 And I'm really excited to have our friend across the pond in Canada joining us live for today's broadcast to talk to us about what a structured coaching program like might look like for your board as well as your senior management. Julia Patrick is here. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And I'm Jarrett Ransom. I get to be my fun quirky self. I'm the non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And we of course want to thank our sponsors. You can see them on the screen, but I will also let you know who they are because they really need this attention. Bloomerang has been with us. We are so honored to have Bloomerang Fundraising Academy, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, the non-profit Atlas, and of course Julia's very own American Nonprofit Academy and my non-profit nerd. So thanks again to our sponsors. We are so thrilled to have your commitment to these conversations and the one that we're about to have with Jane. Again, welcome Jane. And thanks for saying yes to joining us. I'm very honored that you asked Jarrett. Well, you know, I have to admit, so Jane has been one of our loyal viewers. Jane has also shared these episodes with many of her clients internationally, honestly. And I think you had shared with me, Jane. You shared an episode with one of your clients or contacts and you said that individual ended up watching three, four, maybe even five episodes after. So thank you for being here and for being one of our viewers. And now in the hot seat to share some of your valuable time and expertise with us. Delighted to be here and delighted to answer whatever you wanna ask me. And I know what I'm doing when I ask a nerd, what do you wanna ask? Well, perfect, perfect. So get us started, Julia, because this is a question I know that we both have and I'm sure our viewers do as well. You know, Jane, what is structured coaching? First of all, it shouldn't be a new concept because we have coaches in athletics and that's just a natural, but for some weird reason we haven't been able to move this across to our sector. So help us frame this up, if you will. Well, there's many coaches out there and I'm sure all of them have a structure that involves agendas and reports. This isn't just getting together for a chat. We all have to have something because we wanna make the time really valuable to the people we are coaching. What's different from mine is that I took the third sector's interim executive academy and learned how, what do you need to do before you even accept the position? What do you need to do after you've accepted before you start? What can you reasonably expect to get done in the first 30 days? And how are you gonna manage that expectation with your new board if you're an interim executive? Or just in the honeymoon period in any role like board share, and then it usually breaks into 90 minutes. Sorry, 90 minutes. 90 day segments of what you're gonna achieve so that you can monitor goals in batches, not just long term. Let me ask you that, sorry, Julia. As you said, it is structured, you know? Like there is, we want to move forward, we want to be successful. And so you're working with leaders specifically in that board role, as well as senior management. And you mentioned the interim executive academy and for those of you that haven't seen that, we highly recommend you go back. Jeffrey Wilcox has been a phenomenal leader in our sector and has shared valuable insight when it comes to serving as a professional interim executive. And so knowing that a coach like yourself and others, Jane, exist to really serve these leaders in a capacity to help them elevate their mission, their own leaders that surround them and lead the organization, I think is super critical. So you mentioned it's not really chatty or casual, like let's just meet for tea. So how often do you recommend that this coaching structure and program, how often are these conversations in a program like this? Well, it's up to each client, but what I'm suggesting is 90 minutes every two weeks, especially for interums because they have to achieve a lot in a hurry, but also any new leader is under pressure from that good impression and good start. But if they don't want that often, sometimes it's an experienced leader, a very experienced leader, but in a little bit different role, maybe they don't need as much. Jane, I'm wondering, do you find that you have to explain to people that you're gonna work with what coaching is and how it works? I mean, my question is based on, do people come to you and they've already had a coaching mentoring relationship or is this kind of new? I think it's new to most people in the sector. Sadly, in the corporate sector, if you've got people that have been identified as future leaders and it's a good company, they're likely going to get coaches for those people. Well, we aren't there yet and they may know other forms of coaching, but this isn't life coaching that I'm doing. This is your role in one organization. It'll be affected by what's going on in your life, but I'm not helping you plan for you. I'm helping you plan for the, have your organization thrive. And if you're in an interim role or you're about to transition in some way, that the next person is successful. The organization thrives under the next person is more important than what it does for you. You don't have to be liked and loved or everybody wants to be loved to be loved by everybody, but it doesn't always work that way in an interim role. What do you mean? That doesn't happen. One of the things I'd like to acknowledge, sadly, is I've been around numerous board meetings and I know this story and it's kind of funny, but it's also kind of scary where this board chair says, well, the only reason I was elected board chair is because I was taking a bite of my sandwich. And so I really wasn't like raising my hand, but I was the only one that couldn't say, no, no, not me. And so I can only imagine, Jane, that there are oftentimes leaders in these positions, this is their first time, they're not familiar, they're not even sure kind of their roles and responsibility because it's elevated and I'm thinking of that board chair position, it's elevated than being a member at large. There's additional tasks and responsibilities. So I'm sure this isn't the only example of someone taking a bite. No, ask me how I've been treasurer three times. Okay, yeah, that sounds like a great story. But at least you're very knowledgeable. So oftentimes, and this is an assumption, you're working with leaders that have never served in this capacity. Am I accurate in that? Yes, and unfortunately for staff as well, since we often burn out our executive directors and they only do it once. But I did read some American research a few years ago that said most chairs in our sector acknowledged that they had done zero preparation. They had not even read a single online blog, nothing to prepare to be shared. And they thought they knew the job because they'd watched the last one. But the last one didn't share all that behind the scenes, extra work and stress with them. And they often haven't been vice chair. That was really surprised to me. Most board chairs have not served as a vice chair first. I can't even talk right now, Julie, I use that. Yeah, I think, Jane, that's the frightening part of this. And I don't know in Canada if you know the number of nonprofits. But if you think about all the nonprofits that reside between our two nations and those boards, I mean, in general, you're gonna have between five and 12 people, that multiplier effect is enormous. The number of people in North America that are driving decisions about our nonprofit sector and they are not trained, they might have big hearts and they might have lots of energy, but that only takes you so far. Oh, you're hitting one of my pet issues is that many of the people I find as leaders in our sectors became leaders while they were still at university. They were leading a student-based organization or a university-based organization and we had not in any way prepared them. So why isn't that part of civic education whatever it's being called these days, I can't keep up. And by the way, I think we're looking at about 180,000 incorporated not-for-profits in Canada. Nobody has a count of the rest. Right, right. I think that's a big thing. And we talk about that here as well. I mean, there are a lot of people operating a nonprofit, but they haven't actually been designated in the US by the Internal Revenue Service, which is the federal agency that bestows that designation. So I'm fascinated. It seems to me like if you're coaching through leadership issues with folks, it seems to me like you probably are having to go back quite a ways and talk about structural things and process that really they should know but it sounds like they don't. Yeah, I don't present myself as being there to do, to be their educator. For one thing, I'd rather they educated the group of leaders in their organization than one at a time. So I wait to see what comes up that they're struggling with or that they see coming up and don't know how to handle. And then I'll say, well, we've only got 20 minutes left today and you've just thrown a huge issue at me. I'm gonna send you some links in an email right after we speak. So... Do you ever work with more than one person? Do you ever work with groups in this because of this or is it generally more one-on-one? I do governance training and governance reviews and board interventions. So any of that is group work, but I've never called it coaching. Okay. You know, and let's be honest, we know that fires come up. We know that, you know, in this cadence, Jane, that you've recommended of let's meet for 90 minutes, at least every other week, you know, every two weeks, something like that, issues arise, challenges surface. And so having that coach and someone to, you know, share in these thought processes, have someone to, you know, kind of consider options and recommendations, I think is just a high value. Is there opportunity to access, and again, I know you can really only speak to you and your coaching, but have you seen perhaps others where you are available in the interim, not in the interim, between those two weeks meetings for fire drills? Is that something that occurs? I don't think you could not do that. If you've got a client you're meeting with for six or 12 months, you can't ignore them when they are in a tight spot. And they've just discovered that at tonight's board meeting, so and so the troublemaker is going to raise such and such issue. I can't tell them wait till next week. I wouldn't dream of it. No, you can't let that fire burn and burn and burn. Well, talk to us about how you meet with your clients. And I'm really curious, because many of us have been working remotely. Many of us have become quite familiar with telling someone you're still on mute. But how does your coaching work in this remote virtual space? I'll jump to that, but please don't let me forget to come back to those fires, because I have some important points to make. Oh, perfect, okay. Floated, fires are noted. Fires are noted. First of all, from my health situation, Zoom has been a godsend. It has let me do far more than I could have done otherwise, because the clients who two weeks into February of 2020 said, this cannot be done virtually. Two weeks later, they were calling saying, is there any way you could do this on Zoom? So I have learned to love Zoom as long as I take breaks between, I've actually been on it since it was a beta project. So I didn't need to learn it when the pandemic hit. So I love it because for one thing, it's completely private. The person has their own Zoom account to log in on. They don't have to explain to anybody else that somebody's coming to their office every couple of weeks for what. And I can't meet at a coffee shop. I mean, confidentiality is everything. You never know who could overhear. And I'm not set up that way for a home office, as in my husband puts, be less than thrilled if I kept having a string of people show up and telling him to be quiet. You might have some questions on that, but absolutely. So I also find it easier to take notes on Zoom than if I'm facing somebody over a cup of coffee and I don't want to lose eye contact, but eye contact can shift a little bit on the screen without people being that aware of it. As long as you're mostly making eye contact, I can make quick notes for the report. I'm gonna give them afterwards. But the biggest thing is you can find the right coach for you anywhere in the world. That's your world, absolutely. So talk to it, let's get back to the fires because I know you've got some scar tissue as our dear friend, Jeffrey Wilcox will refer to it. Tell us about some of the fires that you've referred to and I'm curious how they've been addressed in this virtual space. Well, first of all, I adore Jeffrey and admire him so much. I'm glad you keep referencing him. Actually, I see a big part of my role as refocusing them away from all the fires onto their bigger goals. It is so easy and if you're a leader, you know how easy it is to spend your day after day after day dealing with fires and make no progress on the big things that are gonna matter. So that I think is a big part of why people need a coach is to keep reminding them, you set these goals. You set this timeline. Okay, there were fires this week. What are you gonna do next week? And keep them coming back to that so that they feel successful in their role. We don't actually feel successful if all we do is put out fires. That's kind of a zero at some game instead of a win-win. You feel exhausted, we feel beat down, we feel filling that emotion, absolutely. But fires can, for example, be, my board chair just quit and nobody's willing to take it on. Nobody was eating a sandwich at that moment, apparently. I had full attendance. That's right. Or an employee just filed a human rights complaint claiming that I'm something we know they aren't, something really serious. And how are they gonna deal with that while continuing to function in the role, especially if it's been spread around the community? I mean, I had one client that wasn't technically coaching, but there were two boards both claiming to be the only legitimate board. One of them had the bank account, the other had the office key, incredible mess. And they needed a special government license that wasn't gonna happen in that circumstance. There was so much animosity that one of the board members was taking the in-camera minutes, which were very sensitive because of what was going on and posting them physically on the town hall bulletin board. That's an example of a fire. That is a big fire, yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of times leaders step into this role and I've heard this from individuals saying, this organization is fantastic and then they step in into a leadership position and it's kind of like you visited the sausage factory and now you know exactly behind the scenes that as you referenced, Jane, many of this or hopefully much of this does not enter the community. Hopefully we're able to maintain a positive reputation but that doesn't mean that the leaders in the senior management as well as the board representation is not privy to information that isn't always pretty. And so having a coach like yourself, having someone with years of expertise and scar tissue really helps us to move forward I think in a positive way. And like you said, moving our attention from the fires and to our goals, what are we here to do? How do we accomplish that? What is our objective? And so I love how you've been able through your stories today, reframe your coaching with your leaders to see the true passion. What does something like this cost? Because I'm wondering if this is an item that should be budgeted in every organization for the board chair, perhaps the vice chair and maybe even that senior management because I would imagine many of our viewers watching and listening would think, okay, I see the value in this and we wanna make sure that this is a line item. So what should we consider? Well, you should consider how much you value talent management and talent retention first of all. And if an executive isn't paying attention to that, I don't think they're using wise ways of leading these days. I mean, why wouldn't you offer coaching to the people who are going to be your next leader, the vice chair, the CFO, whatever that is? I won't talk dollars, but mostly what I do is bill two hours for a 90 minute session to give myself some time to do agendas and reports and change the schedule three times because these are very busy people. So my coaching schedule each week is never what it is at the start of the week. And that's okay. As long as they're not canceling, I'm fine with that. They were canceling a lot, then I'd say you're not valuing this move forward. It's interesting because I'm really fascinated by the 90 minute timeframe and I'm wondering, it sounds to me like you are coaching, working with these folks, and then you are sending a review or a document that says this is what we discussed. And so there's some accountability. Is that what that looks like? Everyone, one of them addresses them. It's never more than two pages and sometimes one, but here's the status of the priorities you set last time and here are your priorities for the coming week and we're going to review those next meeting. The other thing I want to say about cost is some people would rather pay this themselves than have their organization know they have a coach, which really says something to how we need to reposition the idea of coaching in our sector as a positive. I agree and I know that, and I have done executive coaching and I work mainly with director of development and individuals like that. And I've had clients, Jane, that some have paid out of their own pocket because they felt that they were inadequate in their position or they felt that their supervisor boss would think that they were inadequate, right? Like seeing this more as, okay, I'm not doing a good job, I need some help as opposed to, I want to bring someone in as a thought leader, I want to elevate my game, I want to be held accountable, I want to be privy to other best practices. So what you just said, Jane, is I would love also to echo and to shift how the perception of hiring and working with a coach is a positive. Absolutely and you actually started with that by mentioning sports. The higher up you go in sports, the better you are, the more you need a coach. You don't see any Olympic athletes without a coach, they're really good at what they do. Well, and I think to your point, I mean, the Olympics are kicking off tonight, but, you know, Jane, we're seeing you have a coach, you know, for your mindset, for your health, for the technical skills involved in your sport, you might have a coach for media, to, you know, I mean, all of these coaching voices coming at the athlete is very, very common, and yet for some bizarre reason, we haven't translated that over to our sector. So it's hard to believe, but our time is almost up and you have been really an amazing voice here today on the nonprofit show, because I think that this is one of those topics, Jane, that we talk about, but we don't really understand or explain the structuring part. You know, it's not enough to say, oh, you need a coach, but what does that look like? And how does it work? Well, that's the same as I took three interim executive jobs before finding Jeff for you. I would have done so much better if I'd had his structured approach from the start. Me too, Jane. I had already served in that capacity and I thought, man, I wish I had this, you know, when I took that first one. And we say the same, Julia, with fundraising academy, you know, if we had had this tool, if we had had the structure, if we had had the support and resource, you know, imagine the kind of fundraising that we would have done. But now's your time for any of you looking for a coach to reach out to Jane, you know, if she has capacity and as she works remote, she is in Canada, but you work international. Is that correct, Jane? I do. Not, I haven't done any international coaching yet, but I've done international consulting. I certainly am available too. Since neither you nor I can serve everybody out there that needs a coach, I will mention that there's an international coaching federation with some wonderful resources on it. Some people want the certifications. I don't have them. I've pivoted from doing to supporting quite recently. And at 71, that'd be a big commitment to start into the ICF certification program. I'm looking at some shorting ones. It'll give them an idea, though, of what it means to be, to have a coach and what to look for in a coach, even if they don't find them from that list. That's a great resource. And thank you for mentioning them. We often mention AFP, the Association of Women and Professionals. We also mention YNPN, Young Non-Profit Professional Networks. And these are organizations that hopefully, well, I know AFP is international. I'm not quite sure about YNPN, but again, so grateful, Jane, because you are one of our loyal viewers and just grateful to have you say yes to us turning the table, putting you in the hot seat, sharing with us about your structured coaching programs and how you support leaders in that senior management and board role. So thank you. I'm just honored that, again, that we were able to get you on as a guest. You're very welcome. And I've really enjoyed this. You guys are fun to be with. I'm just asking questions, and I hope it helps people that come to it afterwards for the recording as well. Yeah, thank you, Jane. I think it's really amazing. And again, just off the top, your comments about how we need to be demystifying this process and really investing, using it as an investment tool. And so you really struck a chord with both Jared and I. Before we leave, we wanna make sure that we let you know, if you've missed a live broadcast, you can go back to our archives. We are available on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Firetea, Vimeo. And we wanna thank our presenting sponsors, Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom, your part-time controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leadership, and the Nonprofit Atlas. These are the folks that allow us to have these continuing conversations. They're magical, they're really important, and they're something that help move our sector forward. As we end every episode, we wanna remind everyone, and I think ourselves, stay well, so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.