Young Leaders: The Challenge of Developing Yourself
One of the challenges all leaders face is developing their skills as leaders and managers. But for nonprofit leaders, finding the ways—and time—to do this can be particularly challenging for several reasons, not least the disparity between their organizations’ resources and the scope of the work that demands to be done.
Darell Hammond, Earl Martin Phalen, and Liz Maw are three people with valuable insight on this topic. They all parachuted into leadership roles very early in their careers. Hammond co-founded KaBOOM!—whose mission is to create great playspaces through the participation and leadership of communities—in his early 20s. Phalen co-founded Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL), a nonprofit designed to increase the educational achievements and life opportunities of children living in low-income communities, while he was a student at Harvard Law School. Maw became the executive director (ED) of Net Impact, a network of more than 12,000 new-generation leaders committed to using the power of business to improve the world, when she was just three years out of the MBA program at Columbia Business School.
Here, they share their thoughts about developing their own leadership and management capabilities while building and running their organizations.
Hammond’s biggest challenge as co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Washington, DC-based KaBOOM! was the organization’s extremely rapid growth in its early years, fueled by the enthusiasm of core partners such as the Home Depot, Nike, CNA Insurance, and Kimberly Clark. For example, in the first year of KaBOOM!’s operation, Kimberly Clark executives read an article about the organization and decided to celebrate the company’s upcoming 125th anniversary by working with KaBOOM! to build a playspace in each of its 37 mill town communities. Fueled by responses like this, within two years Hammond went from managing a staff of four and a budget of $100,000 to managing a staff of 15 and a budget of $3 million.
“I fumbled along for a while in the early days, my skills and management abilities growing over time, learning both by ‘doing’ and by emulating others whose leadership I respected,” said Hammond.
Hammond recommended that young leaders find advisors and coaches early on in their careers. “Let yourself be coached, and do it intentionally and with regularity,” he said. Hammond was just 23 and working at City Year when, at his boss’s request, he organized the large-scale community service project that led him to launch KaBOOM! In addition to substantial support and mentoring from board members (such as KaBOOM!’s second board chair, Peter D’Amelio, president and chief operating officer of the Cheesecake Factory), Hammond received invaluable guidance and advice from senior leaders at the KaBOOM!’s corporate partners. For example, “the [then-]CEO of the Home Depot, Bob Nardelli, and the former chairman and CEO of CNA, Dennis Chookaszian, both took me under their wing. If I called them up, I knew they would take my call. They opened themselves up to coach me, to help me develop as if I was part of their own management team, and for that I am truly grateful.”
Although the idea for KaBOOM! formally took shape while Hammond was at City Year, the philosophy behind it was firmly grounded in his own experience living in a children’s home in Illinois, where he benefited from the support of community members who joined together to make the world a better place for themselves and those around them.
Hammond reflected, “I have always been blessed to have people let me into their lives and make me and the KaBOOM! mission a priority.”
In fact, each of the three young leaders emphasized repeatedly that mentoring was their strongest source of support, whether through formal or informal relationships, and each found that guidance and support in slightly different ways. Phalen, who in September 2008 stepped down after 17 years as BELL’s CEO, commented, “My greatest growth has probably come from mentors and advisors on the board, two in particular who are both brilliant and very generous with their time and guidance.” He said the board members took the time to meet with him several times a month when he was BELL’s CEO.
Phalen launched BELL in Boston with a group of peers from Harvard Law School’s Black Law Students’ Association after volunteering at a community center in the Roxbury neighborhood, mentoring 15 young children. Phalen and his classmates were shocked by how poorly these children were performing academically, and decided that mentoring alone was not enough to really change these kids’ lives. Encouraged by the motivation of a group of parents at the Agassiz Elementary School, they founded BELL. Phalen moved very rapidly from law student to CEO, running the organization in the early days with a very small team and an even smaller budget. He and colleague Arlene Hudson split a $12,500 grant from Echoing Green to pay their combined salaries. The BELL tutors all worked on a fully volunteer basis, motivated by their shared passion and commitment to the cause.
Phalen said a key to succeeding as a young leader is to be persistent. “The work of leading an organization is incredibly difficult. It challenges you day in and day out, in 101 different ways,” he said.
“You need to have the vigilance and persistence to fight through the myriad of obstacles you will face and to be stronger than them, to stay focused on why you chose this work. If that commitment, that anchor, is strong you will be able to wade your way through any and all of those challenges.”
In addition to seeking advice from his board members, Phalen said he found it immensely helpful to reach out to peers at other organizations to see how they handled similar challenges and opportunities. “[I would] spend time with other social entrepreneurs, visiting other programs, and bringing new ideas back to BELL,” he said.
In terms of more formal training and development, Phalen was sponsored to attend an executive education program at Harvard Business School called Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management, which he found helpful in terms of both the direct knowledge and learning about the experiences of others. However, finding the time and money to attend such programs is never easy. As Maw noted, “I keep looking at various classes and conferences, but I haven’t managed to set aside the time yet to go to any of them.”
Unlike Hammond and Phalen, Maw did not found an organization; nonetheless she was brought in at a significant transition point for Net Impact. Just three years after getting her MBA, Maw was working as a consultant at the Bridgespan Group when she was chosen as the new ED of San Francisco-based Net Impact. She came on board just before Net Impact began the process to split from its parent organization to become a standalone 501(c)(3) organization, and Maw was charged with the large task of building its strategy, infrastructure, and brand, as well as restructuring the Net Impact team.
Maw said she received significant support from her board during those early years. She also found a complementary way of gaining objective expertise and counsel. “I received a great in-kind donation—the guidance of a life coach who meets with me once a week. She helped me navigate several complex, human resources-related issues over the course of my first year,” Maw said, which she found tremendously helpful in building both her management skills and her overall confidence.
Hammond said that as his career progressed, he learned how important it is for leaders to cultivate self-awareness. “A tip I would have liked to receive earlier is to have more self-awareness of my role,
behaviors, and style and how they impact others around me,” he said. This means being conscious of what you are good at, where you need to improve your skills, and how you are perceived by others, both to think about your own development over time and to help prioritize skills to look for when hiring.
Young Leaders: The Challenge of Developing Yourself
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