Emotional intelligence, entrepreneurship take center stage at Leadership Council conference

Nonprofit organizations have never enjoyed an idyllic economic, social, or political landscape. Resources are finite, stakeholder agendas often contradictory, and finding qualified and passionate team members remains an ongoing challenge. Adhering to an organization’s core mission and meeting clients’ needs demands its team’s energy, which makes it a challenge to develop long-term strategies or adapt to evolving financial or cultural landscapes.

Founded in 1977, the Leadership Council for Nonprofits has cultivated a nonprofit network of regional agencies to help connect and support one another through aggregating complementary expertise and providing leadership-development programs and training, as well as networking opportunities that facilitate collaboration.

One of the Leadership Council’s signature events is its 25^th annual Securing the Future Conference which takes place October 29 at the Cintas Center. The event attracts nonprofit organization boards of directors, staff members and donors of diverse 501(c)(3) organizations to enhance leadership, strategic and resource-development skills.

Two keynote speakers well-known within the Greater Cincinnati nonprofit community will provide opening and lunchtime keynote addresses that will help spark attendees’ imaginations and frame conversations around pertinent issues and processes relevant to organizational effectiveness.

The opening keynote will be delivered by Suzanne Smith, the founder of Dallas-based Social Impact Architects, which provides tools and expertise that help nonprofits strengthen their community impact. Lunch speaker, Patrice Borders, is the founder of AmplifyEI, which provides emotional intelligence training and coaching for nonprofit and for-profit entities.

The conference’s theme is “Mission: Possible – Resilience, Connection, and Courage in Uncertain Times.” Beth Benson, the Leadership Council’s executive director, selected them as the event’s featured speakers because of their familiarity with and knowledge of our area’s nonprofits, and because of their expertise relevant to the subject.

“Both speakers understand our local landscape,” she said. “We chose them, our theme, and our workshop sessions with great intention. [This year] has been more challenging than most for our sector. We want to acknowledge that [and] provide people with practical solutions, peer support, and hope for the future.”

Smith, a Dallas-Ft. Worth area native, said that she grew up in a household where political and social issues were routine dinner table subjects: “My parents were educators, and it was expected that we read the Dallas Morning News and know what was going on in the world and be able to discuss them.”

After graduating from the University of Texas, Smith took on several nonprofit-organization roles, including at the American Heart Association, where a conference provided her an audience with iconic business consultant Peter Drucker. She discussed her ambitions, and he summarized them with a fitting term: Drucker called her a social entrepreneur.

“I’d never thought of it that way, and it really inspired a direction to supporting nonprofits,” Smith said.

She took a role at Community Wealth Ventures, a Share Our Strength subsidiary, which assigned to her Cincinnati as part of her territory in 2009. She was impressed with Cincinnati’s nonprofit sector and its level of innovation and collaboration. As a result of the fruitful relationships Smith had built here, she was appointed the Leadership Council’s executive director, a post she held from 2009 to 2011. Smith also co-founded Flywheel Social Enterprise Hub, which provides social entrepreneurs with tools and insights to support enterprise growth.

As she grows her connections in the nonprofit space, Smith considers their unique attributes and challenges and how to leverage them.

“The nonprofit sector has become more professionalized, and donors have an expectation that organizations be run efficiently,” Smith said. “Nonprofits can be competitive for highly qualified talent. Many younger workers are more interested in their work making an impact and not just their paycheck, so organizations should lean into emphasizing good work-life balance, meaningful employment, and a dynamic culture. Nonprofits have everyone from baby boomers to Gen Z under their umbrella, and organizations must be intentional about optimizing everyone’s unique talents.”

Patrice Borders began her professional career as an employment attorney and said that her firsthand experience with how the lack of emotional intelligence (EI) and productive communication can make workplace toxic environments inspired her to create an alternate career path.

“Well accomplished people don’t always have EI, and it impacts culture and collaboration,” she said. “As I started putting together ways to fill those gaps for my clients, I realized the need was great. So, I took my experience in employment and developed an interactive coaching program to help organizations meet those needs.

Borders founded her firm AmplifyEI™ in 2001, and the firm provides executive coaching and facilitated development opportunities for nonprofit and for-profit organizations that range. Her client list has included Disney, Feeding America, and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, among others.

EI is frequently discussed but seldom defined. Borders, aka The EI Amplifier™, describes it as the result of following the three-word directive of “Pause. Process. Pick.” She underscored the necessity of being present when engaging others to understand their needs and process them, discern their meaning and “pick how we show up.”

“When we follow these steps, we give ourselves the agency and space to choose how we want to respond,” Borders said. “That allows the capacity to think before we speak and act.”

As the digital age leaves us increasingly beholden to screens and bombarded by nonstop, often misleading information, Borders lamented that empathy had become less of a societal priority, and that connection in compassionate and supportive ways has become difficult. She praised the Securing the Future Conference as an antidote that “encourages us to pause on purpose and make sure we are leading from a human-centered vantage point that encourages us to become better leaders, better coworkers, and better people.”

Borders noted that nonprofit-sector workers are often on the front lines of working with society’s most vulnerable populations, which requires EI to be an essential part of a team’s makeup: “The work they are doing could require resilience and protecting against burnout. Emotional intelligence for people who help people is as important as air. They need a full cup to be able to pour out for others.”

What: Securing the Future Conference featuring keynote speakers and workshops focused on effective leveraging technology, building strong organizational cultures and fostering collaboration.

Where: Cintas Center at Xavier University

When: Oct. 29, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Who: Dozens of prominent Cincinnati nonprofit organizations

Details: Tickets are $150 for Leadership Council members and $200 for nonmembers. Click here for more information.