Podcast Episode #5 - Part 2 with Vince Burens
Vince Burens
COO
SHOW NOTES
What Was in Lincoln’s Wallet When He Died—and What It Reveals About the Hidden Needs of Great Leaders
What do soccer, hockey, Abraham Lincoln, and executive leadership have in common?
In this conversation, Roger sits down with executive consultant and COO Vince Burens to explore why the best leaders don’t micromanage—they train people to think. Using powerful sports metaphors and real-world leadership experience, Vince unpacks what healthy leadership looks like in today’s complex, distributed world.
The episode culminates in a striking story about Abraham Lincoln. This is a conversation for leaders who want to build empowered teams, sustainable cultures, and organizations that flourish beyond short-term results.
Key Themes Covered:
Why great leaders prepare people before the game—and trust them during it
The danger of micromanagement and overcomplicated strategy
Leadership as freedom within structure
Accountability vs. clarity (and why most leaders confuse the two)
Scarcity vs. abundance mindsets in leadership
What Lincoln’s wallet teaches us about vulnerability, validation, and humanity in leadership
TRANSCRIPT
Roger (00:00)
Well, welcome to podcast number two with ⁓ my good friend, Vince Buren's. For those who missed the first one, you missed a good conversation. So go back and listen to it. But Vince is a well-seasoned executive with experience in high levels of leadership in nonprofits and now leads a for-profit consulting organization. So
Or is this COO, right? Title? Yeah. Senior consultant. So last episode, we talked a lot about the origination and kind of development of leadership through the years how we see ourselves accurately. We talked a little about self-sabotage feedback.
Vince Burens (00:21)
I'm the COO, COO and Senior Consultant.
Roger (00:36)
We both love sports. We love the traditional American sports, but we also love soccer, which is the beautiful game. And so interested to talk about you think about leadership when you think about the experience of the sport of soccer and the process of coaching, because I know you've coached for many years.
And I coached, haven't coached recently, but coached a while back in the day. So what do think about the soccer metaphor when it comes to thinking about soccer, thinking about leadership? How do you think they translate? What goes through your mind?
Vince Burens (01:11)
Yeah, when you, you know, when you had referenced wanting to talk about soccer and as sort of thinking about leadership metaphor for leadership, I went back to a conversation I had with one of my really good friends who's an executive leader in an organization that does human centered design. he's also a sports fan and maybe about a decade or so ago, we're having a conversation. And he was like, you know, I just can't get into soccer. Like, I just I just don't get it. You know, and I was like, man, it's
As a human centered design person, I feel like you're totally missing the boat. Like it is is it is you. And he was like, really? Say more. like I said to him, I want you to watch an English Premier League match and watch a coach. Tell me what you notice. So the next time we talked, he was like, they're in a suit. They just sit there on the sideline every now and again, they get up and say something. But for the most part, they just sit there. And he was like, and that's why I don't get it. And I was like, no, that's why you should totally get it.
And he was like, OK, I don't understand. And I said, look, what you learn in soccer is that your training, your preparation is done in training. The match is where you go express it. So really, as a soccer coach, you teach people to think more than you teach them to do anything else. Because they've got 90 minutes where you can't joystick them. It's not American football where every seven seconds we're stopping.
Roger (02:03)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (02:27)
and I'm telling you what to do next, right? In soccer, I can scream, you know, 60 yards across the field to tell you to make a run. But at the end of the day, you're independent out there, but we've all got to move as one, right? And you've got to teach people how to think about how do I do my job and do it well in a way where I have to be situational and I have to constantly process what's in front of me. And I've got to do it within unison within this team or it's all going to break down.
Roger (02:27)
Yep. Yeah.
Vince Burens (02:54)
Right. And so I have just always loved thinking about soccer as a metaphor for my leadership in that, you know, the way that I prefer to lead is not as an offensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans where I'm calling a new play every seven seconds. That's that probably hurts right now for you all. So I apologize. But, you know, I don't like to think of it that way. I'm more of a let's let's figure it out before we get into the game.
Roger (02:54)
Yeah, yeah.
Vince Burens (03:21)
then you go play, and then let's come back after you go play and talk about what worked and what didn't, right? And that's the way that I prefer to lead. It's a way that I, you you can only coach soccer that way. I think a lot of dads, when they coach five-year-olds, you know, they try to go the American football methodology, and that works only until they get to about 12, maybe 10.
Roger (03:28)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Vince Burens (03:43)
⁓ You know, I think in my leadership, I love to pick the right people, pick the right players, right? Assess their gifts and abilities, assemble a team that kind of fills out, you know, what we need to do, thinking about all pieces of it, administrative leadership, you know, all those different pieces, and then talk about what we need to go do and then let people go do it. Right. And then having the coming in and going out, like, how's it going? Where are we?
Roger (04:05)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (04:09)
Where are we failing? Where are we succeeding? What do we need more of? What's our resource check? All of those kinds of pieces. And then sending people back out, right? It's more, I think, an empowerment methodology for leadership as opposed to, you know, what did Jim Collins call it in good to great, a level four leader was a king with many servants. You know, and I've just never functioned well that way. I think when I was younger, you know, I...
I needed it to look more like the way I thought it should look. Now I'm just much more outcome oriented of like, okay, what does it look like in the end for us? And I don't always mean that in profit and loss, though that's certainly important. But how do you build a healthy culture and a healthy organization? How do you have multiple bottom lines that aren't just how much money we make, but organizational culture, people health, people development, all those kind of different bottom lines.
Roger (04:47)
Yep. Yep.
Vince Burens (04:59)
⁓ Because I think that's a flourishing organization, whether it's in the social sector or the for-profit world versus sort of that old school, you know, I'm the boss. I was just saying this, my wife and I, one of our binge watches during COVID was Mad Men, the movie about the marketing from back in 40s, 50s and 60s. My wife's from New York, so she really appreciated some of that, you the culture.
Roger (05:16)
yeah, children.
Vince Burens (05:23)
But there's a scene where Don Draper is working with one of his younger employees and the younger employee is a creative and she's talking about like, you're not using my ideas Don Draper exposes that old school methodology where he says, look, this isn't about your feelings. This isn't about your creativity. I give you money. You give me ideas. That's it. That's all that's here. And that's a very sort of hierarchical way of understanding transactional way versus a really sort of empowering
Roger (05:46)
Yeah. Yeah.
Vince Burens (05:50)
transformational relational way of leading that I think is just much more effective in today's
Roger (05:55)
Yeah, one of the things that I connect with on that is I always talk about the idea of get the best out of your team, they need to be free, free of fear. And so as a leader, as a coach, especially using soccer as a metaphor, you you. You set people up so they know the structure, they know the boundaries and they have freedom within that than to express and play their role.
And then they can go do that without the micromanagement of a coach always just telling them what to do. think about is the idea of the complementary skill set that you have to have. Like you have to have complementary skill sets of the players. Like you have to select your team for the situation and then you have complementary skill sets. don't play
The same skill set is not the striker, not the playmaker, not the destroyer in the back, is not the goalkeeper. These are different skill sets and you're trying to optimize your opportunity by optimizing skill sets and putting them together. But they have to play within a framework. Not just a framework of the game, but the framework in like, here's what we're trying to do.
What I see a lot of me think about the the American or the traditional coaching models is that people try to create some really complex strategies, but their people can't execute the basics. so they're like, well, my team's not executing. It's like because you've created a lot of. Aspirational, you've read some book, you've got this thing, we're going to do it this way.
but that there's no foundation underneath it for people to actually perform. And so they don't have the capabilities, competence, confidence to actually perform. So they don't have the freedom You know, the leader goes like, why aren't we hitting our goals? Why aren't we doing this?
Vince Burens (07:36)
Yeah, we in the firm that I'm a part of now, part of my job is for our some of our larger clients. do strategic planning. And one of the questions we always ask is capacity to execute. You can write the greatest strategic plan in the world that no one will ever use. And the reason why is they just don't have the vision or the capacity to execute on it. And so, yeah, to your point, learn to walk before you can run. Right. And and I think that's true for leaders, too. Sometimes leaders have huge visions.
but they don't nearly have the people around them that can execute on it. So either, how do you make that more bite-sized or how do you bring it back to the ground a little bit to say, okay, let's get here before we can get there.
Roger (08:14)
Yeah, I one of my college coaches, they win national championships at the Division III level. They're really, really good. I went for a session when I was coaching. Also, I went and helped them work at camp, and I was paying attention to how they do it because they have repeated success. And so I was asking questions like, well, what's the keys to your success?
And he said something, he said something really, really sad. He goes, it's not like strategy. the strategy is dependent on the ability of the team to execute. so what we practice and focus on is the fundamentals, the fundamentals in soccer, can you pass and can you receive? That was it. Like, can you pass the ball? Can you receive the ball in a work context? It's kind of like, you know, what are the fundamentals? Can I communicate? Like, can I listen?
Can I, like, there's these kind of fundamentals that I find that we often assume leaders know that, and we kind of put them in leadership positions, but don't train them in actually how to lead, and they can't do those fundamentals. it's a, almost every organization that I talk with has that same issue where.
They don't have a common agreement on the fundamentals. Do you find that true?
Vince Burens (09:19)
Yeah.
⁓ 100 percent. I remember hearing when I was younger, someone coaching a group of young leaders, which I was in that group at the time. And someone said, tell me what you think I need to do. Speaking in a broader room, like, what can I do to get promoted the quickest? And the guy's response back was get really good at email. And I was like, that's interesting. Like no one was expecting that. And what he was trying to get at was exactly what you're saying.
which is good leaders respond well, they respond efficiently, they have an efficiency of their time that they understand, they have a way of communicating their care for the people and their vision for the future of the business. They know how to do those things, but they do them in a pretty simplistic way, right? So yeah, no, I do think quite often we over-complicate systems, we over-complicate communication.
And I think it's a big miss. And I think investors and nonprofit board members want that. And so it's a really, when I was leading a nonprofit, like I was always listening to board members talking about how they want this massive vision. And I felt really provoked to go in that direction quite often of like, how do I keep speaking as grandiose as I can, as opposed to really getting down to the brass tacks of just doing the basics well?
Roger (10:35)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (10:35)
Yeah,
I think sometimes we take inspiration over substance with some regular.
Roger (10:39)
Yeah. I think that connects with the, with the idea of, you know, doing the basics well is like, if you do the, the small things really well, the score takes care of itself. The end game takes care of itself. But if you focus on the big stuff and you have inconsistency in, in the small things, it hinders everybody. So you have like a
Couple strong leaders among six and it's not going to work. It's got to be the alignment of the how we do things, the alignment and the culture those kind of things. and to take that back to back to soccer is the idea that if you haven't done that well. In practice, if you haven't done that well in coaching.
When you get to the game, it's going to be evident. It's going to be absolutely evident. And you can't hide from it. As a coach, you can't hide from the fact that you didn't set your team up well. You didn't give them what they needed.
Yeah, that's good. Do you find that is that the only sport that you look to when you look at like at that metaphor?
Vince Burens (11:36)
Well, I think, you know, the other sport I think about that I love a great deal is professional hockey, ice hockey. You know, and it is, it's again, another match, even though, you know, they're coming in and off the ice in one minute shifts, really, there's a fluidity to the game and a speed to the game that yes, they're drawing things up and there are set plays and things like that. Just like in soccer, the majority of it is the fluidity of five moving as one, really.
Roger (12:01)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vince Burens (12:02)
And
you can see the break because the game is so fast, even more so than soccer, when there's a breakdown, the breakdown can turn tragic quickly because of the speed of it. And if everybody's not on the same page, and I think to your point, again, I think in leadership when people are, especially in the dispersed workforces that we have now where so many people are on Zoom, so many people are working from home.
Roger (12:10)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (12:26)
If you're not communicating well, if you're not getting people on the same page, people can, I'll call it, go unintentionally rogue very quickly. And I think for most people, it's not a desire to go rogue, it's a desire to do well, not being trained well or managed well, and then they're in a situation where they've got to make a decision, and so they do. And that's where, you know, thinking of a hockey analogy of the...
one defenseman decides to pinch in and the other defenseman doesn't. Now, all of sudden, you've got a gap. Now you've got a breakaway. And I think in the same way, it's even more important. The firm that I work for now, our CEO really pays attention to organizational culture, spends more than our, which is always the temptation, spends more than our CFO would ever like on building organizational culture. But I love our CFO and I totally affirm our CEO's decisions.
Roger (12:53)
Yeah, yeah.
Vince Burens (13:14)
And part of the reason we do a week long retreat with spouses every year as an organization. And the reason why is, you know, we're a dispersed workforce. We're based in St. Augustine, Florida, but grand majority of the employees just live all over the country. Like I said, I live in Pittsburgh. But it's an opportunity to build the culture of the organization and to train and to communicate and to get everybody on the same page.
Roger (13:31)
Yeah. Yeah.
Vince Burens (13:40)
I just think those kinds of things in today's world are just invaluable when many of us aren't sitting around the proverbial water cooler the way we used to.
Roger (13:47)
Yeah, yeah, I love that that focus. I think one of the things I noticed about hockey, I'm not as efficient as hockey as much as you are, but I love the fluidity of the game. But one of the things that makes me think about as you're talking about is is how organizations respond instantaneously to poor decisions. And so I mean, it's like
Vince Burens (14:07)
Mm.
Roger (14:08)
What allows an organization to recover from an individual who makes a well-meaning but a decision that goes bad or something like, so what happens, what allows the organization, it's the fluidity of the other players to adjust, to compensate and go like, oh, we've got your back. We're going to adjust because you may be stepped outside our kind of structure a little bit, but
we're gonna respond quickly and adjust versus the idea of like, you made a mistake and we're gonna call you out. And there's this idea of like that relational connection you're talking about gives you compassion. It gives you a sense of relational connection that allows you to then to do that adjustment that isn't a finger pointing adjustment, but it's like, hey, yeah, we acknowledge a mistake, but we're gonna adjust. We're gonna take care of things and then we can come back and.
get back on the same page.
Vince Burens (15:00)
Yeah. Yeah. And you're making me think of another mentor in my life. It's funny to call him a mentor. I think we're the same age. He's at least a voice of wisdom in my life. A guy named Jay Brown, who was the CEO of Crown Castle down in Houston. He's now the CEO of Weekly Homes, which is one of the largest home building companies in the U.S. And I've been fortunate to be able to spend some time with Jay over the last handful of years. And one of the things that he often talks about is great leaders don't
catastrophize situations. He often says, I view myself as being on a ship. And the job of the leader is not to look at the waves, but look at the horizon. And I think to your point, if things go sideways and we start pointing fingers, we're creating catastrophe. helping, we're giving energy to catastrophe, right? As opposed to saying, how do I look up to the horizon?
Roger (15:46)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (15:52)
take the big picture into account and say, okay, how do I hold you accountable, but do it appropriately? think there's a lot of inappropriate accountability, right? Of just like, I'm gonna hold your feet to the fire. Well, if you've got a bunch of employees, you gotta hold their feet to the fire. You got the wrong employees, right? Like, I don't think that's an accountability issue. That's hiring issue. ⁓ And so if you always have to lean into that, if you gotta lean into all the time, like accountability, accountability, accountability,
Roger (16:08)
Absolutely. No. No.
Vince Burens (16:20)
you got the wrong people. So I think if you've got the right people, yes, you got to hold them accountable, but it's much more about keeping the calm, looking to the horizon, solving the problem, moving forward.
Roger (16:31)
Yeah. So you just like bring up the bring up the idea of accountability I don't want to go on a rant. But but. I don't personally believe in accountability. I think it's misused like in the traditional sense of accountability, like if you come and you say, hey, Roger, you come in doing this and you didn't do it.
I'm going to hold you accountable. You can step towards me, but what makes it work is my request that you do that. If I don't request you to do that, it's just noise. And I think we rely on authority structures, especially when we rely on formal authority for accountability, top down, without the people in the roles saying, no, I want this.
and they're asking for it, accountability just kind of rolls off But I think that so many, I get here all the time, like, you gotta hold your sales team accountable, you gotta hold your people accountable. It's like, well, if you didn't, at the front end of this, set up a structure where they said, here's what I wanna accomplish, here's what I wanna do, here's how it fits into the large organization, yes, I want.
to be coached, I want to be helped to do that, then accountability works. But I think that the top down kind of view of it is exactly what you said. Like if you rely on that as a leader, you've got the wrong people and you probably have set up the goal setting, you probably set up the organization in a way that those people don't own their roles. They don't want to.
Do you like how you respond to that?
Vince Burens (17:56)
Yeah, well, that right. It's either a hiring issue or a lack of clarity issue. You know, I've been a part of organizations and systems where we find really good people. We don't make it really clear what we expect of them. They don't meet our unspoken expectations. And we then come back and want to hold them accountable for the things they're not doing that were either unclear.
Roger (18:14)
There you go, yeah.
Vince Burens (18:22)
or poorly communicated or never told. And then we're going, well, what the heck's wrong with Roger? I thought we hired a great guy. Well, maybe you did hire a great guy. You just didn't make it clear to him what you wanted. And now when he's not meeting the expectation. And one of the questions that I always ask when I'm a teammate to someone in a hiring process a question I actually had a good friend who was a corporate headhunter.
Roger (18:27)
Yep. Yep.
Vince Burens (18:48)
And when I was hiring a lot in my previous job, I said to him, what questions you always ask? And he said, I'll tell you my favorite question. And his favorite question was when he's interviewing somebody was, if we hired you in two years from now, you quit or we had to fire you because it just went really wrong. What do you think would have happened? Why do you think it didn't work? then obviously what he's pointing at there is
Roger (19:07)
Great question.
Vince Burens (19:11)
Let's let's let's deal with the issues before they're issues, right? Is it a lack of clarity? Actually, I just I think I understand the job description, but I don't. I think I understand what you want me to do, but I don't. I like even though the job description has a bunch of nice words in it, at the end of the day, there's really two things you got to do here to succeed. And it's this. And we didn't find those clearly enough. Right. I really like that as a way of doing it, because then the onus gets put back on.
Roger (19:15)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Vince Burens (19:38)
the employee more as opposed to, now I got to hold you accountable because you're under functioning.
Roger (19:42)
Yeah,
yeah, yeah, there's there's an ownership there that is clear from the get go. Love that. That's a great question. The the idea that.
that you as a leader have to clarify what you want from people makes me think of, I've got several of my clients and one of the repeated conversations is when they're talking about an employee is ⁓ what do they think their job is? What do you think their job is? if I ask them,
Vince Burens (20:10)
Hmm.
Roger (20:13)
put it out there, would it match what you say? Or just what you said, like are the assumptions you have the same as their assumptions? especially for like people in leadership positions, typically they're high achieving, they're typically intelligent, they typically have a perspective. They're drivers. But not all of them are good at taking their unspoken expectations and translating that
into something that their people can understand. And people can go like, oh yeah, I want to do that. And then as an employee, the job of the employee, I like to switch this around and instead of employee, like you said, like have the employee own it, I like to tell people as the employee, your job is to interview the people that you're working for and making sure you know what they want you to do. Don't wait for them.
to tell you, like you take ownership of that. And then ask do I have the skill set to do it? Or not? What do I need? And then boldly ask for that, or switch roles. Yeah, that's good stuff.
So let's talk a little about your experience. So you worked in a long time in nonprofits, you work in a for-profit, you're consulting, so you have a view into a lot of organizations. Talk a little about what you notice Where does, in your world, which is strategy and fundraising, what do you notice that, what are some of the...
trends, thoughts, takeaways, what are some of most important for people who aren't in the room with you, don't have your experience and can't see what you see, what do you think that they should know? What do you think would be some of the wisdom you have for us?
Vince Burens (21:45)
Well, I would say and thanks for explaining all that, teeing it up for me. just to clarify fundraising, I always joke and say, I'm not the guy who helps you with hoagie sales. Right. Like I'm the guy that we come in and we do come in and do very large capital campaign fundraisers. So 10, 20.
Roger (21:54)
Yeah, let's be clear.
Yeah, yeah, let's be clear.
Let's just say clearly, we're talking about major multimillion dollars ⁓ engagements where people are trying to change the world and they need a lot of so this the strategy Yeah, we're not talking about selling Girl Scout cookies. No offense to Girl Scouts. But yeah. Yeah, it's great. They're fantastic.
Vince Burens (22:08)
Yeah.
Yeah. Got a lot of money. Yeah.
That's right. My daughter sold Girl Scout cookies for 10 years. I'm all in. that's right.
I couldn't give you much advice on that. so I would say a few things. One is people give to vision. People give to vision and people are committed and follow vision. Right. But that fades quickly without really good strategy.
and really good people is what I would say. people think, well, in order to raise, you know, I have a client right now, it's in the process of raising about $150 million for a project they're doing. They've got a really good visionary leader, but he's also got some really good tacticians underneath him. And people want to know the impact and it's impact investing, right? It's the same kind of thing.
People want to know like, what's my ROI here and can I really believe that you're going to deliver on your promises, not just make the promises in a winsome way. People do, people always give, I would say even investors, whether they'll acknowledge it or not, to a certain degree, it's always got to be a gut and heart check, right? Of like, do I really trust the people? One of things we always say is people give to people they know and trust. And I think that's true in business. It's true in philanthropy, like,
Roger (23:18)
Yeah. yeah.
Vince Burens (23:26)
If I know you and I trust you, I'm more inclined to believe your data than if your data is amazing and your vision is amazing, but I just don't trust your integrity. ⁓ So I think that's one of the things that I would pay attention to. I would encourage, you know, like philanthropy in the US and beyond. We're now we now work with many nonprofits not based in the US is going really well.
Roger (23:36)
Yeah, absolutely.
Vince Burens (23:51)
especially faith-based philanthropy for those of you that are more inclined in that direction. the trends would say people want to go deep and they want to partner with the philanthropies they work with. And so where we help organizations make people truly partners, not just donors. But I would say, you know, at the board level, board members are trying to go more deep.
I think I would say to you, if you're a for-profit leader and you're involved in not-for-profit boards, recognize that leading is a little different, right? Just because you're a great oil and gas CEO, that doesn't mean that you know everything about leading big brothers, big sisters in your community, right? And I think that's a miss that we see sometimes is people want to give back, people who have done well in business and they're leaders and they want to...
Roger (24:25)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (24:34)
sink their teeth into something else that's like giving back to the community, giving back to their church, whatever it might be. And they assume that they have the same competency in their day job as they do here. And that's often, I would say that's a massive blind spot that I see with boards with some regularity. And that can be a challenge because they're the ones that are donating. So it's hard for the CEO, executive director of the nonprofit to be able to push back to.
Roger (24:45)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (25:00)
But it's a massive blind spot that we see with some.
Roger (25:03)
That was so you've talked about two things that the strength of pushing back against people who have who have something you need like that. That's a that's a competency on the nonprofit leadership side to go, hey, I I'm I really am going to protect the culture and protect the organization. I'm a lead effectively. But there is that translation like what what is different? Like what do you notice about people successful in the in the business, kind of the for-profit business driver kind of world when they step into the non
the nonprofit or the service sector, what doesn't translate? What do you think is the biggest gap between the way they have operated effectively and what their expectations are for how that should work for the organization they're giving money to? What is the gap there?
Vince Burens (25:47)
you know, I referenced an old business book. I'll reference the same old business book. ⁓ The aha that I had on this topic was when I read Jim Collins Good to Great many, many years ago, and he wrote a, he called it a monograph for the social sector is what he called it. And in there, he talked about that people that work that are employees in the social sector are motivated and wired like volunteers.
Roger (25:48)
Or what are parts of the app?
Vince Burens (26:14)
So even though they collect a paycheck and they are paid employees, their heart wiring is one of a volunteer mentality. And I think the big disconnect is that when we bring for-profit business practices in their totality, I'm not saying they're implicitly, there's not a one-to-one there. I think there's a lot that the for-profit community can share with the not-for-profit community to make it better, more efficient, more viable, produce more on its mission.
But there are elements of it where there is that going back to that Don Draper quote, like I give you money, you do work. Nonprofit people are not wired that way, even at the top levels. Right. They're like heads of presidents of colleges. Yes, they they make very high six figure salaries, in some cases, seven figure salaries. But they're wired around a mission and a vision and a particular academic understanding of the world. Right. It's not the same as
Roger (26:48)
Yeah, yeah.
Vince Burens (27:08)
someone trying to deliver to a VC company on their investment. And so I think where the miss is, is people, you know, it's a little bit of what I was saying earlier on learning the new golf swing. Like just because I can swing a golf club really well, which as I've confessed, I can't the way that I used to, but even because I can, doesn't mean it's going to translate to me being a good hockey player, even though both of them are swinging sticks, right? And I think sometimes we just think,
Roger (27:30)
⁓ Yeah, good now to you.
Vince Burens (27:34)
You know, I'm an all world hockey player, so of course I can be a scratch golfer. Well, maybe there's definitely some translatable skills in there. But at the end of the day, like, are you going to acknowledge this is a different game and I need a different swing and a different understanding? And can I really humble myself to put myself before certain people to say, like, actually, I need I need better understanding. I need to understand the context. I need to understand this industry because it's a different industry.
Roger (27:59)
Yeah, yeah.
Vince Burens (28:00)
Can I humble
myself or is it a blind spot that I just have a belief that I'm really good at this and there's nothing new under the sun? I think that's the gap where I see and to your point, it takes the courageous on the other side, the courageous nonprofit leader to actually say, hey, we're not just looking for intellect and money here. We're actually looking for true wisdom. And if you're not a wise person, not just a bright person, not just an accomplished person, but a wise person, this
Roger (28:09)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (28:27)
You know, there's a lot of ways we can partner with you, but I don't know if being at the board level is going to be the best fit for your.
Roger (28:33)
Yeah. And
as a leader of nonprofit, I you've got a lot of wisdom about how you select board members and what their roles are and the strategy for doing that. I think that to go up, like what you said is brilliant. But if you step up above that, feel like I hear you say, it's someone who's come up in the for-profit leadership kind of realm.
They've done those things in that realm. And then they jump over as a board member, as investor and a non-profit. And all the foundational stuff they did to get where they got to be really successful business, they don't redo. So they did pay attention to people's motivation because you can't run a successful business unless you pay attention to your people and their motivation and all those things. But they don't take the time to go back to the basics when they get into that world.
That's interesting because the leadership principles aren't that much different, but the people are very different. The humans in there are different. So have to know your people, how they motivate, they motivated by money, they motivated by mission and other ways too. interesting. That's interesting. any other kind of kind of aha moments for you as you
Vince Burens (29:29)
yeah.
Roger (29:43)
stepped into that consulting role and now are in some ways an unbiased, you're a partner, right? But you're in some ways an unbiased thought partner and consultant. Any other thoughts you have about leadership and what is the difference between strong visionary leaders and successful
nonprofits with good boards and where do you see organizations struggle?
Vince Burens (30:06)
Well, you I mean, one of the things is, is you have to be pulling the rope in the same direction. Right. And and I think where you have sort of either board members or staff or leaders that are not all pulling on the same direction, you know, we always say with strategic planning, a mediocre plan well executed is much better than the most the most, you know, savvy, elegant plan never touched. And I think it's the same thing with
with nonprofit leadership and for-profit leadership, candidly. But you'd almost rather have mediocre talent that all believe the same thing, that we're going after the same principles and trying to do it shoulder to shoulder versus all the smartest people in the room that all had their own agenda. And I think that that's cohesion, commitment to mission, commitment to culture, all of those things, I think, make a for-profit. And certainly when we see not-for-profits.
Roger (30:46)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (30:57)
move forward, those are the things that we see that are most critical. Is everyone on the same page? If not, what's the way to get them on the same page or to have an off-ramp for the people who are not on the same page? And it's hard because I would say the other thing we see with not-for-profits is a scarcity mindset. So they don't come in with a mindset of abundance thinking, there's plenty of resources available. They think this is all I've got and I've got to fight to keep what I have.
Roger (31:22)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (31:22)
And
when you bring that mindset as a nonprofit leader, it's really hard to grow and expand because you're always, well, we can't get rid of this person because we'll never find somebody else. Well, we can't lose that donor because there's just not enough money out there. Right. And the more you bring that mindset. And I would say that's, you know, it's true for us personally, right. As leaders, like the more that I bring a scarcity mindset, I can't lose this job because there aren't any others out there. Right. I can't can't make that decision because of
Roger (31:48)
Yeah. ⁓
Vince Burens (31:51)
fail, then what's that mean about me? Or what's the board going to think? what's my leadership team going to think? And the more we lead with a scarcity mindset, that trickles down to all of our employees, and it trickles down and up. So I think we push people to have an abundance mindset to say, no, mean, you can always get more resources. You can always find more people. Let's not be cavalier about it. Let's not be arrogant, but let's also engage the world in such a way where we
Roger (31:52)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Vince Burens (32:17)
we're leading with some freedom here as opposed to feeling like there's only so much and I've got to fight to keep.
Roger (32:22)
Yeah, yeah, I think the the death that's caused by fear that causes people to take to see everything is risk that are going to kill them rather than risk that are going to stretch them rather than risk that are worth taking. And it just just stifles anything that could happen in terms of on the the growth side. Yeah, that's a that's good stuff.
I would say, things that I believe strongly is that in leadership development, we spend traditionally, and what I've seen mostly corporate America, most of my experience, I did work in nonprofit at the beginning when I worked with you, but most of my experience is in the for-profit corporate world.
I would say the models for leadership development are very much aspirational, like in terms of here's the mold, squeeze yourself into that mold. And I think that's the biggest mistake ever when it comes to leadership. we have to have a different paradigm where
where we're not trying to squeeze everybody into a singular role, but we need to really help people understand their unique competence and then how they build their role in their organization around that to leverage their strengths, not just compensate for their weaknesses. And I'm curious, do you agree with that? I'm curious, do you see that played out?
Vince Burens (33:33)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm in my job. It's interesting. My formal work is not to be an executive coach, but I do a lot of executive coaching. just ends up being part of the job. And when you, you know, when you're someone's fundraising consultant, you know, it's more intimate in leadership than you would imagine. Right. mean, you're. And they're able to say things to you about like, I got to get twenty five million dollars. I don't know how I'm to do that.
Roger (33:59)
Yeah, you're their confidant. Yeah, you're their consigliere.
Vince Burens (34:08)
I can't tell my team, I don't know how I'm going to do it. And so it just kind of opens up a vulnerability in the conversation. And I would I'm currently coaching a CEO right now. I'm know, I'm helping them raise their their their significant tens of millions of dollars goal. But part of the conversation that I'm having with him is exactly what you just said, which is he's in this role. And many of the handful of the board members want him to fit this archetype of a CEO that they think it should be.
And you have to function this way. have to think about these things. You got to work on these things. And it's good stuff. It's all very helpful feedback. But at the end of the day, I always push him to say, you're in this role. You are in this role for a reason. You. Who are you? If you've got to completely shape shift yourself into something else, you probably shouldn't be in that job in order to succeed in it.
Roger (34:50)
Yeah. ⁓
Vince Burens (34:59)
people are going to give you the feedback, well, a good CEO does this, a good leader does that, a good, you know, a little bit of that personality assessment testing that you and I were talking about earlier. Like actually the fully self-realized leader. I actually remember when you and I went through that now 20 some odd years ago, I remember it compared different leaders in the organization that we were a part of. And one of the people that was like the most self-actualized leader was like one of the most ineffective people in the entire organization.
but they were the best leader. And I kind of think about that. It was trying to draw you into an archetype. And I don't say that to be negative about that person. It was just a reminder to me of, these things have biases. And we have biases on what, is it Bill Gates? Is it Elon Musk? Who's your ideal CEO? And then let's construct people to it, as opposed to saying, no, I'm in this role. And if I'm going to fail,
Roger (35:28)
Yeah.
Vince Burens (35:53)
I want to fail being me. So I feel like I left it out there as opposed to, will say, early in my leadership journey when I first became a CEO, I was getting a lot of voices to me telling me what it meant to be a CEO. And because one of the sort of negative sides of that Enneagram 3 personality type is you can be a shapeshifter, you can kind of be a chameleon. And one of the things I learned about myself is I'm actually pretty good at being a chameleon. So I'm pretty good at kind of being what you need me to be. But you can
Roger (36:12)
Yeah. Yeah.
Vince Burens (36:21)
lose yourself pretty quickly when you're willing to be a chameleon all the time. I mean, there are appropriate moments for us to acquiesce within a particular culture and to be trained. at the same time, you've got to fully express who you are in the leadership role. And if it works, great and grow into it. And if it doesn't, you know, find a different gig. Have a mindset of abundance, you know.
Roger (36:40)
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember that brings me back to a very, I would say in retrospect, I didn't understand it when I was there. But it was a season of life where for about five years, I worked underneath a leader that had a certain drive and a certain way of doing things and was constantly trying to pull me into that style.
And I did everything I could to fit that mold. I like it was miserable and I it was absolutely miserable. by the end of that time period, I was like, what is wrong with me? And I started to resent You know, the leader I was working for, it was just so unhealthy but a huge
great learning moment for me to point to to go, you're doing everything you can to be someone that you're not.
And you weren't that effective. Like I wasn't as effective as I was when I shifted roles and started being, like being me. The impact was just astronomical. But as a young leader, I didn't, as a young guy, I didn't see it. I did not see it. And that's why I think like, since we don't see ourselves, that's one of the things that this maybe a third conversation we have is about
Vince Burens (37:47)
Yeah.
Roger (37:53)
about how do you use assessment tools? Because one of my critiques of assessment tools is that most of the time they ask you questions.
which is great if you see yourself accurately. But if you don't see yourself accurately, like if I took back assessments when I was in that role, they look totally different. and so assessments I think have to be guided, you have to really guide.
people well to understand those or participate in those because since we don't see ourselves accurate, we project ourselves a false image of ourselves into an assessment that then tells us, this must be true about.
Vince Burens (38:28)
Yeah, I'm actually working with a leader right now who it would take you 30 seconds to spend a high driving, high achieving individualist, super high driving, super high achieving, clearly an individualist. the organization that he works with just did this, you know, just did a group like the leadership team did a retreat and they did the personality assessment. His thing came back as team leader committed to the team, all this other kind of stuff. And I'm like,
You're reading it and you're like, that can't be about that person. And what he did was essentially he answered the questions in a way that he knew. I mean, it might've been subconscious. I don't even know what was top of his mind, but it was like, I know what I'm supposed to be to do this job and that's way I'm getting to these questions. But it's like, cares about the team over the individual. It's like, that's not you. So.
Roger (39:11)
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Vince Burens (39:17)
I do think you're right. Each of them are a data point. think sometimes we go full bore on them of like, like I've referenced Enneagram a couple of times. I've used Predictive Index. I've used a handful of others. Like, I think if we can connect all the data points, we get more of a fully orbed, you know, and I think, you you were talking about feedback before. I think something that's a really effective tool, but unfortunately gets weaponized are 360 reviews.
Roger (39:35)
Yeah, yeah.
Vince Burens (39:43)
You know, they can be really effective feedback tools as long as it's not a, hey, here's a way for everybody to, you know, to go back to Seinfeld. It's the airing of grievances, right? Like, it's just a way for everybody to tell you how bad you are. Well, that makes them ineffective tools. So.
Roger (39:53)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah,
I totally agree. I've been I've been on the giving and receiving side of of that and which is why I think 360 tools and and I do these for my for my clients. I'm sure you do the same. But I have very clear criteria on who who can participate in that feedback.
The person who is receiving the feedback has to know that those people who are speaking into that love them. They love them and they want them. They want the best for them. And if if that's true, you can get some great, great transformational feedback. But if there's any hint. That just
Vince Burens (40:40)
Totally.
Roger (40:43)
Any bit of that feedback is tainted by someone that you don't trust. It can't be accepted, can't be trusted. I think that's a big failure, I think, when people go like, we do these mass 360s. we're, everyone's going to get a 360. We're, everyone's going to get on a survey and everyone's going to respond to all their coworkers. And you're like, well, why doesn't that work? Why doesn't that create transformation?
It's because of lack of trust. And it's confirmation bias in the sense that if know, if I want something to be true and one person says that I'll jump on that, I ignore all the other stuff because I don't know where it came from, don't know what the context was. I really think that that kind of way doing is not really effective for high level leaders.
Vince Burens (41:09)
totally.
Roger (41:26)
Well, thank you very much for the conversation. We talk a lot about books. You one of the books that you recommended years ago. I still read called A Failure of Nerve. like one of my favorite books.
What book have you read or are you reading now that you would recommend
Vince Burens (41:41)
You know, I'm on a I referenced the you know, the Arthur Brooks, you know, he's written a couple of he's written a couple of great books about really understanding joy and happiness. And for those of you that are in that that middle middle season of life, he calls it a you don't have a midlife crisis. You're in the midlife crystal. You know, you're the caterpillar becoming the butterfly, which feels a little too gooey for me. But but I appreciate the metaphor. So, you know, I think I think
You know, some of things by Arthur Brooks have been really good. I will say that I'm in a season, again, recognizing this midlife transition that I'm in, in my leadership, not just in life, but in my leadership of really reading books about leaders. I've appreciated biographies and autobiographies. I've been on a run of like from Bruce Springsteen, who's fascinating, to Dwight Eisenhower, to Lincoln. I just, I'm a people person by nature and I love reading and
maybe even projecting into hearing their lives and understanding what they were thinking. I I just finished a biography on Lincoln where Lincoln, they, you may know this story, but so the contents of what was on Lincoln's body when he was assassinated was not released by the Smithsonian or whomever had it up until about 20 years ago, I think. And one of the things that Lincoln had in his wallet, I mean, he had a lot of the stereotypical things you think he might have.
But he had in his wallet, he had eight news clippings of reporters saying positive things about him. Which I thought was Here's one of the most iconic, beloved leaders in American history who even he had to have like, he saved news clippings and put them in his wallet to read, to like communicate like, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone people like me. know, like even Abraham Lincoln had to do that.
Roger (43:19)
I have to go there. Yeah.
Vince Burens (43:24)
it's like to me, was like little nuggets like that that I take away from those kinds of biographies to remember like, they were human and these are certain things that are just human needs that we all have and to feel okay about them in your leadership.
Roger (43:34)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's which is that's a great connection because you reference the the the school principal getting tears in her eyes when you gave her how much you appreciated her. I experienced that all the time when you breathe, breathe truth into people or when someone encourages me the the amount of value, the amount of the importance of being
spoken to like we are it's human. It's you and most of us go days sometimes some people go years without ever hearing those things. Well, thanks, Vince. Appreciate it. I'm sure we'll have you back on the podcast in the future. But thank you so much. Really appreciate you having a conversation with me.
Vince Burens (43:58)
Mm-hmm.
Awesome. It was really fun. can't believe how quickly it all went by.
Roger (44:17)
Thanks, Vince, I appreciate it.