With these meetings, staff are left with no doubt about the importance of culture at the organization, and their role in contributing to it. My hope is that this meeting helps create a sense of trust and accountability from the beginning. Now that we’ve grown from five staff in our first year to eighty-two, these meetings take increasing amounts of time, but I think they are one of the most important uses of my time, as they set expectations from the very start of the staff member’s tenure. One former colleague in Ethiopia noted after leaving, “One of the most memorable things for me is that you are the first for me to get a direct induction from the CEO in my more than twelve years of experience with five organizations.”
I hold quarterly “CEO calls” for all staff. Initially, I used this time simply to give quarterly updates, but I found that staff weren’t particularly engaged, and I wasn’t providing much that I couldn’t share via email. So now, on each call, a different volunteer staff member interviews me and is free to ask whatever questions they choose and to solicit questions from other staff in advance of the call. Given our staff work in twelve countries in a range of different functional roles, we tend to get a wide variety of questions and styles. I don’t know the questions in advance, which makes it all the more interesting, and vulnerable for me. Everyone is invited to join the video call, which is recorded for those who can’t join and want to watch it later. This format encourages me to be candid and open, and staff seem to appreciate the opportunity to raise questions about pressing issues.
At the end of the year, we encourage all staff to respond to two anonymized surveys. The first is on my performance, and the second is on the organization as a whole. These have the same questions every year so that we can compare performance year on year. They include a mix of multiple-choice and free-text questions. The results are shared with all staff and the board, along with my responses to the findings, including any action I plan to take based on the information received. The process is uncomfortable, as I feel quite exposed. But I think that the message it sends to all staff—that I’m willing to be evaluated by all of them, and value the feedback—is key to creating a culture of accountability. And over the years, the results have been positive. In the most recent surveys, the highest result was to the question “my colleagues are committed to doing excellent work,” which scored 4.54 out of 5. It was closely followed by “I would recommend the Freedom Fund as a great place to work,” which scored 4.39. The lowest response was on “I believe there are good career opportunities for me at the Freedom Fund” (3.48), in part reflecting the relatively small size of the organization, and very low turnover.
One of the more important things I have done as a leader is to build a close and cohesive senior leadership team (SLT) with high levels of communication and trust. This helps ensure we have rich and productive discussions, leading to effective decisions. During our weekly senior leadership team meetings, we often talk about the culture at the organization and ways in which we can build and reinforce it. We regularly share notes of these meetings with all staff, to demystify the SLT and share the thinking behind major decisions.
Across the organization, we engage staff in key workplace decisions. For example, when looking at flexible working in our London and New York offices post–COVID lockdowns, we polled all staff on their preferences. We don’t make decisions simply based on the number of votes, as there are usually other institutional factors at play, but we find the information highly useful, and a way of involving all staff in important discussions.
I personally engage with all staff across the organization in order to affirm their value and keep an open flow of communication. Pre- and post-lockdowns, this meant traveling on a regular basis to all our offices and program countries. During lockdowns, it meant scheduling one-on-one calls with each staff member, for each of the three waves of COVID-19.
I try to attend staff gatherings and celebrations. I want to show that I’m not exempt, disinterested, or inaccessible and that I’m interested in knowing staff at a social level, always within appropriate boundaries, of course. But I tend not to stay late, so there’s space for staff to also engage without the CEO present. No matter how approachable you attempt to be, you can’t avoid the fact that being CEO creates an inherent power differential. It’s better to acknowledge this than be in denial.
The motivation behind these practices is to create and sustain a culture of psychological safety, in pursuit of our organization’s purpose. They are designed for our organization and may not readily translate to yours. But the most important point here is not the specific behaviors but the value of being intentional about the culture you want to shape and influence, and identifying ways to bring staff along with you on that journey.
I’ve talked at length on culture because it is key to everything you want your organization to achieve. There is, or should be, a virtuous circle between your purpose and your culture, reinforcing each other. Nonprofits have a superpower: the motivating energy of a good cause.
A good culture helps you to be bold in how you approach your ambitious goals. It creates space for important discussions on challenging issues, i.e., issues that might elicit a range of perspectives and understandings within the organization. For example, if you don’t have a good culture, discussions about diversity, equity, and inclusion can become disruptive. But a good culture allows the opportunity to work through issues thoughtfully and productively, and arrive at outcomes that benefit the organization as a whole and advance its mission—as we’ll see in the next chapter.
INVEST IN YOUR LEADERSHIP TEAM
A CEO who builds and works effectively with a powerful team will always outperform one acting on their own. In larger nonprofits that team will be your senior leadership team. Of course, not all nonprofits are large enough to merit a formal leadership team. But, even if you don’t have a formal team, you’ll likely have one or more direct reports, who can make up an informal leadership team.
All the evidence from organizational theory and practice is that high performing teams produce better outcomes than high-performing leaders acting alone.* And the reason for that is obvious—effective teams give a leader more options and better information and allow them to test ideas and options and identify the most robust outcomes. Such teams have other benefits too. They make a CEO’s role a little less lonely, as team members can share some of the burden of decision-making and allow a leader to work through their concerns with others invested in the outcome. Team members also help get buy-in across the organization, bringing their own teams along with them on contentious decisions.
Yet new CEOs often shy away from building empowered teams. Too often they are reluctant to share the burden of leadership, worrying that it will be seen as a sign of weakness and insecurity. New to the leadership role, these CEOs frequently seek to establish their authority by making it clear that they are the sole decision-maker. Or, if they have teams in place, they don’t lean into them but treat their colleagues as implementers of their decisions, not fellow decision-makers. I understand the tendency, having been guilty of it in the past myself. But I can only reiterate that the most successful leaders are those who understand that tapping the strengths of an effective team is a demonstration of confidence and security, not the opposite. And one that will lead to better decisions and hence greater impact over time. I know that one of the joys of my role at the Freedom Fund is to have an outstanding leadership team with whom I can openly discuss challenges and fears, and thereby arrive at better decisions, with greater confidence.
HIRING THE RIGHT PEOPLE AND LETTING GO THE WRONG PEOPLE
To build really effective teams, you need to get the right people in place. There are three aspects to this: you need to recruit the best staff, keep them, and let go those who are not right for the organization. As the leadership expert Jim Collins frames it: “You start by focusing on the First Who principle—do whatever you can to get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people into the right seats.”26 Nonprofit leaders can struggle with this, especially when it comes to the firing of staff. But your organization exists to make a difference to those it serves, and that requires a laser-like focus on employing the right staff.
What do I mean by the “right” staff? Too often at nonprofits, hires are made simply by looking for someone with the strongest technical expertise or experience. But other characteristics matter, too, especially for roles that require leadership or representation. Would the person represent your organization well? Do they embody your organizational values? Do they have personal experience of the issues you work on? Are they thoughtful about what effective management looks like, and will they help to contribute to your culture and the success of your staff? Management abilities, in particular, are often overlooked in favor of impressive credentials or degrees, or a deep commitment to mission. But poor management can do a great deal of damage to morale and reputation and bring down an entire team.
Recruitment is hard even at the best of times. Many CEOs say it is their biggest concern.27 Nonprofits have the added challenge that they usually can’t or won’t compete with the private sector on salary. But they have the advantage of having an inspiring cause with which to motivate applicants.
It’s very difficult to know if a hire will be a good fit based on a round or two of interviews, a written test, their resume, and reference checks. Research shows that structured interview questions (where candidates are asked a consistent set of questions with clear criteria to assess the quality of responses)* are more effective than unstructured interviews (a series of interview questions that vary in nature and order from candidate to candidate) and reference checks and years of work experience.28
The reality, though, is, however robust your recruitment processes are, you usually won’t know if you made the right hire until a few months into the job. And, if your new hire is not right for the role, your responsibility—once you have engaged in good-faith efforts to address performance issues or find a better-suited role—is to let that staff member go, in the interests of your organization and that staff member—i.e., to “get the wrong person off the bus.” I often think this is the primary CEO recruitment responsibility. Given you can’t conclusively judge performance in advance, you can’t really be held accountable for flaws in hiring (assuming you have a thoughtful, structured process). There is little point in beating yourself up when you hire the wrong person. But you can certainly be held accountable for not taking action once it becomes clear that your staff member is not fit for the job.
Many of us struggle with this, particularly in the nonprofit sector, which often likes to think of itself as less ruthless than the business sector. But I don’t think there’s anything gentle about keeping on someone who is struggling, impacting your organization’s ability to carry out its mission and undermining its ability to deliver for those you serve. Keeping them on is a disservice to them and your team. And while a thoughtful performance review process is essential, to see if the staff member in question can be supported into performing more effectively or transferred into a role they are better suited for, we often engage in endless processes to avoid making the hard decision to fire someone.
Moreover, inaction can have an opportunity cost. Retaining failing staff can demoralize other staff members and require them to spend more time than they should be compensating for others’ non-performance. Inaction also stops you from getting someone better in the role. Some of the leadership decisions I have most regretted are not moving quickly enough to take action when I had decided someone should get off the organizational bus. I have felt chastened on those occasions when staff opened up about the toll of working with the departed colleague (usually their supervisor) and how they didn’t feel in a position to raise concerns against their direct boss.
MOTIVATING AND RETAINING STAFF
Once you have the staff you want, the challenge is to keep them engaged and committed. A good culture is key, which is why I’ve spent so much time exploring what that means. So is intrinsic motivation, and this is where well-run nonprofits have an inherent advantage over their private-sector counterparts. Intrinsic motivation is the drive to engage in an activity for its own sake—driven by internal factors such as personal interest, enjoyment, or satisfaction—rather than for the sake of an external reward, such as a generous salary. So, working to address hunger and homelessness will be intrinsically more motivating for most people than trying to sell more widgets, for example. While it has long been understood that rewards, particularly financial ones, are a key motivation for staff, more recent psychological research posits that intrinsic motivation is of equal or greater importance. This is important, as most nonprofits struggle to offer the kind of salaries on offer at their for-profit counterparts but are very well placed to offer meaningful work. One recent US study of corporate employees found that 90 percent were willing to trade a percentage of their lifetime earnings for greater meaning at work. And on average they would be willing to forgo 23 percent of their entire future lifetime earnings in order to have a job that was always meaningful.29
Key drivers of intrinsic motivation are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This is known as self-determination theory.30 Autonomy is people’s need to feel that they have choices and are in control of their behaviors and goals. Competence is the need for people to feel effective at meeting everyday challenges, demonstrating skill over time, and feeling a sense of growth and flourishing. Relatedness is people’s need to care about and be cared about by others, and to feel that they are contributing to something greater than themselves.31
The importance of autonomy, competence, and relatedness can readily be understood when debating post-pandemic hybrid work. Many organizations have struggled over whether to mandate a return to the office full-time, provide complete flexibility to work from home, or something in between. The challenge has been exacerbated by the fact that, during lockdowns, working from home was the only option, so for staff who prefer that option, a direction to return to the office for any day feels like a reduction in a benefit already enjoyed. On the other hand, being fully remote can make it more difficult to build connectivity and a sense of belonging.
As we were working out the best approach for the Freedom Fund’s offices in London and New York, we gave thought to not just autonomy, but also competence and relatedness. Many staff commented on the loss of connection they experienced when working entirely remotely. Many noted that their work benefited when they could come together in person as teams. But, of course, many also valued the flexibility that working from home provided, and the time they gained from not commuting. We polled all staff on preferences for a return to the office (encouraging a sense of autonomy) and most preferred the option of two days in the office. We settled on this, with a choice for all managers (in consultation with their teams) over which two days, and highly flexible hours on those days they are in the office. We’ve also sought out other ways to promote a sense of connection, through social events, off-sites, and learning opportunities to encourage a sense of flourishing over time. The arrangement is not perfect, but the outcome appears to have been welcomed and supported by most staff and contributed to ongoing high performance.
Having the right staff and a good culture also means having a diverse team and a culture that welcomes all staff. There is a lot to unpack with all of this, so we will devote the whole of the next chapter to this topic.
TEAM ACTION POINTS
Prioritize Culture and Recruit and Retain the Right Staff
Prioritize building a good culture for your organization as a whole, and for teams within it.
Understand that a good culture is one of psychological safety, and that is inclusive and impact-focused, and supports thoughtful risk-taking.
Recognize the importance of the CEO modeling the desired behaviors as part of building culture.
When it comes to recruiting and retaining staff, “get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people into the right seats.”
Lean into the power of purpose to motivate staff. Recognize that autonomy, competence, and relatedness are key drivers of intrinsic motivation for staff.
* Amy Edmondson, “How Fearless Organizations Succeed,” Strategy + Business, November 14, 2018, https://www.strategy-business.com/article/How-Fearless-Organizations-Succeed. Some conservative critics see psychological safety as a form of “coddling” of employees, leading to a lack of discipline and rigor. But this fundamentally misunderstands the concept. At its heart, it is about encouraging risk-taking, not closing it down, by ensuring that staff are encouraged to air views openly and contribute to better decisions and outcomes.
* See a short but excellent book on the behaviors of dysfunctional teams, and how to respond; I recommend Patrick Lencioni, Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002).
* To give an example, two leadership books I’ve been reading while writing this chapter have the power of teams as the central thesis of their accounts on leadership. See Henry Engelhardt, Be a Better Boss (London: Whitefox Publishing, 2023); and Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code: The Secret of Highly Successful Groups (New York: Ballantine Books, 2019).
* Work sample tests are also good predictors if the job lends itself to giving the candidate a piece of work similar to what they would do in the job. Some jobs (such as communications roles) lend themselves more to this than others. Well-designed cognitive tests are sometimes regarded as an effective tool, but some tend to discriminate against women and non-white male candidates, rendering them largely ineffective.
