For all my peeps in the nonprofit world, leadership in the last few years has been…a lot.
Between the pandemic, national racial reckoning, economic turbulence, remote working, and staff feelings, it ain’t easy out here in these streets.
Join me and organizational consultant and healer Emily Frieze-Kemeny to talk about how we progress without losing our minds and our well-being. We discuss the challenges of leading in the last couple of years, how to draw healthy boundaries with our teams, and simple strategies to ground yourselves.
This interview 🎙 is like a therapy session for the soul.
Visit her website 🌐 www.arosegroup.com
Connect with her 🔗 www.linkedin.com/in/emily-frieze-kemeny
Quote from Emily: “The only reason we’d be scared to be vulnerable is if we think we’re not good enough.”
Episode Transcript
Rhea Wong 00:00
Hey podcast listeners. It’s Rhea Wong with you with nonprofit low down. Today we are speaking with Emily Frieze-Kemeny, who recently started to come in to help organizations and individuals heal and transform.
Rhea Wong 00:12
She’s the founder of a rose group. And today we’re going to be talking about how to survive and thrive as a leader, and particularly coming out of this pandemic. I think we all need a little bit of that. So, Emily.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 00:23
Thanks so much. Pleasure to be here.
Rhea Wong 00:26
Before we jump into the deets, tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 00:30
Sure, I’ve spent the majority of my career working within organizations on kind of all the human development and organizational development related topics, helping leaders to lead, helping organizations to bring more consciousness to their culture and the employee experience, and transform from kind of a strategy, innovation business model perspective.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 00:55
I’ve done that for years. And then I’d say my side hustle was always helping people with navigating their personal lives, their careers, and love and their own well being and healing journeys. And then I started to realize that that was part of what I was here to do.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 01:10
And I’ve always been about the human experience and have this belief that there’s so much more that we’re all capable of more than we even sometimes know, I wear these two hats that I’ve combined in my new company, where I still do the work with organizations to help them to create programs and strategies that unlock the true human potential that they have within them.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 01:33
And to help individuals on their own journeys to kind of reconnect with themselves and awaken to all of their potential and power.
Rhea Wong 01:41
When you and I first connected one of the things that was really intriguing to me, that was sort of a plus, if you will, is you have this background as a healer, in addition to having all this organizational design background.
Rhea Wong 01:55
What tell me about being a healer, what does that mean? What kind of training does that look like? And what does it mean to you to be a healer in an organizational sense?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 02:04
Sure, I think for many of us, a part of what we’re trying to do in the world is what we need for ourselves. I had my own healing journey as an individual. And I still do that, right.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 02:14
I think we all have layers and layers to shed and to work through, I started kind of experiencing it. And then I realized that it was part of what I wanted to do in the world. I come at it from a few different modalities.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 02:28
I’m trained as an energy healer in a form of work called Reiki. I’m a vinyasa yoga teacher. And movement is a form of meditation. And Yoga very much helps us with that, it helps us tap into our bodies and our breath.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 02:45
And then I’ve also been trained as a psychic and a medium, by have the ability to work with people to kind of open up different levels of consciousness and to welcome in guidance that not everybody knows they have access to, there’s lots of layers that I can go to in an organizational context.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 03:03
It’s like anything you bring forward, what people feel comfortable with, and what they welcome in, the intuition is always kind of there and activated. And I can go kind of to the depths of the ocean, or I’m also extremely kind of pragmatic and practical.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 03:17
And we can talk about practical ways to think about how you structure your team, how you structure your day, how you structure your work, how you structure your programs, really open in terms of what the client would like to do.
Rhea Wong 03:28
All right, I want to stop at this healing part because I find it to be fascinating. I, as some of my listeners might know, I’m very kind of woowoo. I’m from Northern California, so I speak fluent woowoo.
Rhea Wong 03:42
I’ve been on a bit of a healing journey myself, I’ve done somatic coaching. And I’ve, I’ve also level one Reiki, and I’ve done yoga for 20 years. So I’m down with you talk to me a little bit about how that plays in organizational contexts because I feel like it’s very binary, right?
Rhea Wong 04:01
You have either in an organizational context, it’s very kind of analytical, right brain, this, these are the deliverables and the KPIs. But what you’re talking about is much more kind of, call it spiritual called consciousness.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 04:13
Yeah, great. Because you’re, you’re led by hearts. It makes a lot of sense. I think like anything that’s judgment, because you never go further than people feel comfortable. You always meet people in organizations where they are.
Rhea Wong 04:13
Call it soul healing, if you will. So how do you bridge those two things? And I feel like the nonprofit sector is a perfect place to do it, because we’re kind of woowoo people.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 04:37
I think that’s the first thing is I’ve worked in organizations and very, in some cases, traditional organizational settings for decades. I never bring anything for that people don’t feel comfortable with and then you start to build trust and comfort.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 04:53
I’d say the easiest ways that the healing side of me shows up on a pretty regular bases is the ability to listen. And to hold space. And some ways, and this is why I’ve also chosen to do so much work on myself.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 05:11
Wherever there are people, there are feelings, there are needs, there’s desires, we can pretend it’s not a part of the work. But we all know it is because we experience it, we experience it as leaders, we experience it as individuals, really what it’s about is being able to welcome that in in an appropriate, actionable, meaningful way.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 05:34
It’s about listening. It’s about asking the right questions. It’s about being curious. and I both do that, as I facilitate and consults. And I help others to get curious about each other, and about what’s really going on, and about what needs to get done.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 05:51
And what happens is sometimes people learn the hard way, they learned because they kick off an initiative. And it’s not successful, or there’s a lot of strife around it. And it’s because they didn’t attend to people’s fears about change people’s needs, people’s buy in the human stuff always gets in the way, what I try to help organizations to do is to structure that into their work.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 06:14
And because I have this very kind of action oriented side that goes with my woowoo side, I want to get stuff done, I have that same energy that they bring to getting results getting growth. Luckily, that’s already innate within me as well.
Rhea Wong 06:27
Emily, I’m so it’s so funny that we’re reading I’ve had so many conversations of late about this very topic. And I’m, I wish I’d met you when I was in my younger years as a leader because I think, coming up and I think you and I probably around the same age, we were really drilled in to the fact that the workplace is not a place for feelings.
Rhea Wong 06:49
Don’t bring your problems here. Like it’s very operational. And I think, especially as a young leader, I really took my cues from that. Because I was like, well, Microsoft operates like this, and they’re much more successful than I am.
Rhea Wong 07:03
So I’m going to do what they told me to do. And I think it really backfired on me to be honest. So how do you really balance the the nature of human beings and feelings and emotions, with sometimes the more kind of cold operational side of like needing to get stuff done?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 07:25
Sure. A lot of the practices around how organizations have been formed and how they operate is based on the industrial era, or the military, right? Those have been those are almost like the things that formed the way we think about running an effective organization leading an effective team. That has nothing to do with the world we live in. Now.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 07:50
There are still organizations that make things of course, but in trying to standardize and minimize risk and drive productivity, we just didn’t talk or pay as much attention to the human side. And an organization is a human system. It’s a human system.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 08:11
Everything about it is based on that, how products get innovated how services get delivered, it’s all human. So the fact that that has not been the primary part of leading effectively or running an organization effectively, literally makes no sense.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 08:30
So it goes way back. And we somehow have not evolved. Like if you read leadership, texts, books about leadership, you really see the same stuff. So we’ve started talking about things like the employee experience.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 08:49
And thank God, we’re finally taking more seriously diversity, equity and inclusion and this idea of belonging. But these things have been marginalized for a really long time. And they haven’t taken hold because people were scared.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 09:03
There’s this idea that if I control and I structure, and I quantify and measure everything, then I have control. Where you have control, you lose space for creativity, innovation, and the brilliance that people hold within them, because it’s not all welcomed.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 09:24
It’s not permissioned. So my belief on leadership and how I work with organizations and think about how leaders should really lead going forward is you have this wealth, of potential and capability amongst your team.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 09:38
You have this wealth of people who might want to be a part of what you’re creating. How do you truly welcome them in with all of their beauty, all of their brilliance, and also all of their flaws?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 09:54
Part of being human is about being imperfect. And that’s okay too. But when we’re scared of that, we shut down all of the genius and creativity that was really there.
Rhea Wong 10:08
I love that you said that. And I think easier said than done. I’m thinking about that New York Times article of Gen X managers who are afraid of their millennial and Gen Z staff members. In amongst my peer group, other executive directors, I do think that there’s a little bit of kind of a bafflement about, like, what do we do right now, because I think the door has been open so quickly to work life balance and mental health.
Rhea Wong 10:35
And those are really important things. But I think the change that the younger generation brings into the workforce is probably much faster than we Gen Xers can wrap our heads around and accommodate within an organizational structure. So what was your response to that?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 10:51
Yeah, so I think it’s like bookends. So with the trust and the belief in people in their brilliance in their humanity, and wanting them to be allowed to fully show up, you have an equally powerful book, and which is called accountability. Right?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 11:12
Like, we’re not doing this just for fun, right? If you’re doing it for fun, I don’t care if you produce anything, right. But if you’ve signed on, as an employee, or as a contractor, or freelancer, if you’ve signed on and made a commitment, you are going to be held accountable for results.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 11:29
And you cannot have one without the other. It doesn’t work that way. So I think we’re the gray is for leaders, is how much do you control to ensure you’re going to get the accountability and the results? And how much do you let go.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 11:45
And I think there’s a few variables, I think one is based on someone’s capability. If you’re somebody who’s really early in career, or changing into something new, they need a little bit more support.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 11:57
So you got to be a little bit more hands on. So instead of controlling, you’re trying to help them to be successful, you’re trying to set them up for success. You also then have the degree to which you prescribe how someone gets their work done, how do they achieve that result.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 12:14
And I think that’s the other place where you got to give a little bit of space, is if you are clear on the outcomes, and the person has the capability, or at least enough capability, let them think about how to get it done.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 12:27
So again, you can give some boundaries, nothing’s like wide open, you can have some boundaries around it. But I think we need to trust a little bit more, to let people think about how to do it, because they may have an equally good way they might have a better way.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 12:40
And the worst case is they come up a little bit short, they’re going to have learned a lot more than you having prescribed it your way of working your way of thinking the way your brain works, because we’re all different.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 12:52
So I think there’s I think that’s the place where you have to get a little bit curious, is in that space of the how you manage between those two bookends have a lot of freedom and trust and flexibility, with 100% expectations around results.
Rhea Wong 13:09
Oh, that’s so good. And it reminds me of like that, that Blanchard sort of curve of, you know, enthusiastic beginner and then as they gain competence, you sort of free up the boundaries or free up the reins a little bit.
Rhea Wong 13:22
But I think as a leader, it’s there’s a bit of an art and a science and intuition around that. So I think that’s interesting. Let me switch tacks a little bit to get to the topic at hand coming out of this pandemic, people are just burnt out, particularly people in the nonprofit sector, because I feel like for the last two and a half years, we have been under a lot of pressure to deliver programs to help those that are sort of falling through the cracks.
Rhea Wong 13:51
I think certainly with remote working. Anyway, it’s been a lot. So what are you seeing amongst the folks that you’re talking to as far as burnout? Yeah.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 14:04
So this is a really important time to be a leader like this is a time where leadership is really needed in the world, and the type of leadership that cares about the human experience, because in some visible ways that feels lacking.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 14:22
So I want to start with saying to all of the people that you speak to your soul needed. And I have such incredible gratitude for the space that you’re holding in the world and thank you because it is so necessary.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 14:38
And to get to your question. It is really really hard right now. It’s like layer upon layer of heart. Because as leaders, you’re human. So you have your own needs. You’ve got stuff going on for you. You have feelings, you have fears.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 15:00
And so you have that which all of us share. And so that’s one layer. And it’s been total chaos. And we’re living within a world where atrocities are happening. So there’s a lot of feelings, and then you are holding space for so many other people. And people need you.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 15:23
And people need you to be okay. So there’s not a lot of room or permission for you to show up with your feelings or your needs. I mean, who even asks the leader, how are you doing? What do you need? How do you feel today?
Rhea Wong 15:38
Emily, as you’re saying this, I am thinking back to my career that basically nobody, I mean, that’s not true. Occasionally, my board chair would, but nobody else did. And I found myself holding everything up for everybody.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 15:55
And then when you’re in such, that’s right. And like when you’re in such a highly charged, emotional environment right now, like we’re in, it’s like, I picture the leader or like, metaphorically, like the person in the storm, holding the metal rock.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 16:11
You’re doing that partly because of your heart, right? You really want to hold the challenges, the burdens, the obstacles, the needs for everybody else. That’s why you choose to be a leader. And you’re very exposed. And you’re very alone at times.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 16:26
And it’s become, it’s become like a pressure cooker. So I think again, leaders, especially in the nonprofit space are light workers they are. And thank goodness, and there’s just a lot that they’re holding up emotionally and practically for everybody else.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 16:49
And I think one of the hardest things that from the people that I’ve been speaking to have shared with me. And it ties back to the topic we were just on about people feeling very kind of empowered and enabled to have their needs out there in the world, is you have some people who are really hurting where their wounds are being mis directed towards leaders.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 17:13
And I’ve seen a lot of leaders suffer from misdirected suffering being placed on them or their organization. And one person can consume a lot of air. And that I think, is one of the biggest challenges I see is just on top of holding everything together. You can have one person who can wreak havoc.
Rhea Wong 17:38
All right, we’re gonna pause right here, Emily, because I am resonating so hard with that one statement. And it happened to me, as I know what happened to lots of leaders. But what does that look like? And what do we as leaders do about it.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 17:56
So what that looks like is that somebody brings a grievance either directly against you as the leader, because again, you’re that person of the storm holding the metal rod. So easy target. And because people have all sorts of psychological feelings about leaders, kind of like a parent dynamic can happen and play out in organizations.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 18:16
So either it’s directly at the leader, or it happens with a dynamic of others within the team that the leader is responsible for. Either way, it consumes the leader. And all of that space that that leader has been holding for the people in community they serve for their team, for their board, for their donors.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 18:38
A lot of it gets redirected towards one individual who’s the wounded soul. And for a period of time, it’s really hard to not focus on that, because you’re the leader. And sometimes the leader feels like they’re the only one who can fix it.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 18:56
So there’s two things One is you’re not the only person who needs to attend to that, it takes a village. So I think with appropriate boundaries around the sensitivity of the situation, you draw in a few people who are skilled, who can help to handle it.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 19:14
Second, it has this incredible ability to affect a leader emotionally. And I think it might even affect leaders in the nonprofit space more, because they have big hearts and because they care.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 19:30
So it’s really really triggering in terms of feelings, because it’s the exact opposite of who you are in the world and what you’ve chosen to do in this lifetime. So that’s where it takes a lot of self care and a lot of re grounding of like, I know who I am. I know my heart.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 19:52
I know my true nature. And literally to feel rooted like imagining your feet grounded to the ground by filling yourself like really seated and secure on your chair, on your seat, and just like having that feeling of I deserve to be here, I matter. And like re centering yourself, because it really throws people off.
Rhea Wong 20:17
Oh my gosh, Emily, this is like a therapy session for me. Because I, alright, I’m just gonna play devil’s advocate for a second, I’d like to delve in a little bit further when you say help, because I’m thinking of a an instance, where I really thought the person for whom this was true, it’s not that she was wrong, but I felt like she was playing out a bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with the organization.
Rhea Wong 20:39
Like it was around her own racial identity and her own feelings about stuff that was happening in the world. And I, and I don’t. And when you say pull in other folks who are skilled. I tried to do that.
Rhea Wong 20:52
But at the end of the day I, I was really struggling with like, what’s my role here? Because really, I thought a lot of it had to do with her own personal work that she needed to do, but that she was making it an organizational issue, which is not to say we were perfect.
Rhea Wong 21:09
Certainly we have things we could do. But I guess I’m just wondering, how do you hold appropriate boundaries around stuff that’s appropriate for work and stuff that’s not appropriate for work. And it was not my place to tell her that you probably need some therapy, though, I certainly thought she probably needed some therapy.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 21:25
Yeah, so this is really, really tough, because we have, again, because of the role models of what a good organization is historically have been like, we don’t do feelings. We don’t do wellbeing. Unless it’s like you have a medical issue.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 21:42
So we have not created the conditions to be permission to talk about feelings, and to really help people and you’re spot on. And this is very, very often the case that even if something happened to some degree, the way it’s been amplified has to do with feelings that don’t have to do with the work and the workplace.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 22:05
And we have not been permission to go there. I think there’s two scenarios. One is as leaders, how about creating a culture, where that’s okay to talk about. And that’s okay to work on. And to not put shame around that. I think that’s one scenario.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 22:21
And if you’re in the scenario, where that’s just not the reality of the culture that you’re in, or the culture you’re leading, or the culture that had been established before you and you have to work within that, I think you have to know that there’s a boundary of how much you can help.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 22:37
And you don’t need to own the fix, because then basically, you just set it, the fix is beyond you. You can be you can take it seriously. You can care. You can take the right actions in terms of investigation and legal counsel and listening.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 22:56
And at a certain point, it still may not be enough, and that’s not yours defects. And I think, again, thinking about who this audience is, as leaders, is you want to fix the things that are hurting in the world.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 23:14
But in this specific context, as an organizational leader, you’re not permission to and that person is not inviting you in to help them. And if they can’t open up, and let you help in that way, and still give them some counsel to seek help. You’re not permission to, it’s a boundary.
Rhea Wong 23:35
This is so good. I wish I I wish I’d known you back then because I think I floundered so much around the boundary of wanting to help, but also realizing a big chunk of this was not anything that had to do with me or the organization.
Rhea Wong 23:51
And yet I was having to deal with the result of all of the feelings, right? And it just sucked so much emotional mental energy out of me, which was not about the work. Right.
Rhea Wong 24:03
So let’s, let’s switch gears a little bit for leaders who are thinking about how to support their staff in this time that feels very hard and very raw. What can we do as leaders while also taking care of ourselves, right?
Rhea Wong 24:19
Because I think so often we hear, but you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself first into thing that people say but it’s often the other thing I see people do. So what do we do Emily?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 24:30
So it’s very funny. I literally was just writing a blog on this exact topic of like that I that metaphor is the worst in so many ways because people have a fear of flying and like you’re imagining you and your loved ones not breathing.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 24:44
I’m like all of it’s wrong. But the thing that I shifted it to in my mind is put your wellbeing on first. Put your well being on first. That is the most important thing because again, as leaders, you’re a regular human like everybody else and you hold the needs of a lot of people, a lot of people in your organization in the communities that you serve.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 25:08
So you’ve got to take care of yourself. And it starts really, really basic like basic needs. So like, if you’re not eating and drinking water, and in a way that nourishes you in a healthy way, if you’re not getting enough rest, if you’re not giving yourself some moments to just step away and take a breath, even if it’s two minutes, that it’s really hard to have a foundation to lead.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 25:34
Because you’re not whole, you’re not actually attending to yourself, as a human. And when you do that, and again, it can be in really small ways. Like I can literally just say, in a couple minutes, I can just, like change my breath, I can slow it down, I can shake my body out.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 25:53
I can go listen to a song and walk, right, there’s a very small ways that you can do it to just give yourself a little space sort of be like what I have a full bottle of water, I haven’t drank more than five sips, since eight o’clock this morning, maybe I should take a pause and just drink some water like those are not big things.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 26:08
But you’re, you’re reminding yourself that you matter like that you have needs, and then you keep going right, then we all get to choose how much we really want to awaken in this lifetime, and how much we want to heal because we’ve all got stuff, and a lot of our stuffs not going to go away away.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 26:23
But you can, you can be an observer of it, you can be less of a victim of it, you can shed some layers that are not serving you anymore. So that’s that’s our choice. But the more we do that, the more we can give.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 26:37
And the more that we can lead while still having our route our center and talk about it, tell your team, even tell your team if it’s hard. Like if you’re if you’re if you’re trying and it’s hard, that’s connected, that’s human that’s relatable.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 26:53
So even the fact that you’re trying to put some small practices in place that are for your wellness tells people that it’s appropriate, and that they’re welcome to do that. And they’re welcome to be imperfect in their trying to do it.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 27:07
Yeah, and then I’d say from in relationship to your team, there’s two really, really important things that you can do. No matter how busy you are, and how intense it is all about like the practical like you can do this, you can fit this in kind of stuff.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 27:24
One is to really listen, to just settle and ground yourself enough that you’re really with someone. And we all know what that feels like. And when we feel it’s not happening, you can feel someone’s like vibration, if they’re like busy and distracted and like trying to get get going to the next thing as fast as possible.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 27:44
And when they’ve really presents themselves with you. It’s just, it’s a quality that feels different. And again, if you have the benefit of being in person or via video, you can see it in their eyes.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 27:56
That is a gift. And that is healing. And that is grounding for both you and that person. And the other one is about asking simple questions. Questions like, how are you? How are you doing? How are things going?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 28:15
What do you need? What changes do you think we should make? Really, really simple questions produce very meaningful connection, and very meaningful insights, the biggest risk for leaders and the longer you lead.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 28:30
And the bigger you grow as a leader is that you make a lot of assumptions and decisions based on your past. And based on a limited information set. And you’ll keep getting a limited information set if you don’t ask open ended questions and leave space for people to talk.
Rhea Wong 28:54
Oh, that’s so good. Because I think it runs counter to a lot of models of leadership that we may have been raised with that are not that helpful, right. Like as a leader, I know all the things and I make decisions and I’m bulletproof. And, and so by modeling the behavior that we want to see in being vulnerable with our team and and opening up it creates the trust to leave space for the feelings.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 29:22
Right and I’d say the only reason we’d be scared to be vulnerable is if we think we’re not good enough. Like that’s what that’s really about like a from a capability perspective. You’ve got it going on. And there’s no risk.
Rhea Wong 29:41
Once again, Emily, it’s always an inside job. Yep. So how do we help our teams to become more whole so you talked about dropping in really listening, asking good questions, good simple questions. How do we institutionalize this? How do we embed this in the culture of the way that we want to work together?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 30:11
So the thoughts that come to mind for me is like, what are your forums? Like what are the systems and the structures that you can bake it into? So let’s pick a really simple one. Meetings. I feel like people love to hate on a team meeting, like more than anything, they’re like, oh, my gosh, it’s so boring.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 30:29
It’s so long, we don’t get anything done, like people hate all over team meetings. That’s like a favorite kind of office complaints. Right? So how do you structure it? Using those types of questions? How are we doing?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 30:47
What’s going well? What things should we consider changing? Where do we need more support or more learning? What wins did we have? Like celebrating the good, I would have almost like a set of questions that guide every single meeting discussion, like throughout the rest of the agenda, take everything on, these are our top priorities.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 31:10
First, affirm that they’re the right priorities, or reassess and realign against them. And then ask those types of simple questions. How are we doing? How’s it going? What are we learning? What might need to change? What support might be needed? And what are the wins.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 31:29
So that’s like a micro example is a meeting because we all do meetings, and we all love to hate on meetings, the other would be more programmatic in nature, the most important place is how you start and how you close.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 31:44
And that can be a cycle, right? So this is an ongoing piece of work that your organization does, you can literally do this like almost like an infinity loop, right. So it’s all have some sense of a start, a milestone could be the close, then the next phase of tweak, or evolution is the start. So imagine like the infinity loop. And the way you start is crucial, because that’s where you really get alignment.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 32:10
So I’m like a go fast person. So I always have to say to myself, you go slow to go fast. So upfront, be really, really clear about what you’re doing. Be really clear about the work, who needs to be involved in what, what the roles are, what the guiding principles are of, how we work together, how we treat each other, how we partner.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 32:37
Again, back to the accountability piece we talked about, there needs to be deadlines, deadlines are our friends, right? So you have to have milestones and deadlines. But you need to establish that type of discipline upfront. And that we’re going to continue to do regular check ins on how we’re doing, and how the work is going, sensing, doing, sensing, doing always both.
Rhea Wong 33:00
Emily, it’s so good.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 33:02
And then towards whatever is that milestone or that end or that reflection point. It’s about what did we learn? What did we gain? So remember, always balancing the positive and the negative because we can be very critical about our imperfections and what doesn’t go well.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 33:19
And always use language like learning or opportunity. Because things like failure, like just like sends your nervous system into like, ah, like panic mode, right? So like, don’t use that kind of language, it’s not helpful to anybody just makes you freeze up.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 33:32
What is there to learn, what is there to be gained? What did we gain? And that just becomes a cycle of how we work and how we communicate. So it’s results oriented, it’s improvement oriented. And it’s connected, like we’re thinking consciously about what we do, what we do, how we do what we do.
Rhea Wong 33:52
I love that you said that, because as you’re talking, I was just thinking about slowing down because I think in nonprofit, we’re driven by such a sense of urgency about the work. But where I erred, again and again was I didn’t attend to the beginning.
Rhea Wong 34:08
And so I would get my I would be going like 50 million miles an hour and then in the middle of it just get pulled back because we didn’t set the parameters at the beginning. So this is a good, good reminder and reflection for me.
Rhea Wong 34:23
I’m using this as a personal therapy session. This is awesome. It’s my podcast, I guess. But I know this will resonate with a lot of other nonprofit leaders too, because we do feel like everything is happening all the time, all at once.
Rhea Wong 34:39
And we’re just paddling as fast as we can just to stay above water. But that in fact, the slowing down will actually help you to go faster later on.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 34:50
That’s right. And the other thing that you made me think of is we have different leadership styles. So sometimes the people who like to lead and to run the organization. They don’t like the planning and the structuring piece as much
Rhea Wong 35:03
guilty as charged. I’m like, oh, what processes policies? Yeah, we’ll figure it out on the way and make sure it’ll be fine.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 35:11
Exactly. And so the good thing is, that’s, that’s your genius, right? Like that’s, that’s what you bring value. And that’s needed. But it may mean that you need at least one, maybe a few others who really like to structure, like the details, like to slow it down, they’ll make you crazy, but they’ll literally make you crazy, because it’s so different stylistically. But the combination of those capabilities is like magic.
Rhea Wong 35:38
I always talk about it like hunters and farmers. The hunters are the lone wolves who like the thrill of the chase and figure it out and just pack up the gear. And we’re gonna go after this big, this big hunt.
Rhea Wong 35:51
And the farmers are like, what time do we need to borrow the crops? When do we need to harvest? Otherwise, we’re all gonna go hungry. And so I was like, being a very extreme hunter. I was like, who’s my farmer partner here?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 36:07
Bingo. That’s exactly right. Because both are needed. And both are healthy. And it’s really exhausting to try to make yourself be something that doesn’t give you energy and joy. So that’s like, then I am huge on, it’s all about the composition of the team, like, piece piece plus piece, like puzzle pieces make something even bigger than the whole, right?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 36:28
It’s like, you become so much more when you complement each other. Again, sometimes it’s the people whose workstyles make you crazy are the ones you actually need.
Rhea Wong 36:36
Such a good point. Yeah. Because if I had a whole bunch of people like me, we’d be running off in like 15 different directions. It would be it would be chaos would be disaster.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 36:47
It would be fine. Sometimes we do that. Because it’s like, Oh, I like your energy. Let’s do that. Let’s think let’s create, and you can invite other people in who helped to kind of hold it all in balance.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 36:58
And I think that that’s like that’s, that’s again, that’s the magic of really being conscious about the design of a team.
Rhea Wong 37:05
That’s so good. All right, Emily, last question is a fun question. I’ve been asking people if you had a billboard, to metaphorically communicate something to the universe, what would be on your billboard?
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 37:16
We are capable of so much more.
Rhea Wong 37:22
I love that. I love that. All right, Emily, this has been so fun and personally enlightening and reflective for me. Where can folks find you if they’re interested in working with you or learning more about you? Sure.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 37:35
The Usual Suspects, the LinkedIn. I’m on social, both Instagram and Facebook, and you can look for arose group. And I have a website. So it’s www.arosegroup.com.
Rhea Wong 37:50
And I’ll make sure to put that in the show notes for our podcast listeners. But Emily, thank you so much for your time. I I feel I feel seen as a leader. I’m like I had so many things that you could have helped me with.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 38:01
I’m so glad we got to connect at least at this point and going forward.
Rhea Wong 38:05
Yes, absolutely. And so folks, if you have organizational needs or any of this is resonating with you, which I’m sure it is because I know my people contact Emily. Thanks so much Emily.
Emily Frieze-Kemeny 38:18
Thanks so much Rhea.
—
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nonprofitlowdown/support
