The Characteristics of an Effective Nonprofit Leader

In this workshop we will address the question ‘What are the characteristics of an effective non-profit leader?’ You will think about people (both alive and no longer living) whom you consider to be leaders, and the qualities of their character that cause others to relate to them as leaders. CSL will share the results of its 12+ years of research into what characterizes effective non-profit leadership, including its review of surveys of tens of thousands of employees around the world from the non-profit, private and public sectors who have been asked what they look for in their leaders. You will try to find answers to the questions leaders ask themselves everyday: How do I inspire and motivate my staff? How do I build trust with my staff, Board, funders and clients? How can I lead with empathy and emotional intelligence so my employees feel valued, inspired and committed to their work? CSL will also share the Three Spheres of Effective Leadership – a model that distills the three most important leadership qualities and how you can leverage their interactive nature and exercise them daily to become an effective leader.

Balancing Work and Life

When you are nearing the last days of your life, do you want to look back and see a career, or do you want to see a life? Why is it that you can schedule time for work meetings, but it is so difficult for you to schedule time for the people who really matter to you in your life? CSL will examine the most common causes of burn-out among non-profit executives and then share its time-tested strategies for how you can sustain your passion and motivation in your work while also developing healthy, meaningful relationships with your family, friends, partner and self. You will learn how to reduce the stress and pressure in your life and, ultimately, how to balance your quest for both success and happiness. This workshop will blend psychology, philosophy, spirituality, personal development, organizational development and leadership into accessible, transformative strategies that enable you to balance ambition with appreciation. You will leave this workshop with concrete, personalized strategies to take care of others while also taking care of yourself and the people you love.

Click here for results you can expect in your organization from this leadership workshop.

Creating Strategic Vision-Alignment in Your Organization

Is your leadership primarily about where you are going, or what you are leaving behind? If your answer is the latter and you would like to build a sustainable organization, come to this workshop. What do you want to be remembered for? What makes you, and the organization, program or department you lead, distinct? How can you build loyalty and motivation among your employees toward a common purpose, something greater than any of you? If you were reading an article describing your non-profit five years from now, what would you want it to say? What would you not want it to say? In this workshop you will learn how to first identify your core values and vision, and then how to align your core values with the way you work from day-to-day. You will also learn how to align the core values of your organization with its everyday practices - including its hiring policies, structure, financial management and organizational strategy. These are the skills that will enable you to build an organization that is sustainable and can weather changes in the external environment. This workshop will challenge many popular notions of leadership and will help you to refine your own definition of what it truly takes to build a lasting initiative from the ground up.

Click here for results you can expect in your organization from this leadership workshop.

Time Management

Do your priorities determine your tasks, or the other way around? If you want to go to the movies, you drive to the theater and park. You don't drive somewhere else, park, and then try to find the movie theater. How can you keep the main thing the main thing? Do you often take work home with you in the evenings and on weekends because you can't finish it at the office? Do you often feel like you're having trouble making time for what's most important to you because you spend all of your time reacting to what's urgent? CSL will address all of these questions in this cutting-edge workshop on the latest developments in Time Management. Yogi Berra once said, "If you keep doin' what you been doin', you'll keep gettin' what you been gettin'." You will not only leave this workshop with new time management strategies to move forward with - you will also unlearn and purge old strategies that have been cluttering up your schedule and moving you in the wrong direction.

Click here for results you can expect in your organization from this leadership workshop.

Managing Change

What is going to happen next in our organization? How are we going to respond to changes in the environment that affect our core programs? How do we know if the ways in which we are changing are going to further us toward our organizational goals? What if we lose our focus or organizational culture by becoming opportunistic? What if we lose our financial stability by not taking advantage of opportunities for growth? Whether you're aware of it or not, these are the types of questions your employees ask themselves every day. What is your role as a leader in managing your non-profit through various phases of change? In this cutting-edge workshop, you will learn how to preserve change amidst order and order amidst change. You will learn how to develop an entrepreneurial culture within your organization that encourages risk-taking and innovation. You will learn one of the core competencies of leadership: the ability to continuously, genuinely and incisively question and improve your organization's strategies to deliver its core programs. CSL will share the most current change strategies with you so you can lead your organization 365 days a year, not one day 365 times.

The 15 Principles of Leadership

This workshop is a sequel to ‘The Characteristics of an Effective Non-Profit Leader’ and highlights advanced strategies of effective non-profit leadership. It delves deeply into the questions leaders ask themselves everyday: How can I encourage my employees to take the right risks? How can I build a culture of innovation and organizational resilience? How can I prevent mission drift? How can I handle challenges to my leadership? How can I handle the disapproval that accompanies leadership? How can I empower my staff and avoid micro-managing while maintaining quality and ensuring the most important work gets done? Buckle up – this is a fast-paced workshop that covers a lot of ground in a short time.

Click here for results you can expect in your organization from this leadership workshop.

Building Highly Motivated Teams for Maximum Results (or Management 101)

A manager has often been compared to a fire hydrant surrounded by a pack of dogs. How do you manage people who often don't appreciate you for it and usually only become aware of your presence when you do something they don't agree with? This workshop will focus on the following questions:

• How do you hire, promote and retain the right people?
• How can you build effective work teams where your employees feel a sense of ownership, pride and responsibility in their work?
• How can you build a culture of self-initiative and high quality customer service?
• How can you make your employees feel inspired to work for an organization that values them highly?
• How can you put the right incentives in place to yield maximum productivity?
• How can you give just the right amount of feedback in order to keep your pulse on an employee's progress without becoming a micro-manager?
• How can you set up a reporting structure that is effective and thorough without becoming overly bureaucratic?
• What management processes can you put into place in your non-profit so your employees feel there is due process and fair treatment rather than favoritism?
• How can you deal in a level, stable way with everyone, even the people you don't like very much?
• How can you lead with your values rather than your emotions?
• How can you supervise people and keep them working hard for maximum results?
CSL will examine all of these questions and offer dozens of time-tested tools that will enable you to manage people toward spectacular results.

Click here for results you can expect in your organization from this leadership workshop.

Building Highly Motivated Teams for Maximum Results: The Sequel (or Management 102)

A continuation of Building Highly Motivated Teams for Maximum Results. Includes case studies on both how to handle difficult employees and how to offer incentives that inspire increased loyalty and productivity.

Leading with Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

How can you become what Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, refers to as a 'resonant leader'? A resonant leader is attuned to the emotional climate of the office and knows how to manage people for maximum results. Your employees want to feel like their voices are heard. They want their issues to be acknowledged and integrated into the organizational processes and strategies. What can you do so they will feel this way? How can you become a 'Life Coach' for your employees? How can you act so they will feel like you are concerned about and attentive to their more holistic needs? How can you detect and tune into the 'emotional receptor' among your staff or board members? How can you handle difficult employees when you'd honestly rather lie down in a hot bed of tar than listen to them for five minutes? How can you get your main points across to others in your organization without alienating them or making them feel like you're being overbearing or insensitive? In this workshop, you will learn how to earn the respect of others by becoming an empathic listener and leading with your authentic voice. [Upon request, this workshop can include videotaped role-plays of your communication style for group feedback.]

Knowing Your Blind Spots

One of the keys to effective leadership is self-management, which is built on self-awareness. Are you aware of your own strengths and challenges? Leaders are not people who do not have challenges - in this case there would be no leaders! - but are people who are aware of their challenges and are able to compensate for them. An effective leader takes less than their share of the credit and more than their share of the blame - others do the opposite. Building an organizational culture of personal responsibility and honest self-appraisal begins with your own openness and self-awareness. This type of culture is the hallmark of some of the world's most profitable and successful companies such as GE and Marriott. In this workshop, you will learn how you can build a culture of authenticity, free information flow and continuous quality improvement into your non-profit - beginning with the person staring back at you in the mirror.

Leadership Communication

CSL's primary definition of leadership is 'Leadership is the capacity to develop and sustain multiple key relationships toward a common purpose.' How do leaders communicate with others? What sets them aside from the average communicator? In this workshop you will learn CSL's time-tested strategies for empathic communication that have been practiced and refined by thousands of executives around the world. You will learn how to become a compassionate leader who makes others feel appreciated and respected, yet also drives the initiative forward toward tremendous results. You will learn how to make commitments you can keep and keep the commitments you make. You will learn how to see others as they are, not as you are. You will also learn why leaders always listen at least twice as much as they speak. You will then learn how you can speak with a voice of authenticity, passion and conviction that inspires others. You will learn how to convey what you have to say within the context of what other people understand so every word counts. Finally, you will learn how to hold your anxiety when others disagree with you, build synergy whenever possible, and use effective communication to help you move forward toward your vision and goals. [Upon request, this workshop can include videotaped role-plays of your communication style for group feedback.]

Effective Communication for Managers

How do you communicate with difficult staff? How do you manage staff with various learning styles and agendas and keep them focused on the organizational mission? How can you set up highly productive work teams where staff have effective lateral communication while driving forward toward spectacular results? In this workshop you will learn how to use the latest communication techniques to manage your staff effectively for maximum results. An ancient Chinese proverb tells us 'He who angers me controls me.' You will learn a system of 'Process Management' which will help you to avoid negative emotional reactions in difficult situations and keep your focus on 'managing for the mission'. You will learn how to build agreement with staff on goals, establish parameters up-front and spend less time reviewing their work. You will learn how to incorporate self-management strategies into your organization that enable staff to evaluate their own work. You will learn CSL's recommended reporting system that will simultaneously keep you 'in the know' and make micro-management unnecessary. [Upon request, this workshop can include videotaped role-plays of your communication style for group feedback.]

The Source of Your Passion

What is your passion? How can you discover it? Your understanding of the roots of your passion will enable you to inspire and motivate others. Your passion is what makes your staff want to work hard, your donors want to fund your programs and your Board, volunteers and community members want to support your organization. Yet, unlike leadership, passion cannot be learned. You have to tap into what already exists within you. Finding your passion doesn't involve seeking; it involves seeing. This workshop will take you on an internal journey that will help you to dis-cover your passion and become a leader that inspires and motivates people toward a common vision. It will also help you, once you have discovered your passion, to understand 'passion shift' so you can continuously make the necessary changes to your day-to-day tasks that will enable you to renew your commitment to your organization.

If success is to live the life you love, happiness is to love the life you live. Many leaders are very skilled at being successful, but not very skilled at being happy. How can you balance the need for both success and happiness in your life? How can you learn how to get what you want and want what you get? To achieve what you value and value what you achieve? In this workshop, CSL will first highlight the 6 P's of Success - six qualities that will enable you to be successful in whatever you undertake. Then we will ask you to define happiness, and also provide some of our own definitions and inspiring anecdotes hailing from our lifetime encounters with people from Kenya to Brazil to the Phillipines. Finally, CSL will help you to conceptualize how you can balance your search for both success and happiness in your life. The result: You will learn how to lead with an abundance rather than a scarcity mentality. Your employees and customers will sit across the table from you and want to be both like you and with you. This is the hallmark of true personal development and leadership.

Power and Leadership

An old definition of leadership is 'A leader is someone who has followers.' CSL redefines leadership with its principle that 'A leader is someone who empowers other leaders.' By this new definition, a true leader is not surrounded by followers, but by other leaders. In this workshop, CSL will explore the nature of genuine power with you. Many internal issues in your non-profit boil down to bids for power or differences over perceptions of power. Are you a friendly leader or a friend and a leader? Becoming aware of the power dynamic can massively enhance your abilities as a leader. Does power have to be Machiavellian? Do others have to feel small in order for you to feel large? Does power mean 'power over' or 'power with'? Can you form a wider, more inclusive definition of power that enables your organization to move forward toward your vision and goals without alienating others or making them feel undetected and unmotivated? When can you lead with empathy and when do you need to be strategic in your alliances? Is power a zero-sum game (e.g. more for me, less for you)? How can you augment the power of others while also expanding your own power? This workshop is a highly interactive journey into the true nature of power and how a leader can most effectively deploy it for maximum results.

The Currency of Leadership: Building Trust

How do you build trust with your staff, clients, Board members and donors? What makes people feel like you and your organization are honest, accountable and incorruptible? Trust is about making and keeping commitments, and it is the currency of leadership. When a leader runs out of this currency, they're also out of a job. In this workshop, you will learn how to build your 'Trust Accounts' with others by making commitments you can deliver on and then delivering on the commitments you make. You will also learn what to do when you've made a commitment you can't deliver on. After this workshop, you will be better able to understand the true inner workings of your organization, which are determined by a more accurate, trust-based organizational structure that CSL will share with you. You will also be able to integrate CSL's renowned Trust Mantra into the way you lead from day-to-day. This workshop will help you to become a leader who operates from a core basis of honesty and integrity and inspires commitment, loyalty and trust from her or his constituents.

Effective Board Leadership

What are the primary responsibilities of a non-profit board? Why do people join non-profit boards in the first place? Understanding this dynamic can help you to manage your board and recruit new board members who are aligned with your organization's mission and values. In this tell-all, no-holds-barred workshop, CSL will share with you its 12 Strategies for Building a Successful Non-Profit Board. As a Board member, is your role one of governance or management? As the ED, how do you motivate Board members to help you achieve the organization's most important goals, including fundraising? Which of the organization's responsibilities lie with the Board and which with the ED? Does your Board view the ED as a 'social entrepreneur' whose vision the board supports, or a 'hired gun' in charge of carrying out the board's mandate? CSL will offer its recommended breakdown of responsibilities between the Board and the ED in order to help you balance this delicate power relationship in your organization. You will learn the differences between the way a family board operates vs. a professional board, and how to determine which is the right board structure for your organization. You will also learn how to create effective board committees that actually get real work done. Finally, you will learn CSL's time-tested 7 Principles for Successful Board Meetings.

Like most non-profits, your organization probably can use more funding. How do you cultivate donors so they feel ownership and pride in funding your programs, and keep coming back for more? What, at the end of the day, are donors looking for when they consider funding a non-profit? What do they respond well to – and what turns them off – when approached by non-profit executives and board members? Tony Silard, CSL’s Executive Director, raised over $12 million for youth programs in his former role as an ED of an international education organization. In this very candid workshop, CSL will share the time-tested techniques Tony and other non-profit executives have used to launch successful fundraising initiatives. You will learn how to set up a development department in your organization that mobilizes other staff and gives you sufficient support to expand your donor base and leverage your face-time with donors. You will also learn how to inspire your board to become more active fundraising ambassadors for the organization. You will learn various cutting-edge fundraising strategies and how they apply to raising funds from foundations, corporations, government agencies and individuals. You will also learn how to do your homework and make the ask for the right program and the right amount within a context the donor will respond well to. You will examine a few sample pitches and develop your own pitch during role-plays while receiving group feedback.

Strategic Planning Made Easy

What does your organization stand for? What makes it distinct? What's your vision for where you would you like your non-profit to be in three years? How do you know what to do next? Without clear organizational goals, how do you evaluate staff performance? Many non-profits spend extortionate amounts of time and resources developing a thick, dense Strategic Plan that is so overwhelming all it does is collect dust on a back shelf in the Executive Director's office. CSL will show you how Strategic Planning can be both much deeper and much simpler. CSL will share its model with you for how your board and executive staff can create a high-quality Strategic Plan in a relatively short time. You will learn how to create a Strategic Plan that is a living, breathing document that your organization can amend quarterly so it retains its relevance to the evolving challenges, budgetary constraints, client needs and priorities of your organization. By the end of this workshop, you will have a simple, easy-to-use model that will enable you to continuously align your organization's programs and everyday processes with its mission, vision and core values.

The Board Chair-Executive Director Relationship

What are the leadership characteristics of an effective Board Chair? Which leadership qualities does this person need to have in contrast to the characteristics required of the ED? Who is the true leader of your non-profit - the Board Chair or the ED - and how can these two people effectively share power in order for the organization to deliver maximum results? Which responsibilities lie with each person? How can an organization manage this sensitive relationship during times of strain? Does your board view the ED as a 'social entrepreneur' whose vision the board supports, or a 'hired gun' in charge of carrying out the board's mandate? The way you answer this question will be pivotal in setting the parameters for the Board Chair-ED relationship. The Board Chair-ED dynamic will be put on the table for you to examine so you can come up with more effective strategies to balance this delicate power relationship in your organization. This interactive workshop will include case studies of actual Board Chair-ED relationships that have worked effectively and others that have nearly collapsed organizations so you can distill lessons and strategies for 'harmony at the top' which you can take home to your non-profit.

The Ultimate Leadership Challenge: Building the Sustainable Organization
(includes Succession Planning)

Do you know what the 'Truck Factor' of an organization is? It's the number of people a truck would have to run over to take your organization under. If the answer to this question for your organization is 'one', then you should definitely sign up for this workshop. What will be the impact of your life on the community you're serving? Are you a genius with a thousand helpers or an empowering leader who makes others feel like leaders? The latter approach is the only way to create a 'second line of leadership' or leadership team that will outlast you. Do you want the impact of your leadership - e.g. your clients and community benefiting from your organization's programs - to go beyond your actual involvement? Do you want to be remembered as a front-stage star, with everyone going home once you exit the stage - or a back-stage architect who designs a sustainable model that far outlives your involvement? If you want to rise to the ultimate test of leadership, you have to be prepared for this workshop to challenge many of your views about power and about leadership. In a workshop that cuts to the core of leadership, you will learn how to focus less on being charismatic and more on being systematic in order to build an organization from the ground up that will sustain itself without your direct involvement. This workshop will help you locate the keys to your own prison - as you will be able to start choosing to lead your organization because you want to rather than because you need to in order to keep it afloat.

Organizational Development

Got passion, need systems? Or got systems, need passion? Is your non-profit a small, informal organization where a few passionate people are chaotically doing everything and job descriptions are non-existent? Or is it a larger, formal organization with concrete job descriptions and a high level of bureaucracy, processes and procedures? CSL will help you to understand the growing pains that prevent most organizations from making this leap. You will learn - based on CSL's research of surveys of thousands of non-profit executives - which leadership qualities are most critical in each type of organization. You will also learn how your organization can adopt a necessary level of bureaucracy without stifling passion and innovation. CSL will share with you common challenges non-profits experience in recruiting and motivating board and staff members, fundraising, strategic planning and financial management based on their size and number of years in operation. This workshop will enable you to assess the current stage of organizational development of your non-profit, and to determine strategies you can employ moving forward to avoid some of the common pitfalls experienced by other organizations in similar stages of development.