, vague, or even nonexistent?
Using my values exercise, an individual can navigate through identifying their own personal values, or teams can do this exercise together. The most important action you can take today is perhaps the smallest one, “Make values your own by writing down the last five things you did yesterday before leaving work. Can you connect them to the org’s mission? Can other people see the through line of your work to the mission, even if you can’t?”
Until every individual in your organization has connected with their own personal values, reviewed them against their job description and daily work responsibilities, you will likely continue to experience a disconnect between expectations, policies, and your mission being achieved.Values, once operationalized, can also become woven into the way you conduct your meetings, inform policies, and help elevate hiring and onboarding processes, as well as employee retention practices.
Another thing I appreciate about Rita’s work and her book is the series of questions and suggestions she offers when it comes to day-to-day practices. A few of those follow:
What are the top three priorities of each person, as they may get overwhelmed with their workload?
During meetings, open them by saying “We’ve got an hour. What’s most important for us to talk about?”
During 1:1 meetings, reframe them from being micromanaging or personal, to instead emphasize them as supportive, investment-focused, and mission-imperative? Additionally, allow everyone to know the purpose of a meeting to help inform the timing, participants, and the outcomes.
What are hidden rules? Do people show up for meetings on time? Is it ok to make jokes? How are birthdays acknowledged here, if at all? Can everyone talk in staff meetings? What is at risk for your org if you don’t address deeper hidden rules that replicate oppression?
How powerful are those?
“The currency of HR is trust. HR creates and maintains policies, operationalizes culture, guides managers in hiring and firing, and is also the bridge between management and non-management. HR stands alone.” -Rita Sever
You may be reading this and think, there’s no way I can implement these practices, we don’t have an HR department, or the one person we have assigned with people and culture does not have the capacity as they’re barely head above water. Let me tell you that it is imperative that you reframe your mindset to explore how each person in your leadership structure can (and must) take responsibility to inject values, culture, and continuous improvement into your work and mission.
“HR should be in service to the organization, to the work, to the mission, AND, ultimately it is happy, engaged, and respected employees who are going to not only get the work done but protect the agency,” says Rita. “HR is the function that can operationalize values - that is, make values a concrete part of day-to-day work practices. HR can be reimagined and realigned to be of value and service. HR can be the partner of justice when the role is staffed by people who are committed to equity and who understand the power and sacredness of the role.”
When it’s reframed in that way, does it bring any excitement to the thought of an intentional focus on your HR work? How can you explore your current policies and view them as a set of riverbanks, a playbook if you will, so everyone understands how to navigate how to get their work done in a manner that is consistently driving towards mission? Are there opportunities to utilize your org chart to not only understand through lines of “authority and accountability” but also to weave in job functions to connect the dots – clearly – between various departments and responsibilities.
It’s hard to choose a favorite segment of Rita’s book, but if I had to choose a top contender it would be the way she addresses culture in our organizations.
When Rita uses the term “culture,” she includes the way things are done in an organization. “It covers policies, practices, and organizational structure, but even more, culture is about how people act together and how and why organizations have the policies, practices, and structures they have,” she says. “Culture” includes what is tolerated and what is not. What is rewarded. The spoken and unspoken rules and expectations. How conflict is handled. Who’s hired. Who’s fired. Who’s promoted. Who has power and how they use it. What people talk about and what they ignore. What stories are passed on to new staff.”
Consider this powerful quote:
“Culture happens whether anyone is paying attention to it or not.” -Rita Sever
Thinking back to your values - personal and organizational - and your tolerance and practice around operationalizing them into your day-to-day, consider the role that culture plays in your organizational health.
“Culture in an established organization is kind of like gravity - it keeps pulling practices to the way things are and have been. Being strategic and creating a culture that aligns with and supports the mission requires constant care, intentionality, and commitment. We must focus on both the way we do things and why we do them that way.”
For leaders looking for a beautiful framework to begin (and then regularly revisit) assessing your culture, check out page 207 of Rita’s book for a powerful Culture Snapshot.
Thank you for listening today. I’d love to hear what your biggest takeaway was from today’s episode. Share this on social media and tag me or email me at naomi@8thandhome.com.
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