Ahead of her talk about high-performing teams at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, the Climate Council’s Chief Operating Officer Katrina Porteus has given us a sneak peek of how the independent climate change organisation built a team that delivers real impact despite its small size.
Giving tough feedback to your team members is an inevitable part of managing staff or volunteers in any NFP, but can be incredibly challenging for a manager. But according to Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman of US-based leadership development consultancy Zenger/Folkman, these conversations are often harder than they need to be.
We have known for many years that humans are driven by an innate desire to find or foster meaning in what we do, even under the most extreme of conditions. Given how central work is to most people’s lives, it is a key place to seek meaningfulness. Recent research with 135 people in a wide range of jobs set out to discover what they considered meaningful work, how work can be made meaningful, and how this sense of meaningfulness can be erased or destroyed.
In the lead-up to his presentation at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, Monash Business School professor and servant leadership expert Dr Sen Sendjaya shares his insights on servant leadership, including why it’s a particularly powerful approach for NFP organisations.
This is the story of how one fundraising team boosted their weekly productivity by 400 percent.
It wasn’t due to pay rises or catered lunches – or even an inspiring or well-trained manager giving staff the motivation to do their work better. So what was it?
Almost half of all Australians work through their lunch break. And more than a quarter of us – 3.8 million Australians – don’t take a lunch break at all, according to the Australia Institute. But while it might outwardly appear that your lunch-break-skipping staff are admirably committed to their work – and that’s good for your team and your organisation – the real impact is more insidious.
It’s been widely panned as a waste of time, ineffective, and straight-up BS – so why do so many organisations still make their staff participate in brainstorming sessions?
There’s a quieter alternative that research shows is better at yielding more and better ideas.
What makes a good team?
It’s a hard question to answer, and one that’s becoming more and more important given the increasingly collaborative nature of work. But if anyone can provide a valuable answer, it’s Google – and the tech giant has some fascinating insights on what makes the best teams.
If you’re a manager in an Australian NFP, it’s quite likely you haven’t received any formal leadership training. Indeed, one study found that leaders on average only received leadership training a full decade after they started managing people.
But what if there was one simple thing you could do now that would dramatically increase your success as a manager and leader?
Ongoing workplace boredom can impact your team in a way that’s comparable to chronic stress.
If not addressed, a staff member’s boredom can quickly transform into resentment. That can then lead to them ‘checking out’ – beyond being passively uninterested, the staff member becomes bitter and no longer wants to work at an organisation they don’t care about.