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Heather Carpenter has served as a Nonprofit Manager, Consultant, Speaker and Trainer to nonprofit organizations in California and Illinois for over 6 years. She earned her Masters of Management in Nonprofit Administration from North Park University in Chicago, Illinois and is currently pursuing her PhD in Leadership at the University of San Diego. 
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New here? Employee Evolution is a blog written by Ryan Healy. Ryan is a Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist, the webs #1 social network for young professionals. Ryan speaks with organizations on best practices for recruiting and retaining Generation Y and how to effectively use social media to reach your target market. To contact Ryan, please visit our contact page.
I wrote this post originally on my nonprofit leadership blog but I think it is relevant to all of us. I am tired of working for baby boomer workaholics who don’t make an effort to be better supervisors. As we–Gen Xers and Millennials become supervisors–we can improve the workplace by being better supervisors!!
Nonprofit Management and Supervision
“I attended this amazing workshop last week about Management and Supervision put on by the San Francisco Bay Area Young Nonprofit Professionals Network. It was great to hear from my peers about how they manage and supervise their staff. This workshop provided me an opportunity to think about how I want to be a better manager. My favorite speaker at the workshop was Vini Bhansali, Program Director at Juma Ventures. She was so inspiring!!
She encouraged us to create an equitable culture, a culture where passionate people thrive. To hire talented individuals and create systems for individual growth and accountability; provide outlets for communications where staff can bring to the surface underlying conflicts and values and a culture where reflection is accepted. She is very successful at creating a team/collaborative working environment at Juma Ventures.
A couple of other great points I heard during the workshop.
- Not everyone is cut out to be a supervisor. One must make an effort to be a good supervisor and truly enjoy supervising your staff.
- Supervision takes self-awareness, knowing what you are good at.
- Communicate with staff and pay attention to subtle changes in behavior.
- Work to bridge the gaps between different nonprofit departments, finance working with HR, HR working with Development, Development working with Program etc.
- Supervision is not about power over, it is about power with.
- The leader’s role is the facilitator.
- Supervision is not about task mastery, it is about working with people!
As busy nonprofit managers, it is really easy for us to focus on the task at hand and on accomplishing the mission of our organizations. However, good leaders in successful organizations spend as much time, if not more on working with and encouraging their staff then they do on accomplishing their work. I learned from this workshop I need to spend more time listening to my staff and find out more about their personal and professional needs.
We are trying to provide equitable opportunities for our clients and constituents, however are we truly making an effort to provide an equitable environment to our staff? I know it sure isn’t easy, but it is worth it!!”
Great points! I’ll repeat what was said, just worded differently.
People should NEVER be promoted to management just because they excelled as an individual contributor.
When a person is promoted to manager, they should have already done almost everything a manager does, except hire and fire people. They can do it as a project leader, team leader, or even a hall monitor (OK that’s stretching it). But they should at least have demonstrated some leadership skills.
Managing is mostly about people. It’s not about whatever tasks you did befor you were a manager. You must be an excellent people-person. You must like being around people. You must know how to read social cues. You must have a good memory for names, faces, spouses and kids names.
All of which explains why I don’t want to be, and never have been, a manager
Fantastic post - I love the points too, but have to challenge Scott on one thing…
I’ve read in a few your comments on this blog that you have no desire to lead. Of course that’s fine, yet I’m always slightly irked by those who emphatically state they don’t want to do something, but then go on to critique those who step up and give it a try. In my experience, some employees hold leaders overly-accountable. I can appreciate a desire to have a leader who has ‘done it all’ for the company. It’s a smart concept and a great way to build a leaders’ knowledge and credibility in an organization. But at the end of the day, a manager is a human being too. And while I agree with you that they need very special skills sets that center around working well with people, let’s also accept that they are going to make mistakes.
Millennials and Gen Xers will soon get their chance to change and improve the way managers work in America. I’m looking forward to it! But given we haven’t actually led before as a generation, we should be humble in our efforts because we are definitely going to fall down along the way. Show me one generation that didn’t try to improve upon the way the generations before them did things? That’s progress. However, we should also remember that this won’t be a simple fix and we’ll make plenty of mistakes as we go.
I know there are a lot of bad leaders out there, and with shows like “The Office” showcasing management in the worst possible light, more and more people don’t want to lead. Yet, we still need to recognize that even leaders are learning on-the-job. They deserve a break from the criticism once in a while. And, if we have a leader that does a good job, we should be sure to let them know it - our appreciation will mean a lot to them…
Leadership is about using the right tools at the right time, setting expectations, and then allowing your employees, with proper guidance and resources, the opportunity to complete the task at hand.
I have known people in leadership roles who didn’t talk that much, wasn’t necessarily the most social in the group, and wasn’t exactly an “excellent people-person.” He didn’t need to be. He knew us, our abilities, and our roles, and he knew how to delegate and give us what we needed to complete the job at hand.
I agree the manager/supervisor doesn’t need to be a doer. The manager doesn’t need to be the one jumping in to solve every problem. However, a great leader will know what tools (workers) to use at the right time, he’ll know how to be clear and set expectations, and he’ll make sure that his workers have what they need to meet those expectations.
It seems so simple, because if the person managing me has the above traits, I can think of no reason I could complain. But the problem, as it seems to me, is lack of trust going down the chain, and the ability to let go. While there certainly are managers who do not give enough direction, by far I think the biggest problem is micromanagement. All too often the leader tries to stick his hand into every pot, because, I think, they are uncomfortable letting go. They know they cannot delegate responsibility, so they have to be in control of everything. This is the downfall of many potential leaders.
A second problem, nearly as important, is setting expectations without proper feedback, and expecting results without providing the tools/ability to deliver those results. Over deliver, under perform. I think some leaders are unable to perform a realistic assessment of what can be expected, so their expectations far exceed what the worker is equipped to deliver.
These are the two biggest problems with supervisors, and while you can teach these to an extent, the subtle traits we look for in a leader cannot always be taught. The easiest answer seems to be that not all people were cut out to be leaders.
Just to clarify a few things for J.T.
My personality is such that often find myself playing the “Devil’s Advocate” on many issues, even to the point of arguing a point of view I don’t necessarily support, just to examine all sides. I sometimes get so caught up in this role that I appear overly-critical, so I’ll have to work on my tone.
However, I do think I have a “horse in the race” when it comes to providing some criticism of management. That’s because I am one of the managed. While I can’t manage people, I do know how I need to be managed.
I certainly understand that managers are learning on the job. We all do. But I’ve seen too many people promoted to management who seemed to be learning EVERYTHING on the job. In today’s flat organizations, there is little room for some intermediate level, where someone can be given the authority accorded a leader, but still kept under the wing of the manager. Instead, people seem to make the direct jump from individual contributor to manager, and then flounder for the first 6 months until they figure out what to do. I think companies need to have a more structured approach to developing managers, rather than this ’sink-or-swim’ approach. That’s the point I was making.
Thanks for listening.
This is great- I work in the nonprofit world too, but you’re right that these tips apply to everyone. I especially liked the point about how “good leaders in successful organizations spend as much time, if not more on working with and encouraging their staff then they do on accomplishing their work.” I think to be a nonprofit manager is possibly one of the hardest jobs.
Take my boss and the Executive Director of my nonprofit- every day he makes the rounds to our multiple locations and sits down with each one of us to listen and encourage. Each of our positions are so different as well- I am in the fundraising section managing 50+ volunteer business leaders, while my co-worker might deal with about 100 clients a day. The fact that our Executive Director spends the time following up with each of us and understands our wide variety of working styles (we have boomers, gen x, gen y- the whole gamut!) is tremendous. It is true that he is not good at getting work done himself and does stuff last minute, but I’ve never had a better manager.
Thanks Scott. It’s funny, I was just in a discussion this weekend about the need to return to the days of having the opportunity to be an apprentice. (Not like the show on TV of course.) Our business models have become so focused on profits and the best way to squeeze more revenues per employee that we’ve scrubbed out any opportunity for people to be given time to learn to be a good leader. The Baby Boomer managers have been so busy trying to reach the financial goals set for them, they’ve had no time to spend coaching, a.k.a. succession planning. Only now is this becoming a hot topic because they are getting ready to retire in the next 5-10 years and are realizing they have no one groomed to take over. A recent survey said that executives claim they want to develop their employees internally, but when asked if they’d prefer to hire talent from the outsides with the qualifications they need instead of developing/promoting from within, 62% said they’d rather hire the person from the outside. I think that is reflective of the lack of time and energy they have left to do coaching. I’ve seen lots of managers from the older generations who are ‘burned out’ and that leaves no motivation to invest in coaching their people. These are the same people who said in the survey that 65% of them need to work at least 41-60 hours/week to get their jobs done. It really is time to invest more in choosing and developing our leaders.
If anyone has an interest, there’s a cool Point of View paper by Deloitte research called, “It’s 2008: Do you know where your talent is?” It’s 20 pages long and outlines in detail the leadership shortage that is coming in the next 5-10 years: www.deloitte.com/dtt/research/0,1015,sid%3D26551&cid%3D71444,00.html
If you want a shorter summary, check this one out too: “Corporate America: Prepare for a Talent Drought Now, Or Pay Later.” However, please know I’m biased about this one because I wrote it…http://www.jtodonnell.com/wordpress/?p=14
Not all baby boomers are workaholics. I’m smiling because I’m a 60 year old IT professional who has spent over 20 years managing or supervising. Supervising energetic, competent, professionals is definitely 90 percent psychology. One must find out how they are motivated, create an environment where creativity is appreciated, but also where goals are met and rules are respected. I agree that many are promoted to supervision because they were good technicians. When you do that you lose your good technician and may create a bad manager. Managers must not do the work, they must help the team do the work. Planning is so important. Having a good attitude is key. And the ability to intervene when necessary comes with experience.
I think the biggest issue here is the demands placed on managers. Upper level employees, who are usually managers, often have the biggest workload. This should somewhat be expected because they have the most experience and can delegate, however this huge workload often detracts from the time and energy they are able to put into actually managing their employees. I asked my father about this problem and he said that when he was younger managers spent much more time mentoring and training young people because that was their number one job responsbilility. Today, everything is about the bottom line and managers barely have an opportunity to breathe, much less teach. At the very least, managers should be able to take a break and go out for a long lunch with an apprentice, rather than sitting at their desks taking phone calls or running around in circles to get to the next meeting.
-Ryan
I think the biggest issue here is the demands placed on managers.
I can only speak for my specific situation, but as I have daily interaction with the two immediate levels above me, I am afforded an interesting view on their roles. I would say that while they do have demanding schedules, they compound this by being micromanagers, thereby making the demand seem that much greater. Some managers would rather sit on their workers conference calls a couple times a day “just to make sure it gets done” instead of of taking care of other priorities.
This is not uncommon in the least. And this is not to take away from their roles, I have no specific desire to fill that management slot, but the 55 hours a week that some managers work could easily be trimmed to the standard 40 if efficient methods were in place, and if employees were properly utilized. I don’t feel bad in the least when I’m leaving everyday, only to see a manager get his “second kick coffee” because they’ll be there hours longer. To say it’s by choice would be slightly incorrect, because they don’t necessarily know how to be a great leader.
Managers shouldn’t confuse working harder with working smarter. This isn’t Rudy, hard work can’t always make up for the proper technique/skill.
I’m a 64 year old boomer who makes his living helping people to become better supervisors and leaders. My background includes management and delivery of services in nonprofit, business, and academic environments. Looks like Heather knows what she’s talking about, but what she says is not just for Millennials — it’s for everyone. For those of you who would prefer not to be managers — too bad. If you’re around long enough, you’re going to be drafted into that service, so I would suggest you use your time to learn the best parts of management and avoid the worst parts.
Thanks for all the awesome comments. Glad that some boomers are responding too. It was great to hear from Rebecca about her good boss!! I can also certainly relate to what Nathan said about a large problem with micromanagers. In some cases I’ve be micromanaged by bosses who were afraid to give up control and trust their staff. They thought they could do everything better–maybe so, however that isn’t the point, the point is teaching and mentoring your staff. Getting to a point where they feel comfortable handing off projects.
I’ll never forget what I learned in one of my business classes and it works!! Manage people based on the way they want to be managed. Some people will need and want to be managed more than others–and some people like and need that support. However with some people, you can just hand off high level projects to and won’t need to follow up with them until the project is completed.
I too used to be like ScottM, except my thing was I didn’t want to ever be an Executive Director and run a nonprofit because of all my bad boss experiences. However, now that I’ve done more consulting and seen good bosses out there, I know that when the time is right I’ll be an Executive Director and continue to work really hard at being a good boss. Plus, I’ll probably be humbled and be more sympathetic towards the bad bosses I’ve had and all they were trying to balance and manage.