Communicating to Achieve the Shared Mission

Over the past 12 months, I have been part of an amazing group, a first time cohort of Points of Light affiliates who are conducting volunteer engagement and Service Enterprise training across the country, while introducing a new framework called Supportive Environments for Effectiveness, or SEE.

Photo from Volunteer Center of South Jersey

Being a part of this group has provided a number of “ah-ha!” opportunities that continue to strengthen our training programs here at Jersey Cares and the Volunteer Center of South Jersey. It has been an incredible experience to watch how others in the group are successfully, as we say, “building the bike and riding at the same time.”

As a trainer, I know that we cannot effectively communicate a message by simply introducing new content without being mindful of how others receive the information.  It is our job to be sure they are connecting with us and understanding the information that we are sharing. It is equally important that they are responding and are comfortable asking for clarification when needed. With the SEE (Supportive Environments for Effectiveness) Framework, it is what we call helping participants build their mental models. For me personally, it has looked like providing that space for individuals to visualize the concepts as I speak, often by giving context to those concepts from my own experience. This space to build from their own understanding also helps to make them feel capable in their work as they go on to engage others (volunteers, staff and members of the communities that they serve). 

In our organization’s work to increase volunteer involvement, my focus has become to show others how to familiarize volunteers with the work more effectively. These are individuals who are not looking for a reward, but want to feel good, enjoy the experience and more importantly, know the impact of their contribution. If it is a good experience, they’ll come back and look for more opportunities to be involved.

I often hear “how and where do we find ‘good’ volunteers?” from nonprofits who are struggling with recruitment and retention. My response is a suggestion that we take an honest look at how an organization is engaging volunteers to achieve their mission-critical work. Are they taking advantage of this as a capacity-building opportunity or are they just looking for bodies to serve an immediate need? Are they putting the needs of volunteers first? How are they attracting volunteers at the outset? How are they setting them up for success? How are they finding truly meaningful work for volunteers, while making sure that it is aligned with their mission?

The components of SEE are really quite straight-forward and they include: building a mental model, being capable in our work, and making every part of the work feel meaningful. All three are equally important in the volunteer engagement cycle, as the focus becomes more about the person and their informational environment, not just how many people we are bringing in to complete a project. What is less straight-forward, is continuing to be intentional about how we apply the components of SEE. This approach helps change the paradigm of volunteer engagement, in that, we are no longer just posting the numbers and hours of volunteer work, but we are building the necessary relationships to make room for more of the great work to get done.

Photo from Volunteer Center of South Jersey

In addition to the work context, I am also integrating SEE components into other projects and relationships in my personal life, enabling me to communicate more effectively, and in turn, successfully achieving the results that I want and need. Before being a part of this group, and before I was introduced to SEE, I was often focused on the finish line, not spending enough time on the details because checking things from the list seemed more important. I believed that this approach worked for me. But did it really? Looking at my project list, there were programs, processes and training to develop, launch, implement and manage. I realized that I wasn’t asking for help because I wasn’t communicating and crafting a clear message in my ask. Utilizing the tools of the SEE framework helped to redirect the focus to be mindful of the thought process of others; allowed me to make space for others to answer that call.

When we ask for help across a variety of settings, what we sometimes miss is how others are actually processing that information, how they might perceive themselves in doing something, and how this might differ from our own view of the task at hand. We overlook key questions like, “Did we give them enough information to visualize themselves helping us?” or “Did we give them the necessary freedom to come up with their own ideas?”. What works for one person doesn’t always work for another, and this is particularly apparent in how we complete tasks, because we each have our own lived experiences that inform our approach to problem-solving.

Making the time and space to allow people to build their mental models, providing people with the tools to make them feel capable, and showing others how meaningful their contribution is, is now my focus. Re-envisioning our work through this lens can empower us, and allow us to open more doors by supporting others.

Michele Francesconi-Epifani is the Vice President of Capacity Building, Training and Strategic Initiatives at Jersey Cares and the Volunteer Center of South Jersey, and was a member of our Points of Light Affiliate grantee cohort. Jersey Cares works to connect volunteers with meaningful opportunities to serve, while empowering nonprofits by providing resources and education in best-practice volunteer engagement and board development.

Using SEE as a Building Block for a Culture of Belonging

Here at HandsOn NWNC, we’ve been on an equity journey since our early founding in the fall of 2007. Just a few years later, we launched our first specifically equity-focused program, Women’s Emerging Leaders, whose cohorts over the past decade have included women of color at relatively high percentages. But since 2019—before COVID, before the killing of George Floyd—we started being more explicit and intentional about not only where we are on our own organizational equity journey, but about what we could do to help others along on theirs as well. When I first learned about the SEE framework, it struck me as being the next logical step on that equity journey for HandsOn: how could this framework help us create a “culture of belonging” within our own organization?

The team at HandsOn Northwest North Carolina.

After all, creating an environment for effectiveness means creating a place where everyone can be their best selves, and bring their full, lived experience to their work. The core SEE aspects of meaningful action (which is baked into our mission), as well as model-building (e.g., can all of our team members see themselves in our work?) and being capable (e.g., do we value the skills and lived experiences of all? Do we help individuals to embrace this lived experience in their work?) seemed to flow directly towards this idea of “belonging.”

Since starting to work with SEE in mid-2021, we have been thinking about how we could apply these concepts to our own culture of belonging. As we geared up to onboard both new board and staff members in late 2021 and early 2022, this became a pressing question for us. Before SEE, we tended to focus way more on the technical skills and knowledge we thought people would need to be “effective” in their respective roles on our team, rather than focusing on the model building and recognition of pre-existing capability that people were bringing with them to HandsOn. In essence, we weren’t starting where they were at, or considering that everyone’s existing mental models might already provide a framework for us to build upon, as opposed to overwhelming them with information.

Over the past decade, we’ve been successful at building a board that is primarily composed of leaders of color, and have done so in a relatively organic fashion. Our board members have said time and time again that our ability to create a diverse, dynamic, and engaged board is because of how much our individual members enjoy being on this board, how much they appreciate their time with us—in a word, it’s because each member feels like they belong on our board. So, how do we translate this knowledge of what makes our board successful, both collectively and individually, to how we bring on new board members, and how could SEE help us with that? Rather than overwhelming our newbies with tons of details—ten years’ worth of financials? A strategic plan no one has looked at since COVID?—we chose to focus on making sure they felt they belonged at HandsOn. What would that look like for them? How could we communicate that to them?

We started, first, with our current board members, by redesigning our every-other-year board self-assessment. We asked three simple but more reflective questions designed to ensure that all of our board members felt capable in their role going forward. One of the responses to that assessment included an idea to prepare a simple overview of the top things that we think the board needs to keep in mind as we dive into 2022–-a tool that would be helpful to both new and current members. Such a tool would allow all board members to see themselves in our work—to help them figure out where they belonged in our organization, and how they could apply their own skills, talents, and lived experiences to those challenges and opportunities. This piece became a two-part Canva image, so it was visually-based and not overly word-y (unlike this blog post!). It served as the basis for our board’s annual “strategic thinking/planning” session in February, which is the first full board meeting of the year for our new members. This piece, and the substantive discussion which flowed from it, would never have been created without our work to marry SEE to our “culture of belonging” goal.

In addition, we also used SEE to scrap our traditional paper-and-too-many-facts board orientation and replaced it with a 45-minute conversation. We focused the discussion on the question of “What does the experience of serving on our board feel like?” We felt if we focused more on the model-building goal of board orientation—the belonging aspect–then the being capable and meaningful action pieces would follow. We did provide access to all of the same boring background material electronically, but rather than being focused on this, we delved into how we build relationships on the board, how new members can get their questions answered, current issues/context likely to inform that February board meeting, how our board meetings flow, etc. This led to all four new members attending a special January board meeting, allowing for full participation at the February board meeting.

We also used the same kind of key questions in redesigning the onboarding of a new staff member—“What does it mean to be a member of our team? How can you contribute to our success?”—and we worked intentionally to create in-person touch points so that we could foster appropriate model building activities for them. With our team still entirely remote—due to both COVID and pre-existing office space issues—being able to successfully onboard a new staff member virtually, clearly worked better when intentionally applying SEE principles than the process we had used earlier in the year to onboard a team member. Of course, supporting this new staff member is an ongoing process, but we feel that we’ve given them the essentials of what they need to feel capable, and bring their best self to their work—because they hopefully feel they belong on our team.

When organizations ask us about what they can do to build equitable environments within their own structure, we now feel as though we can confidently share our own experiences using SEE as a tool to help create what can often be an elusive culture of belonging for both board and staff members. We’ve learned that focusing on making sure people feel confident in what they can bring to the team, understand the model in which we operate, and have the opportunity to directly impact our mission and services (basically, the three key SEE concepts), helps people feel like they belong. And that has made all the difference!

Amy Lytle is the Executive Director of HandsOn Northwest North Carolina, a member of our Points of Light Affiliate grantee cohort. HandsOn NWNC works with more than 500 different nonprofits in a six county area, providing a wide variety of training, technical assistance, leadership and professional development opportunities that help nonprofits become more effective and efficient in their work.

Helping Yourself

Helping yourself, staff, volunteers, and colleagues have more resiliency during this time might be the most important thing you can do. In a single day as I am pinballing between Zoom meetings (national, state, and local), I am hearing people that are overwhelmed and exhausted. This year, I have the privilege of joining reDirect’s Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) Learning Circle to explore how we can build supportive environments for our staff, colleagues, and ourselves, to be effective and thrive in our roles. SEE has served as a beacon of light for me during a time when nonprofit staff and volunteers are unanimously tired of pivoting to meet the changing demands of their organizations, as well as the dynamic community health situation presented by COVID-19.

Nonprofits and many industries need their personnel to continue doing more and we are not seeing a reprieve soon. As I was preparing and polishing things to share during my SEE Learning Circle, I reviewed the principles of Supportive Environments for Effectiveness. It reminded me to “hang the mirror”. In other words, it is not enough as managers to just encourage and support our staff to take care of themselves, but we also need to practice self-care and model what that looks like. When people take care of themselves, they are better able to step up, lean in, and help the community. If you lead staff, volunteers, programs, or a friend group, empower those you lead to give themselves permission for self-care, demonstrate self-care, and celebrate when people take care of themselves.

I am proud that I am part of teams and collaborations that are brave enough to be honest and vulnerable to say, own, and acknowledge individual feelings and an emotional state of being. All feelings are valid; it is okay to feel overwhelmed, tired, stressed, etc. Whether your feeling is negative or positive: own it, acknowledge it, and reflect on it. If it is negative, through self-care, and resiliency, I hope you can let it go (at least for a little bit). As winter thaws here in Iowa you may increase your ability to be capable and clear your head by taking a brisk walk on a sunny 55-degree day or basking in the sunshine and peering out your window at the green grass starting to peek through the melting snow.

As managers of humans, I hope that taking care of ourself is seen as an expectation, not a suggestion. The belief of always needing to do everything and be “on” all the time slowly wears on us and can deplete our drive to achieve goals that we’re passionate about. Self-care is not something that we only do at the last hour when our passion is a tiny lingering flame about to be burnt out; we need to dedicate time for resiliency in team meetings, have self-checks and report-outs, and create team trust to allow for vulnerability.

For our organization, considering our individual needs takes shape in several ways. For example, during supervision check-ins, we ask people about their capacity and what they are doing to recharge and reset. We provide permission to pause activities/projects to allow people to refocus and be more capable of executing a higher priority item. We also ask people what drains them the most, and to assess if continuing that task is necessary or whether in the long-term, it could be a better fit for another team member. I would recommend considering taking your supervision check-in outside or having part of it as a strolling meeting to encourage self-care, while also restoring your ability to focus in the hours ahead.

There is little in life that you are alone for; always ask yourself, how can you engage others? I challenge you to rethink asking for help instead as a means to invite others to grow with you and deliver the mission of your organization. By leveraging volunteers and empowering staff, you are a stronger employee; often skilled volunteers can do things better and faster because it is what they do best. We need to leverage the talents of our network to work smarter, not harder. In our own team, when one of us needs help, we lean in and help each other. The key is having a team culture of transparency and vulnerability so that everyone feels comfortable about sharing how the team can rally to support each other. I hope that others are able to recreate a similarly supportive environment in their own jobs.

Ironically, in addition to the SEE framework helping me to hold myself accountable for self-care, I will also be using it as we continue to invite others to grow with us and deliver United Way’s mission. No matter if it is staff, or a volunteer, we need to make sure that we are empowering them with enough information to be capable, and yet not overwhelm them. You wouldn’t want a project-based volunteer to feel like they need to take a semester-long course to help. So often we provide more information than is necessary for the volunteer to perform their duties, and potentially make it seem that years of expertise are needed to create an impact. Many of the volunteers that I leverage bring skills, talents, and perspectives to the table that we can start with and build upon. If we build on their familiarity and passion, they will more quickly make an impact. We know that volunteers will continue to lean in, delivering more support and services for our organization when they feel that they can do what we ask of them. Making sure to acknowledge and thank those that help also helps them realize the extent of their impact.

If you need a little beacon of light to help those that you lead, I encourage you to check out the full SEE framework. However, if three quick bullet points are all that you have the capacity for at the current moment, I would encourage you to ask yourself:

• How are you giving people the information they need to succeed and be excited about the work without overwhelming them?

• How are you creating space and the expectation for people to take care of themselves while they bring their skills and interest to work?

• How are you ensuring that people know they are making an impact and see the results of their efforts?

I would also challenge you to engage in a little self-care too:

• Reflect on what excites you about your work.

• What can help you create resiliency and restore your passion? Build two or three self-care moments into your day.

• End your day by reflecting on three ways you made an impact.

Remember that to best care for others you first need to care for yourself.

Kayla Paulson is a Senior Manager at United Way of East Central Iowa (UWECI) working in Community Resources and Volunteer Engagement. UWECI connects community members, nonprofits, companies, and more to address community needs through asset-based approaches, sharing time, talents, and treasures to create sustainable and lasting solutions for systemic change.