Insights & Ideas
We’re always learning and expanding our thinking.
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…”
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.
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
"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." In the words of Amy Lytle of HandsOn NWNC, "the core SEE tenets seemed to flow directly toward the idea of 'belonging.'" This is their journey of leaning into the SEE framework to build a sense of belonging for their organization, as a member of our Points of Light Affiliate grantee cohort.
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?
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
“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.” Kayla Paulson of UWECI describes the transformation that learning SEE helped her make as she approached her work as a Points of Light Affiliate grantee.
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 human capital 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.
Reflections on Learning Circles: The Nonprofits’ Journeys
reDirect has used Learning Circles as a strategy for collaborating with nonprofits experimenting with Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) within their organizations. The organizations have taken different journeys—some have dabbled in several areas of SEE applications while others have focused on just one. Here are a few of our takeaways.
reDirect has used Learning Circles as a strategy for collaborating with nonprofits experimenting with Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) within their organizations. The organizations have taken different journeys—some have dabbled in several areas of SEE applications while others have focused on just one. Here are a few of our takeaways.
SEE is about culture change.
Light bulbs turned on all year as participants realized that incorporating SEE relates to their entire organization and how it does its work. It has implications for how people think about themselves, their interactions with others, as well as how they approach their work. They said this in so many different ways: “SEE is not a project. SEE is becoming part of our DNA.” “SEE relates to how we do our work, not the what.” “It has become the litmus test for how we think.” “SEE is a verb – we SEE things.” “When we asked folks at staff meetings how they used SEE, we used to hear crickets. Now, folks have examples!”
As organizations have reflected on SEE as culture change, they’ve shared some other realizations:
Helping people get their heads around SEE takes time, intentionality, and multiple experiences. reDirect has supported many touches with the organizations’ leadership and will be encouraging additional opportunities to engage with staff.
SEE helps build a shared language that takes the “personal” out of conversations. People can step back from their egos/sensitivities to work together and see others through an “assume best intentions” lens.
SEE provides a robust framework for applying other tools (eg DISC, Emergenetics, Strengthsfinder). This is a really interesting hook for organizations because they often flounder at the “now what do we do” stage with these tools. Having a SEE-informed mindset has helped them implement some strategies for using the insights they gained from these tools.
The power of having a small experiment mentality.
The notion of small experiments has been instrumental in helping participants overcome inertia and start doing something tangible. It gave organizations and individuals permission to try things, to play with ideas, and to be ok if something did not work out.
Less is more.
What a liberating concept this has been for some folks. It is so hard for people to really believe and act on this principle and so effective when they do.
The physical environment matters.
We made a point to remind grantees to be mindful of how the physical environment impacts their work experience and effectiveness. While infrastructural changes are harder to figure out (e.g., changing an open cubical space), participants talked about the positive impact of instituting walking meetings, being more comfortable defining their need for quiet space, and being intentional about how they set up their desk/workspaces.
Learning Circles as a Funding Strategy
Fashioned after the Denver Foundation's Inclusiveness Project, reDirect initiated Learning Circles to help our grantees build a peer network as they develop a road map for implementing Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) in their organizations. Our Learning Circle cohorts have focused primarily on using SEE to improve internal organizational functioning.
Fashioned after the Denver Foundation's Inclusiveness Project, reDirect initiated Learning Circles to help our grantees build a peer network as they develop a road map for implementing Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) in their organizations. Our Learning Circle cohorts have focused primarily on using SEE to improve internal organizational functioning.
Below are some of our biggest takeaways as a foundation seeking to authentically work with nonprofits.
reDirect’s work fills a gap in the funding world.
While many nonprofits acknowledge that having effective, highly functioning staff is essential, they have difficulty dedicating adequate resources or time to systematically improving their systems and work environment. And very few funders provide monies to support this behind-the-scenes focus. Participating with reDirect, and engaging with the structure created by the Learning Circles, help organizations to be more intentional and to make time for this kind of work.
Learning Circles are powerful.
The Executive Directors and/or senior staff from each organization meet regularly to explore Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) as it relates to their workplace. These meetings have exceeded our expectations in terms of the level of participation and investment by the organizations, and the power of peer insight. Participants have been willing to be vulnerable and transparent as they collectively explore strategies to better engage with their staff and to improve their workplaces.
Some quick wins can improve the workplace right away.
One of our initial assumptions was that organizations would be investing in changes that might take a considerable amount of time to implement. In our Learning Circle meetings and sessions with staff, we have discovered that SEE has helped generate ideas that the organizations have been able to implement immediately. Even small changes such as improving the physical work environment with walking meetings or helping staff feel more appreciated by developing a birthday calendar can create more supportive environments for bringing out the best in overworked staff.
Our thanks to the nonprofits participating in this work with us: Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education, Colorado Nonprofit Association, Community Resource Center, Community Shares of Colorado, The Gathering Place, Spark the Change Colorado (formerly Metro Volunteers), The Park People, Playworks, and Youth Employment Academy. You can read more about what SEE helped them achieve here.