Aid for Aid Workers Leadership Podcast

One of the big problems with our industry which I have talked about before in episode 44 is complacency.  That is, due to the nature of our environment, because we have so many challenges with logistics and lack of infrastructure and resources and the challenges with finding qualified staff, we become complacent and don’t hold ourselves to the standard we might ordinarily.  I can understand the re...

Maintaining good habits is not easy - especially because as a rule we don't see the rewards for good habits until the future.  In other words, we have to wait to experience the benefits of our hard work.  This can be challenging when there are so many immediate temptations - such as that piece of cake, or watching Netflix, or taking a nap...  In this episode I share four ways you can keep the habi...

Knowing how to adapt to a different culture can mean the difference between acceptance and productivity versus rejection and stagnation.  My guest today Johan Romare shares from his 28 years' experience working in diverse cultural contexts some practical lessons learned in how to adapt to local cultures.  In this episode we cover: Some of Johan's hard lessons learned during his first years in aid...

Like many of you, although I enjoyed my time as an aid worker working with my team, I also really enjoyed my vacation time. However also like most of you there were times when I returned from vacation more tired than before I took it. It is really important we are able to recharge and decompress when on holiday, especially with the type of work and intense environments in which we work. In this ep...

Being vulnerable as a leader can earn you more respect and trust with your team, and also make it more likely you will find out about any problems on the horizon before they become too great. My guest today, Lane Bunkers, shares how being vulnerable has helped him in his 30 years working in international development and some ways you can do the same when working with your team that will make your...

Whether it's more freedom to focus on things you've been wanting to work on, or more opportunity for professional growth, it never hurts to have a better relationship with your supervisor.  In this episode I share three ways you can help your supervisor to help you.  These are things I applied myself and found very effective in not only creating a positive relationship but also positioning myself...

We've done it!  Now 50 episodes in the making!  To celebrate this milestone, the next two episodes feature my husband Shannon and myself as we talk about our combined 32 years' experience in the aid world, lessons learned, and some crazy things that have happened along the way.  Among other things, today we cover: Our most rewarding experience in aid work Lessons learned from living in war torn co...

Today’s episode is something that is SO important and so simple and yet many of us are not taking the time to do properly.   And that is networking in a way that will ensure your future job security. My guest today Raina learned this the hard way after a career break when she found that the way she was networking before she went on break has not allowed her to jump back into the aid world.  As you...

Today I am sharing six proven and unconventional ways to make your weekly team meetings more effective, and more interesting!  They are proven because they are things I tried and found made my meetings go from dull to engaging, and from dragging to productive.  I purposely focused on ideas you normally would not think of to make meetings more effective, and so I think there will be at least one or...

This is one of the things I enjoyed the least about aid work--- the number of ridiculous meetings we have to attend. Of course some meetings can be very productive, but let's face it, most of them are at least a partial waste of time.   Because I have heard this is a challenge for so many of you, I am doing a two part episode on meetings - so you can free up more time during your week to focus on...

Sometimes we need to look again at the assumptions we make when working in difficult environments.  Are the obstacles we perceive really impossible to overcome, or are we in the habit of not thinking of ways to make them possible?  For resources mentioned please visit www.aidforaidworkers.com/podcast/44

Let's face it--- in international development we are faced with a lot of stress in our day to day work.  This stress is only compounded when we go home and the generator is broken, there is a curfew for security reasons, or we develop malaria after last week's field visit.  To add to this stress further, as humanitarians we put even more pressure on ourselves to do our best because we know by doin...

I have always wanted to do a ten-day silent retreat and hadn’t thought through all of the challenges involved. Sitting for 100 hours?  Not talking for 10 days?  My goal: to have a clearer mind, perhaps figure out my purpose in life, and a bonus would be enlightenment. To some of you this may sound like a nightmare, to others intriguing. This episode I am dedicating to all of you, so you can decide...

In today’s episode Virginia da Graca and her colleague Nuno Delicado share a tremendous challenge they faced which we all fear--- that is, having less funding for programming.  But in this case, their funding wasn’t just slashed a few thousand dollars--- it actually went from an annual budget of $77,000 to zero--- yes, ZERO.  Being in this situation made them challenge assumptions about what opera...

Over the last few weeks I have had some time to reflect over the struggles I had as a humanitarian leader in Timor and what was effective in overcoming these struggles. In this episode I share three of the remaining practices that I would do again as a leader to make a more united and motivated team. Also I am giving away a freebie to those signed up for Supplemental Sundays by November 24th which...

So I am back from my break and transition to Kenya, which has already provided some interesting animal encounters! During this break I have had some time to reflect on some of the most effective things that had the biggest impact in terms of team motivation and allowed me to build a strong high performing team when I was Country Director in Timor-Leste.  The result is this two part episode which o...

First impressions count. But second, third and ongoing impressions also count--- especially when we are interacting with donors, community members, in government meetings or with our supervisor. Of course we all want to make a good impression on these and others in our life - but do we?   My guest today, Gerry Sandusky, has over 30 years' experience in TV broadcasting and almost as many teaching p...

As development leaders we may think it is a given we are promoting dignity within our teams - I mean, we work for humanitarian organizations, of course we promote dignity, right?  In today's episode Tony Castleman will make you think with a dignity lense about not only your own behavior but also some of the other ways (interactions, systems, processes, and norms) which can unknowingly impact the w...

  To receive Supplemental Sundays bi-weekly email please sign up here! This week is part two of a two part series I am doing on reflecting on my work and lessons learned in Timor as I transition out of my role as Country Director there.  In today’s episode I share three more obstacles I faced as a leader and some suggestions on how you can overcome them or prevent them altogether.  These include r...

To receive Supplemental Sundays bi-weekly email please sign up here! I am excited for a big change in my life, but it signifies a big transition in terms of leaving Timor and an amazing team and a country program I have put my heart into building over the last four and a half years.  I have taken some time to reflect what I have done well as a leader during my time here, and what I could have done...

The art of delegation in the humanitarian field can be challenging, considering the wide variety of backgrounds of those we manage. Perhaps you have heard of monkey management, a popular article from the Harvard Business Review which explains delegation in terms of monkeys (tasks) and how those monkeys have a tendency to jump onto the backs of their managers.  This upward delegation burdens you as...

We have a lot of jargon in our industry, and recently it is becoming more and more common for donors and organizations to talk about "learning cultures" and "adaptive management".  But what does that really mean, and how does it relate to our day to day work?  My guest today, Guy Sharrock, has almost 40 years' experience in development and 17 of those in monitoring and evaluation and most recently...

The success of the work we do everyday with implementing partners and communities is directly related to the amount of trust we have in these relationships.  And yet I bet few of you reading this have developed a way to incorporate trust with communities and/or partners into your monitoring and evaluation frameworks.  There are many reasons for this - trust is difficult to measure and its definiti...

Do you ever feel like you are in reactive mode, responding to what is going on around you during your day but not having the time to work on tasks that require focused and undistracted thought time?  Making time for focused time or “deep work” as Cal Newport claims in his in his bestselling book, is linked with innovation, greater productivity and staff morale.  But deep work isn’t just something...

If you want to receive similar exclusive stories each week, please enter your email on the Supplemental Sundays page here . Sometimes you just need to get through the week.  You know what I am talking about - that week where nothing seems to be working, like when you found out that proposal you spent long hours writing was rejected, or perhaps you were late to an important government meeting - an...