How leadership communicates (or doesn’t) with staff can make or break an organization’s culture. When your staff members are unhappy or feel left in the dark, “toxic” or “problematic” are words that can quickly start buzzing around the office or Slack chat rooms. Even when a culture is fairly healthy, a mistrust of leadership can sometimes leave with negative feelings about where they work. This is when transparency can be your friend, particularly in nonprofit organizations. 

But, with transparency comes the need to draw boundaries. So how can you manage the delicate balance of openness with parameters? Keep reading to find out!

Your team is a fighting machine (A good thing until they turn on you.) 

If your nonprofit works in social justice or a grassroots movement, fighting imbalances of power and questioning authority are critical parts of your team’s day-to-day work. Unfortunately, this same amazing skepticism that you love about them can turn inward. 

An inherent mistrust of those in power can lead your staff to believe that leadership is intentionally working against, exploiting, or misleading them. This perception can quickly erode the relationship between leadership and staff and negatively impact your organization’s ability to execute its mission.

It’s true, there are places in the nonprofit sector that are truly broken. Staff, reputations, and missions have been damaged. But a blanket assumption that all management is evil hurts the majority of leaders who are principled, ethical, and good at what they do. Staff who are quick to point out where management can “do better” may not have the knowledge, experience, or insights to understand why a leader makes the choices they do or recognize that sometimes an unpopular choice may be the right one.

What should you do in the face of criticism?

Transparency is often the first strategy employed to address disgruntled staff. After all, helping your staff understand what’s happening within an organization and how they fit into the big picture can create trust and bolster a sense of accountability for all. Right? 

Actually, transparency can be a slippery slope. Here are two slippery scenarios: 

Scenario 1: You want to quiet the rumor mill when a staff member is fired by explaining what happened. But sharing details breaches confidentiality and leaves your organization open to liability. 

Scenario 2: You involve staff in every decision and now your organization is stuck in a cycle of consensus paralysis.

Define what transparency is. And what it isn’t. 

One of the most impactful ways that you can “do” transparency is to set clear expectations about what transparency looks like within your organization. In other words, literally define (and communicate) what transparency means to and across your organization. Your staff doesn’t have to agree with your organization’s definition of transparency, but it is critical that they understand it. 

For example, transparency could mean that leadership clearly and frequently shares:

 

• • decision-making processes, 

• • who is involved, 

• • when a decision is being made, and 

• • the impact of those decisions. 

Just because you’re transparent doesn’t mean that every staff member is part of the process or agrees with the decision. But they do have a sightline into the process.

There will be moments when you need staff input to influence or inform decisions. When that happens, it’s important to be transparent about how and if their input will be used. Let your staff know you’re considering multiple perspectives but that they may not be used to make the final decision.

It’s also important for you to be clear about what you can and cannot share. Hiring or firing processes, pay, or funding decisions are sensitive topics that your management team may not want to share intimate details about. However, sharing policies and procedures around these situations can help your staff understand how these choices are made.

It’s OK to disagree.

To be effective, your leadership team needs to make quick decisions and judgment calls that can affect the entire staff. There will be instances where some staff members don’t agree with a decision. And that’s okay. 

Transparency isn’t about making everyone happy all of the time or involving every staff member in every choice. Instead, it’s about setting expectations around what level of details will or won’t be shared and how decision-making happens. And when you are genuinely transparent in your policies, your staff can trust in the process, even if they disagree with the outcome.

 

Book a free consultation with Whitney and get clarity on the HR challenge that’s been weighing on you.