Table of Contents

• Checking In

• Managing through the Middle

  • Ways to Check in and Support Your Midlevel Leaders

• 1% Solutions (or, small things you can do with siz …

• What I’m Reading and Listening To

Checking In

January was a month. Well, honestly it felt like a year. I have attempted to limit the news and social media that I consume. Unsurprisingly, this has not gone well.

What has helped? Community. Family. Organizing social impact dinners (in NYC? DM me to join!) Babysitting my nephew Nate and watching Mulan and Raya and the Last Dragon- strong recommends on both movies. Strong female leads + dragons + fighting back by banding together= a restorative and needed break.

Working in the social impact space— and having as many friends and acquaintances— it is not an easy time. Folks are low on time, bandwidth and are being more cautious about money- and having led through multiple crises and a pandemic, I get it. Having community and thought partners is more important than ever.

In order to better support organizations, I’m offering several less time intensive and cost effective options to build your own internal capacity.

• My March leadership coaching accelerator now has a discounted nonprofit and K-12 price of $1500 for nonprofits and K-12.

• The leadership launch coaching program will be $2250 for nonprofits and K-12 now through June 2025.

• If you have less time, you can book a strategy call, a day long strategy session or an audit. This is more DIY with support. And there will be a nonprofit and K-12 discount from now until April 2025.

And if you are looking for a different type of support, whether it be leadership, finance, or product, DM me. I have an amazing network that I’d be happy to connect you to.

Managing through the Middle

“I just need leadership to be more transparent.” We have either said this or heard this. The challenge I hear from leadership teams currently is that they are not sure what this looks like, are being as transparent as they can and/or (rightfully) question the efficacy of more transparency.

Instead, I’ll offer an alternative approach- internal predictability. Rebecca Holmes writes about this in her book Survive, Reset, Thrive. In this overview, she describes internal predictability as folks being able to say yes to the following questions:

1. I know what we are trying to achieve and why it matters.

2. I know where critical decisions take place.

3. I can rely on others to do what they say they will do.

4. When I do adapt, within the boundaries of strategy, it is recognized and rewarded.

Knowing the answers to the above ensures that folks have enough certainty to be able to make decisions- and ultimately adding some control to people’s lives is what they are actually looking for.

Maintaining stability and focus during crisis is its own strategy. And strategy only works when it is translated throughout an organization. And you can’t do that without midlevel leadership.

Midlevel leaders play a unique role here because they will inevitably be closer both to what people are saying and the strategy behind some of the big decisions. Senior leaders would be wise to explicitly leverage midlevel managers to

• better understand people’s fears, concerns and lack of clarity so they can address issues quickly

• cascade key communication so that people not only understand the org’s direction and focus but also their place in the work.

To these ends, you need to have a mechanism where senior leaders are checking in with midlevel leaders on the team’s experience and provide necessary talking points when shifts in strategy, policy or work are made.

I’d ensure mid-level leaders are also checking in on people as people and a teammates. While the discontent and stress may be universally felt, each person’s individual relationship with work and the org is different. If you can understand what is stressing someone out, you are more likely to find the right support or solution (remember: you may not be able to completely solve for something but you can mitigate the impact.)

Ways to Check in and Support Your Midlevel Leaders

• Create space for practice & strategy

  • In 1:1s running through a presentation or potentially challenging conversation then reflecting on what went well, what didn’t and next steps. Observing video together also works!

  • In team meetings or peer cohorts, sharing a problem of practice or concern to problem solve and role play. Get feedback and try the role play again.

  • Don’t just discuss what you’ll each do. Create space to ask how that will look, what challenges do they foresee happening. The last question helps to do a mini pre-mortem to anticipate challenge so you can plan for it.

• Ensure that 1:1s are bilateral- Remember, this is a time for the more senior of leaders to get feedback as well. How did the last team meeting land for folks? How are folks feeling about the new org policy? What are people struggling with? This is not the only data you are gathering on team culture but it should be one.

• Real time feedback at any time- Build a practice where you both stop to ask and give real-time feedback. The best feedback is speciific, sets context and identifies impact. Example: “The statistics you highlighted for the board presentation told a clear story to explain our current direction.” “The content of what you said in our meeting was compelling but without a pause or reflective questions, I’m not sure if everyone fully processed it.”

1% Solutions (or, small things you can do with sizable impact)

• Focus on removing unnecessary friction for your teams- Ask this one question in every check-in: "What is getting in the way of you being successful right now?" Why? Because people can get behind hard work and even working through an incredible challenge. But when we’re stretched thin, we can more easily snap— I distinctly remember teaching 11th grade history while being a principal. That was fine but the thing that would set me over the edge? The copy machine. Keeping an eye on the things we CAN fix and then fixing it will be essential. It also shows good faith to teammates that you are doing whatever you can to help them focus on their most important work.

• Onboarding newly promoted internal staff- This may be a bit early but many organizations are beginning to think about promotions- either because roles are vacant or being created. The biggest mistake I’ve seen (and have faced) is promoting someone to their next role without any level of onboarding. Besides working together to set clear metrics and goals, it is also worth talking about how their ways of working may need to shift. One simple way to start this conversation is for the newly promoted manager to evaluate themselves based on the evaluation framework, competencies or JD of the new role, and have their manager do the same. This will start a conversation about strengths to leverage, areas of weakness to strengthen, or gaps of knowledge to be filled.

What I’m Reading and Listening To

Most of my reading the past two weeks has been related to making sense of what’s been happening in our government- as a human being but also as someone who works in the social impact and nonprofit space. Unfortunately, I don’t see the chaos ending any time soon, so I am sharing some resources that I’ve found helpful (and will continue to summarize and share)

• Trump Revokes Biden’s AI Policies: What Does It mean for HR leaders: The long and short is that the current administration will advocate for less regulations. But remember- state laws are in effect. I’ll also add this: bias makes decision-making inefficient and incorrect and this is also true in the talent space. So it’s still incumbent on HR leadership to ensure HR Tech that uses AI is working to ensure they’re not biased AND ensure proper education.

• Council of Nonprofits Executive Orders Summary: The Council of Nonprofits put together this overview of the executive orders. It was last updated 1/29/25, so unfortunately is missing a few.

• Tips for Running and Effective Rapid Response Team- News will continue to come fast, and so having a plan in place on how to communicate will help make a tense time slightly less chaotic. (Note: I’m also not advocating to discuss everything at any time- but again, that’s part of the planning process).

• Trump executive orders in DEI- As this Challkbeat article notes, it is still unclear how this executive order will impact schools and how it plans to be put into affect. A few noted concerns/thoughts that stand out here:

  • The language of the EO mirrors some states that already targets critical race theory . 18 states currently have laws on this, but there is reason to believe there may be some level of self-censorship by teachers.

  • A quote that stood out to me was Ary Amerikaner, a former Education Department official and executive director of Brown’s Promise, which conducts research and advocacy on school desegregation and blunder. She noted that the EO is largely bluster as he can’t enforce it. Additionally “This administration is clearly thriving in a culture of creating fear. The thing that..is important is for educators and administrators to not take the bait.”  

  • Trans kids and LBGTQ kids still have protections under the U.S. constitution and established case law. (LF note: That being said, this assumes the current administration honors that. Additionally, future cases may come forward to challenge this in what conservative groups likely see as a friendlier environment to limiting rights).

  • Conservative parent groups currently file federal civil rights complaints objecting to teacher diversity programs and student affinity groups. Under the current Republican administration, these complaints could get a friendlier response.

  • My two cents: Given the latest EO regarding abolishing the Department of Education, I am unclear how this all gets enforced. That being said, people just need to fear retribution for the above to have impact.

Want to see more of something? See if I or my network can help? Just reply to this email and let me know!