The Role of Strong Leaders

The Role of Strong Leaders

Throughout this blog so far I have explored what organizations should be doing to best serve and protect their mission, one area I have not yet touched on is leadership. What type of leaders do strong organizations need to protect their mission? On Friday night I was lucky enough to attend Changemakers Night: Passion for Progress, an event that highlighted three strong non-profit leaders. Each of the presenting leaders had a similar set of characteristics:

• They are passionate and happy to share this passion.
• Each of the leaders’ stories was different. Matt was a computer programmer who decided to travel and connected with emerging small business owners in Uganda. Jill found herself in a principle’s office and was asked to find a way to make recess more productive. Finally Craig was 12 years old and wanted to stop child slavery. Each of these stories is unique and unexpected, a reminder that it is important to be aware of your opportunity.

http://startempathy.org/blog/2012/05/recess-revolution

• Metrics and strong outcomes were a cornerstone of each of the presentations. The leaders knew that they were responsible for sharing their stories and also showing the audience the success of their programs and their ideas using statics.
• Along with concrete metrics, each of the leaders highlighted strong relationships with other influential leaders and large numbers of supporters to demonstrate their credibility. In particular Craig showed a promotional video of his work that highlighted these two different types of credibility.

• Jill, of Playworks, started her presentation by having the entire audience play a game. The game allowed me to reflect on my day, my past and other times that have played this game. This allowed me to create a strong emotional tie to the presentation and her organization and understand her story in a completely different way.
• Finally, each of the leaders shared many stories with the audience. These stories showed the importance of the work being done by each of the organization and allowed each of us to connect with the mission of the organization. Here is a video from Kiva that shares the story of the loans the organization makes.

These are the characteristics that I saw in each of these leaders. What characteristics do you respect most in the strong leaders in your life? How are you working to become a stronger leader?