On Leap Day this year, I was with the North Carolina Network of Grantmakers to facilitate a session and had the privilege of attending others. With the permission of my small group members and conference organizers, I want to share a story from one of the sessions I attended. It was one of the more engaging and useful conference sessions that I have attended in a very long time. It was one of those conversations that can be a catapult for a leap.

How will you show up this Election Year?

As you set your goals and priorities for 2024, are you thinking about the election? How are you going to be an engaged citizen this year? How will your nonprofit participate in democracy?

This week we’re celebrating 23 years of Third Space Studio! Our anniversary prompted us to look through old files and reminisce about days past. We came across an article we wrote for our 10-year anniversary about the ingredients that have been our recipe for success as we’ve worked with and learned from innovative nonprofit leaders. These ingredients still ring true for us today and we want to share them with you as we celebrate another year doing what we love.

As 2023 comes to a close and we peer into 2024, we're thinking about what we might leave behind this year. We hope that you'll consider leaving one or more behind yourself. Perhaps our collective effort to shed what's no longer serving us will create some needed disruption.

The other day someone asked me about the origins of our business name, Third Space Studio. The question took me back twenty plus years reminding me of the power of a “third space”. The question also grounded me in the present as the concept of a third space seems very relevant in the current dynamics of polarization and the global need to listen more deeply to a wide array of voices and perspectives.

As facilitators who work with teams to craft forward direction, we often find ourselves amid multiple team decision – or non-decision – moments. It’s a topic we care about a lot. We believe that making choices is essential to strategy and to effectiveness. Clear decision-making processes are one of the ways to build a stronger, more thoughtful team.

Transparency generates trust and fosters an environment where people are willing to share direct and honest feedback. A culture of transparency helps employees feel valued and encourages creativity. Transparent organizations can be less stressful places to work, and they're better equipped to navigate uncertainty and complexity. Transparency is the foundation for sharing leadership and power.

Being accountable means showing up and accomplishing what you said you would do. I particularly like defining accountability as "clear commitments that in the eyes of others have been kept" as it reminds us that accountability happens in relationship with others. Accountability within a team means that your teammates can count on you and you can count on them.

We opened this series about building strong, resilient, capable teams discussing the importance of creating a culture of belonging. In this week’s piece, we turn our attention to alignment.

We often assume our organizations are in alignment. Everyone knows the mission, right? Yet even when every board and staff member can recite the mission, your organization may not truly be aligned.

Creating this kind of team is not about where the team works, but about how the team works. It's about practices, not incentivizing or mandating where employees show up to do work. We need habits and mindsets that support teamwork regardless of whether the team is remote or in-person.

I just completed a ten-day road trip driving art that belonged to my mother to my sister in Tucson, Arizona. I stopped at eight museums along the way: art, musical instruments, civil rights, and dinosaurs. I stared at big open sky and marveled at desert vegetation. It is these kinds of experiences that make travel important. I hope you get out there this summer.

My favorite spring days start with time in the garden. I listen to the birds welcome the day with chirps and trills. I breathe in the cool damp air. I marvel at the blossoms and buds. Some mornings, I plant. Every morning, I weed. As I bend down to pluck out green shoots, I stretch and notice how my body feels. Garden time also yields reflections I apply to my work life.

It’s the time of year when both organizations and individuals begin to cast themselves forward into the New Year. We think about our ambitions and sometimes set some more concrete goals.

As you think about what might be in 2023, we at Third Space Studio encourage you to think about how you support your people - staff, board members, and even volunteers.

Oof! As an NPR reporter stated last week, “the world is convulsing in fits of violence and tragedy.” The latest publicly reported mass shooting was in Raleigh, NC - 30 minutes from me. Hurricane Ian wiped out several coastal communities in Florida. War still rages in Ukraine, and who knows what Putin will do next. The costs of housing, food, and energy keep rising with no corresponding increases in wages for most working people. We are weeks away from the midterm elections and the public conversation continues to be polarized.

As I sit with nonprofit leaders in group meetings and in one-on-one coaching sessions, the level of exhaustion is palpable. The circles under the eyes are darker. The enthusiasm for new ideas short-lived. The willingness to take on important tasks and conversations lags. The laughs are slow to emerge.

Heather and I spend much of our weeks in conversation with executive directors and other nonprofit leaders. In recent months, we have noticed a rising level of decision fatigue. Some of the overwhelm is the result of responding to complex challenges: a pandemic, racial justice, political hostility, climate change and more. Some of the overwhelm is the byproduct of growing organizations: the decision-making practices for a staff team of six are very different from the decision-making practices for a staff team of ten or more. Some of the overwhelm is due to the relentless wave of external stressors which negatively impact our capacities and interpersonal dynamics. Add all this to the usual nonprofit menu of decisions and no wonder our typical practices are not up to the task.

The Great Return has begun. Here in North Carolina, mask mandates were lifted last week. Heather and I went to an in-person farewell event for a colleague last week. Many of our clients are slowly returning to their offices. We have some in-person facilitations on our calendars. It’s exciting to return to the creative sparks of in-person connections.

My garden is where I ground and center myself for the day. It’s also a place that can bring clarity to what I am seeing and learning in my work with nonprofits. Lately, as I putter, I’ve been reflecting on the act of “tending” and the ways that tending a garden reflects what it means to tend to an organization as a leader.

Many organizations are opting in with a hybrid meeting format, a fusion of virtual and in-person meetings to accommodate teams now made up of remote and in-person staff. However, with hybrid meetings, there's a risk of assuming it's essentially an in-person meeting with a few folks calling or Zooming in. Not so! We want to challenge that mentality.

At the end of October, our friend and colleague Melinda Wiggins was honored for her twenty-five years of service and leadership with Student Action with Farmworkers. I talked about three points that set Melinda apart from other executive directors, and they are important lessons for any leaders: