Transcriber: gaith Takrity Reviewer: esra kurul
I’m a sector Swimmer.
Maybe you are, too. Maybe you’re just thinking about it.
It doesn't matter whether it's corporate to nonprofit arts,
to tech or health care delivery, to Big Pharma, it can be daunting.
But trust me, rewards can be waiting for you on the other side.
How do I know?
Because after years in the corporate world,
I made the jump to the nonprofit sector.
I thought it would be easy for me.
I already had a heart for helping people. I grew up with a reminder every day.
I had an Irish twin brother, Richie. We were just 11 months apart.
That’s Richie at three and me at two.
school came easily to me.
That's a very ancient picture of me winning a Student Athlete award.
But Richie was a slow learner.
and eventually told he was borderline mentally retarded.
Imagine the stigma he felt hearing those words. Those words have so much stigma.
They're not even used anymore.
We loved and accepted Ritchie at home,
but mainstream kids excluded him and bullies picked on him.
I couldn’t stand it.
And until high school, I was bigger than he was.
So I often fought his bully battles for him.
That’s our dad and our little brother When Richie was 12 and I was 11.
And you can see I was a sturdy girl. So why am I telling you this?
Because I credit Richie with my eventual call to the nonprofit sector.
for more than 15 years in the corporate world.
It always felt like something was missing.
I finally realized I needed a career that saved my head and my heart.
To make the switch, I had to figure out what corporate skills transfer to
nonprofits, and what new skills I needed to learn. That was the easy part.
What was a surprise and much more nuanced?
Were the big differences in language and culture.
An experience showed me that to be a successful sector switcher
say that three times fast.
You need strong emotional intelligence to specifically to
the frequency of nonprofits. It's almost like going to work in a foreign country.
A few years back, I was traveling with a group in Paris.
I had studied some French. I was ready.
One hot day we were out walking and we got thirsty.
Instead of asking me to do the talking,
one of us marched up to the Parisian street vendor
and shouted two bottles of water.
Because everyone knows volume functions as an automatic translator, Right?
The expression on the street vendors face pure disdain.
That French disdain.Right.
Then one time, a colleague of my husband’s gave the okay gesture
to a bartender in Brazil, only to be told he just flipped the bartender off.
The OK sign is the equivalent the middle finger in Brazil. Yikes.
Language and cultural immersion programs for people who will live,
work or study abroad are big business.
For a reason.
I would have loved that kind of program before making my switch. Listen to this.
One nonprofit I worked with served 35,000 low income people a year.
They referred to each person as a client.
Doesn't that beautifully convey dignity, respect, an equal footing?
That’s a paradigm shift for some I’ve known,
who don’t think of them as clients,
but as beneficiaries of our well-meaning generosity and earnest goodwill.
And that’s not just slightly condescending
One new nonprofit executive who sold products to other nonprofits,
Introduced new choices by referring to the existing product as the crown jewel.
Now think about who buys this executives products.
Mission driven organizations focused on clean air and water,
on economic opportunity, on alleviating disease and hunger.
Sure,
crown jewel may signify most valuable product,
but it can also evoke imperialist, colonialist and classist systems.
This metaphor might sound fine in the corporate world,
but to a nonprofit audience,
you could imagine them scratching their heads and saying, Crown jewel, seriously!
And then there are the cultural differences.
For one thing, resources in nonprofits are often limited,
so you'll probably work harder for less pay.
But nothing beats what I call the impact dividend.
That's that fantastic feeling you get knowing your work has contributed beyond
your company’s bottom line to someone’s life.
And then there's financial return versus mission impact.
The overriding goal of money in the corporate world can sound insensitive
or even blind to mission impact. For nonprofits, money enables mission.
It isn't the mission. And speaking of mission, your passion for it is crucial.
Nonprofit teams dedicate years to complex social problems.
The progress can be agonizingly slow and incremental.
Mission Passion is the rocket fuel that keeps the team going.
And speaking of team corporations say it, nonprofits live it
so many stakeholders clients, donors, volunteers,
the government, colleagues,
even other nonprofits who would be competitors in the corporate world
can be collaborators in solving social problems.
Change management in nonprofits can be like reaching peace
and security agreements in the UN. Country A, What do you think?
Country B, What do you think? Country C, What do you think? No idea.
Let's circle again and get everyone's feedback on that idea.
Of course, that takes time, humility and a lot of patience.
In the early days of my sector switch,
I came to see that only a higher level of emotional intelligence
or EI could help me succeed.
Harvard Business Review tells us that emotional intelligence is twice
as important as technical skills for success at all levels.
And the World Economic form ranks EI in the top ten skills for 2022
and beyond.
Bend, Texas emotional intelligence expert, says emotional intelligence
is relentlessly contextual.In other words,
you could be brilliant with emotional intelligence in one context
and suck at it in another.
Unless you adapt your EI for the new context.
So what do you think?
Does becoming a sector switcher sound appealing?
Let me tell you, no excellent earnings report feels as good as knowing your work
has made a difference in someone’s life,
like people in poverty who got job training and can’t provide
for their households. Like military families getting childcare assistance,
like kids from all backgrounds,
learning life and academic skills on their local waterway,
and another favourite building, 30 miles of trail.
So the residents of multiple communities can hike,
bike, run and find respite in nature.
And maybe most profoundly to extending
the life expectancy of someone suffering with a horrible disease.
So how to tune your emotional intelligence as a sector switcher?
Well, first, create your own language and cultural emerging program.
For example, do informational interviews with nonprofit leaders.
Ask about sectors which are pitfalls.
Listen for the language in the cultural clues.
Then read nonprofit publications, websites and media. You know that trip.
Then tackle a few key EI competencies like self-awareness.
Our emotions significantly and often unconsciously impact how we think,
behave and perform. Awareness of others, bottom line empathy.
Do you recognize body language clues?
Can you stand in someone's shoes and listen with their ears?
Self-Management. Okay. You’ve cracked first, too.
Now, how will you manage yourself and, you know, awareness.
So you don’t put a colleague into what
EIA expert Debbie Minow calls threat circuitry.
That’s that defensive paralyze feeling we get when we think we’re
being criticized or misunderstood or intimidated.
No one does their best work in threat circuitry.
And finally, emotional reasoning that's combining the first three with the facts
and circumstances to reason through to the most productive approach.
Because don't get me wrong, you'll need the corporate skills you've mastered.
In fact, they'll probably help you stand out in nonprofits.
But learn from my mistake.
I was leading a meeting with a new colleague, a long time nonprofit worker.
I was running through my agenda like it was a military exercise. It was intense.
I got promoted for that in the corporate world.
I picked up my head and saw this expression
on my colleague’s face, threat circuitry. I did that.
I knew I needed to stop right then and shift the energy of the meeting
or lose trust.
Let me tell you a secret.
You’ll be the unusual ones if you don’t have setbacks.
All I had to do along the way was pull up my image of Richie.
There he is, holding our heads. And on the right, in his later years.
At an early age, I saw what it meant to Richie to be stood up for.
And that meant something to me.
Think about all the people and projects you’ll be standing up for
if you make the switch.
And you can put your head on The pillow at night
knowing you made an impact.
Thank you.