Marc Pitman: Welcome to the Concord Leaders Podcast. I’m Marc Pitman, the CEO of the Concord Leadership Group, where we’re helping leaders keep focus as we move forward through these really trying times. And today, our guest is Dawn Cogan. She’s the Executive Director of St. Mark Youth Enrichment in Dubuque, Iowa. Dawn, I’ve been wanting to have this conversation with you for years. Thank you so much for finally saying yes.

Dawn Cogan: You are so welcome. Thank you for the opportunity. I also want to just say thanks for everything that you do for nonprofits, and just for who you are as a fellow human. I really appreciate you, and I’m just honored to be here with you today.

Marc Pitman: Oh my goodness, wow, thank you, I’ll receive that. Yay. One of the things I’ve noticed about you — I remember one of my first memories of you is, I think, one of your staff members, Beth, introducing us in the lobby of a hotel at the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference, and I was really touched by your desire to invest in the leadership development and professional development of your staff. I don’t normally start my podcast off this way, but is that something that came about naturally, or is that something you learned as you were leading people?

Dawn Cogan: Well, I think it kind of goes along with some of what we were talking about today, and really just that what I most enjoy about leading is growing and developing other leaders. It just ignites a fire in me like nothing else, and I think where it comes from is just the immense gratitude that I have for the people who have invested in me. And I know if you do that, people will become their best selves, and they’ll appreciate you for it. And so there’s just this give and take that goes back and forth, that ultimately results in positive impact for who we get to serve.

Marc Pitman: Wow. And one of the things you just said, about the immense gratitude for the people who’ve gone before or helped you, that is such an important thing for you to remember. Have you found ways to reflect that gratitude back to the people — have you had an opportunity to follow up with anybody who mentored you?

Dawn Cogan: Yeah, I do. I have a couple of favorite teachers. I have some people in our neighborhood who were really impactful to me, and even aunts and uncles, family members. I have definitely shared with them just — I think we don’t go set out into the world thinking, “Oh, I can’t wait to hear how my impact changed that person’s life,” right? We just do what we do. But the times someone has said to me, “Wow, you really made a difference to me,” it’s meant more than anything else. And so I have been really mindful of going back to those people, and even previous employers — previous employers who really disappointed me or upset me — to just say thank you, because here’s what I learned. And I mean it in a kind way. At the moment I was upset about that, I was like, “I want you to know here’s what I learned from that, and here’s how that made me a better me.”

Marc Pitman: Wow. I had one mentor who told me — he always would say the view is different from the captain’s chair. And when he became the head of the organization, he found himself going back to previous supervisors and bosses and apologizing, because he said, “The view is different from up here, I didn’t realize.” Basically, “You’re not as dumb as I thought you were” — or, “You just weren’t as stupid, at least you were more rational than I thought.”

Dawn Cogan: Yeah, it’s really interesting, because when I came to St. Mark, I didn’t come here to be executive director. Three weeks into my tenure as director of programs, which was a new position they had created, some things changed, and then an opportunity presented itself. And then I was blessed to get to say yes to leading this agency. But my only hesitation in saying that was that I would no longer be working directly with families and students and the frontline team members. So I prayed about it, and I just felt called to say yes. Working directly with families and students and frontline team members gave me the opportunity to directly impact each of their lives and coach them to believe in and own their own greatness, and I got to experience firsthand their growth — but it also limited the number of people I could reach. So while I was reflecting and praying about saying yes to becoming the executive director, it became really clear to me that this would be an opportunity to reach and influence even more people with my philosophies, and to get to pay forward, like we were just talking about, all that’s been given to me. And it matters so much to me personally, because those who directly impacted me, they coached me, they believed in me, they gave me permission to own what’s great about me, and then they cheered every time I overcame an obstacle or succeeded at something. And that goes all the way back to my own childhood. So while I initially understood my impact and my calling in this world to be working directly with families and students, when the door opened to come here, it became very clear to me that I was being called to step into leadership and influence on a much grander scale — so far out of my comfort zone. I’m happy being in the background, I’m happy being the one no one notices. And so just by saying yes, I would get to have a broader reach and do even more of what I love — which, like I said, is nurturing and developing leaders who then go and nurture and develop more leaders, and then the impact just expands exponentially, right? I’m super blessed.

Marc Pitman: That is really — what a wonderful perspective, and what a shocking challenge after three weeks.

Dawn Cogan: Yes, it was. We all get hired to a job and find out that the job is different than what we thought it was in the interview, but that was radically different. And then I also now had a vacancy in the brand-new position we had just created.

Marc Pitman: Good point, and good for you to know that, to not try to do both.

Dawn Cogan: That’s right. Well, I kind of tried for a little while, but that doesn’t go so well.

Marc Pitman: Well, as you know, in these conversations, we like to look also at an area where something didn’t work out — when you tried something and it failed, or it didn’t work out the way you expected, and how you as a leader overcame that or worked around that. Has that happened to you?

Dawn Cogan: Oh yes, many, many times. I think, to start off on a positive note — one thing that I think has really helped me as a leader is that I made a promise to myself to remember what it was like when I didn’t have the title. I would remember all the things that frustrated me and prevented me from doing my job well, or that made me feel insignificant or undervalued or underappreciated, and I would not do those things to my team.

Marc Pitman: That sounds like a great mindset, right?

Dawn Cogan: Yeah. Yeah, the thing that clouded me early on in my time at St. Mark is I wanted us to be the right answer for everyone. And that led to us trying to help children and families we did not have the capacity to help, and that led to pushing our resources, especially our human resources, to the brink — and sometimes over the brink — of burnout. It was just so hard for me to acknowledge that we couldn’t help someone, that we maybe weren’t the right fit. And what made that even harder sometimes was if there wasn’t another resource in our community I could direct that child or family to — meaning there are some gaps in services that just don’t exist in our community. But because I have a great team around me, and because the team knows my why, and they also know they can speak honestly with me, I was able to begin to understand that trying alone to save everyone would ultimately lead to us saving no one. So it allowed us to take a deep dive into our mission, our vision, our values, and really define who are we and who are we not, who can we serve and who can we not, and things like that. And that ultimately has turned out to be a huge blessing in so many ways, because it now applies to who we partner with, what type of professional development we invest in, what funding opportunities we will pursue. So everything we engage in, everything we do, is held up against the light of whether or not it aligns with and moves our mission forward. And if it does, and it makes sense for us to say yes to it, we do. And if it doesn’t, we say no — even if it’s a good thing.

Marc Pitman: And was that hard — I know you said it was hard when there was an alternative. I find that many of us go into the nonprofit sector because we want to do good and help as many people as we can, and that leads to this incredible mission creep, where you’re doing things you’re really not well suited for. My wife and I call it “pothole fillers” — if there’s a pothole in the street, we will jump in and fill it, because we can see the hole, and we’re not really good asphalt, either of us, but we’ll get in there so other people have a smoother road to drive on, even though it’s driving right over us. And so we get into this — more professionally, it’s called mission creep. But the pruning can be so hard, because it feels like you’re giving up a part of who you are. What was that process like with your board? Did they agree, were they already on board with “we’re doing too much,” or was it hard for them? Did it feel like you were sacrificing some sacred cows?

Dawn Cogan: I think for the most part they were really on board with understanding. But I also think it took us getting burnt to burnout for them to understand. I had really hard conversations with our board — conversations like, you know, it takes a special kind of person to work in nonprofit to begin with, and this team is so talented — if money was the only thing that mattered, they could all go somewhere else and make more money. But we all know there are bigger things that matter to them than just their paycheck. So I told the board, we have a really passionate team here, an extremely talented team here, we haven’t had any turnover now that we have this team in place, and we have to listen to them, we have to take that into consideration, we have to trust what they’re saying. And they were really on board with it. I actually said to them, “This team is passionate, but we’re not so passionate that we’re willing to lose our own families while we’re fighting to save other families — we are asking too much of them.” So we have got to define who we are, what we do, and how we’re moving forward, because that will give us the direction we need — that will give us the touchpoint of what we say yes to and what we say no to.

Marc Pitman: That is wonderful. That is powerful.

Dawn Cogan: Yeah, and luckily they are amazing people, and they asked tough questions, they pushed back, but ultimately they really walked alongside all of us and supported the decisions.

Marc Pitman: Wow, that is great. Well, our time has totally flown by, and you are the second or third person this season who’s mentioned knowing your why. So I usually end by asking what you’d recommend someone do now. But I would also love to ask you — for somebody in this, you’re recording this at a time when there’s a global pandemic putting an incredible strain on our brains, let alone our whole social fabric and things we used to take for granted — what are some things, in a time like this, where people may be reaching the edge of burnout, that they may be able to do to get in touch with their own values, or their own why? What have you found helpful?

Dawn Cogan: Yeah, I think it goes back to what I said. When this first all came about, the pandemic, there was a lot of, “But how are kids going to eat, and what about making sure they have shelter, what about healthcare,” and all those things, right? So I gathered my team together and said, “Trust me, I sat at home doing the same thing all of you are doing — okay, can we pack lunches, can we buy a bunch of grocery cards, can we do whatever.” But our role, in our mission, is social-emotional learning and academics, and there’s going to be a huge social-emotional need, and I want our team to be equipped and ready to handle that. So get out of the way of the people who are doing healthcare, who are providing food, who are providing shelter — make sure our families know how to access that, but get out of the way of the people who already do that really well, and stay true to what we already do really well. And we’ve been able to do that, and so we’ve been able to come up with these packets for social-emotional learning that our families are just consuming — we can’t keep up fast enough almost, putting them together, and families are taking them and staying connected. So I think you just have to really — a lot of people say be true to who you are as an individual, and I agree with that, but be true to who you are as an agency as well, and that’s just so important. And then the other thing, when I thought about how we would end this — if I had something I would say to someone, what’s something you could walk away and do right now? I’d say, first, during this time of intense uncertainty and emotions that are really all over the place, as a leader, go look at yourself in the mirror and say something kind to you. Take a breath and acknowledge your humanness. And then the tip I would offer is: it’s okay to not have all the answers. Just be transparent, be real with your team, and be okay with asking for help. Getting the title often wakes up all these insecurities we have, and it makes us start to wonder if we’re really cut out for this role. So many leaders talk about the imposter syndrome — I went through that terribly, I often say I felt like Nemo in a shark tank. We can be so brutal with ourselves, and then we might try to be someone we’re not. Really, what our people need — whether that’s our team, the staff who work for us, or the people we’re serving — is for us to be real, to be human, to make mistakes, to learn and move on, to own our strengths and admit our opportunities for growth, because when we do that, it gives them permission to do the same. And right now, I really feel like collectively we all just need permission to be human.

Marc Pitman: I agree. Wow, well, thank you, what a great invitation — both saying something kind to yourself, but also admitting that you don’t know. It’s been a very hard thing for a lot of leaders, because they used to be able to fall back on, “Well, this is what we’ve done in the past,” and it’s still hopeful, but the future isn’t the past. And it’s not going to be — there’s not some magic date where it’s just going to be like March 15th again.

Dawn Cogan: Right.

Marc Pitman: And I personally find it very interesting — for St. Mark, and I’m a person of faith — it was 3:16, which is a pretty famous Bible verse, so interesting, that was the day we called our team together to say, “Things are going to change, it’s going to look different.”

Dawn Cogan: Wow.

Marc Pitman: Yeah, well done. Thank you so much for your time today. I know that people are going to want to keep just your heart — this is going to be something that draws people back to listen to it again and again. Where can people find more about the work of St. Mark?

Dawn Cogan: Yeah, so our website is stmarkyouthenrichment.org — so, the “saint” is just “st” — stmarkyouthenrichment.org. And then Facebook and Instagram, we’re on those too, but I think Facebook — we have a team that does some really good stuff on Facebook. So probably the most fun place to find out about us is there.

Marc Pitman: Awesome. Thank you so much. This episode, along with all the other episodes of the Concord Leaders Podcast, will be found at concordleadershipgroup.com/podcasts, with an S. Please rate and review us in your favorite podcatcher. And until next time, remember that healthy organizations start with healthy leaders.