Executive Director Evaluation | By Heather Perkins

The phone rings.

Photo courtesy of kthypryn

The executive director of a local non-profit organization answers and discovers that the call is from a client who was recently assisted by the organization. The client has called to express his gratitude for the services he received and the hope that he has for the future as a result. Although short, the call is upbeat and encouraging.

An hour later, a staff member comes into the director’s office with a letter of resignation. Although she has enjoyed her position and has performed her job well, she has been offered more money and better benefits at a for-profit business. Her loss to the organization will be significant. 

Over lunch, the director meets with a member of his board who is very unhappy with the state of organization and is causing significant dissention within the board.   

How does the director process and assimilate these various interactions?  Is he being an effective leader?  How does he know?

Providing constructive feedback to the executive director is one of the most significant roles of a board of directors, but also one of the most uncomfortable.  As a result, the task is frequently avoided and the director is left to try to assess his performance based upon often conflicting feedback coming from numerous different sources.  In addition, any weaknesses in performance are left unaddressed and continue to impact the organization. 

Regardless of the context, performance reviews are a challenging undertaking.  However, the personal and organizational growth that can occur as the result of healthy review processes should not be underestimated.  Performance reviews are a gift that every nonprofit board should give to their executive director. 

A free online resource for conducting nonprofit director performance reviews that may be helpful is the Evaluating Your Executive Director (pdf) workbook from The Enterprise Foundation in Maryland. And BoardSource has several resources available (at different price points) for nonprofits evaluating their executive.

Dynamic performance review processes provide the focus and support so desperately needed by many nonprofit leaders. In addition, they facilitate the process of engaging in healthy, growth-oriented conversations. And finally, they allow the director to answer with even more confidence the next time the phone rings.

Personal Medicine, Empowering People | By Lael Ewy

When you hear the word “medicine,” you probably think of a bottle full of pills. This is the experience for most of us when we have a physical ailment, and it is often the experience when we have a psychiatric ailment as well. Whatever your views on the “medicalization” of psychiatric diagnoses, pills don’t treat the whole person. And since we’re all different, a whole person approach must be unique to the individual, a “personal” medicine. 

One promoter of personal medicine is Pat Deegan, a mental health consumer and psychologist, who developed a workshop of video presentations and workbook activities called Common Ground to help get mental health consumers in touch with their own personal medicine and to help them personalize their medication experience. 

Nancy Jensen, a Certified Peer Specialist and member of the CPS training team at the Center for Community Support and Research, is both a user of and tireless advocate for the Common Ground curriculum. Nancy came across Common Ground after joining CCSR. “I found myself not wanting to go back to where I was before,” she says, but initially dismissed Common Ground as “just another workbook.” What she discovered was a program for empowering mental health consumers. 

Nancy had been an “aggressive” consumer, one who insisted the provider “had to do it my way.” She says an empowered consumer, on the other hand, allows the provider to have expertise but not to take away the consumer’s control over her own life and medication. Common Ground, Nancy explains, puts forward that there are two experts in the room: the provider and the consumer. 

Key to this is the “power statement,” a statement the consumer uses to express to her provider what she wants out of treatment, what parts of her life she won’t let treatment interfere with. The power statement is formed around personal medicine: the things in life that make one feel good, and feel good about life. For Nancy at that time, that was working and taking care of her cat.      

Another important part of Common Ground that Nancy finds powerful is the idea that emotions are not symptoms. Often, those with psychiatric diagnoses (and sometimes their doctors and loved ones) are so used to seeing what they feel as aspects of illness that they lose sight of the fact that emotions are a natural part of life, genuine reactions to one’s life and the direction it’s going. 

These tools not only help people recover, they help people avoid  the “medication trap,” where the side effects of a medication keep one from pursuing personal medicine, but the lack of medication exacerbates symptoms, also preventing one from pursuing personal medicine. Common Ground advocates "trade-offs” between personal and pill medicine, and the use of power statements to help providers understand the need to help people do those things that make their lives worthwhile. 

Nancy points out that not just pill medication can lead one into the medication trap; therapy can too. She also stresses that the ideas of personal medicine and power statements can be useful for anybody, not just those with psychiatric diagnoses. 

Connecting with SAMHSA online | By Amy Delamaide

CCSR Peer Educator Christine Young recently received an e-newsletter from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which is the national government's behavioral health administration, that promoted its online outreach work.

Increasing Outreach, Feedback, and Virtual Communities

Facebook. YouTube. Twitter. Blogs. In response to President Obama's request for Open Government, SAMHSA has developed a robust “digital engagement” program with established presences on four major social media channels. At the center of it all, SAMHSA's blog serves as the hub for these behavioral-health-focused efforts and expands SAMHSA's connections across the Nation.

Christine notes, "This opens access to so many more people. There need to be responsible concerns about security and having personal information out there, but I think services that are being provided need to evolve with the times."

Lael Ewy adds, "As a way of hitting people where they are, SAMHSA is doing the right thing. The interactive blog is a great idea as well: open government becomes responsive government in that case, and that’s really what we want it to be, especially when the issues and policies are complex."

CCSR looks forward to following and liking SAMHSA.

To connect with SAMHSA, check out their social media page.

See and Be Seen | By Seth Bate

Where does your non-profit organization or coalition go to be noticed?

I attended the February meeting of the Kansas Human Relations Association and ran into a familiar face. Gordon Criswell, human relations director for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., was there. He said the Human Relations Commission he facilitates was meeting soon to choose what community activities it would participate in this year.

Gordon’s timing seems right on to me. With spring fast approaching, this is the time to grab a community calendar and look for some opportunities to see and be seen.

These three questions may help guide your plans:

• At what community activities should we have an on-ground presence? Think about the audience size, the tone of the event and the opportunity for visibility. Are red-carpet and society page events where you should focus, perhaps because of the opportunity to interact with key decision-makers? Where is the best photo op? In your community, do people show up for the afternoon parade or the nighttime ball game?

• Who should be there? Is it the kind of event for which you want two dozen volunteers? Would it be more effective to identify a small cadre of staff, board members and donors? Is an unattended booth or a page in the program enough?

• How does the plan further your mission? Promotional activities are too costly in time and dollars to engage in lightly. What part of your strategic or marketing plan does this activity address? Are there ways that your participation can also reinforce your mission? For example, if your organization promotes early childhood learning, could you sponsor an activity for families with young children at your community picnic?

Please comment below to share your experiences with representing your organization at community events. Or catch me at the fair – I’ll be the one in line at the roasted corn stand.

Photo courtesy of ms.margie

Deliberative Processes as Egalitarian Space: Breaking Barriers to Communication Through the Common Task

by Lael Ewy

I had the opportunity recently to do some executive-level eavesdropping. But it was okay: I was invited to listen in on a conference call (having been asked to set it up) involving a team of which I was not a part. The team is the Certified Peer Specialist Programs and Practices group, which hashes out policy and best practices for peer support workers in the mental health field in Kansas. 

Members of the team come from a variety of different roles—from mental health service consumer liaisons to researchers to trainers to those who supervise peer support teams. My eavesdropping allowed me a certain analytical distance, and as I listened to people from very different perspectives come together to perform a common task, I heard something extraordinary.

People listened. 

So often, our roles dictate how we interact with others. When we work on tasks outside our normal assignments, our roles shift, power differentials fall away, and we become more willing to listen and more likely be listened to. And so a conference call about policy became also an open conversation about the impacts of policy on the various stakeholders involved. 

A study headed by Estela Mara Bensimon from 2004 shows how this can work on a large scale. The study, called the Diversity Scorecard, ostensibly set about to study barriers to minority success on a number of college and university campuses in Southern California. But there was a twist: instead of parachuting in and conducting the study themselves, the researchers called upon faculty, staff, and administrators to be actively involved in making the study happen. In the process, people at these campuses became directly aware of the problems minority students face in higher education, and an honest discussion about race and ethnicity ensued. 

This suggests a salve for hidebound organizational processes, lack of communication, and poor accounting of the perspectives of others: find a task that brings people out of their normal roles—a task force on emergency procedures, perhaps, or starting a company-wide recycling porgram. Or seek ways to be involved with common tasks within your field but outside your organization, such as creating a delegation to be part of a professional association. In this space you might just find yourself being heard and, above all, hearing what others genuinely think and feel.  

Spirituality in Recovery | By Dee Hinton-Turner

Spirituality in Recovery is a thought or vision I received many years ago, and still use today.  I had no idea that I would now be taking on the awesome task of putting Spirituality to pen, paper, and/or computer to teach and share with many others as a Certified Peer Specialist (CPS)/Peer Educator here at WSU Center for Community Support & Research.

Picture courtesy of Sasha Wolff

 A CPS/Peer Educator is someone who has a desire, mission and purpose to help others through many of life’s experiences towards recovery by sharing, showing and teaching.  I’m one of 4 who are on staff at CCSR.  We all have different experiences that we bring to our work.

For me, this journey has been enlightening, challenging and awesome all at the same time.  I have found a wealth of information via the internet websites, i.e., colleges, organizations, professors, doctors and other individuals who simply had a thought or opinion and shared with the world.  An example is David Lukoff, PhD, a founder and instructor offering an online continuing education course and quiz about Spirituality & Recovery from Mental Disorder on the Spiritual Competency Resource Center website.

Hopefully, with what I have learned and put to paper will “help somebody”--my life’s purpose.  Glory!