The Reality of Leadership Isolation
A few years ago I was giving a keynote speech about my Culture CARES model and how nonprofit leaders can build healthy, inclusive, and empowering cultures where people can thrive.
After I sat down at the table, an executive director I hadn’t met before sat down next to me and she looked straight at me and said something that really stopped me in my tracks.
She said, we need your help. It was more than just the words coming out of her mouth. It was the look in her eyes, the look of defeat, the look of exhaustion, and the look of burnout.
I think we’ve all seen this in our own eyes at some part in our nonprofit leadership journey. She began telling me about her unique situation.
She said her organization had about 10 staff members and the mission was strong. The programs were working. From the outside, everything looked okay.
But inside the organization, things had started to unravel. There were HR complaints leading to an investigation and staff tension that no one quite knew how to address.
People were avoiding hard conversations. While she wanted to be transparent with what was going on with the HR investigation, she couldn’t.
Her staff members were upset that she wasn’t telling them everything, and she felt like she was really boxed into a corner.
I immediately related to what she was going through and we ended up working together for the next year. I related to her because I was her.
Turning Setbacks into Stepping Stones
Hi, I’m Marsha Beckner. If we haven’t yet met, I’m a nonprofit CEO mentor and culture strategist.
For nearly two decades I’ve worked inside nonprofit organizations and alongside the leaders who run them.
But before I ever mentored nonprofits, CEOs, and eds, I was one, and my journey into this work started in a place I never expected.
When I was 27 years old, I was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer. Like many people who experience cancer, that diagnosis changed the trajectory of my life overnight.
My doctor had thought I had a benign tumor on my ovary, and so we scheduled a surgery to remove that tumor and she said I’d be back to work in a week.
When I asked her, could I still have kids, she said, oh, yes, you only need one ovary to have kids. The worst that can happen is that we might remove one ovary.
So I go into surgery and what happens when they open me up, they find stage three ovarian cancer spread throughout, not just both ovaries, but my entire abdomen.
An emergency hysterectomy was done without my knowledge. It left me infertile, and at that point I was newly married and ready to start a family.
My marriage slowly or quickly kind of unraveled and a year to the date of my diagnosis, I found myself standing in divorce court alone.
As you can imagine, that was one of the lowest points of a person’s life. But it was also the beginning of something unexpected.
While I was going through chemotherapy, I realized how isolating the cancer journey can be.
Patients and families are suddenly navigating fear, uncertainty, medical decisions, and emotional overwhelm, often without coordinated support that makes that experience more humane.
That realization led me to start an organization called My Lifeline Cancer Foundation in 2007. I even wrote a book about that journey.
It’s called You Are Meant For Great Things. My story of Turning Setbacks into Stepping Stones.
In this book, I share the full story of how that diagnosis changed everything. More importantly, I share how I found my way back to a life I loved.
That experience led me to build an organization dedicated to supporting cancer patients and their families throughout treatment with care, optimism, and possibility.
When I started my lifeline, I had this passion, determination and a mission that mattered deeply to me. What I didn’t have was a roadmap for how to build and grow a nonprofit.
I was absolutely clueless, so I did what many founders do. I read everything I could find. I searched online.
I tried to piece together the puzzle of building a board, fundraising, leadership, team building, and program growth from whatever resources I could get my hands on.
In many ways that worked in the startup phase. The organization grew and people really cared about our mission.
We started reaching more patients and families across the country. But if I’m honest, for a long time it felt like I was operating in the dark.
It’s almost like when you’re in the closet and the lights are off and you’re just like touching all the clothes and trying to feel around for the sweater you wanna wear.
That was the arena I felt like I was operating in. There were moments when I wondered if I was making the right leadership decisions.
Many, many days and weeks and months were probably filled with doubting myself. Am I doing this right? Am I the right person?
The Power of Mentorship and Growth
There were people dynamics I didn’t yet know how to navigate. There were board conversations that felt both delicate and complicated.
Like many nonprofit leaders, I often carried those questions home with me alone. Then about three or four years into leading the organization, something shifted.
I found a mentor, or I should say he found me. His name was Rich Male and we shared an office space together. He mentored me.
He was an incredible community organizer and built and led organizations both in Africa and the US.
He understood the realities of the role in a way that books and articles simply couldn’t teach. What he gave me wasn’t just advice.
Even more importantly, he gave me space to think, a place to talk through the leadership situations that didn’t show up in a Google search.
The staff challenges, the board dynamics, and the moments when you’re trying to decide how to lead when the stakes feel so high.
Having someone who had been there before changed everything for me. I started leading with more confidence and conviction.
I address people dynamics earlier and more directly. I began to understand the cultural foundations that allow an organization to thrive without fracturing internally.
As my leadership skills grew, the organization grew as well. Our fundraising increased, our team became healthier and stronger.
Our credibility in the community expanded and over the course of the next decade, we scaled this organization nationally.
Ultimately, we merged My Lifeline Cancer Foundation into the global network known as the Cancer Support Community, so that even more patients and families could be served.
I am incredibly proud of every stage of that journey. As hard as some parts were, the growth, the setbacks, and the lessons learned are what shape how I mentor today.
Navigating the People Problems
Here’s what’s become very clear to me over the years. The biggest leadership challenges nonprofit CEOs and executive directors face are rarely technical problems.
They’re people problems. They’re the moments when trust inside a team begins to slip. They’re the conversations leaders hesitate to have.
They’re the hiring and firing decisions that shape the culture of an organization for years to come. They’re the board dynamics that require diplomacy and courage.
I see nonprofit leaders struggling with these things over and over again. I want you to know that if you’re experiencing any of these struggles, you are not alone.
I myself experienced them as well. I think every nonprofit leader from startup to growth to maturity phase has these issues.
The problem is many leaders are moving dangerously close to burnout. They care deeply about their mission, but they’re carrying an enormous burden of responsibilities.
They’re trying to stay calm and regulated in situations that feel anything but calm. One staffing issue can turn into another conversation and another side meeting.
Another concern that needs attention could become an HR complaint or investigation. That is what we want to try and avoid.
Before long, you can see leaders are spending most of their time navigating people dynamics instead of leading the mission they care about.
Many CEOs and executive directors feel incredibly alone in that experience. The way that I visualize it in my mind is to think about an hourglass with the sand.
You’re that middle, tiny part. There’s no one else at your level. You’ve got the board above you who are your bosses legally, and then you’ve got the staff below.
There’s no peer in your organization. That’s why it’s so important to join a community like ours.
Find your own community of other executive directors to humanize the experience of nonprofit leadership.
Many leaders not only feel alone, they want to know who they could talk to honestly and vent to without worrying about confidentiality or judgment.
Because they’re capable, determined people, they often fall into a pattern I see all the time. They look at their to-do list and think it would be faster to do it themselves.
That instinct pulls leaders deeper into the weeds. Instead of building a strong management team, the CEO becomes the manager of everything.
Instead of focusing on vision and strategy, they become the problem solver for every issue that surfaces.
We all know what that leads to. That leads to burnout, stress, and exhaustion. I’ve also lived all those moments myself.
A Resource for the Journey Ahead
It still surprises me how often nonprofit leaders are expected to navigate all this without much guidance or support. That is why I created this podcast.
This podcast is a labor of love because I want to offer a weekly resource that will normalize what you’re going through.
It will bring you actionable strategies, practical insights, and takeaways that you can do the next day.
I want you to feel confident. I want you to lead with conviction, and I want you to stop spinning out and set healthy boundaries.
I know you want to design an inclusive, healthy, empowering culture where you and your staff can thrive.
I want you to unify your teams, build morale, and build trust so that you can preserve the mission and the community that you care so much about.
So every week we’re gonna talk about the real dynamics of nonprofit leadership. We’ll explore how culture shapes the sustainability of a mission.
We’ll talk about navigating staff dynamics with clarity and courage, building strong managers, and creating organizations where the team can thrive.
I’m really excited to bring you guests, other nonprofit leaders, fundraising experts, culture builders, and thought leaders I deeply admire.
I definitely see myself more as a guide and not a guru, so I don’t have all the answers. I’m in a continuous process of learning and development just like you are.
That is my lifelong journey, just like I believe it’s everyone’s. Ultimately my goal for this podcast is to be a friend and a companion for you.
If you’ve ever found yourself spinning late at night, second guessing every word, or rewriting an email multiple times, you are not alone.
You don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. That ends today. Leadership is our journey of growth.
The strongest, most productive, highest performing nonprofit leaders are the ones who stay curious, stay open to learning, and surround themselves with support.
If you’re a nonprofit leader who wants to build an organization that’s healthy, stable, and capable of expanding its mission, I’d love for you to subscribe.
New episodes will be released every Tuesday, and I’m excited to continue this conversation with you. Thanks for being here.
Remember, you are meant for great things and you don’t have to burn out to prove it.