This weekend is a whirlwind of learning new skills & making fantastic connections at a women’s leadership program I’m attending in NY. So far, I’ve learned so much from so many beautiful, ambitious, strong women like Gayle King (editor of O! Magazine), Marie C. Wilson (President & Founder of the White House Project), Angelique Kidjo (Grammy-winning African singer), Cheryl Dorsey (President of Echoing Green), Linda Babcock (professor/negotiation researcher at Carnegie-Mellon & author of Women Don’t Ask & Ask for It), and Alison Fine (author of Momentum) and all the other women that are here.
We’re all asking ourselves some hard questions: what kind of change do we want to make in the world and how are we going to do it? Most of us are struggling with setting priorities & timeline goals for businesses or nonprofits, time management & life balance, fundraising & seed capital, and communicating our mission or vision effectively to others. My main challenge in coming to the weekend was how to leverage my blog & other social media to engage more young professionals in accelerating social change while at the same time changing the mindscape of what nonprofit leadership looks like. And my main goal was to learn more about communications – mainly, how to get your message across when you’re not speaking to the choir?
That’s why I was so glad to get this comment from Anonymous on my blog post last week about not being afraid to fail:
Do you think the issue of folks “not getting” what you are saying stems from them not being open to change or how you frame the solution or change that needs to happen?
I personally think it is super important to understand the audience you are speaking to, and frame the issue as well as propose solutions in ways the audience will understand and be receptive to. That will make all the difference.
As a gen y, I can say I love ya Rosetta and what you are trying to do, as well as I wish you the best of success, but when I heard you speak, I think in your eagerness to create change you spoke at people in the audience and not to them–in their place–where they were at.
I’d been struggling with this piece that my reader pointed out…but hadn’t come up with any solutions to try out yet. So I’m most grateful that this weekend I’ve learned a lot about my own communications style and gained some clarity around how I need to tweak my message when I’m speaking to a mixed audience so as many people as possible “get it”. None of the folks here know me or my cause at all, so it’s a great learning experience being able to practice my messages on them and get some really good feedback. Other questions I’ll grapple with on the train ride back to DC from NY: how do you maintain your authenticity as you “frame” your issues as much as possible…
Luckily I get to check in with myself and with you all on this blog as I go through this process of becoming the best nonprofit leader I can be!
