If you read my earlier post in this forum, then you learned that I have worked in the health and human services sector for over thirty years, most of them as a clinician in juvenile justice and behavioral health. That first blog focused on how working with teens and adults found guilty of crimes taught me resilience by observing how hard many worked to effect change in their behavior. Because I started in counseling at such a young age—I was nineteen when I began working with teens as an intern—I had to mature rapidly, learn to think quickly, and balance my inherent instincts for compassion with professionalism and focus on outcomes. No clinician in any human services environment can succeed without developing these traits. It’s probably not a surprise that these same abilities are critical to becoming an effective executive too. The only surprise is that I learned my first lessons in executive leadership and stewardship from teen offenders.
In that first blog I also shared that I grew up in circumstances that asked me to accept responsibility early and that made me learn how to stretch a dollar. These qualities aided my fast acceleration into executive positions. By twenty-eight I had advanced over older peers into leadership roles. That reality required more demands of ensuring I acted with professionalism and demonstrated that I consistently acted in the best interests of those we served and the organization at large. Because I continued to work on the frontlines even as a COO and eventually as a CEO, I wasn’t just humbled on a daily basis, I had the street cred to be respected by my colleagues, and my work was relatable to anyone who has experienced the reality of nonprofit enterprise: You’ve always got to wear many hats at once. Some required skills that accompanied leadership came relatively easy, like maintaining a strict budget. Growing up our family had no choice but to adhere to a budget. I didn’t have a safety net when I went to college because I paid for it on my own, which forced me as a young adult to form a realist’s view of the skills needed to pay bills, plan for hard times, ask questions of the right people, and learn the essential life skills that parallel so many common business demands. I firmly believe that business classes should be required to complete degrees in psychology and social work. Whether working as an independent counselor or climbing into managerial and executive positions in a larger organization, if you don’t know how to run a business, if you don’t know how numbers work, you’re not going to be successful. At Inperium, among new affiliates that join the constellation, the overwhelming exception are organizations that fail to provide quality services; instead the more common circumstance is organizations that can’t balance their books, whether that is because of bad business sense, poor leadership among executives and/or boards, or simply being unable to scale sufficiently to reduce the constantly rising costs of running an enterprise.
The need in my life to accept responsibility early has helped me learn other lessons applicable as an executive that are common experiences for clinicians. Entering a counseling role when I was still a teenager tasked with guiding other teens through self-exploration made me immediately aware how high the stakes were for those who attended my group therapy sessions. I hadn’t made the choices they had, but I understood how actions I took then shaped the rest of my future. For me, it led to devoting my life to nonprofit service. For them, their success or failure in facing their demons and altering their behavior would determine whether they could become productive members of communities or if they would forever cause harm to themselves and others and pass in and out of correctional facilities. It was a daunting first role. I learned rapidly to differentiate when they were being authentic, when they were trying to provide what they thought I wanted to hear, and when they were stone cold trying to play me. In short, I had to learn to truly listen.
You’ve witnessed me use the term self-exploration here already, for that’s what therapy is, a guided journey of self-discovery. That’s not at all different from what the best executives do. So often I find that I need to let our affiliate executives and our own leadership team talk through the issues that they are having instead of trying to give them a solution. The best leaders help colleagues find answers unique to their circumstances that emerge naturally out of themselves and the organizations they lead. They listen, provide support, create opportunity … much like a counselor does. Learning to truly listen to what others are telling you is an art, one that requires us to turn the traditional view of the executive as the one with all the answers and all the power on its head. Relationships require authenticity. If people don’t feel like you’re present and listening, if you don’t understand their investment in the problems they are trying to solve, then they’re not going to be the vulnerable person they need to be to grapple with their organization’s shortfalls or their personal challenges. In my current role developing the relationships with organizational leaders who are considering joining the Inperium constellation the same is true. If I am not authentic and transparent with them, they can’t trust the benefits of affiliating, and they will doubt the partnership required to make the hard choices we will need to face together.
Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned on my journey from clinician to executive is that the interests of both positions must remain inextricably aligned. The real potential in a leadership position is the ability to accelerate and raise the impact of the services our organizations provide. Caring about others is what brought us all to the positions we hold, which is a reminder that we can all, no matter the nature of those positions, learn from one another and from the people we serve.