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 focused through these really trying times. Today, our guest is Mike Geiger. He’s the President and CEO of AFP, the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Mike, I’m so excited to have you on the line. Thanks for joining us today.

Mike Geiger: Oh, it’s my pleasure, Marc. When you invited me to be on this, I was really excited, because you have a great audience, and I think that you’re a leader in our field, and I really want to work with and be associated with leaders so that we can help move all of the work we’re all doing — we can all work together and move it forward. So thank you for having me.

Marc Pitman: Wow, I’m glad this is being recorded — I know this is an episode I’m going to listen to multiple times, at least that segment. Thank you, that was so affirming. You’ve been in a lot of leadership positions over the years. What do you love about leading?

Mike Geiger: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think there’s a couple things. The first thing is being of service — the entire concept of servant leadership is such an important part of my personal ethos. It’s not only why I do the work I’ve been doing, it’s also why I work for an organization like AFP, where we get to selflessly serve our members every day. There’s something for me — when I wake up in the morning, I know I’m going to do everything I can to help someone else improve their life, improve their goals, or achieve their goals. And if I can be a small part of that, to help someone move along, I find that incredibly rewarding. So that’s one of the things about leading for me — that whole concept of leadership and being of service. I’ve got two other things that come to mind. A second thing I really enjoy about leading is pulling a team together to accomplish goals that otherwise we couldn’t do alone. You see a lot in sports analogies — well, this team, individually, they’re not that good, but as a team, they’re just incredible. I love that idea, getting a group of people together and driving toward something bigger than they are, something they couldn’t achieve on their own. I’ll give you a perfect example, if I may — one of the best examples very recently was when we went from in-person to AFP ICON virtual. We had to pivot a 3,400-person conference to a virtual online conference in just over a month. It was amazing just to watch this team of incredibly smart, intelligent, nimble people that I have the great fortune to work with, to watch them come together on something so specific, but something so stressful, so big. And I say big in the context that ICON is sort of a legend within the fundraising sector, and to make it what we call gold standard. So that’s the best example I can give from very recently. And then the third thing, which is sort of along the lines of servant leadership, is I love to guide and mentor people, to help them get to where they want to go, and be a sounding board, give them encouragement when things are tough, and really help prop them up, and try to be their coach, their partner, whatever they need, so they can achieve their goals. So those are three things I really enjoy about leading.

Marc Pitman: Well, it’s so interesting, because I was just having a conversation with a coaching client about guiding and mentoring people — it’s an interesting thing within organizations, because employees don’t always trust that the leader, whether it be their supervisor or the CEO or executive director, means that. One of the very first training programs I ever did was for a veterinarian in Maine who said, “I don’t care what you do from hiring you for the whole day, I trust you to plan it,” but one of the things was a series of five questions, and the fifth one was, “Where do you want to be in the next three to five years?” A lot of them didn’t want to be there — they said, “We like working here, but we don’t see ourselves here” — but they trusted him enough. And I’ve seen this time and again in group settings — they trust the question enough to answer it honestly, and that allows you as a leader to help navigate them so they can do what they want to do, which unlocks all sorts of potential, because it’s like they took their hand off the emergency brake and they’re getting to drive full throttle toward their goals, knowing they’re also in line with your goals. So that’s exciting to hear on that list. I’d love to ask you about servant leadership though.

Mike Geiger: Go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say the word “trust” is so important in all of this. When someone comes on board at AFP, and I have that first conversation with them, I’m pretty much always, either in the first or second conversation, talking to them about the most important thing to me — the personal relationships. Jobs come and go — whatever I can do in my role to help you achieve whatever your life goals are, that’s what I want to do. And I live that, and what comes out of it is, I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had several people come work for me multiple times as I’ve moved from organization to organization. And the thing I take out of that is, you may go work for someone the first time, but you know so much more about them after you’ve worked with them for a couple of years. So if you’re willing to go back and work with them a second or third time, it shows them that I’m in their corner, and that I’m trying to help them truly achieve what they want to achieve.

Marc Pitman: Well, that’s huge too, because it provides you a little bit of incentive as the employer — even if you know you’re training someone to leave, you may actually be training them to come back, if you choose to have them.

Mike Geiger: Yeah, that could give you some juice.

Marc Pitman: The servant leadership aspect too — what got you onto that? As I’ve studied leadership, I’ve noticed that servant leadership is talked about in the nonprofit sector, but leadership experts don’t often understand there’s actually a body of knowledge about Greenleaf’s book and others on servant leadership. How did you come to adopt that as your style — did you discover it, did you choose it?

Mike Geiger: You know, I think it is — you have experiences in your career, when you start out. I was really lucky — when I worked at the Carnegie Endowment, and before that, I had bosses who were looking out for me, or at least I felt they were looking out for me, and that would help me. And I always, at that point, said, well, if I ever get in the situation where I can turn around and also pay it forward, I want to do that. So I didn’t really realize that’s what it was, but then as I’ve moved along in my career, and I’ve talked to other leaders, and I’ve talked to recruiters in different interviews and stuff, it comes back a lot to — you really achieve your goals by helping other people achieve their goals. So the whole idea of leading as if you are a servant of the person you’re leading is so critical. I have, for the last three decades, talked about my role on a team, when I’m leading, as really the inverted pyramid. I’m at the tip of the pyramid, but it’s an inverted pyramid, where that tip is really at the bottom, trying to support those who are now above me in achieving what we’re trying to achieve.

Marc Pitman: What a great model, that’s wonderful. Well, part of leadership is being at the tip of that pyramid, maybe, and when it falls over, or when things don’t go the way you expect. Has that happened to you in your time as a leader — something failed?

Mike Geiger: I’ll tell you — if you have anybody on this call who says it hasn’t happened to them, then either they have not been a leader for long enough, or they’re just not being honest with you, Marc, I’m just telling you. [Laughing] So I’ll pick one, because I’ve had many — I’ll pick one because there’s a couple of lessons in it that I’ve learned from it. And that’s the key — when something goes wrong, it’s learning from it, because you’re mostly going to learn, or you’re going to learn your best lessons, from failures. So the example I’m going to give you is many, many years ago — like two jobs ago — I was in charge of all things IT implementation. I was at a senior level in the finance area of the organization, and IT, finance, and administration — IT came under me. It didn’t go as planned — I know that’s no big surprise, ’cause IT projects go south all the time. But for me, being the perfectionist that I am, this was a little bit of a problem. So there were two lessons that came out of this. The first one is really a weakness I had at the time, and I call this lesson “speak truth to power.” I had a board member who was really pressuring me to launch this project by a specific date — that date was important to that board member. And as we got closer — this was a year-long project — as we got closer to it, that board member exerted more and more pressure to make sure we hit that timeline. Well, we did hit that timeline, but it wasn’t with the quality of project we wanted, ideally. And so the lesson there is, I didn’t speak up as much as I should have — I should have been willing to step forward, be respectfully a little more adamant in my position, about how things were going and what it meant if we did launch that day. So there’s a lesson of speaking respectful truth to power — I learned it on that project. The second lesson on this project is what I call “own it, report it, fix it.”

Marc Pitman: I should write a book — that should be a chapter title.

Mike Geiger: That’s a great chapter title, yeah — “own it, report it, fix it.” It is: take ownership of it, whatever the failing is, report it — this is going to whoever needs to know, and maybe even a little beyond that — once you’ve done that, figure out how to fix it, and fix it. I did that — I’ve never had an issue admitting my failings, I’ve had way too much practice at that. It really is owning it, reporting it, and fixing it. I’ve been shocked at the number of people who feel that failure is a moral mark against them.

Marc Pitman: I love learning from failure — I love that my failure might stop somebody else from failing. I remember we were going through premarital counseling, my wife and I, and the priest said, “Marc, you need to be careful about that, because you love sharing all the times you stumble, and there’s something good about that, but not everybody in your life is ready for you to share that, like your family.” So that’s “own it, report it, fix it” — that’s really good, you should at least get the URL.

Mike Geiger: That’s right, dot com, dot org, dot trouble, I don’t know, all of that.

Marc Pitman: That is really good. Well, any tips on how to speak — I liked how you reframed the first one, the speaking truth to power — you reframed it when you repeated it, with “respectfully speak truth to power.” How have you subsequently been able to do that in a way that — because sometimes, and nonprofits in particular, we have some board members who are just overpowering, and they’re used to, when they say jump, people say how high, and they think they’re now the boss of the organization, which they’re not — their egos get a little bit in the way of their service. Have you figured out ways that listeners might be able to have those conversations without losing their position unnecessarily?

Mike Geiger: Yeah, right, so I guess there’s two parts to it. The first part is, before anything ever goes south, or before anything goes sideways — even when you’re meeting someone, or early on in your relationship with someone — I’ve used this a lot. I would say to them, “Look, Marc, there’s going to come a time where you’re going to want something, you’re going to want me to do something, and I’m not going to think it’s a great idea, or I’m going to look at it slightly differently, and I’m going to come to you and say, ‘Marc, I know you want to get this done, but hear me out on this, because I think if we go this way, it could be trouble.’ So Marc, this is a conversation we’re having today for something that may happen six months from now, may happen a year from now, who knows when it happens — it’s like The Godfather, there may come a time when I call on you for a small service. So then when that time comes, I can go to you and say, ‘Hey Marc, do you remember that conversation way back when, when I said there would come a time? This is the time.'” And I think if you set it up that way — and it requires a lot of forethought and all of that — but when you set it up that way, the person realizes you’re not attacking them, you genuinely have a reason why we should look at it a slightly different way. So that’s the first thing I’d give as a tip. And your question to me is going to be, well, okay, but what if someone’s been in the role for five years? Well, as you get new board members, maybe you have those conversations when new board members come on board, or if you get a new boss, you have that conversation with the new boss — but let’s just say you haven’t had that conversation. Then the other way to do it is, when you, Marc, come to me and say, “You know what, we absolutely need to do this,” and I don’t agree with it, then I think the conversation is, “I understand what you’re saying, Marc, we both want the same thing — perhaps just for a moment, we could look at it this way,” and then go through it. So it’s getting yourself on their side of the table, so they don’t feel you’re sitting across from them. If it’s a confrontation, people dig their heels in, and they want what they want just because they want it, and they’re not open to other ideas. So it’s about getting on the other side of the table and using the right language to help you cross the table.

Marc Pitman: Well, I like helping them focus on the fact that you both want the same outcomes, because I think sometimes people forget that, and think that you don’t want success too. You’re just — success, there’s different ways to look at it, and the successful outcome could be getting it by the right date, or it could be getting it done right by a certain date.

Mike Geiger: That’s right.

Marc Pitman: Really good. Well, I know people are going to want to listen to this over and over, because you’ve just unpacked — as I often say on these conversations — I have a couple pages of notes and strategies, and I’m — I won’t get the domain name so that you can keep “own it, report it, fix it,” but is there one thing you would recommend or encourage leaders to do when they finish listening to this? We have leaders who listen to this at all different points in their career.

Mike Geiger: Well, there’s the old story about how God, or whoever your God is, however your faith is, gave you two ears and one mouth. So my piece of advice to everybody, especially right now with what we’re going through, is listen. Reach out to your teams, engage with them, listen to them. We’re all stuck at home right now, and it’s very difficult, it’s really complicated, and I think that sometimes as a leader you forget about people you don’t necessarily see every day, or don’t interact with every day. So reach out to the people on your teams you don’t interact with as much, and just talk to them, listen to them, hear what they’re struggling with. And then, in your meetings, really encourage differing opinions, and be genuinely open to hearing about them. The thing I’ve always found for me is my level of respect goes up for someone immensely the first time they disagree with me. If someone is always saying, “Yes, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right” — I’m not that right, Marc, I’m just not that right. I’m now scared to say, “Yeah, you’re right,” because I don’t want to be that guy, but I also don’t want to say, “No, you’re wrong.”

Marc Pitman: That’s right.

Mike Geiger: I think encouraging different opinions, even if you don’t like them, is important — to manage it, and to show people you’re accepting of viewpoints other than your own. You’re the leader, you can ultimately make your decision, but it’s important that people feel heard. And then, as part of that, try to take the back seat as a leader whenever possible — and boy, this really comes back to servant leadership, right — let people come in and convince you of their ideas, let them convince you, and then take the back seat and let them run with it, let them drive the show, so to speak, and be there in a supporting role. So really, think about how you would want to be led — what fires you up, what gets you excited when someone is leading you. It’s typically going to be if someone gives you autonomy, gives you responsibility, and then lets you go and run with it. That’s fun, that’s exciting.

Marc Pitman: Wow, so much good here. Mike, thanks so much for being part of this Concord Leaders Podcast series.

Mike Geiger: I appreciate that, Marc, it was a lot of fun talking to you, thank you for having me.

Marc Pitman: Where could people find more about AFP?

Mike Geiger: Well, our website is afpglobal.org, and then we’re obviously also on social media all over the place — my Twitter is @afpmikegeiger, and I post a variety of things on there, I’m relatively active, and keep people updated on things we’re doing. I also try to be a little irreverent every now and then, so you’ll get a little bit of everything, but that’s who I am, and that’s another part of being a leader — just being true to who you are as a person.

Marc Pitman: For everybody listening, one of the reasons I wanted to have Mike on is that he took over — leading nonprofits is like herding a bunch of cats — he took over an organization at critical times, in very important conversations in our culture, and won over some of the key people in the field, and is making real change. And it’s very challenging, as we all know, to lead at this time. So Mike, I really appreciate the way you’re helping influence conversations and giving space to conversations others may not have had in previous times. So thank you so much.

Mike Geiger: Well, I appreciate that, Marc, that is what I think AFP is all about — it truly is a community. We talk a lot about the AFP community, and we’re finding that people are joining AFP now, and they’re staying members, because they can be part of a community they can lean on. So I’m just happy to do my little part in helping the organization, and through that, helping our members be successful. So thanks again, Marc, I really appreciate it.

Marc Pitman: You’re welcome. And everyone listening, please know you can find this episode at concordleadershipgroup.com/podcasts, or on Spotify. Please also rate and review us — it helps people find us, and the best way to help people find us is to tell somebody, “Hey, have you listened to the Concord Leaders Podcast? They had this guy Mike Geiger on,” so you might want to get them to listen that way. Until next time, please remember, healthy organizations start with healthy leaders, so take time to take care of your health. Bye now.