Episode 62 – Dr. Rob Harter – Leaders On Leadership
At certain times, leaders will find themselves at the crossroads that require them to make game-changing decisions. Whatever the decision may be, you may still face questions from various members of your team, and accepting criticism is usually a challenging task. Even if it's for the greater good, sacrifices are sometimes needed. Nonprofit executive professional Dr. Rob Harter explores this gut-wrenching part of leadership and explains how such situations can still be welcomed as chances for further learning and understanding. Sitting with Dr. Tracey Jones, Dr. Harter shares some tips on time management and how he keeps his routine as fresh and interesting as possible.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Dr. Rob Harter – Leaders On Leadership
Our guest is Dr. Rob Harter. Rob is the host of the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast and has over 25 years of experience in various nonprofits. We are going to be tremendously encouraged and blessed by this interview.
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I am tremendously excited to have my guest, Dr. Rob Harter. He is a Nonprofit Executive Professional with over 25 years of experience in leading and building nonprofit organizations. I’m interested to know his perspective on leadership. Rob leads a large humanitarian nonprofit organization and has a bold vision to serve as a leading networker of community service, and is also the host of the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. Rob has also served and continues to serve on boards, including having served as the Chairman of the MLK Jr. Human Rights Commission for Utah. Rob, thank you for sharing with us.
It's good to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.
Tell me a little bit about your journey and what brought you out there before we get right into the leadership aspect of it.
I came several years ago and a job opened up here. Christian Center of Park City is the name of the nonprofit that I lead as an Executive Director. Long story short, when I got to know the mission and the vision of this organization, I was intrigued, even though I had another opportunity in Arizona at that time. This one kept gnawing at me in a good way like there's something here. There's this great vision for what they wanted to accomplish through this organization.
The more I investigated that. I met the board and I met the then executive director. It became clear that this is where I was supposed to be. I took the job and it's been fun to see this organization grow. The organization has been around for many years. when I came, we had about nine paid staff including me and it's grown from there. We have over 52 paid staff now, over 1,000 volunteers a year, the budget is $5 million, and we have two campuses. It's been fun to see it grow.
Particularly during COVID-19, with all the things that we've been able to develop in the programs and services, we were relied upon and still are for some critical, I would call Emergency Assistance Response Programs that we have. It's been fun to see that. For many years, we've been building this and then a major pandemic like COVID-19 that no one planned on came. We were positioned well and ready to handle the immediate need for food and different things we're able to help with so it's been a lot of fun.
How did you hear about it? Had you known about this before? Had you intersect with your other nonprofit or did they just reach out to you?
This is out of the blue. In fact, I'd never been to Park City, Utah. I'd heard about it through the Olympics, but I was in Boulder, Colorado at that time. I threw my name in the hat for the position and they merely called me back. One thing led to another and the next thing I know, I'm packing up and moving out to Utah. It's been a fantastic experience, better than I anticipated. Utah is a beautiful state and Salt Lake is a growing city.
I moved to Denver at that time. I went to school there and got my graduate degree. Denver was booming back then. I feel like Salt Lake reminds me of Denver. It's growing quite quickly and it's becoming somewhat of a Silicon Valley of the West because of all the tech companies around Provo, Utah County, and Salt Lake itself. It's a great place to live. As a lot of people want to have a quality of life, they're coming to places like Salt Lake and even Moab and St. George. There's some real population growth going on which is exciting.
I love knowing what you've done with the growth and scaling an organization because that is a goal why everybody goes into this. I have never been an executive director and I've always been in the for-profit world but I spent about 90% of my time and my giving to nonprofits. I've been on a lot of boards, but how incredible that you were able to grow this. That's what everybody hopes for. For the readers, the nonprofit is motivated by mission and a lot of times for-profits are motivated by money. Neither one is wrong or right. It just depends on where your heart is and what your big overarching vision is.
Reflect back at any time throughout your career, Rob, the first price that my father said in leadership was loneliness. Can you share with me what that means to you as a leader, especially in a nonprofit where you've got that higher overarching vision? Have you experienced loneliness as a leader? What does that mean for you? What would you say to encourage other leaders that are reading this and looking forward to not feeling lonely?
Early on in my leadership experience, I remember getting that same advice that when you're a leader, particularly when you're the CEO, executive director, or you're at the top of an organization, it's the loneliest at the top, so to speak. You're going to get the most criticism and you're going to have to make decisions that are not popular. That was hard because my tendency is to be a people-pleaser. I realized my people-pleasing natural tendency is not a good mix with this idea of having to make tough calls where people won't understand or people will not agree with your decision. That has been tough.
Accepting Criticisms: Prepare for criticisms when making unpopular decisions.
There've been times when you know you need to make a change from the organization or the organization needs to move this direction and some people are like, “I like to go in this direction.” You know that you can't make decisions that are just on personality or to be liked by everybody. You have to make decisions that are the best for the mission, organization, and health of the organization. There have been times I've had to make changes even with this organization to scale it from nine people. My predecessor, my executive director that was here before I was, did a fantastic job of growing this from scratch. He came ten years before I did and there was nothing here.
He built it from scratch and he did such a good job, but it was ready to grow to the next level, and to do that, you have to change the way people interact with you. I remember telling my staff at the time as we were growing through those stages of when we started getting 12, 15, 20, and then 30 staff, and now we're over 50, each step along the way, you have to let go of certain things. It's a grieving process. I remember reading a book one time about how you have to grieve each one of those stages. When I first came, I got to know everybody. I knew every donor and staff. The staff could come to me directly, knock on my door, and talk to me.
That changed because I simply didn't have enough time in the day. I had to empower other leaders and then lead through them. I remember telling people, “This makes me sad. I have to grieve this. I don't have the time I used to have with you but it doesn't mean I don't care about you. It’s just the way I lead is different because we have many other things we have to do. We have to scale this organization because of the need that we saw.” We started seeing lots of resonance with our programs. All of a sudden, that opened up more doors to grow. Particularly, we expanded. We’re in Park City, Utah, and then our humanitarian center grew to Heber, which is a neighboring community.
That alone is one of the biggest moves we made because now, we're on two campuses. There were a lot of challenges because there was a physical barrier. There was a good 30 minutes, 20 miles between the two campuses. We did everything we could to keep that connection but it was hard for a while because I couldn't be there and in Park City at the same time. There were some growing pains in that. As we continue to grow on the Park City campus, I had less time to even travel down to Heber. Loneliness comes in when you know you have to make decisions again that not everyone's going to love.
As you grow, you have less access at times with everybody in your organization that you once had so your connection points become smaller. Therefore, you have to be intentional with who you're investing your time into and making the most of each one of those opportunities. That is one of those challenging things that if you're reading and you're in a business, nonprofit, or church, you're growing and you're realizing, “I can't attend to every need. I can't call every single person. I can't send an email to everybody in my organization.” That’s a part of it.
You may feel that, “I used to get all this great feedback and people loved my leadership. Now, I've got all this criticism.” Join the club because the more you make decisions, the more criticism you're going to be open to. The fact is you're never going to be able to please everybody. The hope is you show respect to everybody in your team and you keep communicating clearly that your decisions are based as best as you can on the mission of the organization and making the organization the number one thing. It's not a personality thing. It's about the mission of the organization.
It reminds me of the Early Church in Acts that was growing. What they had to do was they had to bring on and interview why it’s discerning people because otherwise, you cap off. We all want to say we want to grow but you're right, it is sad. We had a young lady on for the interview and she's like, “When I became the manager, now I don't get to hang out with them. During weekly staff meetings, I have to be doing one-on-ones and pouring into people and I don't get to have fun.”
There's differentiation. What you said about that, the growth mode, and how you do that is insightful. Do you think there's a difference between coming in and handling an organization from scratch versus taking an existing one and growing it? I've always wondered that because I came from a second-generation business. I always look at the people that grew it and started it and I'm like, “That's a whole different set of leaders.” What do you think?
I've started as a nonprofit from scratch. There is a similar entrepreneurial spirit that you have to have. I would say, it's a different gift mix. There are certain people that like to start from scratch and they like to do everything. Getting to the point where you have to manage people and lead through others is difficult and not natural, therefore, you're not at your best and then you capped out. You've probably read leadership books and even had people on your show before where there are certain people that are wired to stay on an entrepreneur level, a startup company, and they need to sell it, and they're going to start up another company.
I've done that a bit and it's funny I wasn't sure if I can transition but I felt like some of those skills that I learned, I was able to translate into this organization. Not that we weren't starting from scratch but we did some of the same like, “Let's treat it as if we were starting from scratch. How do we grow? How do you want to build this organization? How do you want to go through the next stages of growth?” it might be because of my experience that helped me go into this role, I felt more equipped because I'd done it where it was from scratch. For me, it was a little bit easier only because I had had that experience where there was nothing there. At least, I had something to work with, staff to work with, time of building, and budget.
My previous director, Tim Dahlin, had done a great job of building continuity with our community. We had somewhat of a brand name, if you will, that I could build and grow to the next level. It's a different skill set but there's more overlap than I thought originally. I don't think you can't go to the next level if you're an entrepreneur. You're starting a company now and you're wondering if you can get through the next stages, get some good coaching, continue to lean into other leaders who have done it, and read books like crazy. All the time, I'm always reading different books and trying to learn from other people. That'd be my recommendation. I don't think it's black and white either/or. It depends on your personality and experience.
I want to lean into you as a leader. I love the fact that you said, “We all want to be liked but we have to be trusted, fair, firm, and maintain the boundaries.” When you get feedback that a decision is unpopular, when do you as a leader say, “I made a bad decision. I need to go back and apologize to my staff or my flock.” Can you unpack that? I understand there are times where you're going to see it and only you see it.
I've been in both. I've been where I can see it and I've had to let everybody go. I don't see it and be like, “You're not going where we're going.” I've also had times where I've done things or I've seen people do things where I'm like, “That was the wrong call.” You're not getting criticism because they don't see your vision. You're getting criticism because that was the wrong thing to do or say. How do you as a leader stay open to saying, “I may be the only one that sees it but at times, I may have missed something.” Can you speak into that a little bit?
Accepting Criticisms: Owning up to your failures and telling them to somebody is very important.
It is difficult. I'm a recovering people-pleaser but whenever I get criticism for a decision, it still gets in my gut. I still have a gut check like, “Was that a bad decision or was that the right decision? I don't like the fact there's blowback and there's criticism.” Being self-aware of what's hitting you. Is it this sense of being rejected or is it like, “That was a bad decision?” Sometimes, it’s listening to the criticism. Early on in my career, I wouldn't listen to criticism, but now I've learned to listen to it and see what nugget of truth is in there. Even if it's 5% or 10%, own it and tell your staff, “It was the right decision, but the way I said this or the way I communicated it, that was not right. My bad on that. I own that.”
The more you can have security in the fact that you own up to your failures and you tell somebody about it, that's an important thing. When I've done that, my staff respects me, even more, when I'm honest because they know what is a bad decision or when they don't like it even though it's a good decision, so they knew that. That would be my thing. Examine what it is, embrace what the criticism is, and figure out what truth is in there. What I had a hard time letting go sometimes is, even when I know that 10% was my bad, I didn't lay it out well, but it's still the right decision and there's still pushback. There's still this general sense of, “I'm not okay with it.”
I let that linger too long and I listen to the negative thoughts too much. I've learned I've got to let that go and go back to what's the mission. Try to stay away from the personalities in this and keep saying, “As long as I'm in this role as executive director, my job is to make sure I maintain the mission,” and then lean to other people that are enough removed from the situation that can give you advice. I'm lucky I have a wonderful wife that gives me great advice. She's a licensed therapist. I'm in counseling at all times which helps a lot but she does give me some great insight. As long as I'm listening, I feel like the more you listen, the better a leader you can be.
Even though people look at us as leaders, we're not mind-readers. We're not God. We’re human and we make mistakes. I would say to our leaders out there, too, I’m like you in the beginning. When I would hear criticism, it’s a fight or flight kind of thing. You need to adapt. That's a sign of maturity. Leaders reading, you will get to that point. I hope you do. I hope you never lose the ability to look for that 10%, get wise counsel, and always go back.
I don't care how egregious the comment was. If you go back in grace and explain it or ask for forgiveness, that's what we're in the business to do. I found it only makes it worse because if you don't go back and be like, “It's been a couple of weeks. It's going to go away.” No, people never forget that. You have to seek restoration. Even if it's for 10%, still say that. I appreciate you unpacking that for me because that's tough. We live in a crazy world where sometimes, we speak or step out of turn or we make decisions and we don't get all the facts.
We have to go back and we have to re-address it on another day when the scales come off, another piece of information, or we go back and we listen to what we said and go, “I need to do that better.” Thank you, Rob. That helped me unpack that. Thanks for being transparent with that, too. I love the, “Then let it go.” Why I'm drilling into this is we're going through some things with some people that I'm in it, involved with, and other people. Once it's out there, either grant forgiveness or say, “We're going to agree to disagree and let it go because stewing over it burns your energy.”
It's not productive at all. It's a hard discipline. You have to discipline yourself to do that.
I tell people, “We're not condemning people to hell. We're having a disagreement. Let's move on. This is not soul stuff.” Thanks, Rob. The next he talked about is weariness. He said, “Anytime you're going to be working on something, you're going to have people that are doing way more than their fair share and people that aren't.” The perception, whether correct or not with nonprofits, is a lot of times because people are volunteers, you are at their mercy, whether they're even going to show up. That's not leadership. That's still adult babysitting. Talk to me about how you stay energized and refreshed because the leader never let them see you swear and bad-mouthing. How do you stay refreshed and deal with the weariness that leadership brings?
First of all, it's real. I've got to the point where I run on the verge of being burnt out in the nonprofit world because there's always more work to be done. There's another email you can always send, a phone call you can make, visitation, or a meeting with the donor. There’s always more. You're never done so you have to create your own finish lines. I remember learning it from a pastor leader of a large church in the Chicago area. He used to say, “You have to create finish lines. A finish line for the day, for the week, for the month, and the year.” I’ve finally done them and I was like, “I never have a finish line. Therefore, I don't think I'm done and therefore, I'm always going and you get worn out.”
No matter how good of a leader you are and no matter how much energy you have, eventually, you're going to burn out and it's not sustainable. I learned you have to create boundaries. You're not Superman. You can't save everybody. You can’t save every single person that comes to your doors. You do the best you can, but you want to be there for the long haul. That's been one of the things I've learned. It’s taking me a long time because I tend to go hard. What typically would happen to my pattern in the first 10 to 15 years of my leadership life is I would get sick and that would force me to be down on my back.
It would take me a long time to get sick. I would go crazy and put tons of hours in, and then I get sick, and then I was done. I realized, “That's not a good pattern.” I thought, “No, I've got to do this. It’s got to be more sustainable.” Having those finish lines, for whatever reason, that clicked for me. Every day, having a time where I'm like, “Okay. I’ll do whatever.” It changed each day because I've got three kids. I got to go to basketball games and violin recitals. Even though it's family time, it blends with work so you have to have time to say, “I'm done.”
Turn your phone off and don't respond to emails, or portion your time out where you get back. When you're done with work, you’ve got to do family stuff. You got to cart them around, drive them around, and then help them with homework. You pick up your email at 8:30 or 9:00 but then you're done at say, 10:30 or whatever it is, come up with finish lines. The other thing in the week, when things are the most consistent is once I got to a good pattern where say Fridays happens to be typically my finish line for the week. Even though I’ll sneak in a little bit, every now and then if there's something going on, I'll check things.
For the most part, like Friday night, I could tell my wife, “I'm done. I've crossed the finish line and I'm putting my work away.” It's a relief for her to know we can focus on us, family stuff, and whatever the honey-do list that I have to do at home. You spread that out to a month, and then do that for a year. We have time to take a vacation and try to getaway. To your question, that's creating a more sustainable pace and having focused on self-care has helped me with the weariness factor. I've been there right on the edge of being, “I'm done. I'm worn out. I'm burnt out.” No matter how much you care about the mission, when you're burnout, you don't have any more energy and you can't carry on the mission.
Accepting Criticisms: Create boundaries. No matter how good a leader you are, you will eventually get weary.
You got to take care of the temple and finish the race strong. I love that, “Create your own finish line.” You even do that on a daily basis.
It's hard, but I tried to. Sunday nights, we now have it as a family ritual. We all connect as a family. Looking at our calendars is one of those things. We talk about the week ahead, and then we look at, “Who needs to take this person to soccer or this person to basketball?” Funny enough, COVID-19 shut down everything, so we've had so much great time as a family because we're not running around all over the Salt Lake Valley and Park City to take them to various places. That's been a good thing. Before that, we would check in every Sunday night for the week ahead.
As I did that then I would spend about an hour or two, depending on the week of getting ready for the week. For me, that was part of my ritual. My wife and my kids are in bed around 7:00 to 7:30 and I would start getting ready for the week. That was part of my finish line though to say, “Now I'm launching into the week.” It kept me being stressed on a Monday morning where you're like, “I have so much to do.” I felt less stressed by Sunday night planning and preparing not just by myself but with my family to know, “Here's what's going on this week,” and then thinking ahead what my finish lines are going to be for this next week.
You got your PhD. I crossed that line, too.
Congratulations.
I’m excited. People are like, “Did you know PhD stands for Piled Higher and Deeper?” I heard Post Hole Digger, too, and I’m like, “I don’t care what you call it. I’m a doctor. Whatever it is, I'm taking it. I can laugh now because the tears are over.” That was one thing. I call it chunking. They're like, “How do you do it?” I go, “Inch-by-inch. Life is a cinch.” That's from John Updike. Deconstruct it down. I'm a simple girl but I have a near engineering mind. Although we've got that entrepreneurial passion that fuels us, I will be all over the place. All thrust and no vector. I stayed focused and you chunk it down to bite sizes. That's why I love the finish lines because we are passionate about it. Your body can't keep up with your passion but we are this mortal coil so we’ve still got to take care of it and rest. I had never heard that before.
It stuck with me.
The next he talks about is abandonment. This is important because you get 1 million people calling you every day. “What about this? Do this. Have you thought about this? Partner with this.” How do you stay focused on what you need and ought to think about versus what you like and want to think about?
Going back to my ritual o Sunday nights to check with my family, then check in with me. One of the things I'm doing is looking through my week because you have to break it down every week, every day. What you're going to do and the big goals for this week that need to be accomplished, and I tie into my monthly goals or then even yearly goals. Having that constantly in my mind so that when I look into the week, I'm not reacting. Any nonprofit leader, any leader in a business that is reading, Monday mornings can hit. You've got a ton of emails and you've got five texts before 6:00 AM, and then you're reacting.
For me, I had to get in front of that by being proactive. That's what I've done. I don't perfectly do it. There are times where I hit react mode and I'm in react mode until Wednesday and I'm like, “What am I doing? I’ve got to get back to being proactive.” That's been my discipline is. If I start Sunday night, I start well, and then another practice of self-care but it plays into this, too, is I work out on a regular basis, almost every day. It's running or going to the gym or whatever. Through that, I'm preparing for the day, and thinking through what are the big goals I need to get done and prioritizing them?
By having that mindset, when you do get to work and you'll get 1 million distractions once you get to work but making sure that they don't become the norm because it's going to happen. You're going to have distractions and it used to drive me crazy when I would get to work and I had a whole list of things I needed to do. I got distracted by all kinds of things that weren't on my plate and it wasn't on my plan for that day or that week. By making sure, “Absorb as much as much as you can and try to redirect as much as you can.” At the end of the day, if say, by 3:00, you're like, “I have not done anything on the main list that I had.” You're going to have to reprioritize the list and go back to it.
You don't reprioritize until the next day but you still get back to that point. Practical things like emails. I have a tendency to be a little OCD with emails. I want to respond to every single email, I want a clean slate, and get through all of them but I've realized that's impossible. At least in my role, I do get too many emails. However, what I do is scan through them and see what is critical. I'm not even talking about junk email. I'm talking about emails that are legitimate emails that I need to respond to but going through them, seeing what's the most critical ones, and getting through those.
I’m sitting almost like a timer where for the next 30 minutes, I'm going to look at email and get through the ones I need to. At that point, call it and say, “Now I've got to get on to whatever the main goal is,” “The big program I'm working on,” “The strategic plan that I'm working on. This phone call with a key donor that I've got to be prepared for.” Give yourself limits on responding to emails. I found that more than anything else for myself and as I talked to other leaders, “Text of emails, they can send you in a million directions and they are not connected to each other.” They feel urgent because someone's urgent at their end.
Accepting Criticisms: Do not let a million distractions at work become the norm.
Therefore, if it creates an urgency for you, you're going to get distracted and go in a million different directions. You have to discipline yourself where I had tried to give yourself time slots for going through your text and/or emails for a period of time, and then drawing the lines, “I'm done. I got to move on to other things.” Otherwise, at least for me, I could never get through my emails enough because as I'm going through them, there's more coming in. It's never-ending. That helps me with the abandonment and focusing on what's most important.
The more you understand your mission, the more you respect it so you're going to be cautious of it. Not that we're not open but we also respect what we're doing enough to know. I don't want to dilute it. It's like the gospel. I don't want to detract or add to it. It is what it is so is your mission. You don't want to detract or add to. Sometimes, even in our gracious little hearts, we add-in and we start diluting our ability to stay focused. Somebody told me the word busy stands for Burdening Under Satan's Yoke. We’re roaming around on a bunch of stuff.
I also love the part about working out. I had the blessing of having a home gym in my house. Now everybody’s back out or walking or running but when COVID hit, I'm like, “What are we going to do?” I'm telling you, when you are on the treadmill or working out, there's something about it. Some people get these epiphanies in the shower. It never ever happened to me. If I'm working out, all of a sudden, I'm like, “Mm-hmm.” If I have a speech, I'm stuck on writing, and I start working on it, I don't know what it is. Thank you for bringing that up. People are like, “I'm too tired to work out.” If you're tired, you need to go work out.
It’s one of the best stress relievers. It burns your stress off. Let alone, gives you more energy. I'm with you. I share that.
That's pragmatic and practical advice. The fourth price of leadership is vision, and you hit on the vision word several times throughout this. My father referred to vision as simply seeing what needs to be done and doing it. Sometimes, we think, “I can never be like Dr. Harter because he's such a visionary.” Vision is to get to work. It's a great commission. It's going out and doing it. Can you share with me how you grow your vision? How do you hone your vision? What does that mean to you?
Number one, you have to have clarity. When I've done seminars and spoken to different groups, I find that whatever organization you're part of, business or nonprofit, what is your mission and vision? I know sometimes, we get all caught up in, “Mission is this and vision is that. I got to separate the two, and then this is the motto.” That's all good. It's a good exercise to go through all of that but at the end of the day, you need to boil down what you are about, what your organization is about, and get into a portable way. If you're in an elevator and you have two minutes with somebody, you can tell somebody, “This is what we do.”
For us, for example, our mission here at the organization I lead is, “To meet people at their point of need as an expression of God's love.” That's what we do. We meet people at the point of need. I'm able to tell that it's portable, short, and mission-driven. Ironically, when COVID-19 hit, the organization had two different food pantries. We also have a program where we help people with rent assistance, when they can't afford bills, going to be evicted, have a medical bill they didn't expect, or a car bill they can't repair. Those kinds of things happen on a regular basis.
When COVID-19 hit, we're in a strong tourist economy here in Park City. They shut down right away and no one was coming to Park City. People lost their jobs overnight. In a normal month, we'd have say, three people we would help with rent assistance, another bill, or whatever they need. We went to over 900 families applied. We had to immediately scale up this program with the intensity of COVID in our protections and trying to keep our staff safe. At the same time, we had a food pantry and we were serving 1,000 people a week, and that kept going up.
We have a mental health counseling center where we had people all over the charts of suicide ideation, major trauma, major fear, and major anxiety. We had three major programs going on to respond to COVID-19 but what helped through all of it was we were mission-driven. We want to meet people at their point of need. What are the needs? Let's go after it and do the best we can to meet those needs. By explaining to donors and people that are out there in the community, “Here's what we're doing. Here are the three programs we're trying to meet people's needs immediately.”
Also, setting them up for the long-term. It helped us communicate clearly what that mission was and people could get, and they bought into like, “That sounds great.” The more clear you can be on your mission, therefore, you're going to be able to communicate it better. I'm sure you have heard of Andy Stanley. He's a pastor of a mega-church in Atlanta and he used to say, “Clarity is even more important than certainty.” A lot of leaders get stuck, and I fall into that where you want to be absolutely 100% certain before you make a move.
I've learned that clarity is more important because it may become clear that the direction you're going, you need to redirect but you rarely get 100% certainty when things come your way because things are changing so much. You see this right. I feel like our world shifts more quickly than ever. I'm not totally sure if that's a combination of social media, the way the world is, or we're more global. As a leader, you have to quickly change and you can't wait for, “Let's do a month's study on this and figure out what's the best response to this.” If COVID-19 hit for us, we had to respond right away. Do we do it all perfectly? No, we learned along the way but we were clear like, “We're going to meet people at their point of need and we're going to do it now.” That clarity versus certainty was critical to have at that moment. Hopefully, that answers your question. That's what's helped me anyway to move forward and scale-up programs in our organization.
It means you're also open to led. I call it singularity. That can change if God gives you a mission complete. You've been to different places in your life so as I. I want to know where am I supposed to focus now? Yes, you have to plan for the future but God directs our path but I do what I can do. People are like, “I need to know,” and I'm like, “I have to land on that point of what I'm supposed to be doing, and then everything else falls into place.” If you can dial into that at the earliest opportunity, then you know who to talk to and what resources you need.
That's what fuels you because you're clear on what you're driving towards. A hundred percent of the people that have been on, all tied their vision back to people, even the for-profit. Everybody was about people and for organizations, it isn't about scaling or building it. It's about helping people and for leadership. If you tie that vision to people then the people that are either going to have a pain point, purpose, or need, you're going to reach them. You summarize that exactly.
Accepting Criticisms: Discipline yourself when addressing things that give you urgency.
I love that you said, “Make it portable.” That's fantastic because I don't want to pull out a prospectus or a circular or whatever. I don't have time for that. I need your help especially in a nonprofit. People that poo-poo on money, what do you think makes the nonprofit's run? It’s the church millstone thing without money coming in. Rob, what else? We're wrapping this up. You've covered the four points. You have taught me so much and I know the readers love this. Anything else you want to touch on that you haven't already covered?
I love that you're doing this podcast. Of course, you mentioned I have a podcast as well, and one of the reasons I did it is because I'm passionate about leadership, giving tools, and introducing people to other great leaders. I've always been told this and I've tried to follow it as much as I can, if you want to be a good leader, you want to be passionate about it of course but you want to fuel your passion by always to me learning. It’s always been in a mode of learning because there are always new things that you can learn out there through a podcast and books.
I remember a leader of mine who was an older mentor at the time. He lived a long life and was successful in his different adventures in life. He said, “I noticed the leaders that stopped being effective.” I was like, “How did you know?” He said, “They stopped reading.” I thought that was fascinating. He was like, “When they stopped reading, they stopped learning.” In nowadays world, we don't read as many books. We listen to audiobooks more or listen to podcasts more than we pull out a book. Even though books are still amazing. I still do tons of audiobooks when I'm running, working out, or in my car.
I’m constantly listening to audiobooks because, for some reason, we have a hard time sitting down and reading a book these days but there are great books. Your father's book, for example. The more you're reading, it's about learning. The more you're open to learning, the better leader you become. We all get stale and tired, and we all get to the point where we get in ruts. For me, what's helped me stay passionate and stay effective is to keep learning and growing.
Therefore, you are always learning from someone else or learning a different angle of leadership, or hearing something from for the first time perhaps a different way to apply your leadership skills. I would pass it on to your readers. The fact you're having this show is fantastic. I encourage those that are reading because they want to learn and they want to be a better leader. What it takes is a commitment to learning. Being a lifelong learner of leadership, those are the best leaders out there.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Leadership is truly nothing more than lifelong learning. I thank you for that. Rob, where can people get in touch with you? You've talked about your tremendous organization. How can they find you? How can they connect with you?
NonprofitLeadershipPodcast.org, you can check out the podcast I do. That's the website, or you go to iTunes and type in Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. I'm on social as well, you go to LinkedIn and Facebook. I don't use Twitter as much anymore. Facebook and LinkedIn are the primary ones, and then Instagram. Look up Rob Harter or Rob Harter Park City and you'll find me. We'd love to connect with you. If there are follow up questions or if you want to know more about what I'm learning, I would love to connect with you.
Rob, thank you. Thank you for your heart, for what you do for those people out there, and for all you're doing to help people get through this and emerge as a better self and make the world a better place. We're thankful for you.
Thanks for having me on the show. It's great. Thanks for your great questions.
Thank you. You brought it. I can always tell when people are theorists, but you've been in there and I love that. You have that kind heart. It's going to be tough but it's going to be victorious. For our readers, please make sure to check out Rob's podcast, hit the subscribe, hit the rating, and be sure and come on over to Tremendous Leadership. Subscribe to us wherever you're following us and we would be honored to have a five-star rating from you as well. Check out all the links and stay connected, everybody. Thanks for reading and have a tremendous day.
Important Links:
Nonprofit Leadership Podcast - iTunes
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Facebook - Dr. Rob Harter
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About Rob Harter
I am a Nonprofit executive professional with over 24 years of experience in leading and building non-profit organizations, leveraging resources and managing organizational growth. I have demonstrated communication skills with both large and small groups as a speaker, teacher and seminar facilitator. I am adept at using verbal, print, electronic communication along with social networking media and emerging technologies.
I like to lead through inspiring others. I’m highly relational and have contagious energy combined with an entrepreneurial spirit. I speak, write and consult on issues relating to non-profits, leadership, social justice and personal development.
In 2010, I became the Executive Director of CCPC (Christian Center of Park City), a humanitarian and community-focused non-profit organization with a bold vision to serve as a leading networker of community services to those in need. I have received my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and most recently my Doctorate as well.
I am currently the Host of the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast show, serve as the Chair of Utah's MLK Jr. Commission for Human Rights; serve on the Board for the Utah Nonprofits Association; serve as a Ski Chaplain for the Park City Mountain Resort; Coached for local youth basketball and soccer; Served as a board member for both locally and globally-focused non-profit organizations including serving on the board for Mountainlands Housing, and am a Park City Leadership Class Alumnus.
In addition to playing College varsity basketball, I love deep powder skiing, hiking 14-thousand foot mountains, devouring great books, traveling to new places and coaching my children’s sports teams. Most of all, I love spending quality time with my amazing wife and children.