another session scheduled for the very next day that I had not yet planned?
Now how did I get in this precarious predicament, you may ask? A dreadful combination of a new job, unclear roles and responsibilities, not enough sleep, poor delegation, and lack of preparation. I was an un-Together Leader, and I had hit a breaking point. And the stakes were high. We were preparing teachers to go in front of students. So on this day almost fifteen years ago, I made a vow to never, ever get myself into that kind of situation again.
Perhaps you empathize? You, too, may be trying to juggle the high volume of work and responsibility thrown at you every day. Maybe you have all your to-dos reasonably under control but wish you could be more planned ahead. Or maybe you're just exhausted and looking for a better way?
This book can work for you if you are a new manager. It can work for you if you've shifted careers from the corporate world into the nonprofit sector and you're thoroughly confused about the culture. Or maybe you've made the move from teaching to school or district leadership, or you've quickly realized your MBA was practical but didn't teach you how to prioritize in a world of limited resources. Or maybe you have been in your role for a few years and you realize that lack of Togetherness is holding you back from achieving your goals or securing a promotion. Perhaps you are trying to get your own mission-driven work off the ground. You may have unlimited vision and passion but require finer execution skills to make your dream a reality. Regardless of who you are, let this book be your guide in managing your time, energy, people's work, meetings, projects, and stuff. If we leaders are not Together, we will not get the ambitious results we want for our organizations. But if we are Together (along with a few other things), big and meaningful change can happen.
Some of you may have read my first book, The Together Teacher, a guide for teachers and other folks who work on a fixed schedule in on-your-feet environments without much discretionary time. But now you're a leader, and you have a different challenge: choice. You get to choose how you use your time. It's wonderful and daunting all at once.
What Do You Mean by Mission-Driven Work?
There are many, many books, blogs, apps, hacks, and more designed to boost your productivity and hone your time-management skills. This book is unique because it's designed for leaders in mission-driven settings who do their own work and manage the work of others. By mission driven, I simply mean anyone whose work ultimately serves the greater good. It doesn't have to be limited to nonprofit work, either. A mission-driven leader could be the person who oversees a community theater group, a Sunday school director, a chief financial officer of a housing organization, or a school principal.
So why is mission-driven work so different? In my work coaching leaders, I've seen mission-driven leaders face these specific challenges:
• The problems we are trying to eliminate (homelessness, poverty, and environmental concerns, just to name a few) or create solutions and innovations for are enormous, urgent, and critical.
• Our work is never ending. Resources are limited. We are often both managers and makers.
• Our goals can and should be ambitious. The volume of our work is intense.
• The emotional toll of our work cannot be understated. In any given week, leaders face tough conversations about apartment evictions, breaking up fights between students, or big layoffs.
It is no wonder that many mission-driven leaders are overwhelmed and ineffective and eventually burn out.
What Do You Mean by Togetherness, Anyway?
What does a Together Leader look like anyway? What is my definition of Togetherness? I'm deliberately not using the term organized because, well, just being organized is simply not enough for a busy leader with an important mission at stake. I see Togetherness as a combination of prioritized, planned, efficient, organized, flexible, predictable, intentional, and reliable.
In the painful personal example that opened this book, a more Together Leader may have thought, “Maia knew the training for the veteran teachers was incredibly high stakes. Because she regularly reviewed her calendar three months in advance, she knew it was coming down the pike. Because it was a new training, she proactively scheduled a series of meetings with her deputy director to outline the objectives, create the activities, and design the practice in the month leading up to the training. Because Maia realized that the materials aspect of the workshop would be a huge crunch, she carefully delegated production to a summer intern and set several meetings to check on progress. The day before the training, she ran one more dress rehearsal; invited her deputy director to ask her the tough questions she anticipated would come up in the trainings; packed the materials in her car; printed out directions, a premade pacing guide, and a sheet to take questions and contact info; laid out her outfit; and got a good night's sleep.” That leader would have been much more Together – and clearly would get to a better outcome, via planning, prioritizing, delegating, anticipating challenges, and operating efficiently.
Togetherness means being
• Prioritized
• Planned
• Efficient
• Organized
• Flexible
• Predictable
• Intentional
• Reliable
Of course, Togetherness is just one aspect of effective leadership. There are so many more facets of people management, such as setting vision, investing in others, leading with heart, designing strategy, marketing and selling ideas, and so on. There are tons of books, executive courses, and grad school syllabi that cover this stuff. This book, however, focuses on just one aspect of leadership, one I believe is often neglected or discounted. There are very few classes in high school, college, or graduate school that really teach you how to design and execute personal, team, and organization-wide systems to reach your goals. As you head deeper into the following chapter, you will find several self-assessments about your tools, routines, and mind-sets to help you determine your Togetherness strengths as well as where you may have some gaps.
Why Togetherness Matters Even More in Your Context
I entered my first job as a nonprofit leader at Teach For America immediately after working as a classroom teacher – where I basically had no time. Teaching was an efficiency and prioritization game. But in my new role, everything was suddenly about choices: how to use my time, how to spend our limited money, and which staff to hire and when. With each new decision I was reminded of whose future was at stake. Yikes!
Togetherness is a means to an end. You can lead a strong organization without being completely Together. Many top-notch organizations do not subscribe to a culture of Togetherness and instead place strong value on turning on a dime, dropping everything to pursue an opportunity, and swooping in to flawlessly solve a crisis. I respect this. And a small percentage of people want this excitement on a daily basis for the rest of their lives.
The former chief talent officer in me would argue that this approach, though invigorating, will not build the teams and organizations we want over time. People get burnt out by late-night, never-ending meetings, and eventually even the most mission-dedicated individuals decide they want more time with their families. The Together Leader is about finding the right balance between systems and spontaneity so that you can meet all of your organization's goals – and have a life!
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