Episode 11: Leadership - What it is and Where to Find it

Welcome to another edition of “Around with Randall,” your weekly ten-to-12 minute podcast about making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here's your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.  I really appreciate your time. This week on “Around with Randall” I want to follow up to what I talked a little bit about last week regarding how I got to where I am.

And part of the reflection process I went through was thinking about leadership and the people who got me here. In the last podcast I talked about some of the experience. Today. I want to talk about the people. Leadership is such an unbelievably vast conversation, discussion research series of articles.

However you want to put it. I mean, it's so large to try to define it in a short podcast is. Nearly impossible, but I did hasten back a little bit to some thoughts I had on some of the better publications I've read about. And one seemed to come to mind quite frequently, really was the work of Napoleon Hill for most people that are going to be who in the world is Napoleon Hill.

Napoleon Hill was the chosen biographer confidant writer for Andrew Carnegie and Carnegie, obviously the worldwide known philanthropists and business mogul of the early part of the 20th century, and even into the last part of the 19th century, who ended up giving his fortune away to all kinds of nonprofits.

Carnegie Hall is an example of the libraries across many small communities in the United States. Carnegie came up with a philosophy of about 31 different aspects that he indicated were leaders’ important leadership qualities, and that, Hill documented, he wrote a couple of books. One was “Think and Grow Rich” in 1937 or so if I remember correctly and then a second in 1948, after the second world war about think your way to wealth, all based on his interaction for 20, 30, 40 years with our Andrew Carnegie.

So here are some of the things Carnegie talked about that were important aspects of leadership, and I'm not going to list them all. But just for context, he talked about leaders having a definite purpose and a plan that they should be incredibly motivated that they surround themselves with talented people and not be afraid of that talent that they be self-reliant and self-disciplined persistent, creative, decisive.

One of my favorites is they don't react too quickly. They gather data or facts before they make big decisions. Leaders are enthusiastic and fair. Open-minded tactful. They listen more than they speak. They have great attention to detail. They can take criticism and, and more. That’s just one vantage point of leadership.

But what I think is true, and if Andrew Carnegie was here today, I think he would agree is, is that when we have people who help mentor us, who lead us, especially early on in our career, it makes these things much easier to understand. And so what is leadership to me? Well, it comes in a couple pieces and really they're more experiential than anything.

The first place to always start for me is, is my parents leadership was by example. Quality people. High quality people who truly believed and still believe to this day, that what you do is more important than what you say. And I also then would connect that to my wife, the leadership she has to demonstrate at home, to manage our family, to allow me to do what I do, that she works ten times harder than I do every day. 

And it's all about leadership. It's just, some people may not see it that way. In my professional life leadership started with a gentleman by the name of Mike Dempsey. I was in college, probably skating through would be a fair word. Didn't work. Very hard, kinda was just limping along. Not quite sure what to do. And I went to Gross High School and asked if I could coach basketball. And then ended up coaching basketball and some, a little bit of football, and golf, and some other things. But Mike Dempsey was the head basketball coach and became the athletic director at gross high school.

I've tried to express many times how important he was to me, because for the first time somebody believed in me more than I believed in myself. And that was people that, that individual Mike Dempsey wasn't my parents. Twenty years old  - gave me responsibility for 13, 14, 15 year old kids and said, they're your problem. Figure it out. I'm here as a resource and then walked with me when I made a million mistakes. And what I learned was is that he gave me the opportunity to lead others and to believe in myself.

I went on to law school after that. And then after law school ran into a gentleman by the name of Tom Pesci, at the time president at Rochurst High School in Kansas city. Tom, a Jesuit priest hired me to run their philanthropy  at 26, 27 years old, really knowing nothing about the industry to oversee a department.

What I learned from Tom, the leadership he demonstrated for me was he believed in my potential more than I did. He saw more in me than I saw in myself and what I could be, what I could do.

I always want to find ways early, early on in my career for, for Mike and for Tom to say thank you to them both. I try to as regularly as possible because early on, they gave me an opportunity, but because they demonstrated some of the skills that Carnegie was talking about for very specific ways that allowed me to grow as a person.

And as a professional, when I went to Minnesota, I worked for a gentleman by the name of Tom Mich, Dr. Tom Mich at St. Thomas Academy. What I appreciated in his leadership was his honesty. He said early on, I don't know anything about fundraising. So I need you guide me. He took a 31-32 year old kid. I look back at it and shake my head.

And this was not an average high school. I had a department of like 11, 12, 13, 14 people at times, depending on the campaign and the need to guide him and guide the institution as a whole, in terms of fundraising. Whole department people to hire, fire, manage, motivate, discipline, elevate, evaluate, and he let me do it at a young age, then guided me.

And when I left the Academy, I went to go work for Glenn Fosdick, CEO and President at the Nebraska Medical Center, the clinical arm of the University of Nebraska and led their fundraising efforts. Glenn brought me to a table I'd never thought I'd be sitting at, at a very young age, 35-36 years old. That was the executive table of a multi-billion dollar corporation with six other people plus in, and I was half everyone's age in that room.

And he gave me the opportunity to learn. And he said, I want you to sit and listen. You're going to understand, particularly at the beginning, you're not going to understand a lot, but your job is to learn and to listen. I'm not sure I said much in those first two years at those tables, but boy, was it a treasure trove of education in terms of how corporations and large nonprofits work in the politics and the business and all the things that I would have never understood at. And I've been sitting in those rooms for those conversations, really a wonderful opportunity. 

So for Mike Dempsey, Tom Pesci, Tom Mich and, Glen Fosdick, I'm eternally grateful for the skills that they demonstrated were very much along the lines of what Carnegie talked about, but for me, they were able to identify the holes that I had, whether it was my own understanding of my self or my professional potential or the growth inside of nonprofit work.

So, what does all this mean? So enough of the Randall story. Tactically, what does it mean for you? So here's what I've picked up along the way. The big overall conversation that I want to have the tactical piece is, is that you need to probably pay as much attention for the person you work for as you do the organizational mission and the opportunity and the, and the compensation. 

Several podcasts ago, I did a podcast on managing up and I talk a lot about this, that the relationship you have with your boss, as essential in some of the tactics that you can use to better that relationship and give yourself more opportunity. I'm going to push that back into that podcast. I'd suggest you go listen to it.

It might be helpful, but the overall big picture of leadership is is that if you're the one looking for it, you got to find people that are willing to give it. And so in interviews, or even now in evaluations or on a regular basis, are you asking questions like who mentored you? How did that occur? Is that something that I could have the same opportunity for? Would you be willing to include me in certain things? And if you're the leader, are you asking your employees those you lead cash? What would you like to know? What would you like to do employees? If you're looking for opportunities, have to be led. Can you ask for access? Can you sit at the right table, even though you may not comment, so you can learn?

I remember one time with Tom Mich, I finally was beginning to think this is a direction I wanted to go professionally. Long-term. I asked to sit in the executive committee meetings of the board with no voice. Just to learn where are places you can go to learn in the meetings, listening tours or, or, or, or sit ins.

As I called, I used to think of them. Are you making yourself whole, are you learning more than things like we talked about in the last podcast that are valuable for your organization and, or your boss? Are you doing your job most effectively? If you're not doing that, then this is all a waste of time.

You look like a climber. So if you're the leader, I was positioning those all as maybe an employee looking for someone to be led. If you're the leader, are you asking those questions in reverse the other way for your people that you're overseeing and leading? How can you help them? I think that's the end game is I look back at Mike and Tom and Tom and Glenn and say they were looking after me.

How could I be better? And it's probably something I can be better at with the people that I work with, but I find it incredibly valuable in the consulting world. Just a quick couple of reminders. So on the website, www dot HallettPhilanthropy.com. That's two L's, two T's and Hallett blogs. Are there two, three times a week, just some 90 second reads on our profession.

What we're going through? Maybe just something I saw. I went, wow. That's something that is worthy of a thought. Certainly the podcast is there, but you can get it on Apple or Spotify or any of the other platforms where you download podcasts around with Randall. And if you run into a problem, try Hallett Philanthropy as well.

It's kind of tied both ways. Uh, and by the way, if you think this is helpful, forwarded on to someone, if this causes someone to think a little bit about them and their career and their nonprofit, then that's really great. Uh, it could be, uh, something that might be a catalyst for them to go on to that next thing and do that next thing, learn that next thing that they've really wanted to.

So share it with a friend or two. Let me conclude, as I do every week saying what we're doing in this industry is vocational. If you're here, you are called to it. And at the end of the day, what this is really all about is us helping others. Philanthropy doesn't mean money. Philanthropy means love of mankind or humankind.

And. You are making a difference for your nonprofit and for people who need assistance or an area of our world that needs to be preserved to be catered to. That always leads me to my favorite saying some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wonder what happened and we're people who are making things happen for those who are wondering what happened.

And I can't think of a better way to spend a professional career. This is joyous. I hope you feel that joy every day. If I can help you find that joy, you let me know, because this is a great journey of life. And as we, as we pursue our professional excellence, I appreciate your time this week. We'll see you next week and remember, make it a great day.