Whether it's a one-off contribution or something more ongoing, Having these different roles available, clearly defined, and then recognizing the contribution builds the foundations of a successful volunteer program.

Hello, I'm Patton McDowell, host of the podcast called Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership.

And I'm delighted to congratulate Carol on this wonderful milestone of 100 episodes for the Mission Impact podcast.

And I'm honored to have been part of one of them.

I got three things in response to that question.

Number one, let's make sure we align the roles with the mission and impact that staff and volunteers and board members want to do.

Often, I do not see that alignment with organizations.

potentially so we want to just find the right balance there's nothing wrong with consensus so I want to start by asking you like think back to your time as a senior leader in one of those organizations that you've worked in was there a moment where you were trying to be collaborative when you were trying to be collaborative actually slowed a decision or made it harder on yourself to lead and do you remember what was happening at that moment

Very much so.

I was one of the youngest program directors in the country as the senior program officer at Special Olympics North Carolina.

And I felt, as we all do sometimes, a bit of imposter syndrome.

And I felt like, and the reason I wanted unanimous approval for any decision, because I worried that people were judging, you know, my capacity and quality as a leader.

And so we were tackling some new programming ideas.

I had ideas that I thought made sense, but I probably, stunted the growth of these ideas because I was trying to convince everybody that it was the right decision.

Let's say you have a weekly staff meeting, right? How do you optimize that opportunity for building culture as well as getting work done?