5 Mindsets That Make a Difference When Communities Face Chaos
What do you do when you don’t know what to do?
This question lives in the heads of many of our partners in the nonprofit community. When people are hurting, communities are facing hardships, progress is slow, and needs are unmet, folks in the philanthropic and nonprofit space want to do something. It’s what we love so much about this space; you want to get things done, even when the landscape is foggy.
But sometimes what’s needed to cross the chasm of complexity isn’t a new strategy or tactic. Sometimes what’s most helpful is a strongly held mindset.
If your network is facing a moment where you feel unsure of next steps, these mindsets may help you center yourself amidst the chaos and take your best next step.
P.S.: In this article, when we refer to a “network,” we mean a group of people and/or organizations working together to advance a common cause. Power is shared in most networks! For example, a network that addresses the needs of community members who are experiencing homelessness could be made up of emergency shelters, grassroots groups, governmental agencies, supportive housing nonprofits, hospitals, and religious institutions.
Mindset Shift #1: Centering Your Core Cause
Instead of losing your focus
Centering around the core cause of the network means holding the mission at the heart of every policy, partnership, and plan you make. It is a continual choice of mission over anything else.
When you’re facing chaos, center on your core.
If your purpose is advocacy, it’s time to get loud. If your purpose is putting food on tables, it’s time to find creative ways of meeting this need. Encourage your team to adopt this mindset; any solutions you brainstorm need to fit with what you believe. This will be more productive than saying, “There’s no limits!” when thinking up next steps together.
Your mission is just a set of words until it becomes a motivator aimed at changing real lives.
It’s simple, we know! We often get feedback that this idea is too obvious to even warrant discussion. “Of course, hunger relief organizations are focused on people who are hungry,” they say. “Absolutely, we put the mission in the middle.”
But centering on the core cause is more difficult to practice than folks realize. Language, structure, and how we spend our time often centers on other stuff. People get tied up in money and positions. We design our programs so they’re easier for the implementer than the person on the other side of the table. We “other” rather than “center.”
If everyone in the world were centering their cause (big dream, we know!), we’re confident that things would be different.
Small Mindset Changes to Make
Your organization → Your mission: Instead of centering conversations around your organization, center every conversation, plan, and message around the mission.
Recipients → Leaders: Move away from treating the people you serve as recipients of your good cause. Move toward welcoming community members into the process of designing solutions. Hire community members. Honor their decision-making power. Instead of centralizing your organization’s power, you’re centralizing the core cause.
Organization updates → Firsthand stories: When writing a newsletter, could you center the voices of people with lived experience in meaningful ways? Go beyond updates from your team and think about how you can give them a platform to tell their stories.
Reading about your community → Being in your community: It may have been a long time since you’ve worked in direct service and built relationships with community members. Your understanding of them might come from donor-oriented marketing materials that focus on their struggles and underrepresent their strengths. Shift your mindset to being among them and with them instead of reading about them on slides.
Mindset Shift #2: Focusing on Assets
Instead of distracted by deficits
Asset-based thinking means focusing on the strengths of each organization, leader, or situation rather than the deficits or weaknesses. It comes from a mindset that sees abundance instead of scarcity.
In a network, it means believing all network members have value and contribute to the mission. This type of thinking is an ideal structure to deploy diverse resources, skills, and knowledge to achieve a goal in a time of turmoil.
Many leaders think of themselves as the writer, director, and star in a film operating on a less-than-blockbuster budget. But rather than complaining about the cast and crew, try scouting for strengths. It just may lead to uncovering “star power” in unexpected places.
Small Mindset Changes to Make
Others are a threat → The problem we’re addressing is the threat: Partners are not understudies or villains. There’s no need for resentment or gatekeeping in a network. Embrace diversity and focus on honoring each other’s assets to serve the mission.
Scarcity mindset → Abundance of resources: We often see smaller organizations forget that their hubs are full of people who share their values and vision for the future. Everyone is an ensemble cast, serving the core purpose together. If you have a need or an idea, just ask!
Tiers → Complementary expertise: Network members working at the national, regional, and local levels can see and address issues at different altitudes. Each perspective comes with its own privilege. Harness this complementary expertise rather than creating tiers that can limit the growth potential for smaller organizations and hamper innovation potential for larger ones.
Dismiss underperformers → Provide more resources: Leaving “underperformers” behind means giving up on the communities they serve. Dismissing their potential to meaningfully contribute often results in reinforcing systemic inequities, like racism. Flip the script to honor the assets and provide more resources to help them grow.
Mindset Shift #3: Designing for Inclusion
Instead of one size fits all
Generic solutions don’t work in complex networks serving varying communities and needs. But it’s tough to understand the best ways to segment our networks without requiring full customization for every engagement.
We’ve seen networks attempt to solve this issue by leaning toward segmentation based on demographic information, like size of budget, number of staff, or geographic identifiers. But these types of segmentation can sometimes take inequities in a network and magnify them by focusing resources towards segments deemed best at bringing things to scale, and leaving less-resourced segments behind.
One option to address this segmentation challenge is personas. Personas are descriptions of the ways people, or organizations, think and behave. Persona segmentation focuses on differences in mindsets, strengths, and behaviors instead of numbers like budget or size.
Developing personas and designing stakeholder engagements with intentionality can help you address the need for segmentation while honoring your commitments to inclusion and equity.
When your community is in chaos or the needs are urgent, this mindset shift may not feel possible. But putting in this work now will help you be ready to respond even better in the future.
Small Mindset Changes to Make
Marketing to a people group → Being in community: Meet folks where they are rather than trying to reach people with clever marketing tactics from far away. To design for inclusion, organizations and individuals must feel they are recognized and valued for what they can bring to the table. They’ll be able to tell if you don’t “get” them.
Playing favorites → Seeking new voices: Challenge yourself to identify any “favorites” you have in your network and seek new voices next time you need feedback. Maybe you have a roster of go-to community members you talk to when you want feedback, but you’re unintentionally sidelining others. Selective engagement sacrifices deepening a relationship with the partners who challenge existing processes and push for innovation.
One size fits all → Personas: There is no set solution for engagement. Personas can help shift problem-solving from “this will/will not work” to “for whom might this work?” and what additional solutions might be needed to serve other users.
Mindset Shift #4: Equity in Practice
Instead of equity on the sidelines
Equity is life’s work. Putting equity into practice is a requirement for collectively reimagining systems and maximizing social impact. It’s not making a pledge or posting a graphic. In networks, this means working together to break down barriers and create a society free of oppression. It’s a relentless effort to ensure every person has fair access to resources or opportunities.
As our collaborator and friend Sharina Sallis says, “This is life’s work.”
Putting equity into practice requires endurance. You may be working on a tough problem that needs action now, but equity will always be on your to-do list. You’ll likely dedicate a lifetime to pursuing it. This mindset shift involves taking a deep breath when you’re overwhelmed and remembering that this is a lifelong journey. Lace up your shoes!
Small Mindset Changes to Make
Equity is something to learn about → Equity is something to practice: Too often, addressing equity begins and ends with the tactical response of training. While education around topics like unconscious bias is extremely important, we can’t stop there. Support change in practice, not just building knowledge.
“But I’m not in charge” → “I will use the influence I have”: If you’re feeling frustrated because your efforts to advance equity are getting blocked by people in power, ask yourself: Where you do have influence, authority, or opportunity to make change today?
Add equity to your to-do list → Embed equity goals into everyday work: DEI shouldn’t be on the to-do list — it should shape the whole to-do list. When recruiting businesses for sponsorships, for example, you can prioritize and incentivize engagement from businesses that are Black-owned or women-led. When choosing a location for an event, ask partners if the space is friendly to people with mobility challenges.
“We should go where we can win” → Go where folks were systematically designed to lose: It’s tempting to seek out easy wins so you can maximize shareholder value. But practicing equity sometimes means going where you’ve been losing. Design opportunities to serve organizations that have been under-resourced and historically left behind.
Mindset Shift #5: Practicing Trust
Instead of waiting for trust
Trust can get wobbly amidst change. When funding gets taken away or a CEO leaves or a service offering disappears, trust between two parties can falter. On top of that, many people inherently don’t trust medical systems, police, the government, churches, and schools. Public confidence in institutions is near its lowest point in 46 years, according to data from Gallup.
So what do you, as the leader of an organization, do?
The mindset is certainly not to naively trust everyone and demand full trust in return. People often have good reasons for distrust. For example, distrust manifested as self-advocacy and questioning are useful strategies to fight for what one needs to survive in the medical system. Given the historical mistreatment of people of color and low income people, their skepticism has been well-earned and may be necessary until our systems change.
Don’t hide from distrust. Explore it. Understand the roots and branches that must be addressed to demonstrate trustworthiness.
As a leader, you can increase your effectiveness by recognizing moments to demonstrate your trustworthiness and extending trust to your partners.
Small Mindset Changes to Make
This will pass → This is an opportunity to build trust: Instead of waiting for a smoother sea, understand that trust helps us stay in our boat together as we figure out how to row through the storm. Use change to be proactive about earning trust within your network.
Ask everyone to trust you → Extend trust to others: When we asked people with chronic illness to share about their most empowering health care experiences, many reflected that it was they felt trusted by their doctors. People want to know they are trusted. On your end, you can listen, respect experience and expertise, and honor people’s autonomy and independence.
The Power of a Mindset
“Can a network end a war? Pick up the pieces after a dictatorship? Or fight something as big as apartheid? They can and did.”
These words are from consultant and leader Stephanie J. Clohesy in the foreword of our book, “Activating Moments for Change” (where we cover these five mindsets in greater detail).
Your community may be hurting and folks feel stuck on what to do next. As part of a network, you can accomplish more than you think, and it all starts with your mindset. Mindsets can’t change the world — but you can.
Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t worry, this work is what we specialize in! Schedule a discovery call today to learn more about how we can help your organization make a plan to activate real change in your community.