Who can (and can’t) the CEO turn to?

This week, I convened a three-day gathering of seven CEOs who lead associations of other nonprofits.

Together, they represent 1,400 member organizations directly, which in turn represent over 50,000 congregations, chapters, and community centers. These are busy people, with large networks.

Why did they come?

I didn’t know any of them very well. Why would they invest three days of additional meetings and travel on top of already busy calendars?

I looked back through my notes and transcripts from 310+ conversations with CEOs in the last two years. Here is what surfaced in my first pass:

You grind and grind and grind, and who do you talk to? —CEO of a medium international health organization

Everybody’s in the room, saying [to me], what do we do? And that is a lonely moment. Because you feel this sense of, well, only I can make this decision, and the weight of it is on me right now, and it’s not kind or good for me to look for anyone else to carry that weight. —New CEO of a large religious nonprofit

This can be one of the loneliest positions…In the end, I have to carry the decision. —Aaron Abramson, CEO of Jews for Jesus, on this week’s episode of The Nonprofit CEO Podcast.

There’s nobody that I could talk to that cared enough, nobody that could also look at all the pieces and help me make the best decision, but also have the appropriate amount of caring for me, for how I feel, for how heavy this is for me… —Olivia Mulerwa, CEO, Mission One, Episode 4

Those seven CEOs spent precious time and money to come to DC this week because of the central challenge of the CEO role in the nonprofit sector:

Nonprofit CEOs are isolated by the very structure of the role.

The vast majority of CEOs agree that it’s “lonely at the top.” The CEO of a large urban human services organization said:

I have to be fully diplomatic. So I don’t have a lot of people that I can use as a sounding board because they have their own interest in whatever we’re discussing. It has skewed some friendships. I’ve lost some friendships.

That’s part of it, but there are some additional, peculiar dynamics at play here.

The demands are intense, because the vision always outstrips the resources. 

You are always surrounded by people, but you can’t be fully transparent with any of them.

Boards are busy. Given that trustees are highly capable people, they are in demand, not always available.

Boards are…weird. Most CEOs say that their board is a mixed bag of good intentions, low commitment, little time, and odd oversight. One CEO said:

“Boards are more set up for failure than they are for success in the very nature of how they’ve been created…You’re constantly having to retrain your board on what you do and why you’re there to do it and what direction are you headed in. It just feels like something isn’t right about how that structure works, which makes me wonder, is this the best way to have oversight?” 

Given that the board hires and fires the CEO, it’s hard to be transparent about challenges and struggles. As one CEO of a large network of nonprofits confessed:

Another [reason for CEO isolation] is maybe self imposed. Maybe I’m just overexposing myself in this answer…but this reluctance to kind of go out and acknowledge to any broader audience that I don’t have all the answers. In certain kinds of decisions, my board has put me in this role. They trust me in this role. I better darn well be able to walk in there with a recommendation. 

In an upcoming episode, Michael Martin, President and CEO of ECFA, shared research on how boards thought that they were engaging well with CEOs. But the CEOs themselves were half as likely to say the same.

 (I’m interested in board design and dynamics as future research questions. It’s a significant drag on the sector’s outcomes. Let me know if you have thoughts about this.)

The Asymmetry of Information: you know things that others don’t. And you can’t tell them.

“A lot of times you’re making decisions behind the scenes that are quite confidential and you can’t share them.” —Carol Bremer-Bennett, US Executive Director, World Renew, Episode 24

You are an avatar of the organization, a mascot. You have to own all the decisions and all their consequences, even when they’re not your own.

You shoulder the burden of all of the mistakes that you make, as well as all the mistakes that everybody makes…It weighs heavily on you. —Jody Levison-Johnson, President and CEO, Social Current, Episode 7

Executive teams have their own horses in the race. If you’re making a decision about strategic resource allocation or a RIF or a new structure, they have an interest in the outcome. Their input is still important, and also it must be taken with a grain of salt.

The Hourglass: You are uniquely placed right between the board and the staff, the skinny part of an hourglass. You are the pinch point, the bottleneck. You are the only one on the board that is also on staff, and vice versa. One CEO of a network of large international nonprofits said, “

These are lonely jobs, right? Like your stakeholders below you, all work for you. And your stakeholders above you, you work for them. It’s just this nightmare.

Oof.

Both boards and executive teams need a steady hand. One CEO told me how they wished they had a group of peers to explore new ideas, as their board and team would be too unsettled by the conversation.

Your needs outstrip your spouse’s capacity, too. In 261 of 498 conversations, the CEO talked about their spouse. (This covers over 310 CEOs total, but the 498 conversations count multiple interactions with some CEOs, including my advisory clients.) Most are tremendously grateful for their spouse’s partnership. But most also share that they know that relationship can’t carry all of the stress, pressure, and processing CEOs need.

Your peers are frying their own fish. Other CEOs are busy, staggering under the load just like you.

Coaches come up short. Many CEOs have a coach, or have had one in the past. (I have, too.) There’s something good about having a regular appointment with a coach. But their incentives are not aligned with yours. They get paid when you continue to need a coach. Many of them are great people. But that’s a weird arrangement, isn’t it?

It’s great to have an executive coach. But it’s even more important to have a peer group who you feel safe with, who you can get vulnerable with and say, I blew it. I totally blew it. —Jody Levison-Johnson, President and CEO, Social Current, again on the podcast

Peer groups are not built for you. Several CEOs have told me they’ve tried some sort of CEO peer group. Very few of them are satisfied. Vistage, Convene, and C12 are generally filled with whatever for-profit CEO is nearby. But most don’t understand nonprofits, with all that boards and fundraising and the culture entails.

Some have a group of CEOs within their particular subsector membership organization. Many tell me that these groups are not what they need either. Those groups are not intentionally curated, taking any size and type of organization and any CEO who wants to come. There's no one effectively playing host, making thoughtful introductions and leading the group to the depth that CEOs desire. These groups are also insular, not benefitting from other models and points of view.

Being a CEO is the loneliest position I’ve ever been in. There’s so much that I can’t share or that I don’t have anyone to talk to, but others in the position can uniquely understand that. —Kaitlyn Slate, CEO, Growing Hope Globally, in an upcoming episode

This central challenge of the nonprofit CEO role—this structural isolation—is so endemic that I couldn’t believe nothing had been built to address it.

A few CEOs have told me their board is amazing, and they can tell their chair anything. A few CEOs have said their team is a band of siblings that would take bullets for each other. A few CEOs explain that their coach gives them all they need. A few CEOs have key relationships with a few people outside their system that are willing to walk through anything with them.

A few.

In my experience, perhaps 5% of CEOs tell me that they have the connections and relationships they need to thrive in the role. That is a problem for our organizations and the people we aim to serve. 

So I convened those seven CEOs this week, intentionally, for depth of conversation and connection. They came because they were honest about what they needed. Afterward they said,

• “Thinking together with and learning from true peers like this is tremendously valuable.”
• “The depth, richness, and structure of this conversation…has a lot of value.”
• “I have nowhere else to have that honest, deep conversation that takes me out of my echo chamber.”
• “This is gold.”

So alongside my deep work with CEOs in advisory engagements, as well as the podcast and these weekly articles, I’ve built The Nonprofit CEO Circle. It’s a curated group from across the sector, intentionally small, for the conversations we wish we were able to have.

Why do you think this hasn’t been done before?

Thank you for what you’re leading.

Adam Jeske, The Nonprofit CEO Advisor

P.S. Please reply with your thoughts about this. What did I get right? What did I miss?

Your input helps me shape the book I’m writing, Peerless: Nonprofit CEOs and the Decisions They Carry Alone.

Thank you.