Are you likable enough to lead?

During a moment in the 2008 Presidential debate in New Hampshire between then Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the question of likeability was raised which became one of the most memorable exchanges between the two candidates from the entire campaign.

In a question directed to Senator Clinton, WMUR-TV political director Scott Spradling asked: “What can you say to the voters of New Hampshire…, who see a resume and like it but are hesitating on the likability issue, where they seem to like Barack Obama more.” Senator Clinton replied, “He's very likable. I agree with that. I don't think I'm that bad.”

To which Senator Obama quipped, “You're likable enough, Hillary.”

I recall watching the exchange between them and wincing.

I didn’t “like” either candidate very much at that moment. Senator Clinton appeared weak and Senator Obama seemed somewhat callous to me.

Looking back on the debate between the future President and the future Secretary of State, one can only assume that the ability to be “likeable enough” was sufficient for the two of them to forge an uneasy working relationship in the Obama White House. While President Obama and Mrs. Clinton are certainly not the best of friends, they both were able to learn to put their differences aside long enough to govern. 

The question of likeability remains one that vexes all nonprofit leaders, especially executive directors. Our role as chief fundraiser and face of the organization places high value on our ability to build relationships. Our work necessitates a fairly significant likeability skill set in ourselves and our coworkers. We need people to like us in order to be successful. 

One thing that I’ve learned is that it isn’t easy to know if you are “likeable enough.” Of course your friends, your mother, your dog, your cat and your parakeet all like you. But, you don’t always get to work with the people who like you and who you like in return.
  
So what can we do to be likeable enough? And what, if anything, can we do about coworkers who might not be quite likeable enough to make an effective team?

First, two ground rules to keep in mind:

1. If you work at a nonprofit organization, there is a high probability that diversity is valued. Diversity requires respecting differences. A healthy nonprofit is by definition a diverse workplace. Your coworkers may well be likeable, but this does not mean that they are like-minded and they shouldn’t be. That’s boring and counter-productive. You can bet that President Obama and Secretary Clinton were not always on the same page. Yet, they still had to work with each other. In fact, they both chose to work with each other. There is a lot to be said about the value of mutual self-interest.

2. You cannot expect everyone you work with to be your friend.

I might also add a third ground rule:

3. If you happen to be the boss, chances are high that your staff will be your harshest critics. Perhaps not all of them, and certainly not all of the time, but when you’re the boss, being closely scrutinized comes with the territory. It is important to understand that those who work for you will not like all of your decisions and that extreme dislike often feels personal. When you are the boss there is a high probability that you will be unpopular and disliked at least some of the time.

In order to be likable people need to be able to trust you. Trustworthiness is of utmost importance for anyone who seeks a leadership role. If your staff and coworkers don’t feel a sense of trust toward you, they are not likely to follow you through the inevitable ups and downs of nonprofit work. Additionally, community stakeholders – your board, volunteers, donors and cohort of other nonprofits – also need to trust you.

So your first rule should be to insure that what you say is consistent with what you do.

Sounds simple enough, but it isn’t always easy to do. We often get tripped up by the simple things. As when you are in that grey area where you have to withhold information due to confidentiality or when a potential organization change is in the wind, but not quite yet a reality, the desire to “circle the wagons” and not say anything is tempting, but the wrong move. Every leader needs to recognize that clear communication is your best ally. Not full disclosure of an endless list of “what ifs” – but regular (and preferably in person) communication about what’s happening that will affect the lives of the people who work for you and with you and that you all seek to serve.

Likeable leaders are able to communicate effectively to the people they lead and build trust and credibility in the process. Your communication style should be factual, open and concise. If you have a sense of humor, use it to your advantage because it can be a great way to humanize yourself – but be careful with humor – you need to be mindful of cultural sensitivities. This might be a good question to run by your executive director friends if you aren’t used to using humor to illustrate a point or break the ice. Ask your peers to be brutally honest with you about your communication style and whether they think you are funny. If you aren’t steer clear because inappropriate or lame humor will undermine the credibility you are working to build. 

It is also mandatory that you communicate information consistently across your team. It is divisive to tell one person a set of facts and other group something completely different. When you are building trust you need to show that you can be trusted and that you trust others. This means that everyone gets the same story and that there are no “insiders” and “outsiders.” One way to insure a dysfunctional workplace is to create an atmosphere of distrust by dividing up the people you work with and parsing out information. Doing so is almost guaranteed to create a workplace where no one trusts anyone and where the gossip mill runs wild.

The last likeable trait is authenticity. Likeable people are comfortable in their own skin. They understand their strengths, are aware of their weaknesses – which they acknowledge and are working to improve – and they are able to be vulnerable and human. They are uniquely and authentically themselves all the time.

Sometimes it is hard to know if we are truly being our authentic selves. After all, we can seem like one person with friends, one person at work and another person when we are with our families. Leaders have a tough time being vulnerable in a productive way. Too often our vulnerabilities cause us to feel weak and we are inclined to try to hide the parts of ourselves that we don’t like or that don’t fit into our carefully crafted image of who we think we should be as a leader. We often feel just plain unworthy to lead.

But our humanity does not diminish our authority. It actually makes it possible for the staff we are charged with leading to trust us.

Going back to that debate in New Hampshire, the exchange between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama is now seen as a pivotal moment in the 2008 campaign. Mr. Obama was riding a very nice lead going into the debate after a win in the Iowa Democratic caucus. But the debate changed how the people of New Hampshire viewed both candidates. Overnight, Mrs. Clinton was perceived as being more likeable due to her expressions of vulnerability and humanity and Mr. Obama suffered a defeat in part due to his being perceived as aloof, cold and distant from the people he was trying to convince to let him lead the nation.

These lessons of likeability are ones that all who seek to lead should take to heart.

The Art of Leaving - 50 Ways to...

 In his 1975 hit song “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover", Paul Simon writes: 

“The problem is all inside your head

She said to me

The answer is easy if you

Take it logically

I'd like to help you in your struggle

To be free

There must be fifty ways

To leave your lover”*

Of course, the nimble songwriter was referring to ending a romantic relationship and the song became a huge hit because who hasn’t felt trapped inside a dead end romance at some point in their life? We all know the pain and sense of loss that comes when a partnership we’ve invested our heart and soul in comes to an end.

In the same way, the investment of self that most of us give to our professional lives mirrors, and in some cases (perhaps more frequently that we would like to admit) even eclipses that of our personal lives. The common notion that we spend more time with our co-workers than our family members is all too true for many.

Having spent the better part of my adult life working in the nonprofit sector, I readily admit that I am guilty of caring too much about work and not enough about my personal wellbeing. It seems to come with the nonprofit territory as an integral part of the job description….”other duties as assigned… including working impossible hours and meeting outrageous goals.”

This sense of fierce commitment to the organization is especially true for those who bear the responsibility for fundraising. We have been told from the beginning by countless members of our profession, that we are the ones entrusted with safeguarding the organization’s mission.

In her book, Donor Centered Leadership, Penelope Burk, well respected researcher, consultant and fundraising expert, reveals that the average amount of time a fundraiser stays at his or her job is 16 months. Sixteen months!  Let that sink in.

Most reasonable people would agree that amount of job turnover is too high for a group of professionals who give so much of their own time, talent and treasure their jobs. But Burk’s research is solid and even the most skeptical observer of the nonprofit world can read confirmation of these findings revealed the seemingly endless listing of job openings at charities.

It should come as no surprise that the top three reasons for leaving are 1.) To earn a higher salary, 2.) To have more opportunities for professional advancement and 3.) “Due to a clash with the organizational culture.” While the first two are fairly straightforward, the third speaks to the high level of stress fundraisers feel and the lack of support they receive from their executive management, boards of directors and volunteers. Fundraising can feel pretty lonely when no one seems to understand or appreciate what you are up against. Also, a general mindset by boards and organizational leadership that puts pressure on the fundraiser to generate as much unrestricted cash as possible in the shortest amount of time while ignoring the real need to build long term quality relationships with donors for the ultimate sustainability of the organization, fuels the flame that leads the fundraiser to run quickly out the door as if the building were on fire. This is terrible news for the nonprofit sector and for the culture of philanthropy as a whole.

So, what is a dedicated fundraising professional to do except to prepare for the inevitable fact that one day – perhaps not quite as soon as in the next 16 months – but almost certainly at some point in your career, you will decide that you cannot keep trying to spin straw into gold or bear the thought of one more special event that isn’t. 

But, even after you decide to leave and change organizations, the break-up, no matter how amiable or mutually beneficial, is seldom as effortless as the simple rhymes of a song. Another reality uncovered by Burk is that most seasoned fundraising professionals spend very little time looking for their next position – with so many job openings and many consulting firms searching for talent – a new job is almost assured. So while the fundraiser can look forward to a new opportunity with new challenges pretty quickly, no one just packs up their cardboard box of mementos and walks away without looking back.

In my own career I have experienced my own share of job moves and for the most part those top three reasons for leaving hold true for me, too.  Each move has brought financial security and professional advancement that is personally rewarding. I enjoy learning new information and meeting new people, so for me the adjustment period after making a move is relatively short and painless.

The truly hard part has always been the necessity of having to stop caring about my former nonprofit home.  

 Like an old romantic interest, a job at a nonprofit organization can get under your skin. Ask anyone who has ever worked for one and they will tell you the one truth I have learned in more than two decades in this profession – eventually a nonprofit will break your heart.

Okay, now if that sounds overly dramatic to you consider the essence of what we fundraisers do – build relationships. We are the ones who are charged with the task of caring, nurturing, guiding, safeguarding, developing, and connecting individuals to our organization and then asking them to have the trust, confidence and care required to provide support to the organization financially. In our efforts to build donor loyalty to the organization, our hearts naturally get caught up in the process. When your job is to ask people to care, naturally you actually do care, too. We are passionate about our work and this passion is what enables us to do our jobs well.

For those of you reading this who don’t already know, the word “philanthropy” comes from the Greek word “philanthrōpos” – loving mankind – we really do care about the people and organizations we work for – it is literally at the heart of what we do.

My recommendation for those of you who are in the midst of a transitioning from one nonprofit to another or for those who one day will be making that transition (the research clearly tells us that ALL of us will face this situation) is to allow yourself to time grieve but to move on and for goodness sake, stop caring about your former flame.

Specifically, understand that once you leave you are no longer responsible for the wellbeing of the organization or its donors. No matter how the organization might change or what actions the board will take, you cannot continue to care about what direction the organization is moving and you must reserve your opinions and remain mute about whether you personally agree with any changes made after you leave. Concentrate on the fact that you left the organization in a much better state than when you arrived and feel good about a job done well.

This is much harder to do than you might think. After all, you gave your heart and soul to this organization, you asked people to trust YOU and now the board is going to do what…?

I’m not writing about malfeasance here, but rather a difference of opinion. Actual criminal wrong doing is for others more versed in the subject matter to write about.

Your professional response to how things might be changing at your former nonprofit is polite silence. Nope, sorry, can’t say anything about. Remember you are not the nonprofit. It is separate from you no matter neither how closely you identified with it, nor how many hours you spent worrying about it. You are not Paul Revere and cannot race through the night on a mission to warn of a potential harm that you perceive is about to happen. You might think you should, you may even feel a deep sense of responsibility to do so, but no, you just can’t do it. Better to not say anything and just let it go.

“You Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free”*

*© 1975 Words and Music by Paul Simon