May 3, 2025
How To Stay Strong when Others Around You are Giving into Fear
There is a lot of fear in the air, and I think it's important that we as nonprofit leaders take a hard look at that and get clear about what we're going to do with it.
The first thing is we have to acknowledge it. I've been part of a number of conversations where the fear is in the air, but it's not being talked about directly. And I think that's a mistake, because we run the risk of letting that fear guide our decision making and our actions in ways that we may not even realize or intend. And that would be a loss for everyone.
I think it's important to call it out, to acknowledge it, to say, yep, it's here. It's legitimate, and while it's real and present in our lives, we don't have to let it run our actions and our decision making. We need to be able to feel the fear, without operating from fear.
In this episode, we share:
- Two keys to navigating our own very real fears
- The essential choice we must make as leaders in times of fear
- One powerful tool for managing fear in this uniquely scary time that you can also use with your team
- Powerful evidence that we have more influence than we realize
- Two keys to helping decisionmakers get out of fear so they can make decisions that serve you
I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.
What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn.
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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we share how to stay strong when others around you are giving into fear.
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So stay tuned.
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If you wanna have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I.
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I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive Nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them.
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Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey there folks.
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Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because there is a lot of fear in the air, and I think it's important that we as Nonprofit leaders take a hard look at that and get clear about what we're gonna do with it.
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I think the first thing is we have to acknowledge it.
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I've been part of a number of conversations where the fear is in the air, but it's not being talked about directly.
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And I think that's a mistake because we run the risk of letting that fear guide our decision making and our actions in ways that we may not even realize or intend.
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And that would be a loss for everyone.
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I think it's important to call it out, to acknowledge it, to say, yep, it's here.
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It's legitimate, and while it's real and present in our lives, we don't have to let it run our actions and our decision making.
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There's a critical difference between feeling fear and operating from fear.
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There's no question that there is a lot of fear in the environment right now.
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It's a hundred percent understandable because frankly, the daily actions of the administration are dangerous and harmful and pose real threats to individuals and organizations and to fundamental rights in this country.
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There's a lot to be afraid of.
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And that fear is by design.
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It is at the core of the right wing strategy and this administration in particular, to get away with as much as they possibly can, as they try to dismantle basic freedoms and reorder the economy even more in favor of the ultra wealthy than it already is.
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And to indulge the dictator-ly fantasies of the occupant of the White House.
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So lots and lots of people have real palpable reasons to feel fear right now.
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If you are an immigrant, if you are politically outspoken, if you are an academic, if you are a lawyer, if you're a Nonprofit that's working on things the administration doesn't like.
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If you're just about anybody doing anything that they decide they don't like, or being someone they don't like, then you're right.
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You've got a target on your back.
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This is real.
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So it is not only normal but rational to feel fear in this moment.
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And all of us, if we're being honest, feel that from time to time.
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And we certainly see it in the faces of the people that we serve, in the faces of friends and colleagues and fellow advocates who are more exposed or have extra targets on them.
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The more targets you've got on your back, the more fear you have reason to feel.
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On top of all the other fears, we're sitting here, we're Nonprofit leaders and we're worried about our funding.
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We're worried about making sure that we can continue providing the services to the people who need them at the level of quality that we are committed to doing.
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One of our fundamental concerns, of course, is that every Nonprofit that has some sort of federal money is feeling the heat here and may already have experienced a reduction in funds or the threat of a reduction in funds.
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So how do we as individuals and as Nonprofit leaders navigate that?
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Here's the thing.
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We would be foolish to pretend that there's not a reason to feel fear.
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That fear is real and we should acknowledge it.
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As we should acknowledge any feeling.
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Emotions do not like to be ignored or denied.
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Nothing good happens when we try to pretend that a strongly felt feeling isn't there.
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So if we're smart and we want to take care of our mental health, we acknowledge the fear.
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Then we find ways to manage that fear.
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The challenge we have is to feel the fear and then choose our response to that.
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To choose our response to the feeling of fear, and to choose our response to those who are deliberately instilling fear.
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And that's a two-prong effort.
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There's self-management, and then there's creating strategies for dealing with others, both the instigators of fear and those succumbing to it.
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Managing fear starts at home.
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We have to deal with our own fear first.
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Especially as leaders, this is so important.
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And that means acknowledging it and bringing it out into the open, and taking a good hard look at it and making some conscious choices about how we are going to respond to our feelings and our initial reactions, what we're gonna do with that, how we're gonna operate as leaders in this time.
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Because that's a choice.
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How we respond to whatever is happening in our environment and whatever emotions it's producing.
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We can't control the emotions we feel and we shouldn't try.
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They are what they are.
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But we can absolutely choose what we do with those emotions and how we respond to them, how we manage them, and how we operate in the world.
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Those are all choices.
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We have to do that part first because only then can we be an effective leader for others.
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We have to do that internal work of calling out the feeling of naming it and saying, yeah, you know what, there are days when this just feels really dangerous.
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And then we reground and create intentional strategies for keeping our fear in check so that we can focus on the work.
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One of the strategies that can be really helpful is constantly looking for and noticing evidence of what's possible.
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We're very good at noticing evidence of threats, but it requires intentionality to notice evidence of possibility, looking around and seeing what others have been able to do and realizing that we can do that too.
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There's a lot of things to notice right now that can go a long way to helping us shift our perspective.
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Even though there's a lot in the environment to support the idea of, yeah, you should just be really afraid.
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There's also a lot in the environment to say yeah, and there's a lot you can do about that.
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As these first 100 days have unfolded, this administration has revealed themselves to be a bizarre combination of malevolence and incompetence.
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And it's really helpful that they're as incompetent as they are because their malevolence level is very high.
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But as they've bumbled their way through and lost a huge percent of any legal challenges that they've been confronted with.
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Most of what they're doing is either flat out illegal or has no legitimate underpinnings that stand up to any sort of scrutiny.
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And their hope is just that they can throw as much at us as they can, so that we can't possibly respond to it all.
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And that therefore a lot of it will go without scrutiny.
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And the stuff that goes without scrutiny goes ahead.
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But anything that gets a hard look taken at it, that doesn't stand up.
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And whenever they wind up in court, they're losing.
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Loss, after loss, after loss.
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Because there's no legitimate basis for what they're doing.
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They're doing what they want based on what they wish were true.
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But there are laws in place, there are other structures in place that say, no, there are actually rules around this.
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And it's the court's job to say you're breaking the rules and you can't do that.
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But the courts can't say that unless somebody brings it to the attention of the court.
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So litigation has been one of the key strategies to challenge their actions.
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The other key strategy to challenge their actions is protests and demonstrations and public outcry of all kinds.
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And the combination of the two is having a really significant effect.
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Because here's the thing.
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Now that this has been playing out for over three months, we're starting to learn where their weak points are and the ways in which we can effectively counter and fight them.
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They operate like a typical bully.
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Make their tough guy move, and then they're counting on the other person or entity to back down in fear.
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But just like with most bullies, if you stand your ground and fight back, they back down.
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Sometimes they back down right away, sometimes it takes a while.
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But eventually they back down or they're forced to back down by a court.
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That's really important information for us right now.
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To know that it is possible to push back, to fight back, to say no, and to not accept their actions as a done deal.
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To not take their threats at face value.
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I don't doubt that they mean those threats.
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I'm not saying that.
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It's just that threats don't hold up when they're challenged.
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And so we're learning very rapidly here that challenging them works.
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And we have to challenge them on all possible fronts.
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There are a number of non-profits that have successfully challenged denial of federal funding in court where they already had a contract and they had money that was supposed to be coming to them, and the administration shut it off.
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They went to court and they got that money back.
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They went to court and the court agreed with them and said, Administration, you had no business doing this.
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You gotta give these people their money.
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Others have gone to their Republican members of Congress and gotten them to argue on their behalf and gotten special dispensation.
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Is this how we wanna do everything forever?
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Of course not.
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But in this environment, we have to use the strategies that work.
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These are not normal times.
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So we need to have some tools in our toolkit that go beyond what we're used to doing as advocates.
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But the core thing is to remember that when they're challenged, they tend to back down.
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Now, the other thing that is working in our favor and against them, is that everything they're doing, everything, is deeply unpopular with the American people.
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Each new set of polling data that comes out week after week is showing us that increasingly larger majorities are rejecting everything they're doing across the board, and they're rejecting it by huge margins.
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So they are sinking in the polls, which really bothers the guy who really cares about ratings.
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There are protests and actions to stand up for people's rights, for critical government programs, for federal workers, for veterans, and this is happening in every community all across the country, and it's happening daily.
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It's also bothering Republican members of Congress, who so far mostly have been afraid of 47, but all these forms of pressure from polling data and very vocal, angry constituents is starting to make them worry about their ability to get reelected.
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The tide is turning.
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We're not safe by any means just yet, but the tide is turning.
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And that's information for us, and it's fortification for us.
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So as we're examining our own fear and coming to terms with it and saying, all right, I'm gonna feel the fear and I'm gonna go ahead and make a strategy and be a leader.
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And make sure that my team and my organization and the people that I serve are all gonna be okay in this process.
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And we're gonna do what it takes.
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To be able to come to that, it's important to have evidence that this is possible.
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That fighting back is possible and it works.
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Cause remember, a big part of their goal is to convince you that resistance is futile.
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That it will not help you.
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That it will only make your life worse if you push back.
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And nothing could be further from the truth.
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So we've got ourselves figured out, which is the key first step.
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We also have to deal with the fear in others, and the ways that it's impacting their thinking and their actions.
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And this is a very big deal.
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Obviously, it starts close to home with your team.
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They are all feeling a lot of the same fear you are and maybe some extra ones depending on their circumstances.
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And they're probably gonna need help dealing with those fears and coming to a place where they can find a way to step into their power and not give in.
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To say, I feel the fear, but I have choices about how I respond to it, and I'm gonna fight for what matters.
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So that's one thing with your team.
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But the other reality we're dealing with is that fear is affecting decision makers across the board, particularly funding decision makers.
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We've got the federal agencies and that's one thing.
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And then we've got state and local governments who are looking at a possible impending recession.
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Depending on their location, possibly large numbers of suddenly unemployed people who've been kicked off the federal workforce.
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So there's problems with their tax base and there's an increased demand on services and there's that going on.
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And then you've got corporations and foundations looking at a sinking stock market and worrying about capital and endowments and all of that.
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And on top of all that is the uncertainty which makes it difficult for anyone to plan how they're going to spend their money.
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So we've got a lot of money decision makers out there who are operating in fear.
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They may not be fearing for their personal safety or for their ability to stay in the country, which a lot of people are having to deal with, but they're fearing for the wellbeing of their whatever organization they're responsible to, and they're worried about their bottom line.
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And it's that fearful focus on the bottom line that creates so many problems for us.
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We have to be prepared to take them out of that mindset.
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No one makes good decisions from fear by definition.
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When it's an individual making a decision rooted in fear, the ripple effects aren't necessarily that big.
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But when you have a money decision maker who's in charge of significant chunks of funding making decisions from fear, now you have a serious problem that has potentially very broad and large impact on a lot of people.
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So one of our biggest challenges as leaders right now is to help decision makers get out of fear mode and get into strategic thinking and strategic response to the situation at hand.
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The situation at hand is that there is uncertainty about money.
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There is uncertainty about what anybody's bottom line is gonna look like.
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That is a fact.
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But what any given decision maker chooses to do with that depends a great deal on whether they are continuing to operate from fear, or whether they're able to acknowledge just as we have to, whether they're able to acknowledge that fear and say, okay, that's there.
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I see you fear.
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I acknowledge you.
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And I have other responsibilities here.
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So what I need is a strategy and a plan to meet those responsibilities, in spite of the fact that things feel fearful and uncertain right now.
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And that's the place we have to help them get to.
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A big chunk of that is messaging.
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And we've been talking about that a lot in recent episodes about how we do that messaging to help decision makers get focused on the right priorities and get their head right, so that they're focused on making sure that not only do the people who need help get help.
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But also that they don't make a dumb decision about pulling back on that investment in the interest of some short term savings to protect the bottom line.
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Only to discover that they've created a massive additional expense because people's problems got way worse.
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And now you've gotta figure out how to solve those much worse problems because you didn't provide the service early when you could.
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So we have to help them get all of that and see the bigger picture.
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They like to look at this as a, little simple math equation where it's just like, well, we have expenses out for the services and that's it, and those are the only costs involved.
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And it's like, no.
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Yeah, there's an outlay to pay for services, but that outlay is an investment that will have a return.
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In many cases, it will have an actual return, as in for every dollar spent on a particular service it saves$3 somewhere else.
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Great.
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If you have that kind of ROI data, you are in great shape.
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But also, we have to help them understand the cost of failing to solve a problem or solving it only halfway.
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Because they don't normally think that far down the road or think that big picture most of the time.
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But we do and we have to help them see that.
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Because once they get that, once they realize that the cost of failing to solve the problem is way more expensive than paying for the services that will solve the problem, then they're much more able to see why continuing to invest in your services is the smart move.
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But we gotta help'em get there.
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So that's a messaging piece.
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The other piece is that how we show up to these conversations with these decision makers matters immensely.
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Most decision makers are feeling some fear, some nervousness, some trepidation about all the uncertainty and the chaos.
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When they're in that kind of a frame of mind and they're operating from that, they're not operating from the place of being a strategic problem solving decision maker.
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They're operating from a place of, try not to make any mistakes and try not to have a problem happen.
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You can't win with someone who's stuck in that place.
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We gotta get'em out of that place.
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And we can't get'em out of that place if we're stuck in that place.
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So how we show up, when we're able to show up as confident, strategic problem solving partners who have thought this through and who have clarity and can provide clarity to help them find their way out of the scary weeds that they're in, that's huge.
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Remember that energy is contagious.
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The energy we show up with has a lot to do with how effectively we can guide those decision makers to a more helpful way of thinking and operating.
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We can only do that if we have dealt with our own fear.
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Acknowledged it.
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Made some very clear decisions in our own mind and heart about how we're gonna be in this time and how we're gonna manage that fear.
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And done the work with our team as well, so that we can all show up, particularly in conversations with decisionmakers, as clear-eyed, confident problem solving partners who have a strategy and who can help them find their way back to the priorities that make sense and that matter.
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And that ultimately will make their life better as decision makers because problems will get solved and ultimately that will serve their bottom line.
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It's up to you and it's completely within your power to choose how to lead when you're surrounded by fear.
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It's up to all of us Nonprofit leaders.
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Let's all stand together and choose the powerful path.
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Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we share how to stay strong when others around you are giving into fear.
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So stay tuned.
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If you wanna have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I.
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I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive Nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them.
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Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey there folks.
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Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because there is a lot of fear in the air, and I think it's important that we as Nonprofit leaders take a hard look at that and get clear about what we're gonna do with it.
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I think the first thing is we have to acknowledge it.
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I've been part of a number of conversations where the fear is in the air, but it's not being talked about directly.
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And I think that's a mistake because we run the risk of letting that fear guide our decision making and our actions in ways that we may not even realize or intend.
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And that would be a loss for everyone.
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I think it's important to call it out, to acknowledge it, to say, yep, it's here.
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It's legitimate, and while it's real and present in our lives, we don't have to let it run our actions and our decision making.
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There's a critical difference between feeling fear and operating from fear.
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There's no question that there is a lot of fear in the environment right now.
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It's a hundred percent understandable because frankly, the daily actions of the administration are dangerous and harmful and pose real threats to individuals and organizations and to fundamental rights in this country.
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There's a lot to be afraid of.
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And that fear is by design.
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It is at the core of the right wing strategy and this administration in particular, to get away with as much as they possibly can, as they try to dismantle basic freedoms and reorder the economy even more in favor of the ultra wealthy than it already is.
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And to indulge the dictator-ly fantasies of the occupant of the White House.
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So lots and lots of people have real palpable reasons to feel fear right now.
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If you are an immigrant, if you are politically outspoken, if you are an academic, if you are a lawyer, if you're a Nonprofit that's working on things the administration doesn't like.
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If you're just about anybody doing anything that they decide they don't like, or being someone they don't like, then you're right.
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You've got a target on your back.
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This is real.
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So it is not only normal but rational to feel fear in this moment.
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And all of us, if we're being honest, feel that from time to time.
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And we certainly see it in the faces of the people that we serve, in the faces of friends and colleagues and fellow advocates who are more exposed or have extra targets on them.
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The more targets you've got on your back, the more fear you have reason to feel.
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On top of all the other fears, we're sitting here, we're Nonprofit leaders and we're worried about our funding.
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We're worried about making sure that we can continue providing the services to the people who need them at the level of quality that we are committed to doing.
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One of our fundamental concerns, of course, is that every Nonprofit that has some sort of federal money is feeling the heat here and may already have experienced a reduction in funds or the threat of a reduction in funds.
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So how do we as individuals and as Nonprofit leaders navigate that?
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Here's the thing.
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We would be foolish to pretend that there's not a reason to feel fear.
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That fear is real and we should acknowledge it.
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As we should acknowledge any feeling.
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Emotions do not like to be ignored or denied.
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Nothing good happens when we try to pretend that a strongly felt feeling isn't there.
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So if we're smart and we want to take care of our mental health, we acknowledge the fear.
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Then we find ways to manage that fear.
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The challenge we have is to feel the fear and then choose our response to that.
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To choose our response to the feeling of fear, and to choose our response to those who are deliberately instilling fear.
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And that's a two-prong effort.
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There's self-management, and then there's creating strategies for dealing with others, both the instigators of fear and those succumbing to it.
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Managing fear starts at home.
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We have to deal with our own fear first.
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Especially as leaders, this is so important.
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And that means acknowledging it and bringing it out into the open, and taking a good hard look at it and making some conscious choices about how we are going to respond to our feelings and our initial reactions, what we're gonna do with that, how we're gonna operate as leaders in this time.
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Because that's a choice.
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How we respond to whatever is happening in our environment and whatever emotions it's producing.
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We can't control the emotions we feel and we shouldn't try.
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They are what they are.
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But we can absolutely choose what we do with those emotions and how we respond to them, how we manage them, and how we operate in the world.
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Those are all choices.
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We have to do that part first because only then can we be an effective leader for others.
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We have to do that internal work of calling out the feeling of naming it and saying, yeah, you know what, there are days when this just feels really dangerous.
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And then we reground and create intentional strategies for keeping our fear in check so that we can focus on the work.
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One of the strategies that can be really helpful is constantly looking for and noticing evidence of what's possible.
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We're very good at noticing evidence of threats, but it requires intentionality to notice evidence of possibility, looking around and seeing what others have been able to do and realizing that we can do that too.
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There's a lot of things to notice right now that can go a long way to helping us shift our perspective.
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Even though there's a lot in the environment to support the idea of, yeah, you should just be really afraid.
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There's also a lot in the environment to say yeah, and there's a lot you can do about that.
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As these first 100 days have unfolded, this administration has revealed themselves to be a bizarre combination of malevolence and incompetence.
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And it's really helpful that they're as incompetent as they are because their malevolence level is very high.
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But as they've bumbled their way through and lost a huge percent of any legal challenges that they've been confronted with.
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Most of what they're doing is either flat out illegal or has no legitimate underpinnings that stand up to any sort of scrutiny.
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And their hope is just that they can throw as much at us as they can, so that we can't possibly respond to it all.
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And that therefore a lot of it will go without scrutiny.
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And the stuff that goes without scrutiny goes ahead.
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But anything that gets a hard look taken at it, that doesn't stand up.
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And whenever they wind up in court, they're losing.
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Loss, after loss, after loss.
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Because there's no legitimate basis for what they're doing.
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They're doing what they want based on what they wish were true.
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But there are laws in place, there are other structures in place that say, no, there are actually rules around this.
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And it's the court's job to say you're breaking the rules and you can't do that.
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But the courts can't say that unless somebody brings it to the attention of the court.
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So litigation has been one of the key strategies to challenge their actions.
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The other key strategy to challenge their actions is protests and demonstrations and public outcry of all kinds.
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And the combination of the two is having a really significant effect.
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Because here's the thing.
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Now that this has been playing out for over three months, we're starting to learn where their weak points are and the ways in which we can effectively counter and fight them.
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They operate like a typical bully.
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Make their tough guy move, and then they're counting on the other person or entity to back down in fear.
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But just like with most bullies, if you stand your ground and fight back, they back down.
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Sometimes they back down right away, sometimes it takes a while.
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But eventually they back down or they're forced to back down by a court.
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That's really important information for us right now.
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To know that it is possible to push back, to fight back, to say no, and to not accept their actions as a done deal.
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To not take their threats at face value.
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I don't doubt that they mean those threats.
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I'm not saying that.
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It's just that threats don't hold up when they're challenged.
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And so we're learning very rapidly here that challenging them works.
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And we have to challenge them on all possible fronts.
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There are a number of non-profits that have successfully challenged denial of federal funding in court where they already had a contract and they had money that was supposed to be coming to them, and the administration shut it off.
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They went to court and they got that money back.
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They went to court and the court agreed with them and said, Administration, you had no business doing this.
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You gotta give these people their money.
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Others have gone to their Republican members of Congress and gotten them to argue on their behalf and gotten special dispensation.
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Is this how we wanna do everything forever?
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Of course not.
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But in this environment, we have to use the strategies that work.
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These are not normal times.
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So we need to have some tools in our toolkit that go beyond what we're used to doing as advocates.
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But the core thing is to remember that when they're challenged, they tend to back down.
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Now, the other thing that is working in our favor and against them, is that everything they're doing, everything, is deeply unpopular with the American people.
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Each new set of polling data that comes out week after week is showing us that increasingly larger majorities are rejecting everything they're doing across the board, and they're rejecting it by huge margins.
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So they are sinking in the polls, which really bothers the guy who really cares about ratings.
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There are protests and actions to stand up for people's rights, for critical government programs, for federal workers, for veterans, and this is happening in every community all across the country, and it's happening daily.
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It's also bothering Republican members of Congress, who so far mostly have been afraid of 47, but all these forms of pressure from polling data and very vocal, angry constituents is starting to make them worry about their ability to get reelected.
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The tide is turning.
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We're not safe by any means just yet, but the tide is turning.
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And that's information for us, and it's fortification for us.
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So as we're examining our own fear and coming to terms with it and saying, all right, I'm gonna feel the fear and I'm gonna go ahead and make a strategy and be a leader.
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And make sure that my team and my organization and the people that I serve are all gonna be okay in this process.
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And we're gonna do what it takes.
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To be able to come to that, it's important to have evidence that this is possible.
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That fighting back is possible and it works.
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Cause remember, a big part of their goal is to convince you that resistance is futile.
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That it will not help you.
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That it will only make your life worse if you push back.
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And nothing could be further from the truth.
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So we've got ourselves figured out, which is the key first step.
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We also have to deal with the fear in others, and the ways that it's impacting their thinking and their actions.
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And this is a very big deal.
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Obviously, it starts close to home with your team.
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They are all feeling a lot of the same fear you are and maybe some extra ones depending on their circumstances.
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And they're probably gonna need help dealing with those fears and coming to a place where they can find a way to step into their power and not give in.
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To say, I feel the fear, but I have choices about how I respond to it, and I'm gonna fight for what matters.
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So that's one thing with your team.
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But the other reality we're dealing with is that fear is affecting decision makers across the board, particularly funding decision makers.
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We've got the federal agencies and that's one thing.
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And then we've got state and local governments who are looking at a possible impending recession.
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Depending on their location, possibly large numbers of suddenly unemployed people who've been kicked off the federal workforce.
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So there's problems with their tax base and there's an increased demand on services and there's that going on.
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And then you've got corporations and foundations looking at a sinking stock market and worrying about capital and endowments and all of that.
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And on top of all that is the uncertainty which makes it difficult for anyone to plan how they're going to spend their money.
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So we've got a lot of money decision makers out there who are operating in fear.
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They may not be fearing for their personal safety or for their ability to stay in the country, which a lot of people are having to deal with, but they're fearing for the wellbeing of their whatever organization they're responsible to, and they're worried about their bottom line.
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And it's that fearful focus on the bottom line that creates so many problems for us.
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We have to be prepared to take them out of that mindset.
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No one makes good decisions from fear by definition.
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When it's an individual making a decision rooted in fear, the ripple effects aren't necessarily that big.
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But when you have a money decision maker who's in charge of significant chunks of funding making decisions from fear, now you have a serious problem that has potentially very broad and large impact on a lot of people.
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So one of our biggest challenges as leaders right now is to help decision makers get out of fear mode and get into strategic thinking and strategic response to the situation at hand.
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The situation at hand is that there is uncertainty about money.
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There is uncertainty about what anybody's bottom line is gonna look like.
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That is a fact.
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But what any given decision maker chooses to do with that depends a great deal on whether they are continuing to operate from fear, or whether they're able to acknowledge just as we have to, whether they're able to acknowledge that fear and say, okay, that's there.
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I see you fear.
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I acknowledge you.
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And I have other responsibilities here.
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So what I need is a strategy and a plan to meet those responsibilities, in spite of the fact that things feel fearful and uncertain right now.
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And that's the place we have to help them get to.
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A big chunk of that is messaging.
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And we've been talking about that a lot in recent episodes about how we do that messaging to help decision makers get focused on the right priorities and get their head right, so that they're focused on making sure that not only do the people who need help get help.
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But also that they don't make a dumb decision about pulling back on that investment in the interest of some short term savings to protect the bottom line.
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Only to discover that they've created a massive additional expense because people's problems got way worse.
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And now you've gotta figure out how to solve those much worse problems because you didn't provide the service early when you could.
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So we have to help them get all of that and see the bigger picture.
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They like to look at this as a, little simple math equation where it's just like, well, we have expenses out for the services and that's it, and those are the only costs involved.
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And it's like, no.
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Yeah, there's an outlay to pay for services, but that outlay is an investment that will have a return.
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In many cases, it will have an actual return, as in for every dollar spent on a particular service it saves$3 somewhere else.
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Great.
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If you have that kind of ROI data, you are in great shape.
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But also, we have to help them understand the cost of failing to solve a problem or solving it only halfway.
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Because they don't normally think that far down the road or think that big picture most of the time.
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But we do and we have to help them see that.
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Because once they get that, once they realize that the cost of failing to solve the problem is way more expensive than paying for the services that will solve the problem, then they're much more able to see why continuing to invest in your services is the smart move.
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But we gotta help'em get there.
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So that's a messaging piece.
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The other piece is that how we show up to these conversations with these decision makers matters immensely.
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Most decision makers are feeling some fear, some nervousness, some trepidation about all the uncertainty and the chaos.
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When they're in that kind of a frame of mind and they're operating from that, they're not operating from the place of being a strategic problem solving decision maker.
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They're operating from a place of, try not to make any mistakes and try not to have a problem happen.
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You can't win with someone who's stuck in that place.
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We gotta get'em out of that place.
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And we can't get'em out of that place if we're stuck in that place.
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So how we show up, when we're able to show up as confident, strategic problem solving partners who have thought this through and who have clarity and can provide clarity to help them find their way out of the scary weeds that they're in, that's huge.
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Remember that energy is contagious.
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The energy we show up with has a lot to do with how effectively we can guide those decision makers to a more helpful way of thinking and operating.
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We can only do that if we have dealt with our own fear.
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Acknowledged it.
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Made some very clear decisions in our own mind and heart about how we're gonna be in this time and how we're gonna manage that fear.
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And done the work with our team as well, so that we can all show up, particularly in conversations with decisionmakers, as clear-eyed, confident problem solving partners who have a strategy and who can help them find their way back to the priorities that make sense and that matter.
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And that ultimately will make their life better as decision makers because problems will get solved and ultimately that will serve their bottom line.
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It's up to you and it's completely within your power to choose how to lead when you're surrounded by fear.
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It's up to all of us Nonprofit leaders.
00:21:25.997 --> 00:21:29.828
Let's all stand together and choose the powerful path.
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Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
