| Charity Leaders’ Exchange |
Keeping your focus and sticking to your guns as a Charity Leader
In my view two of the most difficult things as a charity leader are keeping your focus on the big picture and sticking to your guns.
To deal with them in turn. Keeping your focus as a charity leader is an obvious problem for many people. When you are trying to juggle so many things at once; supporting your senior team; trying to keep your Trustees informed and fighting fires as they appear, it can be hard to focus. If you were asked my someone external to the organisation you could tell them what you should be focusing on: probably a number of main current priorities along with the overall mission of the charity. However whether you actual feel you do this every day or even most days might be a tough thing to answer.
Sticking to your guns means that when you have to take difficult decisions, do you have a set of core principles by which to judge them and do you stick by these principles? I call them 'line in the sand' moments. Let's say for example you are considering a merger with another charity. What are the things that are your non-negotiables? Or perhaps your charity has always worked in one way but a funder is dangling the carrot of a large grant in front of you to do things a different way. Should you change? Even if you know where this line in the sand is for you, decisions can be difficult: but without having thought about where that line might be before that decision comes along, they will be even more difficult. Such lines may be positioned differently by different leaders due to different values, different levels of experience or different priorities. Where would you place your own lines?
Alex
To deal with them in turn. Keeping your focus as a charity leader is an obvious problem for many people. When you are trying to juggle so many things at once; supporting your senior team; trying to keep your Trustees informed and fighting fires as they appear, it can be hard to focus. If you were asked my someone external to the organisation you could tell them what you should be focusing on: probably a number of main current priorities along with the overall mission of the charity. However whether you actual feel you do this every day or even most days might be a tough thing to answer.
Sticking to your guns means that when you have to take difficult decisions, do you have a set of core principles by which to judge them and do you stick by these principles? I call them 'line in the sand' moments. Let's say for example you are considering a merger with another charity. What are the things that are your non-negotiables? Or perhaps your charity has always worked in one way but a funder is dangling the carrot of a large grant in front of you to do things a different way. Should you change? Even if you know where this line in the sand is for you, decisions can be difficult: but without having thought about where that line might be before that decision comes along, they will be even more difficult. Such lines may be positioned differently by different leaders due to different values, different levels of experience or different priorities. Where would you place your own lines?
Alex
