Listening in Order to Lead with Amy Gorecki

Amy Gorecki:
The first step for me is going to be a sit back and listen. Because if I don’t understand the viewpoints of everybody around me and I don’t understand the history of the organization and where people are coming from, how can I help lead the organization to make the right decisions to transition into the future and to take the next steps in accomplishing their strategic priorities if I haven’t heard what people had to say?

Mathieu Yuill:
Good day and welcome to the Leading With Nice Podcast, my name is Mathieu Yuill. In this podcast we want to help you and your team inspire others build loyalty and get results. Today I’m super excited to have Amy Gorecki, the Executive Director of the Science Teachers Association of Ontario chatting with me. I came to know Amy through a project we worked together on in the summer of 2019 and since then we have maintained a great relationship. And for those of you who are at the start of a project or a situation where you have a big task ahead of you and you’re wondering how you will acquire resources and the people and the other things you need to manage them, Amy’s story will be really helpful for you today. Amy, welcome to the podcast.

Amy Gorecki:
Thanks, Mathieu, it’s great to be here.

Mathieu Yuill:
Amy, tell me a little bit about the Science Teachers Association of Ontario, how long it’s been around for and what it does and who would be a part of this thing?

Amy Gorecki:
The Science Teachers Association of Ontario has been around for 130 years, this is actually our anniversary year which is very exciting. We are a nonprofit organization that provides resources, networking opportunities, and support for science teachers from kindergarten to grade 12 across Ontario. And I think one of the biggest benefits for our members is a feeling of community and that they’re not in this alone. Teachers have very high-stress jobs and they are trying to balance a lot of different things within their careers so we are here to help provide them with the supports they need in delivering the science curriculum and learning from their peers in terms of best practices.

Mathieu Yuill:
One of the things I found really interesting about science teachers that I remember you sharing with me, they have feelings of isolation and they don’t often have a chance to connect. And I was like that’s so strange. I live in Toronto so the TDSB would have probably hundreds if not thousands of science teachers. And then one of the teachers in the board explained to me that when they go into their classroom they close the fireproof door and the room is very isolated because they’re the only teacher in the room with all the students and they’re there for three, four periods a day. They don’t have what others will have that work in an office or whatnot, where they can get up from their desk and go visit somebody or check-in with their boss during the day. That’s a real thing for science teachers.

Amy Gorecki:
Absolutely. And finding ways to help connect people to bridge some of the gaps they might have in their own knowledge or in how they apply what they already know in the context of teaching their students, that’s something that we’re here to help do.

Mathieu Yuill:
Amy, one of the reasons I want to speak to you today in particular is you had shared with me an article you wrote about project management professionals. And we’re going to get into a little bit about what you experienced when you entered into your role, but I want to help set up for our listeners today a few of the fundamentals that you bring and a few of the lenses that you view the work you do through. And in this piece you wrote about why project management professionals are uniquely suited for nonprofit leadership. You wrote about under-communication, about the training and skillset project management professionals like yourself have in stakeholder engagement. Tell me why for you that one piece is so important for your role.

Amy Gorecki:
Stakeholder management is really about knowing who your audience is, both your direct audience and your indirect audience, and figuring out the best way to reach them, the best time to reach them and just making sure that the messaging that you get across to those stakeholders is truly the information that they need. For me, stakeholder management is so important because if you don’t know who you’re talking to, you don’t know if you’re sharing the right message. That’s not something we’re all trained to do and I thought that was a really unique aspect of my project management training that I could bring to my job in the nonprofit world as a leader.

Amy Gorecki:
A lot of times in the nonprofit world we get really caught up in what we’re doing or so excited about it, it’s a great cause we really believe in it, but sometimes we get invested in the messages that we want to share and not in the messages that we need to share to be effective in our role. For me, taking that step back, looking at stakeholder management and really evaluating critically the needs of each person that we’re trying to impact as well as the people who may have influence on that end user is really important.

Mathieu Yuill:
That makes a lot of sense. And for those of you that are listening because you want to get the real information on how to start in a position like Amy has been in, that set it up so perfectly. Amy, when you came to the Science Teachers association, Ontario, and we’ll call it STAO from here on and that’s what we call it colloquially, they were in the middle of the transition period. Can you tell me a little bit about what you experienced and what the reality was of the situation you inherited?

Amy Gorecki:
Absolutely. I guess to kind of set it up a little bit it might be helpful to hear about where I was coming from as well. I was the Vice President of the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario prior to joining STAO as the Executive Director. So I had been in a leadership position, but it was a small organization and I’d never had full ownership for my organization and I was also I’m familiar with working with the board of directors so I hadn’t had a lot of experience in that aspect of things either. That helps set the stage a little bit for what my experience was like when I came in.

Amy Gorecki:
Prior to my starting with STAO, there had been a long-term executive assistant. That role transitioned into the role of interim executive director and the intention was always to hire someone new to fill the role of executive director, but they were just starting to work through that transition. I came in as the first full-time executive director. Not only was I truly untrained as an ED but I was also stepping into the shoes of someone who really wasn’t in that true leadership role that most non-profits would view their ED as being in.

Amy Gorecki:
Another tricky aspect of that is that that’s not a situation that’s unique to STAO that’s a situation that can be familiar in a lot of nonprofit organizations because the executive director should really be a parallel role to a CEO of a for-profit business, but because of the limited resources that a lot of nonprofits have, that’s not necessarily the case. So you will find your ED doing a lot of administrative work that they shouldn’t be doing in those smaller organizations because you have to do to those resource issues that you may have.

Amy Gorecki:
For me in terms of the transition, I think I came in with a lot of idealistic thoughts about what I was going to be doing, what kind of impact I was going to be having, the projects I was going to be leading, relationships I was going to build, and then it all kind of came crashing down as I realized, first of all, I’m the only full-time employee at this organization. I had to reframe my expectations a little bit as I got my feet under me and learned about the history of the organization and how ran.

Amy Gorecki:
STAO has been run traditionally by volunteers and so everything we do is still very volunteer-driven. But when I came in the transition from an executive assistant to executive director was difficult for all of us because I don’t think we all had the clearest understanding of exactly what I was going to need to do and what skills I was bringing and how my role would evolve from the previous executive assistant role. That was the biggest challenge for me, something that I was really not prepared for in being the sole employee of the organization.

Amy Gorecki:
I was also learning how to work remotely as we don’t have an office so that was another big adjustment. Not only do you not have sort of… The water cooler talks every day, you don’t have that staff and that team around you to support you. If you’re having a bad day to help you get motivated, to hear about what else is going on in the organization. That was the piece that, that was a really big transition. I would say for me, stepping into a leadership role with STAO was challenging due to some of the lack of experience I had in the role not having that close team around me to support me, as well as having the organization going through a transition at the same time as I was.

Mathieu Yuill:
You mentioned so much in there that I’m sure many people are experiencing especially those in smaller nonprofits, even those who work in smaller for-profit companies, is the amount of work you need to do that is outside of what you typically would expect that of an executive director or a senior leader. But when you have a board of directors that are volunteer, often these people care deeply or they have generally joined the board of directors because they have something that they’re very interested or passionate about. However, their board of directors by definition they are not expected to do the work or to even manage it, their role is to govern. Amy, I just would love to hear some tips that you have that other people might be able to throw into their toolkit to help the board of directors’ relationship with the executive director in accomplishing the goals for STAO.

Amy Gorecki:
I think the most important thing that you said Mathieu there was that they are volunteers. Obviously, if they didn’t want to be there they wouldn’t be there so they’re passionate about something that you’re doing or there’s some kind of reward that they’re taking from being a member of the board that is really important to them. So if they’re there they should be invested in what they’re doing and that by default means that they want to support you as the person who’s responsible for leading the organization.

Amy Gorecki:
I think one of the most important things to remember about your board of directors is that they are all human beings and as volunteers they have so much going on outside of what they’re doing for you and your organization. As much as you only get a small portion of their time, it’s so important as well to remember that volunteer and personal connection because if you don’t have a personal connection with your board, people want to support people that they know and that they like. It’s not just supporting the organization they know and like, you need them to support you as the leader as well. So taking the time to set up those foundations of a really solid, personal relationship are really helpful I think when dealing with your board of directors. I think that’s probably been one of the keys to my success with STAO, is having taken that time at the beginning to establish that.

Amy Gorecki:
The other thing that I think is really important about working with your board of directors once you’ve had the time put into building that personal relationship, I think just making sure to keep the communication lines open. You’ve built your personal relationship and now to keep things running smoothly within the organization, making sure that the board really knows what you’re working on, what you’re doing as the executive director in terms of the operations is really important. A lot of boards really struggle to keep their distance from the operations and that’s one transition that has been going on within our organization as well, is a transition from more of an operationally-focused board to a governance board, which is really the way it should be.

Amy Gorecki:
So if you want to keep your board involved in the governance aspects of the organization, in order to govern effectively, they need to know what’s going on behind the scenes at the operational level. So keeping that communication open and making sure that they know the projects that you’re working on with your team, the progress, that they’re really keyed into what’s happening financially with the organization, what are you doing in terms of planning. If you take the time to build personal relationships and keep your communication lines open it makes for a much more effective relationship that allows you to accomplish the things you need to do as the leader I think.

Mathieu Yuill:
I speak to a lot of executive directors and people that work on boards and I haven’t heard somebody put it so eloquently the need to build the personal relationship with the people on the board. When I talk about empathy, one of the key points I make is that empathy is all about ourself, and I don’t mean like yourself personally but the way we define ourself is who is in our close circle and usually that’s friends and family, and we feel empathy for those people very naturally but we don’t feel empathy for people that are outside that circle. So to build empathy for them you do need to develop a relationship, you do need to be intentional about building that. So it makes so much sense that some of your success has come because you put the groundwork in. And for people that just want to get down to business, man, it’s a bit tougher to understand.

Mathieu Yuill:
Now I know also that, we’ve had lots of talks, you are not naturally an extrovert or somebody who wants to go and network and do a lot of chatting. I imagine that this was something that you had to be intentional about, it probably took some energy for you to do. I’m sharing that because if you’re listening today and you’re like, “Oh man, that sounds like a real chore,” yeah, it can feel like a chore for sure. So yeah, I just want to encourage you that that is honestly one of the best ways I’ve heard that approach put.

Mathieu Yuill:
Amy, tell me about what it’s like to be the executive director. Now you talked a bit about it before you go into administration, but just talk about the constant ideas that come at you, the constant direction you get. What are some really good tips you have for that person who is going to be a solo executive director or not have many or any support around them?

Amy Gorecki:
I think the first really important thing, and this is something that has taken me quite a while to learn is the boundaries piece. When I came in as a new leader new to the organization I was following somebody with so much history who had done a great job, who everyone in the organization really appreciated, really looked up to. It’s hard to follow in the steps of somebody like that especially when there’s only you and there’s no one really to learn from in terms of an employee relationship, there’s only volunteers to learn from. A volunteer always is going to have a different experience than a staff member.

Amy Gorecki:
Coming in and thinking you can do everything and be everything to everyone is very idealistic and it’s something that I had to struggle with a lot because I wanted to do that. I like to think I have a lot of skills, I like to think that I can give everything of myself, but if you don’t set those boundaries, eventually your work is just going to take and take and take from you and you’re going to find that you have nothing left to give because you’re exhausted.

Amy Gorecki:
The first thing you need to do is really look at establishing those boundaries for yourself, and that’s a learning process, nobody’s going to come in and get that right from the get-go. But once you establish those boundaries that you need, you need to communicate those out to people. Because if they don’t know that you don’t feel able to do something, they’re not going to stop asking you, they’re going to keep expecting you to do the same thing but if you need something done differently you have to advocate for yourself, there’s no one else to do it.

Amy Gorecki:
I would say establishing your boundaries and advocating for what you need, that’s part of your job that you really need to come in and do things with. I’m not saying come in from day one and say, “This is what I need and you all have to give it to me or else.” It’s more, work a little bit, make some adjustments, it’s a give/take relationship, but find your boundaries, put them in place and be direct about what you need. In terms of that aspect of having to be everything and having to pivot and just take on so many roles particularly in a small organization, I think it’s also really critical to do some self-analysis and make sure what you’re spending your time on is the right thing. That’s not always easy to do and that’s something I really struggle with. I want to do everything, I want to accomplish everything. I want to make everybody happy but at the end of the day you’re one human being and nobody can do that no matter how much you want to.

Amy Gorecki:
So play to your strengths and don’t be afraid to find the people within your organization who can help play up some of your areas that aren’t your strengths, and teach people what you are good at so you don’t have to do all of those things that you’re good at all the time and you can work on the things that you’re not so good at. You are going to have to learn new skills most likely when you enter into a leadership role for the first time so don’t be afraid to take those on, but just be honest with people about what’s new for you and what you need help with. I think those were the biggest things for me in transitioning into the leadership role that I would share with someone who would be coming into a new role like this.

Mathieu Yuill:
I want to speak directly to board members now for a second, because this is so important. Your executive director, they are constantly learning new skills, they’re always trying to implement everything the board wants. And oftentimes I see a lot of board of directors are always wanting to be doing something new or trying something or implementing a new something. And I just want to encourage you as a board to think about a rhythm. As a board think about what does it look like over a three-year period or five-year period or… a two-year period probably is too short, but to have one year where you’re just doing something like articulating how you do the thing really well. And that gives the executive director in your organization a chance to catch a breath and to be prepared for what’s next. But oftentimes as a board you’re only on for a short time. So you’re like, “Oh man, I have all these plans.”

Mathieu Yuill:
I worked with a nonprofit board about five years ago where the president that was there for one year, they made it very clear their job was to maintain. They’re doing some great things and they want to give the board a rhythm. And now five years later, they’re able to add their right amount of new stuff and new projects in a really smart way. The last thing I want talk to you about, Amy, is you spoke about just all the new learning. We love to have practical and actionable tips for our listeners. I’d love for you to share just a few, maybe your top three or top five things to do as an executive director of a small nonprofit where either you are the only person or maybe you have one or two part-timers or one other full-time. And those things can be as specific or as broad as you want. What should I do? What are some things that I should be mindful of?

Amy Gorecki:
Okay, let’s go with three. The first thing I think that I have learned over the past year and a half is really important, is establishing connections within the field with people who are in a similar position to you. In the fall of last year I attended a conference by the Ontario Nonprofit Network and there were hundreds of nonprofit professionals there. And meeting with a lot of the other executive directors was really great to just hear people say, “Oh, I feel like that too.”

Amy Gorecki:
One of the things that’s most common in the field that I took away from that conference in particular is the feeling of imposter syndrome and feeling like, “What am I doing here? How did I get here? Are people taking me seriously?” Yes, they are. I mean, you’re there for a reason, people chose you so be confident in your skills. And if you have that network of people who are feeling the same way as you it’s a really great opportunity to connect, to have somebody to discuss those things with since you don’t have a team of staff, I think that’s really important. For me that would be the number one tip, take opportunities to connect with others in a similar situation to yourself. Nobody will be in the same situation but you can find people in similar situations.

Amy Gorecki:
The second tip I would have is, go easy on yourself. When you enter a new organization there is always a learning curve. There’s no way you can come in on day one and be at your best and solve all the problems an organization is experiencing and do your best work because you have so much to learn and you need to take that time to step back and just give yourself the opportunity to learn. If you don’t take that opportunity nobody’s going to hand it to you. They’re quite happy for you to jump in and hit the ground running, but take a step back to learn and be patient with what you need to do in terms of developing new skills, talking to the right people, learning the right processes, that can really set you up for success as you jump into those projects and as you get the ball rolling on things.

Amy Gorecki:
And I think the third thing that I will say that is super important when you’re transitioning into a leadership role is to listen. And I actually said that in my interview when they asked me, “What are you going to be doing when you get here?” I said, “The first step for me is going to be a sit back and listen because if I don’t understand the viewpoints of everybody around me and I don’t understand the history of the organization and where people are coming from, how can I help lead the organization to make the right decisions, to transition into the future and to take the next steps in accomplishing their strategic priorities if I haven’t heard what people had to say. So be patient with yourself, give yourself space, listen and just do what you need to do to find other people who can empathize with the situation you’re in. Those would be my top three tips.

Mathieu Yuill:
I love it because basically, self-care, that is…

Amy Gorecki:
That is what I said, isn’t it?

Mathieu Yuill:
It’s so true though. It’s what we all need. Amy, how can people find out more about STAO? Where can they go to learn about them? Where can they find them on the web? What can they do?

Amy Gorecki:
You can find out more about us on our website, www.stao.ca. You’ll find links to information about our membership and all of our resources and opportunities to get involved with us.

Mathieu Yuill:
Okay. If you’re listening to this and you liked what Amy had to say, I don’t know whether this is necessarily on her agenda, but if you have a conference coming up or if you have a workshop or something she would be an excellent speaker. I have the pleasure of working with her often and I always walk away with some new learning. So if you are in that position reach out to Amy because she’d be an excellent panelist or a keynote speaker, or even just to get on a phone call with a few of your leaders. Amy, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.

Amy Gorecki:
Thank you for having me, it’s been really great. Thank you.

Mathieu Yuill:
I want to thank our listeners. To learn more about this topic visit leadingwithnice.com. And on our way out I want to thank the people that help make this podcast come together. Jeff Anon, Andrew Park, Austin Pomeroy, they all are involved in the production of this and I am so grateful for them. For Leading With Nice, my name is Mathieu Yuill, and we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty, and get results, talk to you next time.