How to not be a bad boss (Supervision Series: Part 1)

Think for a moment - who were the bosses you’ve had in your career who treated you right? Who took care of you? Who helped you on your journey? Who provided leadership? Insight? Support?

And consider as well - who were the bosses that … didn’t do those things?

It’s a hard truth about our sector, but for many people, this will ring true: the leadership we experience in nonprofits is often not what we need. There are entire spinoff industries based on this, coaching you to manage up, to prevent burnout, to fix burnout, to survive whatever gets thrown at you.

I just don’t think it needs to be like this.

I also don’t think this is the fault of individuals. Your bad boss is likely not an evil villain; they’re just someone else who is burnt out and overwhelmed. This is a structural issue that shows up in many ways and in many nonprofits. I have some anxiety about posting these blogs because I think this is one of the places we often refuse to go in nonprofit life. It's one of the hardest truths to look at. But I think we do ourselves and our staff a disservice by keeping quiet on the structural issues and instead cosmetically adjusting with simple professional development for leaders that doesn't penetrate to the real issues.

This blog is part 1 of 2 about supervising nonprofit staff. Today, we’ll talk about supervising individuals, and the next one will be about teams. The goal: establish a common ground for why nonprofit staff management is so challenging, and chart a different path forward.

There are three main reasons why I believe supervision of individual staff people often falls short of where it needs to be in nonprofits.

Reason 1: Nonprofit supervisors don’t often differentiate between supervision, management, and mentoring

This is the simplest of the three reasons. One thing I consistently coach my own staff on and the people I train through Nonprofit Visions is that you must be more specific with the tools you’re using when you have power over other people. When you’re in charge, you’re responsible for getting the work done, but you’re also responsible for the wellbeing of your staff. Those two things can sometimes even feel like they’re in conflict! 

Here’s a simple way to consider it:

• Management - tasks getting done

• Supervision - making sure your staff meet expectations

• Mentoring - ensuring the development of your staff

We’re always doing all three of these things. But we have to know which one we’re doing in the moment, and we also have to make sure they’re in balance.

Management is necessary to complete the program and project goals. These are the deliverables we must meet, the events we must run, the tabling metrics we must meet. And it’s everyone’s responsibility to meet them. You’re part of it, and so is your team. This is making sure people show up on time, that the event is planned correctly, that everyone has up-to-date laptops, etc.

Supervision is how we make sure each member of our team is equipped effectively to do what they need to do. Do they need coaching on that education strategy? Do they know how to run the electronic medical record system? Do they code their receipts right? These are all the questions we ask when we are supervising. They can seem, perhaps, dull, but there’s power and autonomy to be gained when a person knows what they’re supposed to be doing and how it’s supposed to be done.

Mentoring is often the trickiest of the three. This is stewarding the journey of our staff such that they’re able to reach their goals in this job, at this organization, and in their career. This is where we do professional development, where we think about long term goals, and where we consider if staff people are a good match for what they’re doing - if what they want to do aligns with what they do. 

All three of these are necessary, but given these definitions you can imagine what goes wrong when they’re jumbled up.

Consider, for example, a staff person who is consistently not meeting goals for outreach. What’s the problem? If you are coaching them on how to talk to people 1:1, but the problem is that outreach happens at the wrong times of the day, then we don’t have a supervision problem, we have a management problem. If you’re trying to motivate them by offering a promotion within the program given better performance, but their dream is to move into another program in the organization, then we have a mentoring problem, not a supervision problem. 

I strongly believe this structure could resolve a massive amount of staff management problems in nonprofits. But it’s not happening in a vacuum, and there are two critical additional reasons for management challenges in nonprofits to consider.

Reason 2: Nonprofit leaders were not themselves previously appropriately supervised.

I work with many nonprofits, and I see this everywhere - the people who make it to leadership often did so not because they were especially prepared to manage people, but because they survived the churn of nonprofit turnover. In nonprofits, the turnover rate is around 19%, markedly higher than the for profit world, which experiences turnover at around 12%. Retention of staff is consistently identified as a challenge by nonprofits. 

This turnover wreaks havoc on leadership pipelines, and who stays at an organization is often not defined by who is most capable or who is the highest performing; rather, the people who stay have some other external factor that helps them stay. Some examples I’ve heard and seen:

• A person who can endure a low salary because their partner makes enough in a for profit role to sustain their family and finances

• People who have higher tolerances for burnout and exhaustion, outlasting others who leave because the “why” - the mission - is not enough to sustain their mental health

• People who have tighter networks within the organization that help to insulate them from the turbulence of nonprofit life, fairly or unfairly

• A person who can sustain a low paycheck because they still live with their parents and can save on cost of living

• People working a program that has more consistent funding, so they don’t have to worry about layoffs, furloughs, demotions, reassignments, or cuts in pay compared to their colleagues in another part of the organization

All of these have solutions - which maybe we’ll have time for in a future blog - but they are all reasons that I have seen and heard about time and time again in nonprofit spaces. They also functionally, very often, result in a person being promoted simply because they…survived! Not because of their skill or capability, or even in some cases their commitment or desire. Just because they are who is left. And while no one is to be blamed or shamed for any of these reasons, it can also be true that these are not effective reasons to promote someone. 

And if you’re thinking something along the lines of…

…bear with me. I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad about how they got where they are, and anyone in any position is capable of growing into the leader they need to be. But if your promotion was a result of you surviving, not you thriving, then this is the place we need to start. And, if your boss was promoted for a reason like this, it’s an essential way to understand the lay of the land and how you can maneuver within it.

I don’t think of this as a kind of original sin. It does not indicate that a person cannot be effective in their leadership role. But it does require some humility and introspection to determine where one’s gaps are. Take some time to consider - what skills don’t I have? What do good managers do that I don’t do? And maybe even - is this the job I want to have?

And if it’s your boss, listen…you’re in a tough spot. I’m not a “managing up” advocate. You don’t get paid enough to do that. It might be time to consider if that leader can give you what you need. If not, do you have the tolerance to stay in that situation? Or might it be time to leave? It’s ok to do what’s best for you. I promise.

Reason 3: Nonprofits are not subject to consequences for money problems in the same way as for profits

As I got my Professional Management Certification (shout out to my study buddy Mike!), one thing that was deeply enlightening to me was what happens in for profit spaces if the profit isn’t made. I’ve worked my whole career in nonprofits, so I’m used to falling short, working to make ends meet, and keeping things as they are because another grant or donation will probably save us, eventually, we hope, probably, I promise, just keep working a little bit more and stretching to make ends meet, etc.

But in the for profit world, if a team consistently underperforms, loses money, or has high turnover, there are consequences. People are fired. The project is cancelled. The business itself could be closed!

I’ve seen and heard of a great many sins in nonprofit financial management - none of them raising to the level of anything fraudulent or illegal, but many of them certainly being bad business decisions. And I don’t think this is just a quirk of being mission-oriented. I think this is a structural lack of commitment to accountability to reform underperforming programs and projects, usually because leaders don't have to.

To be honest, I’ve run some of these underperforming programs myself - programs where we needed to be doing better and weren’t. And I feel very complicated about the reality of those situations, now that I have some distance and (hopefully!) wisdom. I can see opportunities supervisors had to have hard conversations with me about the business reality of my programs. It would have been difficult, definitely embarrassing as well, but I can’t help but wonder how much better things would have ended up if we had done what needed to be done, and how much faster I would have grown as a leader. This is why I have such a strong commitment to building that alarm system in myself. When things are going wrong, when there isn’t enough money for what we’re doing, something has to change.

And what does this mean in terms of supervision? It means that supervisors and program managers can have too much leeway - there’s too much opportunity to slide. We can get away with a lot as leaders without getting in any trouble at all, and we pass the cost onto those we supervise.

“Sorry team! No raises this year - it’s just not in the budget.”

“I can’t get you a new tablet for tabling. Can you bring your personal one from home?”

“Overtime is off the table. This is what’s expected of you.”

“If you really care about the mission, you’ll do what I’m asking.”

This contributes to a cycle of underperforming. You underperform, the program underperforms, and your individual staffers underperform. The lack of real accountability drives wasteful supervisory relationships, not meaningful supervisory relationships. Burnout, bitterness, and wastefulness rule the day.

For leaders, there have to be consequences. They have to be real. Otherwise we’re not telling the full truth to ourselves, our funders, or our staff.

We’ve covered a lot, and there’s much more I could say, but the primary, main, essential, critical, foundational, cornerstone thing I need you to take from this is blog is this: whether you agreed with any of what I’ve said or not, I’m begging you to take a moment to consider how you can be better to your staff.

Every single supervisor, leader, manager, whatever you call yourself, has room to grow. We always have room to grow. Your introspection, your growth, your improvement will make your teams’ lives easier. It will also, I promise!, make your life easier.

And remember, it's also not just about any one leaders failures or room to grow; this is a structural issue across the sector, and treating it as an individual disease will keep us from recognizing it's actually endemic.

Next week: supervising teams. 

Together

Everyone

Achieves

More

… or do they?

Just kidding, lol. But, worth discussing how true that is for you! And how you can make it more true for your teams. Stay tuned.

P.S. This blog is certified AI-free, and partly inspired by Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Thank you to that book and author for helping me get my butt off the couch and into my office chair to write these ideas I’ve had for ages.