Be Bold: 10 pieces of leadership advice from Share our Strength President Tom Nelson

By Sophia Oliverio, ProInspire Intern

Tom Nelson is a father, a husband, an introvert, a country music fan, a sporadic yet very capable cyclist, and a man who has dedicated his career to serving nonprofits in several different roles. Tom serves on ProInspire’s Board of Directors, and as the President of Share our Strength, a nonprofit focused on ending child hunger in this country.

On Thursday June 18th, Tom spoke to the 2014 ProInspire Fellowship class about his role as President of Share our Strength and his many experiences in the nonprofit sector.

Tom and the fellows spoke about their nonprofit experience, and the importance many nonprofits place on social impact, passion, commitment, inclusion, and collaboration. The group also discussed that nonprofits often do not put enough emphasis on management. In fact, many organizations are not using management practices like goal setting, budgeting, or tracking performance.

Capable leaders and managers are critical when it comes to solving hunger, poverty, or illiteracy, which are some of the world’s toughest challenges that nonprofits are tackling on a daily basis. To usher in a new class of non-profit workers, leaders and managers, Tom left the Fellows with “Ten Lessons Learned.” These are based on things he has observed, learned, done right and wrong. They have had an impact on his career and hopefully helped him to become a better leader in the process.

1. As a leader, one of your responsibilities is to get the best possible talent into the nonprofit sector. The nonprofit sector is not the B team. We have people as smart and as accomplished as the people in the private sector  and nonprofit leaders should acknowledge that and recruit and develop talent accordingly.
2. Mediocrity is the enemy. There will be good passionate people committed to the cause and for whatever reason they will not be the right person for the job. You as a leader must act on that, and if you don’t you are hurting your organization and your cause.
3. It’s not about you. It’s about your team but you still have to be very clear about where responsibility lies and delegating that responsibility effectively.
4. Plan and execute for both the short and the long term.  We are always very focused and relentless about meeting  today’s numbers.  However, you also have to look up and say, “Okay where are we going to be five years down the road.” This is hard in any organization but especially in a nonprofit when you have limited resources to free up the mental capacity or staff time to look down the road, but it is an important skill set to develop.
5. Get to the gym, whatever your gym may be, whether it is family time, eating well etc. You  have to be willing and able to work hard and part of that is taking care of yourself.
6. Be Inside and Outside. A good leader has their hand on the rudder of the organization, and is connected externally.
7. Be BOLD. It means having a bold goal, but it also means being bold in your strategy and your tactics. When a leader is bold, it is inspiring, and it can also be less painful when making tough decisions. Be bold, be quick, be clear and get it done.
8. Realize the Power of Storytelling. Find an inspiring story to show people why your mission is important and why you continue to do the work that you do.
9. Shadows Matter. People take their queue from what kind of shadow you cast. Workers are going to pick up on how a leader carries herself or himself every day, not just during times of crisis or times of importance.
10. Point North, Again and Again. So many of us in the nonprofit sector are caring people and we want to do right by everybody, but we can’t. As leaders we must make choices and be clear on which direction we are headed.  It requires clearly pointing north or what our end goal is.

Tom Nelson’s final piece of advice was to remember that at any age you are still a work in progress.