Leading Edge

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Leading Edge Case Study – Organizational Culture & Talent Development

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BBYO is a member of The Talent Alliance, a community of practice focused on talent and culture, run by Leading Edge. This past year, BBYO asked the question: “What does it mean to be a successful professional in our workplace?” The answer to their question led to the creation of a competency model that fully outlines the elements of success–it’s a model that could be relevant to any organization.

BBYO’s Challenge

Active leadership is one of BBYO’s core values. For over 90 years, this pluralistic teen movement has successfully provided leadership development experiences for hundreds of thousands of Jewish teens around the world. At the same time, BBYO has found itself challenged to address its own employees’ questions about what it means to be a successful leader within the organization. BBYO has a large number of entry-level employees and many of these young professionals are seeking career growth or promotions for the first time. Furthermore, the lack of clarity around how to fully define successful leadership isn’t limited to early career employees; it applies to BBYO’s seasoned professionals as well.

Two years ago, when Elizabeth Berman joined BBYO as Chief People Officer, she marveled that as many as 75% of the roles in the organization require a uniquely broad and diverse skill set. “I call them ‘expert generalist’ skills,” she told Leading Edge, describing the diversified skill-set that employees need to have, including finance, fundraising, event planning, public speaking, marketing, and effectively reaching and connecting with teens, all in one job description. For a leadership organization like BBYO, the need for employees to cultivate proficiencies in many different professional areas presented a challenge, as did having staff spread out geographically.

But the gap in defining success wasn’t only about technical competencies, or which part of the country people worked in.  Staff had a general sense that in order to advance, they needed to not only achieve their goals, but often times, to exceed them as well.  And it wasn’t clear where gaps existed for those who did not receive advancement opportunities, especially when many of them met their goals in terms of base metrics.

Elizabeth and her colleague, Director of Learning & Development, Jill Rosenberg, felt that the organization excelled at training staff and holding them accountable to their core metrics. But the question of “how” was still hanging in the air—how was BBYO expecting employees to go about performing their work? In truth, the organization had technical competencies down pat, but greater clarity was needed regarding what BBYO valued in terms of leadership competencies.

“In any non-profit organization,” Jill told Leading Edge, “you need to understand four things–the values you sit on, the technical competencies any employee needs in their given job to flourish, the metrics everyone is driving towards and, finally, the leadership and soft skills needed to be successful.”

When it came to soft skills, BBYO realized there simply wasn’t enough clarity on what was required for success in each position at the organization.

Why a Competency Model?

BBYO had a competency model, however, it was mostly viewed as an irrelevant and unwieldy document with descriptions of competencies that were vague and undefined. For instance, it would say, “communicate effectively,” but fell short in explaining what that meant in practice or how it was applied to various jobs in the organization, from a new professional to a senior executive — and everyone in between.

BBYO wanted everyone to have the same shared language in order to perform well in their current job and advance to their next position. They wanted staff across the organization to evaluate for themselves where they feel they sit in each core area and understand how they can pragmatically acquire the competencies for advancement. Most importantly, BBYO wanted staff to experience a workplace where managers have the tools to help them advance their careers.  

Elizabeth and Jill set out to create a fresh competency model that would better clarify the behaviors desired for each level of job at the organization and integrate these competencies into the fabric of the organization, from hiring and performance reviews to training and promotion.

“Leadership development is a blend of art and science,” Jill said, “A strong, detailed competency model provides the scientific foundation for the art of leadership.”

The Process

Once key stakeholders bought into the need to update BBYO’s competency model, the team embarked on the following steps to get there.

Identifying Consultants. Elizabeth inventoried BBYO’s network and identified a dozen firms for an initial screening. From there, a larger group conducted phone interviews with the top three candidates. Ultimately, the team picked a firm that understood BBYO well and demonstrated a willingness to build a sophisticated product tailored to the organization.

Conducting Focus Groups. With a firm in place, the team conducted a handful of focus groups by phone, randomly assigned across departments but organized by staff level to help the consultants understand what various competencies meant to staff based on where they were in their career arc. Employees weighed in on what they found valuable about the existing competency model, what people were accountable to within it, and what was missing.

Drafting Back & Forth. Incorporating the valuable feedback from focus groups, the consultants and BBYO team went back and forth with several drafts, identifying what did and did not fit in a new competency model.

Garnering Stakeholder Feedback. Roughly halfway through the process, the team ran a draft of the model by a focus group comprised of C-suite managers, to gauge whether it tracked with the leadership’s vision of the organization. Once they integrated this feedback into the model, the team reassembled segments of each focus group to present the new model. They posed a rubric of questions such as, does this represent what you do, and, when you read this, do you think this is my job? Integrating additional feedback, they made a few final adjustments and sent the model back to the management team for final approval.

Sharing the Model. With the language in place, the team considered how to best share the new model with the entire organization. Rather than hand out the full detailed model at their upcoming staff conference, they created a one-pager to explain the purpose and values behind the competency model. To further bring it to life, they held deep dives into storytelling, with each manager getting up and providing examples of competencies by highlighting the work of select staff members and how different skills came into play with their efforts.

Tying it Back to HR Practices. Since the launch of the competency model, BBYO has been in the process of integrating the model into the organization by:

  • Taking the model into account when drafting job descriptions
  • Designing interview questions that specifically address key leadership behaviors
  • Factoring it into feedback loops and formal review processes ​so that managers can identify the skills, strengths, and gaps of direct reports
  • Empowering employees to own their career planning by developing learning strategies that track to the model and encouraging them to partner with managers in selecting courses, assignments, and experiences that are aligned with their specific needs
  • Weaving the competencies into regular staff communications; for example, BBYO has an organizational update that goes out every Monday, which now includes an accompanying article for recipients to read that is directly linked to a competency bucket

As an organization, BBYO isn’t only focused on its goals, but also on the skills people need to achieve those goals, which is why they designed their new competency model to be naturally applicable to the work people do there every day. While this may sound relatively easy, it was an intense amount of effort that took over eight months for the team to complete. They guaranteed staff buy-in during development and made the implementation an organization-wide initiative–not just something driven by HR professionals on a pulpit.

In the long run, BBYO believes that the equation that helped them arrive at their new model is the right one–and that engaging in a similar exercise will pay great dividends for other organizations as well.

Brené Brown, Vulnerability, and Strong Leadership

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“No vulnerability, no creativity. No tolerance for failure, no innovation. It is that simple. If you’re not willing to fail, you can’t innovate. If you’re not willing to build a vulnerable culture, you can’t create.”

—Brené Brown

The Leading Edge team is buzzing about the new Netflix special, Brené Brown: The Call to Courage. In case you aren’t one of the nearly 40 million people who are familiar with her TED talk, Dr. Brown is a bestselling author and a research professor at the University of Houston who has spent more than 20 years looking at topics like empathy, shame, courage and vulnerability.

The first researcher with her own Netflix special, Dr. Brown connects vulnerability to authentic leadership: “Giving feedback receiving feedback. Problem solving. Ethical decision making.  These are all borne of vulnerability,” she tells us.

Leading Edge has now surveyed more than 10% of the employees in the Jewish nonprofit sector regarding their overall engagement at work. When Leading Edge looked at the largest gaps between those claiming they want to leave their organization within the next year and those who plan to stay, senior leadership, direct managers, and internal communications (which is closely tied to leadership) have the greatest impact on this response.

Dr. Brown stresses that vulnerability is a sign of strong leadership. She defines vulnerability as taking action when there is “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”

“When we build cultures at work where there is zero tolerance-for vulnerability,” Brown says, “where perfectionism and armor are rewarded and necessary, you can’t have [difficult] conversations. They’re not productive.”

Leading Edge President & CEO  Gali Cooks recently opined about the issue of vulnerability:

“When people take the time to reflect upon and understand their own internal experiences—to “know thyself”—they unearth fertile ground that is the bedrock for learning and growth,” wrote Cooks. “The more you know about yourself—what drives you, what triggers you, what strengths you have, what weaknesses you struggle with—the better able you are to communicate those factors to your team and surround yourself with people who can complement your attributes, energy and behavior.”

Read Gali’s full piece here.

If you’re interested in exploring the role that vulnerability plays in your own leadership and in your workplace, check out more from Brené Brown here.

Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Understanding Gender Inequities in the Jewish Communal Workforce

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As President & CEO of Leading Edge, I represent a minority of women who hold top leadership positions in the Jewish nonprofit sector.

While approximately 70% of our sector’s workforce identifies as women, women represent only 30% of our CEOs. At Leading Edge, an organization that focuses on building a robust leadership pipeline for Jewish nonprofits, I am acutely aware that I have broken through what is still a glass ceiling in 2018.

Of course, executive leadership is not the only site of gender disparity. Consider, for instance, organizational budgets. Data show that male-led organizations have an average budget size almost three times that of female-led organizations.

With these challenges in mind, Leading Edge applied a more focused gender equity lens to our 2018 Employee Experience Survey. We did so by integrating survey questions that would shed light on women’s experiences in the workplace. We were able to filter for women’s answers using an individual’s response to our gender question. We also ensured that our survey allowed for the expression of a range of gender identities beyond the usual “Woman,” “Man,” options and consulted with Keshet on best practices.

A total of 7,300 professionals across 105 Jewish organizations participated in this year’s survey. The responses we received were similar to industry standards. Still, the pain points are difficult to digest. Here are some significant gender-related findings:

1. Women experience a disconnect between their desire to advance professionally and their perceived opportunities for advancement.

Our survey found that despite their desire to advance, women believe they have fewer opportunities to do so than their male colleagues (this finding is supported by other research, including this treasure-trove from Advancing Women Professionals). In Leading Edge’s review of comments related to this topic, we found that female participants described both a lack of opportunities for advancement as well as a culture that demands more sacrifice from women, making healthy work-life integration even more elusive. For men, comments described primarily a lack of desire to stay within the sector. This is an area that merits further action, as its impact can be fateful. If women, in particular, do not see advancement opportunities that could fit into their lives, their aspirations for leadership may be quashed.

2. Women feel less psychologically safe in our workplaces than men.

The survey assessed psychological safety by posing questions about people’s comfort speaking up, providing feedback to others, and sharing potentially unpopular opinions. Across sectors, when it comes to attitudes around psychological safety, research shows that, in general, women are less comfortable speaking up in the workplace. They often worry about how they will be perceived, while men tend to be more secure in revealing what is on their minds. This disparity shapes our organizational cultures in profound ways and indicates that there is still work to be done to promote greater psychological safety in our workplaces.

3. Setting and discussing compensation is a common pain point for all managers, but female employees, in particular, feel unclear about how compensation and raises are determined.

Our survey found that men are 12% more likely than women to understand how compensation, salary, and raises are set at their organization. We believe this reality may be because more men hold leadership positions within Jewish organizations, so they are privy to such information or are the decision-makers for financial matters. Jewish organizations overall need to prioritize how they determine and communicate compensation philosophies to make our sector more equitable.

4. Male respondents feel less positive about the leadership of female CEOs than male CEOs.

A growing body of research shows that people assume the competence of male leadership but scrutinize or question women leaders until they prove themselves. The data in our survey seems consistent with this unconscious bias and the differences in how gender impacts perceptions of leaders. Being aware of such biases is a positive first step in ameliorating them. What we want and need, fundamentally, is to expand our mental models of what a leader looks like and who a leader is. The Jewish community needs a multiplicity of voices to lead us into the future, and we need to deploy all of our available talent in service of achieving our collective mission.

Like so many sectors in the United States, the Jewish nonprofit sector must do better to diminish the gender disparities within our field. There is no magic bullet for achieving equity. Creating a systemic shift requires an ongoing commitment from leaders who are willing to place equitable workplace culture at the forefront of their agendas. It demands radical patience and a willingness to stay the course.

At the same time, the simplest nudges could have a huge impact.

For instance, the Leading Edge Survey also found that in our sector, male executives more often have the title “President & CEO” while female executives are more often called “Executive Director,” even when they lead organizations of the same size.

We at Leading Edge are not immune to the unconscious bias that fuels this disparity. Prior to these findings, my title had been Executive Director. After we saw this data, the Leading Edge board voted to change my title to President & CEO. In making this change, our board was clear and unequivocal that I had earned this title, and I have a newfound appreciation for the impact of these kinds of nudges. These are more than cosmetic changes; titles go a long way in signaling value and leveling the playing field.

The research presented here shines a light on the many growth opportunities for all of our organizations.

Small steps matter. By identifying the inequities in our system, we can begin to fix them.

This article originally appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on December 3rd 2018.

This is the call of Leading Edge

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Leading Edge just released a new short video lifting up the voices of amazing leaders in our community that provides an overview of our work, why we do what we do, and what programs we are focused on. Please check it out, then share the link with people in your life who also care about workplace culture and the future of Jewish nonprofits.

Click here to view the full video.

Feedback is the Key to Developing Leaders… And It’s the Gift We Aren’t Giving

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It turns out, there is an actual recipe for creating a leader. Start with a heavy dose of dynamic work experience, add a few dashes of mentoring, mix in a pinch of formal training and voila! You have a leader. It’s called the 70-20-10 leadership development model, and it was developed by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) decades ago.

Notice something interesting? A full 70% of this formula hinges upon the cultivation of increasingly challenging, on-the-job “work experiences.” Yet too often this key ingredient is overlooked by managers. After all, it is much easier to simply approve an employee attending a one-off, skill-building course, say, rather than meaningfully support them in leading a new program – a riskier and more time-consuming proposition.

But the latter is exactly what organizations need to do in order to successfully cultivate workplace cultures that enable individuals to develop as leaders. Unfortunately, our sector is falling short in this area.

So how might we maximize this 70%? By promoting feedback.

For the last three years, Leading Edge has asked thousands of employees at Jewish organizations about their experiences at work. And every year we are struck by a fascinating finding – our managers are well liked by those they manage, but they are not viewed as effective as they can be. Why? Because they fail to provide their employees with regular and constructive feedback.

Don’t get me wrong, we give feedback. We are very good at giving positive feedback. We are simply not adept at giving constructive feedback – the kind that helps an individual learn and stretch and grow. In other words, we are very good at offering the yasher koach – not so good at the challenging stuff.

It’s understandable. Most people, especially those who are drawn to purpose-driven professions like those in the nonprofit sector, don’t want to let people down, hurt people’s feelings, or be confrontational. And giving constructive feedback can be risky, especially if one works in an organization that blends the professional and personal spaces (for instance, when one sees their co-worker at a community event or congregation).

So how might we give better constructive feedback?

  • Ensure that feedback is a gift. Remember, honest feedback helps employees do their best work and grow professionally. But feedback is only a gift when it is delivered thoughtfully. While these conversations can happen in the moment, more involved discussions should be planned with an agenda so that no one is surprised by the conversation’s trajectory.
  • Be mindful. Only initiate a feedback discussion under calm circumstances. Set the tone by ensuring privacy and an ability to focus. Do not sit behind a computer or in a place with many distractions.
  • Make it timely and ongoing. Offering feedback just once a year makes the entire interaction far more intimidating (or even downright scary) for both the giver and receiver. And doing so only when the sky is falling casts a negative cloud around the whole dialogue. Provide ongoing feedback to establish a culture of open dialogue, and to reinforce positive behaviors and shift negative ones before they get out of hand.
  • Focus on behavior. Feedback should be about the work at hand and the employee’s approach and behavior. Use specific examples and talk about what worked and what could be improved. Share observations, but never any judgments, about the person.
  • Be direct. Employees deserve honest, straightforward messages. They should leave with a very clear understanding of what is being asked of them, not a sugar-coated or muddled version of what should have been said. Recap key points at the end of the conversation or ask the other person either to summarize their key takeaways or respond via email after the meeting.  
  • Make it a conversation. Ask for input from the other person. What do they think about the shared feedback? Would they like to take some time and come back for further discussion?
  • Ask for feedback. The most effective leaders and employees are those who ask for feedback. Model an openness to feedback by asking for it regularly and responding positively. This in turn will make it easier to provide feedback to others.

Feedback is the not-so-secret sauce that can super charge our professionals and organizations. Let’s learn how to give and receive it better so that our community can grow trusted leaders and benefit from their strengths.

This article originally appeared on the Mayberg Foundation Blog on February 7, 2019.

ISO Great Leaders: A Guide to Successful CEO Searches

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What would happen if your CEO resigned tomorrow?

If your organization is like most others, you likely don’t have a succession plan in place, let alone a capable replacement in the pipeline.

Fortunately, organizations typically receive more than 24 hours’ notice. But regardless of how much time they have, the point still holds: nonprofit boards are generally ill-prepared for their CEO’s departure. In fact, in a 2015 survey of nonprofits, researchers at Stanford University found that over two–thirds (69 percent) lack succession plans, a shockingly high figure given that every CEO inevitably leaves office.

The challenge is even more acute in the Jewish world. Over the next few years, the vast majority of Jewish nonprofits will need to hire new CEOs. These leaders, in turn, will set the direction of their organizations for the next decade or more. It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of the Jewish community depends on our ability to ensure that the best candidates are placed in these vitally important roles, and then both enabled and empowered to succeed.

Leading Edge, an organization focused on building a robust leadership pipeline for Jewish nonprofits, has just released a CEO Search Committee Guide that lays out best practices for CEO searches and applies them to the Jewish nonprofit sector. It was prepared for Leading Edge by Eben Harrell, a senior editor at Harvard Business Review, a publication dedicated to using best-in-class research to improve the practice of management and leadership. The guide distills the most important elements of a search and presents them in a practical and accessible way, serving as a foundation from which boards can conduct searches with the greatest chances of success.

Over the years, I have been involved in executive searches for many important Jewish organizations and almost always found the process quite challenging. The Leading Edge guide contains a number of suggestions and recommendations that I wish my search committees had known—and followed—at the time:

  1. Most organizations employ an unstructured, conversation-style interview process. While that may allow for organic discussions, research shows that unstructured interviews are essentially useless and lead to unwitting discrimination since interviewers tend to have more favorable impressions of candidates who they resemble. On the other hand, a structured process that requires the assessors to score each answer has numerous benefits, most notably the ability to compare a range of candidates using the same criteria. Unfortunately, structured interviews are rare in the Jewish nonprofit sector.

  2. It takes time to perform a search process well. In fact, most experts recommend that boards plan for a CEO hiring process to take four to six months. That will give the board sufficient time to surface qualified candidates, perform proper due diligence, and make an informed choice. The search committees responsible for the process should be comprised of five to eight people and ideally should not include the current board chair, staff, or the incumbent CEO.

  3. Most Jewish nonprofits prefer to hire external candidates. But in the for-profit realm, the majority of companies fill CEO vacancies with candidates from their own ranks. Research shows that internal CEOs generally perform better and remain longer than outsiders. This underscores the need to do more to develop our internal leadership teams so that organizations have an existing pipeline of talent to consider when the time comes.

  4. A common pitfall when crafting the position description is to dump every desirable quality into a job profile—leading to job postings that one search consultant described as the “Messiah section of the classified pages.” Search committees should do evaluative work before crafting the job description to determine the specific skills they believe the new CEO must possess, what can be assigned to others on the executive team, and what can be developed over time.

Leadership transitions are a time of great opportunity and great risk for organizations; a successful search can catapult the group to the next level and a bad hire can set it back for years. That is why even the most seasoned boards should seek support with their searches, and make sure their processes are as strategic and objective as possible.

By adhering to the principles outlined in the guide, boards will give themselves the best chance to conduct successful searches. They will emerge from the process stronger and led by able executives who, with proper oversight and support, will shape the Jewish community in a positive direction for years to come.

To download the CEO Search Committee Guide, visit: https://leadingedge.org/lay-leadership-initiative/

This article was originally published in E-Jewish Philanthropy on October 25, 2018.

Mordy

Leading Edge Appoints New Deputy Director

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New York, NY – Leading Edge, the Alliance for Excellence in Jewish Leadership, announced today that Mordy Walfish has been named Deputy Director, effective July 31, 2017. In this newly-created role, Mordy will oversee all Leading Edge program strategy and implementation, working closely with the Executive Director and the Board of Directors to translate strategic priorities into action. … READ MORE

Call to Action: How Lay Leaders Can Overcome the Jewish Community’s Leadership Pipeline Challenge

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March 15, 2017, New York, NY—Leading Edge released a report today that highlights key areas of opportunity that will enable the Jewish community to attract and retain top talent. The report, Call to Action: How Lay Leaders Can Overcome the Jewish Community’s Leadership Pipeline Challenge, outlines a number of practical steps lay leaders can take to promote progress in building stronger leadership pipelines … READ MORE