Nonprofit Leadership: How to have Difficult Conversations

Every day we at Valtas are brought into nonprofit organizations to help them have difficult conversations. Whether these conversations are related to the strategy, culture, leadership, direction, or day-to-day operations, we help facilitate respectful communication and strategic mission-setting to move the organization forward.

​Recently, our team got together to share some of the key lessons we’ve learned along the way and shed light on the type of approaches we take to help you do the same at your organization. 

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We hope you will find these tips helpful and use them to drive growth for your organization!

Communicating Respectfully
When you need to have a difficult conversation, focus on communicating respectfully by practicing empathy and building trust. You may need to create a safe space first to accomplish this and ensure confidentiality.

In your communications task everyone with focusing on the issue at hand, not the people discussing it. Don’t make the topic personal and don’t take the conversation personally! Be an active listener, aiming to truly understand where another person is coming from before responding. And, when you do speak, use your responses to give constructive feedback instead of negativity.

Preserving the ED-Board Relationship
Regardless of where you are in the process, aim to protect and maintain the relationship between the Executive Director and the Board. If it’s a new topic, try to establish a strong ED-Board relationship from the beginning to avoid costly strife down the road. If it’s an old topic and communication around it hasn’t gone well in the past, you’ll have some repair work to do before you can move on and move forward.

Focus specifically on:

• Establishing a framework for success.
• Aligning your strategic efforts.
• Collaborating on shared goals.
• Providing consistent and honest communication.
• Assessing performance on key objectives regularly.

As time goes on, reflect on what worked well and what didn’t to learn and grow together.

Think Strategically
One of the best ways to unite your Executive Director and Board on a divisive topic is to have them seek common ground. Find a common goal or statement that everyone agrees with. Use your organization’s mission to help center them around one common point of interest. With them focused on the areas where they agree and rallied around shared goals, they will be better positioned to brainstorm and explore possible solutions together. It also gives you a common point of agreement to return to when the conversation starts to go off topic or get personal as opposed to strategic. Of course, you will want to be realistic about the organization’s constraints and limitations as you go but encourage them to dream big nonetheless and fully hear each other out in their discussions. Once the difficult conversations have been had and a plan has been made, set clear expectations for how to move forward. Know who will do what – assign roles, create action items, and decide on deliverables and timelines.

Bringing in Outside Help
It would be unrealistic to assume that every organization will be able to follow this model on their own across every topic. There are some topics that are particularly contentious and some relationships that simply can’t be reconciled from within. Sometimes you just can’t do it on your own due to past hurt! In these types of cases, you’ll want to bring someone in to facilitate the conversation. Reach out to get help!

Leaning on an outsider like a nonprofit leadership consultant offers several key benefits, including:

• Fresh perspective.
• Increased neutrality and objectivity.
• A way to funnel harsh criticism towards someone outside of the organization to avoid damaging relationships inside the organization (aka a “lightning rod”).
• Depth of experience in handling these specific types of issues.
• Better follow through for greater accountability.

When you need to have difficult conversations at your organization, reach out to us. As nonprofit consultants, we are brought in all the time to broach the topics that nonprofit leaders and boards are hesitant to have on their own (or have failed at trying to have in the past). Let our experienced nonprofit leaders get our hands dirty digging through whatever kinds of issues you need to push through so your organization can grow and flourish. From nonprofit board advisory services to interim nonprofit leadership, we can offer the direction that your organization needs to succeed in fulfilling its mission.