6 Essential Coaching Skills for Nonprofit Managers and Leaders
Today’s nonprofit managers are the bench of talent who, with the right support, will grow into future nonprofit leaders. But too often, as nonprofits, we don’t take the time or resources to provide coaching or management training for our staff.
We promote staff into management positions because they are good at their current roles—and leave them to sink or swim as managers.
In my nonprofit career and as a coach and consultant, I’ve seen firsthand how everyone can benefit from leadership coaching.
In this article, we’re going to cover the basics of coaching for nonprofit managers, including how managers can benefit from coaching and use coaching skills to strengthen the teams they manage.
If you’re a nonprofit manager, feel free to grab the talking points in this article to help make the case for your own professional development!
What Is Nonprofit Management Coaching?
Coaching is any formal or informal practice used by an experienced professional to help someone experience transformation and reach their goals. There is no magical formula but there are many tools coaches use to achieve transformation for their clients.
Coaching can be provided by mentors, peers, independent consultants, or even younger and newer employees who have direct experience in a particular area like media relations, finance, negotiation, working with grassroots communities, or other areas.
For example, informal coaching—or “coaching in the moment”—uses observation, instruction, and dialogue to help people use current situations as learning moments.
Most nonprofit managers and leaders can also benefit from professional coaching services provided by an outside consultant, such as the one-on-one or group coaching services that I offer.
Who Needs Nonprofit Management Coaching?
In the nonprofit sector, coaching is underrated, underestimated, and misunderstood. There is only so much improvement you can expect from training and managing. The biggest bang for your buck in developing high-performing and high-potential staff is coaching.
That’s why all employees, especially managers and leaders, can benefit from coaching. Keep in mind that even high performers may be struggling in silence or dealing with mindset issues that limit their potential.
Receiving professional leadership coaching can help managers be better at their current roles, prepare them for future growth opportunities, and empower them with coaching skills they can use with their own direct reports.
In other words: providing professional coaching for one manager can benefit staff across the organization for years to come!
Why Nonprofit Managers Matter So Much
Managers get a bad rap in our culture as people who don’t “do” much. But the reality is that a nonprofit manager’s job is to get results—not to be liked. And yes, these two aspects often create conflict in nonprofits. That’s why even great, visionary leaders need strong nonprofit managers!
While I’ve served as an executive director five times, I spent just as many years as a staffer and manager at nonprofits. I learned a lot about how to run nonprofit organizations by watching it be done poorly—and I guarantee that many future leaders out there are learning management lessons the exact same way.
The reality is that many nonprofit managers see things as they really are—not as leadership might want things to be. Given the right conditions, this insight can become a powerful asset for nonprofit managers, leaders, and organizations as a whole.
For example, my first boss at my first real nonprofit job (and best friend at the time) was a brilliant strategist but struggled as an executive director. He had many strengths including leadership abilities. But following through and using management best practices were always afterthoughts.
No one had job descriptions. His desk was a huge pile of paperwork and he glamorized the mess as a sign of being busy. Fundraising and finance were always someone else's job. He loved advocacy, and that was his gift.
I decided that when I became an executive director, I would do things differently. I would focus on what the organization needed most from me, not the work that felt more comfortable. This takes diligence, commitment, and a mindset shift that most nonprofit leaders haven’t developed fully—but that CAN be developed through coaching.
Coaching Skills Nonprofit Managers Can Use TODAY
Coaching is a way of helping people get results and grow by seeing their own power and helping them overcome challenges. If you’re interested in what a professional coaching program looks like, check out my comprehensive guide to executive leadership coaching programs.
To get started, here are six things managers can do to be effective coaches:
1) Make time.
You need to schedule dedicated time to coach. Doing it on the fly will shortchange the experience. Can good coaching happen on the fly? Yes. But good managers make time to develop their people…with an appointment.
2) Assess mindset, toolset, and skillset.
To create a framework for coaching to transformation, consider the individual’s:
Mindset, meaning their perspective and limiting beliefs.
Toolset, meaning the resources they have to do their job better, including worksheets, articles, or training.
Skillset, which may involve role-playing, seeking feedback, or practicing a skill on their own time.
The greatest “a-ha” moments tend to be about mindset and perspective and not skill-based.
People get hung up on the term “mindset” as if it has to do with lacking confidence. Mindset issues are ways we limit ourselves. It might simply be that our worldview and experience have limited our understanding of a term or concept or what our job actually is. Great coaches are listening for mindset issues that may limit an employee’s success.
3) Be compassionate.
You don’t have to be a hard ass because you saw some romanticized TV example of “tough love.” That isn’t coaching, it's boot camp.
“You don’t have to be a hard ass because you saw some romanticized TV example of “tough love.” That isn’t coaching, it’s boot camp. ”
Yes, tough love may have its place in personal development, but workplace coaching requires empathy and compassion.
4) Prioritize authenticity.
People don’t want platitudes and buzzwords. They want real-life stories and lessons and to hear the messy way things got resolved—or didn't!
5) Listen actively and thoughtfully.
Emotional intelligence is rooted in empathy and humility. We must appreciate that our team members and coachees come from a wide range of experiences and backgrounds.
One worker may speak four languages and have come to the US as an asylum seeker. The next person may be struggling in silence with a pre-existing condition or trauma.
Radical curiosity can be key to unlocking the abilities of someone in front of you and may be the tool you need as a manager to peel back the layers to uncover the reasons behind sub-optimal performance. Suspend judgment. Smile. Lean in and be curious about people. Watch body language, listen to word choice, and notice what goes unspoken.
Demonstrate compassion and employees will be more likely to open up.
6) Spend money.
If you want to see change, you may have to put a budget behind coaching. That could mean classes, courses, retreats, apps, or subscriptions to things to deepen the learning.
Other Nonprofit Management Coaching Tips
Whether you’re being coached or coaching someone else, there are a few other key elements that can set you and your direct reports up for long-term success.
1) Create space for success and failure.
You have to be OK with allowing people to fail…even spectacularly. A workplace must have a culture of growth, innovation, learning, and acceptable risk-taking if anyone is going to learn.
The goal is that if you let a coachee fail, they fail forward and learn something—and get better.
“The goal is that if you let a coachee fail, they fail forward and learn something—and get better. ”
However, letting someone fail out of laziness or carelessness is not OK.
Coaching and management should help people think more strategically than mere effort. That could mean doing scenario planning about what failures might happen and what you may be able to learn or use from those failures.
For example, imagine a nonprofit that focuses much of its efforts on passing an ordinance or law that will significantly change how it reaches its mission. Unfortunately, in a given year the ordinance does not pass. BUT even with this supposed failure the organization actually added 100,000 new names to its database for the next fight because it used the campaign to grow capacity. That’s strategy.
2) Listen for themes.
Coaches and coachees should always be listening for themes.
Is the manager or coachee complaining a lot or taking a victim mentality…like things are happening to them all the time and they are not in control? Do they not take initiative or are they afraid of conflict or not being liked and that’s why they don’t hold others to high standards?
Look for themes and fold them into your coaching and management regimen.
3) Speak truth.
Do not hold back the truth from a manager or coachee. It can actually fracture trust.
However, speaking the truth is not the same as being cruel. There is a way to be professional, encouraging, inspiring, and honest without hurting someone’s feelings.
This is probably the most sensitive and time-consuming part of delivering feedback…making sure the message you are trying to convey is taken as constructive and not pure criticism.
So, if a coachee is getting in their own way, overthinking things, being a perfectionist, or afraid to let go of tasks, name it!
4) Help create connections.
Coaching can also be about opening doors, making introductions, and sharing the world of resources that as a coach you undoubtedly have built over a lifetime.
5) Cultivate vision.
Managers lead people and work. Many employees are already motivated, but you sometimes need to show people a vision of what’s possible for them and the organization so they can reassess where to spend their energy. Sometimes that can even mean helping people see that their long-term value is not working where they are now!!!
In nonprofit organizations, vision isn’t just about social change, it is also about building confidence and transforming yourself for your career and your family.
6) Embrace accountability.
One of the toughest things to do is hold people accountable—both ourselves and others.
Many people have excuses for why work didn’t get done or done well. Your job as a manager is to get results, hopefully without micromanaging. If an employee’s story isn’t checking out about why there are delays or low-quality work, you may need to observe the work more closely to get to the bottom of logjams, bottlenecks, and wasteful processes. Diagnosing issues with systems, software, people, and policy is a key responsibility of managers.
7) Learn to make hard choices.
Part of managing is knowing whether you have the right person in the right role. It doesn’t always mean someone has to be terminated. They could be moved instead. But because your job is to get results, you can’t hold on to people who aren’t helping you reach the mission.
Conclusion: Nonprofit Management Coaching Can Be Powerful
All coaching is about transformation from one’s current state to a future state. Whether you are receiving coaching or providing coaching, this commitment to transformation should be a guiding principle. Hone the skills above and you’ll be on your way to becoming a great manager and leader!
If you’re looking for more support on your path to leadership growth, check out our one-on-one and group coaching programs.
