EP 20: Are We Speaking The Same (Organizational) Language?

April 20, 2023

Show Notes

Do you find it challenging to streamline communication within your organization?

Do your team members have different perspectives on how information should flow?

It might be time to establish a shared language and approach for communication. After all, everything that takes place within an organization can be traced back to the countless conversations you and your team engage in regularly. 

Understanding the importance of effective communication within an organization is crucial for its success. By figuring out how your team collectively wants to share, listen, and connect with one another, you can pave the way for a more unified organization. 

In this episode, Tucker and Sarah explore practical frameworks and tools to help you align your team around a common communication style, fostering stronger connections and enhancing collaboration. 

Learn how to generate buy-in from your team members and harness the power of open dialogue to drive your organization’s mission forward. By developing a common language around your approach to communication, you can overcome the barriers created by differing worldviews and work together more effectively.

Listener Links/Resources:
Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux – https://amzn.to/3yHy3DP

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganthiele/

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oH5R3Rg1hbSv-e8okLsVLgDlJ652TSfj&usp=drive_copy

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Transcript

Tucker:Welcome to THRIVERS, nonprofit Leadership for the Next Normal. I am your host, Tucker Wannamaker, the CEO of THRIVE IMPACT, and our mission is to solve nonprofit leader burnout. Burnout is the enemy of creating positive change, and we want to connect you with impactful mission-driven leaders and ideas so that you can learn to THRIVE in today’s nonprofit.
Today’s topic, well, I say this literally every single time because I actually am excited about every topic, but today’s topic is something that Sarah and I are gonna go through from our own learning. We just wrapped up a four-part series called our Culture Energizer, with a whole group of nonprofit leaders.
Sarah, it’s good to be here on the podcast with you. By the way, Sarah, to you, this workshop process was really illuminating even for us, around different ways that we can frame up communication, like as if we really think about how we create change inside of any organization. It all boils down to how we communicate with each other.
It boils down to conversations that we have. It boils down to some of these interpersonal type of experiences many times that go down. Sarah, curious your reflections, at a high level, on this Culture Energizer workshop process that we had before we hop into some of the pains around this.

Sarah: Yeah, it was super interesting.
You know, we were really lucky to engage a few experts to build this with us in the HR space. And, you know, communications was one of the core pieces, but we created this beautiful drawing, which we’ll put in the show notes for y’all, which essentially looked at culture as a garden and had kind of three core flowers to it, which are the pillars of great culture. The first was strong management practices. The second was flexible and supportive policies. The third was really open communications, which we’ll hit today really, and then watering and giving nutrients to those things are empathy and equity. And I just loved this frame that this brilliant HR specialist named Megan, who came from Story Corps, lent to us. And I thought it was a really impactful series around what we can all do to make our organization stronger places to be.
Tucker:Yeah, it really was an impactful workshop series, and we’ll make sure and link to Megan and her LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well. But shout out to you, Megan. You were the one, I remember the room that we were in together on Zoom anyway, where you drew out some of this initial structure. So just a shout out to you and your brilliance around some of this work.
So, Sarah, as you shared, we talked about those different components: strong management practices, flexible supportive policies, and open communication. Let’s dig into open communication a little bit because again, all these components are important, but you know, the way we communicate really affects a lot of things. I mean, we all see this in our own individual lives. You know, the way I communicate with my own spouse or with my own kids, or the way that you and I interact with each other and communicate, and how do we actually do that?
What are the types of questions that we ask ourselves? How do we have transparent communication with each other? The way we communicate affects quite literally everything in our lives unless we’re under a rock and not really doing anything with other people or with other teams. So, I’m curious, Sarah, as we think about this in our typical process here of what are pains or issues that nonprofit leaders are noticing right now, and even some of the stories that we’ve experienced, pains that nonprofit leaders are experiencing right now around open communication.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s such a good question. And, you know, I actually have a story around this that we recently encountered. So you and I were both recently on a meeting with one of the nonprofit leaders that we support, and, you know, this nonprofit leader, she is working to shift the culture of her board and really move the way board members communicate with her.
And she communicates with board members and board members communicate with board members, and she was mentioning specifically a conversation they were having about reporting and what was gonna be shared in relation to progress of a plan they’re working on and some of the tension that came up around what some of the board members wanted to be shared versus what this leader wanted to be shared.
And as she was unpacking this story, what really came up for me that we went through in the culture organization is this idea that we all have different ideas about what to communicate to whom and for what purpose based on our lived experience, our age, literally where we come from, and the influences we’ve had.
And if we’re not explicit about our preferences or even our world views around communications, we can create a lot of tension, right? For ourselves and for others because it feels like, hey, wait, I want to know something and you’re not telling it to me, but really it’s more complicated than that, right? It’s really that we see communication differently, and so I think that’s one of the biggest pains, is that we’re not clear that our communications preferences are coming out of worldviews, and we’re not articulating those worldviews clearly in a way that will help move the conversation forward. So that’s what I was seeing. What about you?
Tucker:You know, Sarah, what just that made me think about is the phrase we use inside of THRIVE IMPACT, which many of you probably heard, but is “blame the process and not the person.” Yeah, but I was thinking about when you were sharing about many of us are not clear about what we do prefer, right?
Yeah, have an unpacked or excavated that from within our own understanding, based again upon our own just lived experience of what we thought was right at one point, or worked well at one point. Yeah, and we haven’t really excavated that, but then that shows up and then we feel tension. And then many times people will then go to judgment right after feeling the tension as if it’s their fault, or they’re there to blame for that, or why aren’t they thinking this way?
When in reality it’s like, well, how perhaps we don’t have a shared expectation, right? We don’t have a shared experience or a shared understanding. Which we know based upon some of the work around this culture Energizer, shared expectations was kind of a big deal, right? Around being a learning organization and creating shared expectations.
And so I see one of the big pains around this is what do we all believe is how we ought to communicate, yes, in the first place? And getting to that point, but that’s a huge pain that if we don’t go into the path of blaming the process, not the person, if we can very quickly get into blame games and judgment of others when reality is we just haven’t created the conditions for us to have a shared understanding.

Sarah: Oh, big time. I mean, it’s, they’re, these are these implicit biases we all have, right? And the point of them being implicit is that they’re hidden, and unless we make them explicit, it’s very hard to move around them. Yeah. So, I think that’s one of the big pains. And you know what Megan really shared with us that I thought was so helpful is that there are three big buckets of communications that sit underneath what happens in nonprofit organizations. And by being more aware of what they are, we can get better at utilizing them differently. So, I’m just gonna go over them quickly and then Tucker, ask you to tell us how they connect to this idea of different worldviews. But the three levels, the first level is sharing, and that’s kind of the lowest level of communication that is one directional, right? It’s newsletters, it’s all staff emails, it’s meetings, right? It’s where one or a few people are telling people other things. That’s sharing. The next level of communication that Megan identified was listening, right? This is gathering thoughts and feedback from people. It’s surveys, it’s interviews, right? It’s a suggestion box. Maybe it’s having office hours, right? This is the opportunity to listen out to what’s happening. And then the third bucket of communications is connecting. And this could look like committees, affinity groups, parties, team-building events. It’s where people get together and the communication flows both ways. So, those are the three different buckets of open communications that we went over and really kind of dug into around the types of communication that may be important in nonprofit organizations these days.
Tucker: Well, and again, based upon what type of worldview that you have, you view communication in a variety of different ways about going about it. So let me give you some examples. So this actually, I’m gonna, we’re gonna pull in some work from a guy named Frederick Laloux. He wrote a fantastic book that all of you need to get called “Reinventing Organizations”, and it’s actually an incredibly illustrated invitation. He literally says on the cover, “an illustrated invitation to join the conversation on next-stage organizations”. And so many of the graphics and the visuals that they use in here are both hilarious because they’re so accurate and very poignant to some of the work that we’re thinking through. But in here, what he talks about is a couple of different worldviews. He hits on three different ones or really four different ones in particular. One is the traditional worldview and in this traditional worldview, if you want to think about it, like the analogy that they really use or the metaphor is a military, right? Very, very hierarchical, top-down and siloed. Same work, same pay, very regimented, very rigid, stable organizational chart, very formal titles, and job descriptions. Clear reporting lines, clear rules and policies, consistent replicable process. You know, and some examples are literally the army, right? The government, right? Where it’s a clear pay structure, there’s, it’s all very regimented. So that’s one worldview, is that traditional sort of worldview. Another worldview is one that’s called the achievement worldview. And in the achievement worldview, the analogy is kind of organizations as machines. Organizations as machines. And so when you think about this, and a lot of you probably are involved in some of these types of world, they’re matrix. They have project leads, cross-functional initiatives. They’re meritocratic, right? They have individualized pay and incentives based upon merit. They have, they’re innovative and optimized. They have accountability around management by objectives. Many times it’s profit-driven or shareholder value, in our case with nonprofits. That, of course, is not the case. And then there’s the third worldview that he really speaks of pretty heavily too is this pluralistic worldview. And that’s the metaphor of that our worldview is organizations as families. And so that’s where you see, and I definitely noticed this a lot more in the nonprofit space, although I think we kind of have a combo of a lot of different ones. It’s been interesting using just as a thought jogger, in a frame to reference other organizations, including our own too. What are we bringing into the table? But he was talking about a pluralistic worldview. That’s decentralized decision making. Employee empowerment, team bonuses, and reduced wage disparities, consensus-driven organizations, equitable and inclusive community. And community-focused with stakeholder value included in the process. And so those are the three different ones. He also talks about what he calls an evolutionary worldview, which we’re not gonna go into quite as much ’cause this, he calls it a teal organization, but I really encourage you all to check, check out, take a look at this book and check it out and see ’cause he goes really in-depth into these. But when it comes to open communication, if you think about a traditional worldview, a lot of that is the flow of information is very controlled and communicated via organizational hierarchy. There’s very select information that is shared. There may not be a whole lot of listening. That sharing is probably the primary and really it’s sharing from the top down.
And perhaps there’s not a whole lot of connecting either, from an achievement worldview. Listening takes greater importance, especially through formal data collection practices. You know, being a little more market-driven or, if you think about it from a nonprofit, what are the real pains we’re actually solving in the world in terms of empathy for the people we’re serving? Yet, at the same time, we also see that a higher rank, within that still some hierarchy there, which is a higher rank, gives greater value to the communication. That the lower rank you are, and this is where, you know, we see many times sometimes around strategic planning process, that we talk about, you know, the joke that we have and we just did it today, right? How many of you experienced the pain of an irrelevant strategic plan? Well, one of the main reasons why is that we have top-down-led strategic planning processes. Yeah. And what that really is saying is that the information from those at the top, aka the board and senior leadership, are the ones who have the most information. It’s the most important information, exactly. And then you have a pluralist worldview, which is that the flow of information is founded on an open book type of transparency. Right. That open, transparent communication is like a currency of cultural value with inputs that include, particularly around those who are most proximate to the work, their worldview or their information is brought forward. And so you see an even stronger emphasis on the listening and that decision-making is not necessarily about the top figuring out the decisions, but it’s actually more about the deeper listening. It’s almost can be not quite viewed as an inverted pyramid, right? From a top-down versus like whereas, but those who are most proximate to the work, their information is actually sometimes the most valued or can be the most because they’re closest to the work. So those are some different frames to think about around the different organizations. Again, I’m not gonna get into the Teal organization. Again, highly recommend you go and check in, go deeper into that, because that gets into even more work around even deeper diffuse power structures. And there are a lot of great stories in the book, but I want to just use these three as an adaptation from Frederick Lulu’s book.
Sarah: Yeah, I love these worldviews since being introduced to this and this book. It’s really given me a framework to think about my past experiences, honestly, at a lot of nonprofits. And I was gonna ask you, Tucker, like as you think about your past experiences at nonprofits, what worldviews have shown up and how has that impacted the communications? What are some lived experience stories that you have?
Tucker:Well, honestly, I, for me, this actually gets into a deep burnout story I had, which was, and I’m not gonna share the organization, but worked at quite a few different nonprofits and in particular, the vision of the organization was very much a pluralistic worldview. The vision itself, like what we’re setting out in the world to do, yeah, was about unearthing the leadership inside of everybody. Yeah. But how we actually operated on the inside was achievement, and arguably, I would even say traditional. Yeah, it was, it was venturing, not just achievement-oriented, it was traditional, like there were real clear lines. And so there was this real gap of who we’re saying who, who we believe the world, what the world ought to be, and how we actually lived on the inside. There was a massive lack of embodiment in and, to where it was so hierarchical, like literally interviews for almost every position went all the way up to the CEO. This was not a small organization, and you felt this hierarchy, which actually created inside of the organization kind of this dog-eat-dog world, like it was a zero-sum game. We’re all fending, yeah, super competitive on the inside, all perpetuating or trying to perpetuate a totally pluralistic and almost even beyond into the teal side. Like it was a really fascinating, for me, a very deep struggle because I felt out of integrity ultimately at the end of the day. Yeah, it created an immense amount of burnout for me. That’s not the only reason, but that was definitely one of the primary things I noticed in the org, yeah, that I was like, whoa, there’s a massive disparity here between how we operate and what we actually are trying to put out in the world.
Sarah: Yeah. Well, I love that. As I was thinking about my stories, I was coming back to the last organization I was at. I was in a pretty high leadership position, and one of the things that came up once, you know, I would send out these org-wide emails congratulating people for certain things and sharing upcoming events. And one person said to me once, “Sarah, I feel like you don’t shout my office out as much as you shout other offices out.” And of course, it wasn’t intentional. I had sent the same email but slightly different about each office. But this is where the achievement worldview comes in, right? Because my voice took a lot of power, and I didn’t even realize what an email from me was meaning. And like, even though it was relatively the same email, I customized them, it felt different for her. And she felt slighted. And you know, as I was looking at these worldviews, I was like, “Wow, so that is such an achievement-oriented landscape.” And as a leader, I just didn’t even know that people were looking at my communications in that way and weighing them in relation to their own merit or worth. Right. And so it’s so interesting to reflect after having this framework about how I’ve shown up in different organizations, how others have, and then the implications for those communications into relationship and then into culture, right?
Tucker:Wow. Wow, that’s so interesting. Yeah, the worldview, yeah. You had this, I almost feel like you were sharing to share, right? You were like sharing to share, which for you is like, my information’s no different than everybody else’s information. Yet it was a helpful reflection on partly how the culture of that organization existed, right? Totally. It was achievement-oriented, yes. And by the way, I just want to throw it out there, none of these are right or wrong, per se. This is where getting into this without judgment when we’re going to clearly share our bias, which you actually already have some, in terms of what we believe. But I also want to share that this is more used as a reflection tool, kind of like what you were doing, Sarah, I love that. It sounds like you had a little more of a pluralistic worldview somewhere. Yeah.
Sarah: I did. I was like, hey, yeah, let’s share. Yeah. But I was sitting in an achievement culture, and so my words carried weight that I just, I didn’t, you know, I didn’t realize. But once I realized and I thought, oh gosh, okay, does that mean I stopped sending the email? Does it mean I shared recognition in other ways? But it had to be equal because in that worldview, I was adding a gold star, essentially, on somebody’s paper via the email that I sent. Yeah. And they would use that, right, in a performance review to say, ‘Sarah thinks my work is great.’ It’s important for leaders to know that so that we can essentially play by the rules and make sure we’re not unintentionally harming those around us.”

“Yeah. Well, Tucker, I wanna ask, you know, and we’ve just talked about this a little bit, but like, what is made possible for a nonprofit leader and those they have influence over if they adopt this ‘next normal’ in open communications? Like, what can it look like, and what can it lead to?
Tucker:Well, I mean, you know, what we were just talking about is partly just reflecting on what is your worldview. Yeah, using this, you know, and again, every frame, no frame is perfect, but as long as it’s useful for you to at least use it as a reflection tool, like you were saying, Sarah was, this was really a helpful reflection tool.
So part of this is just understanding straight up, how do you even, what worldview are you operating from? Like, you know, and what is the organization operating from as well? And where are there disparities and how can you be explicit? Kinda like we talked about the pains earlier. Is there a way, and even using this as a common language tool, this particular as a common language tool around different ways of viewing our whole organization, the way in which we’re approaching things.
But I wanted to bring in a particular story from, you know, we’ve interviewed a CEO on our podcast named Indy Frazee. She’s the CEO of The Independence Center out in Colorado Springs. They do a lot of incredible work around those with disabilities. In fact, making sure that everybody with unique abilities, as they like to say, have to feel known, valued, and be directly in parts of society in every part of society really.
And, but anyway, she had a story, and then we actually brought on Nikki, who is their head of HR as well. I think she’s the head of HR or she’s somewhere in that role. But Nikki came on, was a part of the culture energizer as well, and she shared the story that Indy also shared too. But it was a beautiful story around what I would actually say is a pluralistic, more of a pluralistic type of worldview.
That I was noticing really how powerful it was in terms of the space that we’re in right now, in terms of things, and we’ve mentioned this many times in this podcast, the speed of change and the complexity of change that we’re all dealing with, right? Just like we did earlier today in our workshop, we talked about the speed and the complexity of change has been happening at an exponential. But our ability to adapt to that as humans has tended to be a lot more linear. That comes from the work of a guy named Astro Teller. And it was brought forth in Thomas Friedman’s book Thank You for Being Late. But all of us have experienced that. We’ve experienced this immense change and speed and complexity of change happening around us.
And so what they chose to do, they were trying to figure out the path around a very standard thing inside of organizations, vacation policy. Right? Yeah. They knew there was, there was, they had been listening and been learning that there were people who were like, their current vacation policy was just not working right. Yeah. It was struggling or it was not quite where it needed to be. And so what they chose to do, you know, if they had chosen to do it from an achievement worldview, let me see if I can do this. I wasn’t prepping for this, but let’s see if I can do this. If they were choosing to do it from a traditional worldview, probably what they would have done is the senior team would have gotten together and they would have said, “Hey, here’s our new vacation policy based upon what we see as best practices out there and our own ideas, and we’re gonna implement that, right? And here you go. Hey, hey, everybody. Here it is.” Very select information. Here’s the decision. We’re moving forward. Now, get used to it. Basically, it was an achievement worldview. They may have incorporated a little more listening, maybe like a survey or something like that. But nevertheless, you know, taken in some kind of a less human approach to sharing and gathering a little bit of information. So maybe he was adding a little listening but not exactly connecting, right? And then yet still would have done probably a similar process. Like, “Hey, we heard what you said from your surveys.” Probably wouldn’t have shared the survey results. Right? Because transparency is not as much valued in an achievement worldview. And then they would have come out with, again, same thing. “Here’s our new vacation policy. All right. Here, here is the decision.”
Whereas a pluralistic worldview, what I noticed about Nikki and Indy’s story and their share was they chose to create the conditions first of asking the question and creating some space of connecting where everybody was all in the same zoom room.
In this case, I believe – I don’t think they did this in person. They could have though, but I don’t think they did – where they created the conditions around incorporating everybody’s voice all at once. Yep, right there in the room. So very transparent, right? They – the voices heard the voices, and when I say voices, one of the things they used, a great tool that we use all the time, I think they found it from us actually in the first place, is called Easy Retro. It’s a great tool that allows you – and when I say hearing the voices, it’s not like literally hearing audibly everybody’s – it’s creating conditions that we’re able to get everybody’s input right there then and there. And Easy Retro is a great tool that everybody’s able to input their ideas up into the tool right off the bat, and everybody can see each other’s ideas. Right, and it’s actually – it’s, yeah – and it’s synonymous too, yeah, which actually amplifies some of the safety, yes, and gets some of the better ideas, frankly, out, and so it’s a really beautiful tool. But they did it all in the same, yeah. Yeah, because the value of the information was not about it; it was more valuable to have a transparent process where everybody could – as the voices – could hear the voices. We’ve shared that type of story from other organizations too, and that decision-making was not about us going in our leadership cave and coming up with our best decisions. It was actually about the deeper listening of what came out of the space that they had created – gathering all the voices, right? Yep. And so what was made possible with that was beautiful because what they chose, I realized this, is instead of going from strategy into belonging, so I’m gonna use a phrase here, which is based on the neuroscience around how our brains work.

You know, we go from safety, then we go into belonging, then we go into significance or strategy in our prefrontal cortex. Many times in strategic planning or any change management, we tend to go to strategy first before belonging. Yeah. But what they chose to do is go into belonging first, meaning listening, connecting, gathering voices in a transparent way to where people feel like their voice mattered. And then they went into strategy. And that strategy and decision-making was really deeper listening of the voices, not us just coming up with our great ideas as a leadership team.

And so, so that was just was really fascinating about their – and that’s what Nikki and Indy both shared – was they didn’t have hardly any buy-in issues. Because they didn’t come at it strategy first. They came at it belonging first. Because a lot of, again, change – they created the buy-in through the approach ahead of time. Yes. And so it was buy-in and belonging first because we gathered the voices, and people felt like they were heard. And then strategy versus strategy first and then trying to figure out buy-in on the back end.

Yeah, and Indy had an example of one time where they had this – you know, it was quite a few years ago in this same organization where they did the opposite, where they did strategy first, kind of the achievement worldview approach or traditional worldview approach. And the buy-in was a massive issue. Yeah. It was a massive issue. So anyway, that’s what I think has made possible here. Frankly, we don’t have to have as much buy-in problem. Right. I mean, that’s one of the massive pieces. But Sarah, you heard that story too, and you were part of that podcast with Indy. What did you hear in their, in her story as well around what’s made possible around some of these types of approaches?
Sarah: Well, I mean, I think you’re absolutely right, and one of the things that Nikki always points out, which I think is really important, is that it’s not that they took every idea that staff put out there. Some staff, as always will happen, put “I want whatever, 5, 6, 7 weeks of vacation” and we don’t live in Europe, right? We’re in America, and so they couldn’t do all of that. But what they could do was take as much as they could and then be really clear about why they couldn’t action the other pieces. And so, I think it goes back to the transparency piece that’s at the heart of open communications. And I think that transparency and connecting not only get the job done but improve culture along the way. And that is why we leverage co-creation practices and open communication practices in our work because you don’t just have to get the task done, you can also improve culture and increase belonging and significance along the way if you do it right. And that is about not just asking the voices what they think but inviting them to connect with and hear one another and then process.
Tucker:Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s kind of going back to that Venn diagram of sharing, listening, connecting, right? That listening takes a greater importance in achievement. But then when you get into plural, it’s almost like it incorporates all three of them totally. Sharing, listening and connecting all in one experience. And when you can do that, it really can amplify your buy-in in a quicker way. Now, maybe there’s some experiences where it makes more sense to be a traditional. I’m not sure. This is for you all to reflect on. We definitely have a bias towards pluralistic, and I’ll freely admit that. And even going into the Teal organization, which is the beyond, beyond what that is in Frederic Laloux’s work. But you know, there may be circumstances where it does need to be a little more traditional, or maybe it does need to be a little more achievement. And you know, we’re even wrestling with that inside of THRIVE IMPACT. Like, I feel like we have mostly pluralistic, but we also have some achievement orientation to some of our worldview around structures. And I noticed us, once we had this frame, it was like, oh yeah, we’re in a wrestling of worldviews. And it’s not that either is right or wrong, it’s just like what makes sense for what we’re trying to achieve and what we want in the first. So those are just some things for what matters most now. Good old Dr. Daniel Friedland’s work: what matters most now? Well, Sarah, what are, just to wrap this up, I think this is such a great workshop series and that we’d love to bring more out into the open. We were able to do this with about 7 or 8 nonprofits in this workshop series where they were able to learn from each other too, and I loved it. What are some practical steps that a nonprofit leader can take right now to really improve their open communication process and approach?
Sarah: I mean, the first one for me is really take a look at and audit your worldview. You know, take a look and see if you fit where you fit. And as Tucker said, there’s not a right or wrong here. It’s just where you’re at right now. And I will say many of the nonprofits that were in this workshop series identified with multiple. So maybe you’re a little bit of both or a little bit of traditional and achievement. But take a look, where are you right now? And then identify where you may want to be. Maybe it’s the same place as where you’re at, maybe it’s not. But identify where you’re at and where you want to go in terms of your worldview. And then I would say take a look at your communications, really using those three buckets of sharing, listening, and connecting, and audit your communications. What percentage sharing versus listening versus connecting? And really again, think about where you want to be versus where you are. And then I would just say identify a few of those places where you can increase from the sharing to the listening and then finally to the connecting. Because ultimately, I think regardless of your worldview, if you really want to improve culture, which I think we all do, as well as get the work done, it’s the connecting bubble that’s really gonna take us there. So those are a few of the steps I would suggest folks take. Wait, Tucker, my friend, we can’t hear you.
Tucker:Oh my gosh, I just had the zoom. It was muted. Oh my gosh. I love that. I facilitate all the time and I still forget that I’m muted. Anybody else deal with that raise by show of hands? Yes. Okay, thank you. I hope some of you who are listening to this actually raise your hand. That would be great. No, but I, Sarah, I was loving what you were just sharing around. How do we create more spaces of deeper listening and deeper connecting? Yeah, especially when we’re able to see cross-departments or cross-pollination. I think as we do a lot of this work, you know, I love it when we can have a board chair connecting with the janitor. We had a story like that where it was so rich based upon the questions we asked. These, you know, the cross-pollination across hierarchies, across departments, across divisional lines within an organization.
When you can create conditions that allow people to connect with one another and listen and share with one another, it really amplifies again just learning and buy-in and things like that. Cool. Well, hey everyone, thanks for listening into this particular podcast. This is just something we wanted to share from time to time what we’re learning. And we do workshop series on a regular basis. We just wrapped up this culture Energizer one. We also wrapped up one on being in a learning organization, and we want to continue to share what we’re learning as we’re going through this journey and some of the stories that are coming out of it.
So hopefully this is supportive for you. And by the way, if this is helpful for you, if this is creating impact, we’d love for you to write a review. Give us five stars and write a review, because you know, our mission is to solve nonprofit leader burnout and you probably, especially if you are a nonprofit leader, know other nonprofit leaders who need to hear about more ideas, whether or not ours are the right or the wrong ways of going about it.
That these are ways for people to reflect and move forward in the next normal. Now we obviously have a bias that we think a lot of what we’re doing is effective because of the data that we’re seeing from our own impact evaluation. But hey, what are you noticing? Just like with these worldviews, what are you noticing and how might you move forward? I think it would be great. So yeah, if you can help us, you’re actually helping other nonprofit leaders out by leaving a review. So thanks for doing that, and we’ll see you on the next episode of THRIVERS Nonprofit Leadership for the Next Normal. Bye everyone.

Sarah: Thanks y’all!