266. LIVE! from Phoenix: Build Better Culture - Aila Malik, Lawanna Kimbro, Ted Vaughn, and Sara Cunningham

Responsive Nonprofit Summit, We Are For Good, Build Better Culture, Aila Malik, Lawanna Kimbro, Ted Vaughn, Sara Cunningham

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Overview

Join Jon + Becky for this Friday's episode where they talk with a Varsity Team of experts on Building Better Culture. We talk through what modern nonprofit culture should encompass, how leaders can better shape vibrant cultures, why the term "culture fit" is damaging, and a host of other topics. Special thanks to Virtuous for convening us all at the Responsive Nonprofit Summit and for our panel experts: Sara Cunningham (Free Mom Hugs), Lawanna Kimbro (Stardust Fund), Ted Vaughn (Historic Agency) & Aila Malik (Venture Leadership Consulting)👊

The Build Better Series

Today’s conversation is a LIVE replay of one of the dynamic panel conversations at the 2022 Responsive Nonprofit Summit presented by Virtuous. To get access to bonus resources from all these sessions, visit our RNS page at weareforgood.com/rns.

Today’s Guest Panelists

Aila Malik - Founder + Principal, Venture Leadership Consulting
Lawanna Kimbro - Managing Director, Stardust Foundation
Ted Vaughn - Author, Culture Built My Brand
Sara Cunningham - Founder, Free Mom Hugs

“Culture is a tension to manage. It’s not a problem to solve.”

— Ted Vaughn, Co-Founder of Historic Agency and Co-Author of Culture Built My Brand

Episode Transcript

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Episode Overview

Tone setting and why culture is an incredibly important topic right now (3:45)
The phrase “cultural fit” and what the problem is with it (5:00)
How leaders can intentionally help shape culture today (9:00)
- 1. Check yourself as a leader and do the work.
- 2. Create transparency and clarity within your organizations.
- 3. Make time to build connection with each other.
- 4. Look at your rituals as an organization.
Culture goes beyond our physical building and immediate staff members (18:00)
Navigating unhealthy cultures within our organizations (21:00)
Rethinking our definition of what conflict is (25:00)
Prioritizing mental health within our cultures (31:00)
The more senior you are in the organization you lead, the more culture shaping you do more than your specific skill competency ability (40:00)
Lawanna’s One Good Thing: Something being unprecedented doesn't mean it's impossible. (41:00)
Aila’s One Good Thing: Get very clear with yourself. Have your own personal vision on this world so that your work is simply in alignment to that. (42:00)
Ted’s One Good Thing: Culture is a tension to manage. It's not a problem to solve. (43:00)
Sara’s One Good Thing: Focus on the joy. (44:00)

Powerful quotes

“No matter what you call it, company, culture, organizational culture, workplace culture, it's a really blurry term. And it's frequently used, but rarely, I think, truly understood.” -Ted

“So if you want to know what your company culture is, ultimately, you want to look at how your people, your employees, your stakeholders behave, especially senior leadership, because that's where you'll find the real beliefs and values that drive your organization forward.” -Ted

“I'm very excited to talk about this topic, because I think it's the most fixable, changeable thing in our organizations.” -Lawanna

“A part of when we're thinking about the types of teams that we need to pull together for our audacious vision, we have to think about who's in the room and who’s not.” -Lawanna

“We don't get to build the futures we care about with the same game plans. So we need to be stretching ourselves constantly around our mission and around the coalition we think can get us there.” -Lawanna

“It's intentional building an intentional understanding that we're not all going to be perfect. And that's not the goal. It's to understand where are our limitations? How do we work together as a team.” -Aila

“I fully believe that “cultural fit” is basically code now for a likeness and bias around likeness, it hides a lot.” -Aila

“I believe that people learn from other people and by getting outside of the bubbles.” -Sara

“It's all about communicating, embracing leadership, understanding your role. And trusting people who share the same vision.” -Sara

“I think that consumers and donors of today have been burned by brands that sold one thing and did another. So that betrayal has elevated values of trust, honesty, and authenticity, to new levels of importance.” -Ted

“I think also in today's fast moving world, where speed and innovation are crucial competencies for survival, if you don't have a culture that allows people to take risks and fail forward, you're not going to keep up.” -Ted

“Succession isn't about a plan. It's about a way of being informed behavior so that when the leaders and people change decks, the culture holds and invites that same normal behavior that arguably is for the success of your your mission and your impact to continue.” -Aila

“If you don't have strong culture that is tied to your impact and tied to your metrics and your outcomes, then you're at risk for having over dependence on a leader savior or a couple of leaders that then really put your mission at risk.” -Aila

“Oftentimes, when we think about like equity and inclusion, we make that sometimes the burden of the most marginalized.” -Lawanna

“I would argue the best way you do that is by integrating development and culture into systems of supervision and management. In my opinion, supervision and management are the frontlines of leadership development.” -Ted

“I see as a through line is organizations, particularly leaders, that have an unexplored relationship to conflict.” -Aila

“Conflict can be a vehicle to deepen relationships and deepen understanding.” -Aila

“Now we have boundaries to help us have the bandwidth to serve the community that we love, and their families.” -Sara

“There is the sort of romanticizing the struggle, there is a sort of appraising of resilience that can backfire in ways that we don't attend to burnout.” -Lawanna

“So here's what we're going to do, we're going to really practice having direct conversations and holding ourselves to moments of discomfort without rescuing each other.” -Aila

“The more senior you are in the organization you lead, the more culture shaping you do more than your specific skill competency ability.” -Ted

“Culture is a tension to manage. It's not a problem to solve.” -Ted