Here's what the Leading Edge team is learning about culture, executives, and boards this month.
Reimagining Jewish nonprofit culture
By incorporating Jewish values internally, Jewish institutions have the opportunity to build spiritually thriving workplaces and overcome the current crisis of culture they are facing. Through examining themselves through the lens of middot, embracing the Jewish value of ongoing learning, and being aware of the needs of the spirit, these institutions can offer employees experientially rich workplaces that may be able to compete with the higher salaries and often lower stress levels offered by the for-profit world.
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CULTURE
Workplace AI Wants to Help You Belong
With the increase of remote offices after the pandemic, there came a major uptick in new digital tools to inform employee engagement and performance management. At the same time, organizations have been responding to new and louder calls for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) at work. Thoughtful, curious, and intentional social change leadership and investment is required to help advance and push for tools that can truly create more just and equitable workplace environments, or decide whether they should be developed at all.
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How to set better boundaries while working hybrid
Since the pandemic, a major boundary workers have found themselves setting is around their availability and responsiveness. Managers play a pivotal role in demonstrating healthy boundary-setting behaviors to their teams, and they should openly communicate their boundaries and also truly follow through with them. Ultimately, it's up to leadership to foster a culture where boundaries are honored and can be meaningfully set.
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MORE:
- HBR: How High-Performing Teams Build Trust
- Dolgin Leadership Group: Rethink your assumptions about feedback
- Fast Company: This underappreciated skill is the antidote to workplace toxicity
EXECUTIVES
Hire Better Managers: 35 Interview Questions for Assessing a Candidate
When sitting down with management candidates, interviewers tend to resort to the same ho-hum questions that barely scratch the surface. Think, “How do you describe your management style?” or “How do you motivate your team?” If you're looking for someone exceptional, however, you'll need to ditch the rudimentary questions and dig deeper. Here is a guide of some of the best interview questions for management positions compiled by First Round Review.
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Resources: Evaluating Your Evaluation: Getting to Effective, Safe, and Fair Performance Management
Ineffective or inconsistent performance management practices can result in eroded trust amongst staff, undermined psychological safety, and experiences of unfairness. Processes like goal setting, feedback, coaching, mentoring, professional development, and associated promotions and compensation increases can help create safe and fair work environments. Promise54 offers DEI and antiracism-infused performance management tools for leaders to avoid common pitfalls, including a Performance Management Systems Metrics resource and a Competency & Role Progression Mapping tool.
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MORE
- MIT SMR (subscription access): Building Culture From the Middle Out
- HBR: How Leaders Miscommunicate When Tensions Are High
- Fast Company: 5 ways to fend off your mid-career identity crisis
BOARDS
Inclusive Board Meetings
Diverse teams get better results, but it takes skill and thoughtfulness to make the most of diverse experience at a board table. Once a board becomes more community-anchored, how are they to embrace the challenge of inclusive governance and bring out the best insights from their new members? Here are four steps that foundation, board, and sector leaders can follow, breaking down and applying ideas for inclusive governance into concrete questions and tactics.
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Managing the Transition From a Working Board to a Governance Board
The evolution of a board from hands-on operational involvement to strategic governance is a pivotal change with huge potential positive impact, but it’s hard. Some board members may not survive the transition. In this article, CEOs of disease-focused nonprofits discuss the reasons for change and how to best protect valued board members, starting with the board chair.
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MORE:
- CEP: Practicing What We Preach: Acting on Donor Feedback
- The Chronicle of Philanthropy: Futurism Is Having a Moment in Post-Pandemic Foundation Strategy
- NonProfitPRO: 3 Strategies to Help Nonprofits Overcome Donor Fatigue
