Tania Luna on the importance of employee health and well being for animal advocates

Tania Luna brings us a wealth of knowledge this week as she walks us through the best working practices of organisations seeking to support animals that must integrally include the human animals that work to protect others.

Tania’s team apply their wealth of experience in the tech space to the animal advocacy space supporting organisations to prioritise employee health and well being in pursuit of our common goal: increasing the sustainability and efficiency of our work. Tania offers top tips, learnings from supporting organisations so far and explains more about their service at Scarlet Spark and how they can support you.

If you are interested in movement health and especially if you are a leader who could benefit from advice on running an organisation, no matter how big or small or someone who has the desire to run an organisation in the future - this is the perfect episode. 

• Leadership office hours for any leadership challenges and questions (open to the entire animal protection community).
• Workshops every month to brush up on your leadership skills (recordings available if you can’t make it live).
• Animal Advocacy Careers Advice
• Peter Draker? Managed gets done
• James Penny Baker - writing 15 minutes 
• LifeLabs Learning – Catalyst program for small nonprofits 
• Tool library for templates and guides that fortify your teams and organisation. 
• The Scarlet newsLetter for new resources and updates about free events and other learning and development opportunities.
• LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook for ongoing tips.
• Tania’s latest book, Lead Together, on shared power leadership
• Tania’s last book (The Leader Lab) on management and leadership skills.
• 4000 weeks – oliver burkeman 
• 2023 study on leadership challenges in animal protection
  
  00:00:00:00 | Intro
  00:07:22:13 | Scarlet Spark
  00:15:34:08 | Optimal team size
  00:17:33:15 | Importance of investing in employee well-being
  00:26:53:08 | Rola clarity as Founder
  00:37:04:20 | What can Organizations expect from Scarlet Spark
  00:45:40:10 | Personal growth in leadership
  00:52:11:11 | Identifying problems for leaders
  00:56:38:14 | Morning pages
  01:09:24:18 | Leader Lab
  01:16:14:10 | Closing questions

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!

Transcript

Tania: 
Back to your question of what's unique within animal advocacy is everyone's overwhelmed everywhere. Burnout is common everywhere. Sorry, but the depth of pain that people feel within our movement for not doing enough is unique. You know, there's a sense of, literally animals are dying or suffering if I don't get this thing done. So as a result of that, it's very easy to just constantly. I think of it as, like, animal abuse. It's just we're the animals that we're abusing, right? So we're like constantly either stretching ourselves way too thin or beating ourselves up and constantly feeling like failures, which of course, like, if you take any animal and abuse them and beat them up and constantly punish them, they're going to be diminished in their capacity to thrive. 

Tania:
But we do it to ourselves and then when we're in leadership roles, we role model that. 

Amy:
Hi, my name is Amy. 

James:
And my name is James, and this. 

Amy:
Is How I Learned to Love Shrimp, a podcast about promising ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement. Tania Luna brings us a wealth of knowledge this week as she walks us through the best working practices of organisations seeking to support animals that must integrally include human animals that work to protect others. Tania's team apply their wealth of experience in the tech space to the animal advocacy space, supporting organisations to prioritise employee health and wellbeing in pursuit of our common goal and increasing the sustainability and efficiency of our work. Tania offers top tips, learnings from supporting organisations so far, and explains much more about their service at Scarlet Spark and how they can support you.

Amy:
So if you're interested in movement health, and especially if you're a leader who could benefit from advice on running an organisation, no matter how big or small, or someone who has the desire to run an organisation in the future, then this is the perfect episode for you. We also love seeing exciting updates from previous guests. And this week, thanks to a proposal put forward by Ines, our previous guest at the Party for Animals, which was subsequently approved by the House of Representatives, the Dutch government will now be pushing for a European import ban on shrimp who've experienced eyestalk ablation, which we know from our episode with Andreas is an extremely painful trauma for shrimp. The Minister for Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality will also be calling on Dutch supermarkets to stop selling shrimp who've been mistreated in this way. Amazing success from Ines. 

Amy:
So without further ado, enjoy this week's episode. 

James:
Hi, everyone. Today we are joined by Tania Luna, who is the co-founder of Scarlet Spark, which is a nonprofit that offers free leadership development and organizational health resources to animal protection charities. She is a psychology researcher, author of multiple leadership books, and lives with 34 rescued animals and one human. Welcome, Tania. 

Tania:
Thank you so much. So delighted to be here. 

Amy:
What a bio!

Tania:
Yeah. Me and potentially some of my animals will be joining, hopefully not in a way that interrupts our fascinating conversation that I'm sure we'll be having. 

James:
I think we're always very welcoming of animal interruptions. I think there's been a few cats and dogs that have come in, which are always nice for people who are watching on YouTube, which you can do. You can always see some of the furry or non furry creatures come through, which is quite nice. So the first question I'd like to get everyone started off with is, what's an animal related view you've changed your mind on recently and how come? 

Tania:
Roosters. I've been thinking a lot about roosters, learning a lot about roosters. We adopted two of them and then two more. We don't have hens. And something that I've always kind of assumed about roosters is that they're quite territorial, or people will say, you can't have roosters living together because they'll start fighting with one another. This is one of the only reasons I go on Facebook is to learn about roosters and pigs, because I live with both of them. And the popular opinion is you have to show them who's boss, you have to demonstrate dominance. And I was fortunate enough to find this group called Rooster Allies, which takes a very rooster centric approach to developing relationships with roosters. And it's just as you would expect with so many other animals, dominance is not a great tactic. Turns out, not surprisingly, if you try to show a rooster who's boss, they're only going to become either more defensive or more, I don't even want to say aggressive, but will act out. So I've been really learning about the roosters, getting to know them, building their trust. I snuggle with all of them now, which is delightful, learning all the different little sounds and body language and all that stuff. So that's been amazing. 

Amy:
Very good. James, have you got one for this week? 

James:
It's funny, I think when other people have answered this question, it's been much more like animal movements. But this was like an actual animal related view, which is great. I think one that we knew because it was actually in a recent episode, but I actually listened to this episode again with Doug from Eurogroup about fish. And something that I forget about is how much longer farmed fish live, before they're killed, sadly, relative to other animals. So broiler chickens, it's like 42 days. And for salmon, it can be like up to four years. And the average, I think, for farmed fish is like two years. And that, I guess, was kind of, I don't know, I still find surprising just because obviously that means if the conditions in these ponds or these farms are bad, such a long period of time. 

James:
So I guess that's something that's, like, weighing on my mind in terms of actually how to then think about converting animals killed to how long, like, how many are actually alive at any one time. So, anyway, I'm kind of grappling with this new way of thinking about stuff, and that was, yeah, thanks, Doug, for that kind of interesting tidbit. 

Amy:
And it's interesting because we often talk about the numbers, right? That's what makes us focus on fish, is the numbers. But then also actually now adding in potentially the lifespan and the length of the suffering. Not so much, it's more, I guess, remote work related, which many of us are. But Thailand has just opened up nomadic visas. You can stay there for up to five years now on a nomadic visa. And we just visited Thailand recently. So I just saw the news and was like, I think we probably have a lot of digital nomads that listen in who could take advantage of this. So, yeah, random one from me. But it's just what came into mind. So, Tania, we, of course, want to talk to you about your organization, Scarlet Spark.

Amy:
And one thing when doing some research for the podcast I particularly was drawn to was the tagline. And I'm just going to read that verbatim, which is “creating human friendly workplaces to spark the full potential of organizations that help animals”. And I actually was just really drawn to it because I've certainly had experiences in the past where, you know, we're all passionate. We're putting all of this effort into helping animals, and often at the expense, sometimes, of the people who are doing the work. And I think that's so important. And I’m really interested in what that sparked for you. And if you can talk us through how you came to found this organization. 

Tania:
I guess I'll answer the first part of that question first. Cause I think about it constantly. More people doesn't necessarily mean better results, and coming together to work doesn't necessarily mean coming together to work well. In fact, I remember early on in my career in organizational psychology and organizational health, I kept thinking of this study that looked at what happens when you have people in an experiment participate in kind of like a tug of war game and you measure what is the force that each side exerts in that game. And when you add more people you would think that the group would get stronger and stronger. But what ends up happening is the more people there are, the less each person tends to pull. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, right? Like it's not necessarily a bad thing. 

Tania:
It might be that as a solo activist you're doing too much and so it's important to distribute some of that workload. But more often than not people reduce their level of passion and energy and effort as the group grows. And in the workplace what that looks like is just massive amounts of inefficiencies. It's not just oh, we're distributing the work and so we're being more sustainable. There are more people now and so there's more frustration and more miscommunication and more loss of time and energy and all this kind of stuff. 

Tania:
And so there are so many amazing organizations obviously as you know, who are doing this work to change the world for animals, but most of them don't have the time or the resources or the experience to think about how do we build a really healthy, effective, efficient organization where when we do come together actually the contribution of each person grows instead of diminishes. And so yeah, that's one of the reasons we think of the word spark is we're not doing the advocacy work ourselves. We want to serve as almost like that spark that lights and sustains the flame or the fire of organizations that have already committed to that mission. 

Amy:
It's so important. And like you say something that I think has probably just not historically been prioritized, especially when the movement grows out of normally voluntary efforts. And people who establish organisations kind of accidentally because they were just passionate about a specific topic and it's an organization that's formed and you know, rarely do people come into the movement who have trained in management or these really specific tools that do support those really healthy cultures within organizations that inevitably grow and then become huge and need all these support services within the team. 

Tania:
Or I would even say become two people or become three people. Absolutely. Once you're over probably 25 people or so, you really need to put scalable systems in place. But even being a group of three people, it's not just you and your own brain. You need to be so much more explicit about your expectations. You need to be so much more deliberate in your communication and your planning. I'll also say that within animal advocacy, I've often seen people say, we don't have MBAs or we don't have management training and experience. My background prior to co-founding Scarlet Spark was co founding another organization called LifeLabs Learning, where at least for the first few years, most of our clients were rapid growth tech companies, and they had the same exact kind of self image. 

Tania:
So they would say, we don't have MBAs, we're engineers, we don’t have management experience. We're just figuring this out. And so I would say that the lack of MBA or the lack of business experience isn't necessarily, first of all, it's not an unusual thing. Many rapidly growing industries are very similar. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, because I don't think I've worked with MBA trained individuals who were far more successful or, you know, more building organizations either. So I think it's actually a great place to start from, is we care about the work, we care about the mission. And now let's also add on the skills and tools that we need to build an organization. 

James:
Yeah, makes sense. These people who are great managers weren't born as great managers. Everyone started off not managing anything and then managing a small thing, then a bigger thing, and then suddenly you were like the CEO of a Fortune 500 companies. So it's like no one innately, I think, has all the skills required. So it does make sense that we shouldn't be too jealous, because we can also kind of skill up and learn the same way that every other industry and sector has. 

Tania:
Yes, completely agree. And maybe we have an advantage, too, because people within our movement tend to be more compassionate and more empathetic and more attentive to all animals, including human animals. So I think we're in a really good place, and it's okay that the experience isn't there yet because we're building it. Confession is, we didn't start Scarlet Spark thinking that we would be doing what we're doing now. So Charlene and Alyssa and I and Brian, who's my husband, and he's kind of our part time, sometimes involved, but Charlene, Alyssa, and I are full time involved. We thought that we were going to be helping with operating efficiency for sanctuaries and rescues. We were all involved in some kind of animal rescue. You know, we live with lots of animals, and we were like, oh, my gosh, the way these organizations operate, there's just so many inefficiencies. 

Tania:
There's so much that's being done manually that could be automated, things like that. And so we actually thought that's what we were going to be doing. And then we piloted that a little bit and we found that the rescues and sanctuaries kind of didn't want that support. They were like, yes, we get it's important, but we don't have time for that. Or maybe there just wasn't trust in us. Because who are these random people trying to tell you how to do your job when you've already been doing it for 20 years? And it was actually through some career coaching, through animal advocacy careers. Basically, Martin, who was the advisor at the time, was like, why don't you just do what you already know how to do and you have skills and experience in? And my last company was doing leadership training. 

Tania:
We also studied over 2000 companies and we trained over 400,000 managers. And he was like, why don't you just use that and leverage that experience? Alyssa and Charlene both had experience that was really relevant both in academia and in the like. I worked in kind of startups, Charlene worked in larger organizations. We all had an education and facilitation background, same with Brian. So we were like, oh, okay, maybe we should just play to our strengths. And we also didn't even know about the whole animal advocacy world. Now that I'm inside of it, I'm like, obviously this is the most important work to be doing. But as just like a random vegan who, you know, just cared a lot but didn't understand the inner workings of the systems level change that was happening, I didn't even know about the organizations to approach. 

Tania:
So it was actually THL, The Humane League. That was the first organization we reached out to and said, like, do you wanna give this a try and see if we could be helpful? And they were like, yeah, sure. And then from there, we kind of pilot it with a small number of organizations, realized that this is a thing. There's a need for our actual existing skill set for the things we're really quite good at and sort of adjusted. And for the past almost two years, I guess two years in September, we've been focusing on leadership and organizational health. 

Amy:
Great shout out to animal advocacy careers. I think that's such an important service to just show people the skill sets that they do have that you can apply to the space. I think you often have your grand plan of where you could use your skillset, and then it's others that just point you in the right direction of things that you knew you were good at and knew that you could fulfill and find a space in the movement for you there. 

Tania:
Yeah. If you could just see the spreadsheet we created of, like, ways we can help animals. What's the most- What's the biggest impact we can make for animals? And it was like the, duh, just do the thing that you're good at. 

Amy:
Right. 

James:
I want to ask a random bit of trivia that it just on my mind because it came up recently and I thought, you know, you're an organizational researcher. I thought, why not? I'm sure you've heard of this thing, but, like, you know, the optimal team size is, like, between six and eight people. Is that true? I guess you probably know much more about this. How true is that fact? And is there an optimal team size? 

Tania:
Yeah. So there's a lot of kind of, I don't know, folk wisdom around the idea that a team should never exceed the number of slices in a pizza or exceed the number of people that you would be able to sit around a table and just look at and take in and have conversations with. That said, there isn't actually research support, like, empirical research support for that. I think that's because team is such a mushy word. Team just means a group of people that are interdependent, that come together to achieve a particular goal. If the goal is a really large one, then it probably makes sense for there to be more people. The thing that there's more consistent research around is that after a company size of 150 employees, things almost always get much harder and more inefficient. 

Tania:
In fact, there are some organizations, like Semco in Brazil, that has a rule, even though they're thousands of people, that they will break off into segments after they hit 150. I believe it's called the Dunbar number. 

James:
Yeah, Dunbar's number. Right. 

Tania:
It's like, how many faces and names and, like, relationships we can actually manage is 150. So I don't think 6-8 is a rule. I think it's maybe more like a nudge to go, are we being as small as is practical? Because smaller tends to be more efficient, while also inviting diverse perspectives and points of view and things like that. So smaller tends to be better. But I haven't found evidence that six to eight is the magic number. 

James:
Got to clear up some misinformation, because it came up in a meeting yesterday, and I was like, did a bit of googling, and I was like, I don't know if any of this is real. Cool. 

Amy:
And so why do you think it's so important to invest in employee health and wellbeing? I guess it sounds like a relatively simple question, but I'd like your view on those really key factors that play into why that's important. 

Tania:
So we think about organizational health, and we think about employee well being as almost like two branches of the same tree. Organizational health generally has to do with what are the systems that we've put into place to create the kind of ecosystem where positive, constructive behaviors happen? So, for example, is our theory of change really clear? Do we have values that are going to guide our decision making so that people can make decisions that are aligned independently without us having to question everything and kind of micromanage everything? Do we have clear systems in place to minimize bias? Do we have clear systems? And that could be as simple as, like, we always have two decision makers and a tiebreaker for high stakes decisions like hiring or firing. We have a structured interview process. So things like that. 

Tania:
So are there structures that are going to be like the mechanism for producing really consistently positive results? And that's a lot of the organizational health piece. And then the employee well being is, are the individuals that are part of that ecosystem set up for success both in the short term and in the long term, especially within animal advocacy. This is not just about being effective today. It's about endurance combined with being really deliberate about elevating and expanding our capacity. So we need to be able to do really great stuff today. We need to keep doing really great stuff, and we need to get better and better at doing the things that we're doing. Why is it important? Because amazing missions, amazing ideas, just flounder without the systems and the culture that creates it- makes it possible for people to actually execute on that idea. 

Tania:
Burnout is incredibly common, as I'm sure you both know, because people are just working in ways that are not sustainable. They join because they love the mission, they care so deeply about animals, but then their energy is just drained with conflict and miscommunication and confusion and questioning themselves and feeling disrespected and feeling overwhelmed and all that kind of stuff. So we see our goal is like, let's take away all of that noise. Let's take away all of the stuff that strips us of our capacity to achieve that mission so that we can really do the work that we showed up to do. 

James:
Yeah. As someone who was running an organization where at one point I was spending at least half of my energy and probably my time in like internal conflicts and all these problems, and it was just like a hellish, like three to six months and being like, it's incredible how little work. I can't actually remember any work that got done in that period because that just wasn't the focus. Yes, it is amazing how much time and energy that can suck up.

Tania:
You know, based on what you just said. It makes me think of. There are two pieces of feedback that we get most often that I find really interesting. One is the word everything feels lighter. And I think that goes along with what you just said. It's like, oh, I had this burden that I was carrying of both the external burden of I have to manage these dynamics and the internal burden of I'm questioning myself, I'm stressing myself out, that kind of stuff. The other word we've gotten a lot is game-changing. I love that. I don't know. We never set out to change the game, but so often that we get this word game-changing. And I really think it's about all of a sudden you have this new set of tools that allows you to essentially play a different game. 

Tania:
You were playing a really hard, stressful, frustrating game, and now you get to play this more joyful, easier, more fun game. 

James:
Do you have a sense of the groups you've been working over the last two years? What are the main ways the animal advocacy movement groups, in what ways are they the furthest away from this ideal employee health systems and well being? Are there in particular places that you see coming up and up? And again, that we're a bit weak on? 

Tania:
The two most common that we say over and over and we notice over and over are lack of goal clarity and lack of role clarity. So what I mean by lack of goal clarity is, yes, we know that we're here to help animals. We know roughly what our theory of change is going to be. But very often it's a sense of we're constantly busy, we're constantly overwhelmed, but we're not quite clear what are the very specific, tangible things that we're trying to achieve. Sometimes that's a problem of having no goals, and it's just like we're going to do tasks and we're going to do to-do list items, but we're not clear whether we like, there's no North Star helping us really think strategically about what's the thing, what are the big things we're trying to achieve. 

Tania:
And the other extreme is we have way too many goals. So we'll work with an organization that has like 20 goals, which is very similar to having no goals. Yeah, because it's like if you need to get everything done as if everything is most important then nothing is most important. 

James:
When you say lack of goal clarity, do you mean like on an organization level or like on a team by team level as well? 

Tania:
Depends on the organization size. With smaller organizations, where it's like under five people or so, it's often just lack on an organizational level. With larger organizations, what tends to be really tricky is figuring out, okay, we know what our org level goals are, but how do we measure success at the individual level, or even, as you said, on the team level? So just defining success, maybe that's a better way to say it. What is our definition of success? So that's a really big part of it. And so many things come out of that. This feeling of overwhelm, this feeling of, why is my team not stepping up and contributing more? Why do I either feel like I have to micromanage or on the other side? I feel so micromanaged. And very often that's just because we haven't yet aligned on where we're going. 

Tania:
And as soon as that destination is really clear, it makes it so much easier for people to plan well, to think strategically, to manage themselves, to proactively recommend solutions. So goal clarity, or definition of success, is one, and then the other is role clarity, which is what is each of us doing, which sounds basic. And usually there's a- mostly that's done, although there's still lots of questions of, like, who's doing this thing? And if no one's doing it, or if, like, we're all sort of responsible for it, but it's not getting done, then what happens? A more common one, though, is within role clarity, decision making authority. Like, who has the authority to make this decision so we're not either waiting on it or, like, spinning and spinning in circles or feeling frustrated because we're stepping on each other's toes. 

Tania:
So role clarity, goal clarity. And again, like, the role clarity piece, can- a lack of it can lead to overwhelm. It can also lead to a lot of this feeling of not being appreciated, or a lot of the power struggles or interpersonal tensions so often are just alleviated with, what does this role do? What does this role do? What does this role decide? What does this role decide? And again, how do we define success for that role so that we can self monitor and kind of be our own boss first and foremost? 

Amy:
And are those similar challenges to what you've seen across other sectors? I guess they're fairly normal. Do you think there's anything that stands out as particularly unique for the area of work that we're in. 

Tania:
I think it's only unique in that within animal advocacy, there are quite a lot of relatively small organizations. So sometimes I'll be speaking to a funder or something and they'll say, this organization is huge. And I'm like, oh, how many people are there? And they'll be like, 40 people. Whereas in my past life, working at LifeLabs Learning, you know, small was 150 people, or maybe under 150 people was considered small in our movement. That those are kind of, we think of those as the giant organizations. And so role and goal clarity are very common challenges for smaller organizations because there's just like, feels like there's so much to do. We're kind of constantly in startup mode. We're relying on different people to fill different, you know, kind of gaps in our plan. 

Tania:
But it's just because the norm is that organizations within animal advocacy are so small. It's almost like every single or most of us are solving that problem, rather than being able to get beyond, okay, we've gotten role clarity. We've gotten goal clarity. Now what? So it's almost like we're all, like, trapped in that two or three year old age group. I think that piece is quite unique and different. You know, in the past, and we worked with over 2000 organizations, usually we would talk to them and be like, oh, your challenge is very different from this other organization's challenge. Whereas here we can almost predict that roles and goals are going to need some support. 

Amy:
And what's the optimal time to, like, assess those? Because I think as a co, you know, as a co founder or founder of a relatively new organization, there naturally isn't much role clarity because you're having to just wear a lot of hats and get right down in the weeds and be doing a lot of the tasks. And actually, often it's not that clear. Is there a sense of, is it when the team expands or when you've been with the organization a certain time? Like, at what point should that shift into more formal goal and role setting occur? 

Tania:
I actually think that it can and probably should happen right from the beginning. And wearing different hats doesn't mean having confusion or ambiguity or friction around who's wearing that hat. So you might say, for example, my role isn't executive director. My role is executive director, and I oversee our HR systems and I oversee our financial systems, and I over, you know, so almost like listing, what are those buckets that you're holding? It's not like, here's my job title. Here's my job description. It's more like, what roles am I currently doing? And in a smaller team, it might be totally realistic to just hold lots of different roles. And then as you grow, you go, oh, you know, this is becoming a full time thing, or this is becoming a part time thing. 

Tania:
Let me take this bucket that I've been holding and pass it on to someone else. In a new organization, you might even say, we're going to rotate who holds this role. So maybe I'm doing bookkeeping for this six month period, and then that's going to move on to someone else. But I think there's still, absolutely, it's essential to be able to spell that out. And even quite frequently, depending on how much ambiguity there is, monthly quarterly check in and go, where do we have role squishiness? Or where do we have role blur? Sometimes you just do it on a project by project basis. Like for this project, we really like the DACI model. So it's driver, approver, consultant, informed. 

Tania:
So we'll go for this particular project, I'm the driver and we're going to approve it together as a team or for this project, I'm the driver and I'm the approver. Consultants, I'm going to check in with you all for feedback and then informed, I'll let you know what I've decided. So I think to your point, Amy, it's like, it's segmenting it in each of those little hats. Sometimes the hat is a role, sometimes the hat is a project, but you still want it to be your hat. 

Amy:
Yeah, it's so interesting. As a little aside, we actually did this more recently in our personal life, myself and my partner - also James. Not confusing at all. And that was a really interesting exercise, just writing down like all of the life responsibilities and then just segmenting them into like, okay, I'm taking that bucket. You've been doing that bucket, but actually that meant you had tons of buckets. And that's just naturally fallen to me as, you know, perhaps being the female or the mother of the family. And that actually could have been passed on. And so perhaps there's also some gender or, you know, like experience challenges there where just the more organize-y or like, you know, HR-y tasks are going to women and because it's stereotypically more natural or- I think there's a lot of conversation to happen there. 

Amy:
And yeah, it just reminded me that we've also done that privately. 

Tania:
I love that you did that. A big kind of emotion that we pay attention to is resentment in relationships in the workplace. And as you know, outside of the workplace as well, because that tends to be like this silent poison that's just like, entering its toxins into the soil that we're all growing in. And very often resentment comes from the sense of there's imbalance here. And you know, gender is a big part of it. We also see culture is another component of it, like, who is more socialized to support, who is more socialized to ask for what they need? And so that can very quickly spiral without just going, okay, just to be clear and to be fair, let's put this into buckets. The other thing that I notice is back to your question of what's unique within animal advocacy is everyone's overwhelmed everywhere. 

Tania:
Burnout is common everywhere. But the depth of pain that people feel within our movement for not doing enough is unique. There's a sense of, literally, animals are dying or suffering if I don't get this thing done. So as a result of that, it's very easy to just constantly, I think of it as, like, animal abuse. It's just we're the animals that we're abusing, right? So we're, like, constantly either stretching ourselves way too thin or beating ourselves up and constantly feeling like failures, which, of course, like, if you take any animal and abuse them and beat them up and constantly punish them, they're going to be diminished in their capacity to thrive. But we do it to ourselves. And then when we're in leadership roles, we role model that. Role modeling-

Tania:
Whenever you have any sense of any kind of power, whether it's formal or informal, what you do, people consciously and unconsciously pick that up and repeat it. And so, anyway, back to the buckets. One of the things that I notice is that quite often, just doing the exercise of writing out everything that you've been doing, writing out whether it's everything you've been doing and all of the kind of worries and responsibilities that you've been holding onto in your head, like, you just see people's body language change instantly, where they're like, oh, my gosh, I had no idea that was all, you know, swirling around in there. And oftentimes, just writing it down and looking at it allows you to be a lot more thoughtful about which of this should I just stop doing? 

Tania:
And which of those, you know, could be done later, could be done more efficiently, redistributed.

Amy:
Because also sometimes colleagues or co-founders or your managers don't even know that you were doing that task. “Oh, like, you're doing that and you're spending that amount of time on that. Wow. Definitely just stop that right now. You know, someone else can take on that responsibility.” I think often it is like you don't realize. They don't realize. And those challenges could be distributed more evenly or just more appropriate to the role. 

Tania:
Yeah, or like the stop that right now approach again, partially, I think, I don't know. A big chunk of it has to do with this feeling of urgency and loss and sense of responsibility toward animals that makes us assume that more is always better. I should be working more. I should be working longer hours. I should be. Any time that I'm pausing and thinking and reflecting and resting is fueled or you get flooded with a sense of guilt or, yeah, I just, it's not done because you feel like I'm doing something bad. And of course it just doesn't work that way. You know that those opportunities just pause and go, okay, I've just taken ten minutes to take a look at this and realize I should just not be doing that thing at all. 

Tania:
Very often when we work with organizations one one, we're helping them do less and then when we follow up with them six months later, they're like, we achieve so much more. Because it just works like that every time. 

James:
Yeah. I'd be curious to hear more about because it seems like it's kind of going into goal clarity, which I definitely want to pick on more as well because you said there's two main problems. One is organizations that wouldn't really set a goal. And the other one is there's too many and be kind of doing everything at once. And it seems like is the latter more common that people have set too many goals or what do you think? 

Tania:
Okay, I really haven't thought this through. Take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt, but I feel like when we work with more grassroots types organizations, it tends to be a little bit more like no goals. Let's just be really present and responsive to what's going on and more kind of NGO or maybe particularly EA kind of influenced, effective altruism influenced organizations. They tend to skew on the too many goals because they're going, we have to measure everything. 

James:
And so they're the like 50 OKRs. Yeah, yeah. 

Tania:
We have to do OKRs. And then you're like, oh, I'm still scrolling on this spreadsheet of OKRs. So they're almost like both are maybe overcorrecting in both directions. One is like, I want to do what's most needed and most pressing right now. So let me not set goals at all. And the other is I want to measure and I want to be really clear and structured. And so let me measure everything. Was it Peter Draker that colleges who said, what gets measured gets done, but the full gets managed? What gets measured gets managed, but the full sentence there is, and I'm paraphrasing, what gets measured gets managed regardless of whether that thing is worth doing. 

Tania:
So once we start measuring something, it can also really lead us to over focus on what these very specific, tiny, measurable things are instead of stepping back to go, wait, is this actually the most important thing to be doing? 

James:
I've heard that in the context of, I think, this one called Goodhart’s, which also, it's like, Goodhart’s problem, or like, it's called good hearting, where, like, you set a metric and then rather than, like, the metric is a proxy for doing some good thing, then you end up optimizing for the metric and not. Not the good thing. And then I think, yeah, so, I mean, we've had this previously. Social change lab is like, you know, we had some, like, we were monitoring our social media metrics, but I was like, no, but we should only be monitoring them. Like, we don't want to optimize social media. Like, this really isn't our goal. Like, it's okay to collect data, but, like, I want to be wary of. Like, this is like our holy grail of success. So, yeah, definitely, I can see.

Tania:
And those are two. Those are really important distinctions. I'm a huge fan of data collection because you never know when you might want to go back to that and turn it into a goal or, you know, look back on that and be able to learn from it. But it doesn't mean that every single one of these things needs to be prioritized. And even in organizations that have, let's say, three really clear goals, they're well organized, they're not overwhelmed. That practice of pausing to question the goal, does this still make sense for us? Is the work that we're doing the best way for us to achieve those goals? That pause still really needs to be there for the goals to continue to serve us well. 

Amy:
Okay, well, maybe to wrap up this section on Scarlet Spark specifically, do you want to give us an overview of what organizations can expect when they engage with you and what the process looks like? 

Tania:
We work with organizations in, I guess, three different ways. One is one to one, where once a quarter, generally we put out a call for, hey, we have space for new one one clients. So please sign up for our newsletter for that. It's called the Scarlet Newsletter. Scarlet Letter. Get it? Literary reference there. So if you sign up for the Scarlet Newsletter, we will alert everyone at the same time. Hey, we're open for folks to apply. 

James:
And it's all free, right? 

Tania:
It's 100% free. Partly for that reason and partly because we're quite good at what we do. If I do say so myself, we do have a lot more demand than we have availability right now, which is really hard and the worst part of doing this work. But that's why we have that application process. And then we look at it through that lens of who has the needs that are most pressing, combined with the needs that we are really good at solvIng. We also try to diversify who are the organizations we're working with. So we look at everything from, like, where are they in the world? Because we, right now, we're really wanting to be quite distributed in our approach. You know, what's their theory of change? Is their mission focused on, are they grassroots or NGO? 

Tania:
So those kinds of characteristics we factor into which are the organizations that we're going to work with in that quarter. And then one one, it's very much tailored to what the organization needs. Usually it's some combination of coaching, consulting, maybe some training in skills. And the second way that we work with organizations, there's one to one. The second way, we call one to many, which are free leadership workshops that we have at least once a month. We have leadership office hours as well, at least once a month where people can show up and learn a skill, or at our office hours, bring any challenge that they have and get support from us, as well as the amazing other leaders that are in that group. 

Tania:
That's one of my favorite parts, is we can share, like, here's a tool or here's some research, but the people in that room, in that virtual room, can also support each other. And we're continuing to build out more one to many resources. And then finally, the last way that we work with organizations is we call one to all, which have no constraints. These are tools or templates we've created. They're videos, whether it's recordings of workshops or it's like short video tutorials, like, I just did one on compensation strategy, everything you'll need to know, or at least most of the things you've ever wanted to know about compensation. So please go to our website, scarletspark.org, to see what are those different tools. 

Tania:
And we keep adding more and more so that even when we're not able to work with an organization live, hopefully they can skip a lot of the work of researching and thinking about it and agonizing it and doing things wrong and just start with either a tutorial or a tool or a template. 

Amy:
And just to clarify, when you have that criteria, so you're collecting that information on a form, you're asking them, you know, size theory of change, where they're located. Is that because you're trying to work with a whole breadth of organizations, from grassroots to NGOs? Or is that because you're specifically targeting a demographic or a type of organization that you're definitely wanting to test this model on?

Tania:
So the only place where we're targeting is we want to make sure that the need they have is something that we can serve. And, you know, when there are lots of different needs, if it's a question of help, we have people quitting after six months, or it's like we want to create a more fun workplace. We're going to prioritize the organization that is kind of, you know, we're triaging almost. We're going to prioritize an organization that's really struggling. But we are very deliberately actually going for diversity, going for breadth for two reasons. One is we really wanted to test whether we can support all these different kinds of organizations. Like would our services work cross culturally? Would they work with different size organizations? Yeah. Grassroots versus more like organizations that are set up more like a conventional, you know, corporation. 

Amy:
Yeah. 

Tania:
So we wanted to test, you know, will the same interventions work or do we need to make any differences or any changes? The other reason that we've really gone for breadth is our hope is that we can kind of flood the animal protection ecosystem with really good tools and habits. So that way when one organization that we've worked with is interacting with another organization that's never even heard of us, maybe they don't even have to talk to us. That organization that we have worked with can be like, oh, here's this resource, or here's the thing that we did and it worked for us. 

Tania:
Imagine if any organization you work with has like, incredible culture and great hiring practices and really fair performance assessment, and then as new nonprofits join or as new advocates join, they're like, oh, this is just how we do things here. And I think that could really influence the effectiveness of all of us collectively. So that's one of the reasons that we've gone for diversity and breadth in the organizations we work with. 

Amy:
Yeah. Great. Has there been sort of learnings that you've had already where you recognize that many of the practices that you're used to implementing in the US just aren't applicable. And perhaps there's additional resources or services required that have more of an understanding of how NGOs or grassroots organizations would function in those areas?

Tania:
The short answer is yes. You know, so far at Scarlet Spark, we've worked with a little over 100 organizations prior to that in my former life. And for Charlene and Alyssa, we've also worked quite a bit cross culturally as well. So it's not like we're poking our heads into new areas for the first time. So there haven't really been surprises. The biggest nuances aren't really around organizational systems so much as they are around the leadership skills that we teach. When it comes to organizational systems, it's human psychology. So generally the same kinds of things apply. There are differences in terms of how hierarchical versus cooperative or collaborative organizations tend to be, depending on where they are in the world. But we're never prescriptive around this is how you should do things. 

Tania:
We just say, tell us what your goals are, tell us what your ideal way of working is, and let's work with you to make sure that way of working is optimized. So because we're not prescriptive, that helps us stay really flexible to different regions. Where there's most nuance required is teaching leadership skills. So, for example, one of our most popular workshops is our feedback skills workshop. Cultural norms around feedback are so wildly different. Around, you'll have some cultures where feedback is super blunt, super direct. You can just be like, you did a terrible job. And then you have some cultures where we're talking about feedback and the version of feedback is like, how are you feeling today? I don't know how to use that. But again, the human psychology is the same. 

Tania:
So what we often find ourselves doing is saying, okay, the way that we approach feedback is going to be different, but we do know that all of us are going to need clarity of information when we receive feedback, all of us are going to want to feel some sense of autonomy or partnership in that conversation. So someone isn't just like throwing feedback in our face and walking away. 

Amy:
Yeah. 

Tania:
So we'll share the tools and the research, and then we'll talk about how might you do this in a way that feels natural and normal for your organization. And I think the other important nuances, wherever you are geographically, you have the power to create your own micro-culture within your specific organization. So we try wherever we are not to be bounded by what's normal in this country, especially because so many organizations are cross cultural. And instead we say, let's help you co create some norms that are going to work for your organization based on your mission, based on your values, based on your team. 

James:
I think it'd be useful to move on to talking about tools, tips, resources, frameworks that people listening to this can take away and hopefully apply in their organizations. But I guess before that, I'm kind of curious, what are the ways that you found most useful personally to actually learn about good management and good leadership? And was it like, I guess your research, was it a mentor? Was it trial and error? I'm curious, how did you actually learn how to implement this stuff yourself? 

Tania:
Yeah, it's a really good question. I don't think anyone's ever asked me that question. It's making me really reflect. I will say, for whatever reason, I have been really drawn to taking on leadership roles since I was very little. I was probably, I think, three or four years old, and I organized this group that would go and rescue flies from spider webs, which, like, sorry, spiders, I should not have been doing that. But also there's some, like, animal activist in me as well from a very early age. And so I was like, I can't do this alone. We can help more flies if we get more kids involved. So we like, I'm from Ukraine, so we'd literally run around barefoot, just like fighting spider webs and freeing flies. That was my first probably stint in leadership. 

Tania:
And then third grade, I had this group called the Power Girls Club because there was a Power Rangers club that was just for boys. And I was like, this isn't fair, so I'm gonna start an all girls group. And I, like, printed them certificates and all this, I was very structured with it. So for some reason, from an early age, I was like, things need doing, and we need to come together as a group to get the things done. I don't think of myself as power hungry in any way. In fact, whenever I. 

James:
Of course, you say that. 

Tania:
Yeah. Please give me feedback, anonymously, if you prefer. Just send me an email. Yes, you are. I think I just get really passionate. I really want to get things done, and I really find joy in that sense of we're doing this together. In fact, generally when I start a group, I don't actually like to stay in a leadership role. So I'm very much like a startup leader. But I found, like, in my last organization, we went from two people to, by the time I stepped out of the CEO role, 150 people, that wasn't fun for me. Like, it wasn't the, we're all coming together to, like, save the flies. 

Tania:
It was like, I really need to be thinking about how we scale, you know, I really need to be thinking about how did the laws change as we go from one phase of growth to the next phase of growth. 

Amy:
And a lot of pressure on you, right? When that's literally your job, to have sustainable, effective teams. That is what you're teaching others. And then your own team is growing and you're like, man, if we can't get this right for ourselves,

Tania:
Yeah, you're so right. I think that was a huge part of it. I also just had, like, really close relationships with everyone there that made it both more delightful and just so much harder, because I was, like, worried about every single one of those people. Yeah, we did do a really good job. At the time that I left, our engagement survey was at 96%. Like, I would recommend this as a great place to work. Of the 150 people, three people quit in that eight year period, and two of them came back. So it was amazing. I got to see what it's like from the inside to co-create something. And my approach to leadership was very much like, okay, I've started this thing, but now let's figure it out together. 

Tania:
For whatever reason, I've been drawn to it for a long time. So I would say in terms of how to learn, for me, it was a lot of, let me just try this, and let me try this scale. Let me try it at this larger scale. And that could be at an organization level, it could be volunteering on a project level. I really put myself in a lot of situations where I would notice that there's a group that's there or there's a goal, but nothing's really happening. And I'd just be like, okay, I volunteer. Let me see if I can get us to be a little bit more organized in pursuing this goal. That said, I think different people learn so differently. There's a three E model that I really like that we used to teach at LifeLabs - experience, education, and exposure. 

Tania:
So experience is a way of learning through doing. Education is, for example, reading books or participating in workshops. That is something that I did. I don't think that was as central to my own development because I was always suspicious of, like, who are these people telling me what to do? I need to figure this out on my own. Even though I've, like, now I teach and I write books so. 

Amy:
Don't listen to a word she says. 

Tania:
Yeah, there's education and there's exposure, which is another really, a really powerful way to learn is by observing others, interviewing others, getting a chance to potentially shadow someone and see, what is this leadership thing? What does it look like day to day? So those three, I think, are important ways to learn, ideally in combination. But for some people, they’ll be really drawn to one more than the other. 

James:
In terms of things that you’d recommend to other people, it would be a combination of these three things. A) maybe try push yourself a little bit, try take on leadership responsibilities where possible, and ideally, maybe start with low stakes, move on to higher stakes stuff as you can develop. Do some reading and trainings, and then also shadow people. Maybe ask your boss or your manager, try and understand what they're doing, why they're doing it. And those kind of three approaches you'd recommend?

Tania:
Yeah. And find the one that most works for you, where you notice yourself, like, oh, okay, that made me more efficient in getting this thing done, or that made me feel more confident. I'm dyslexic. That heavily influences how I learn because my brain is, I don't know, unconventional maybe, is the positive spin on it. So I'm not great at, like, following rules or reading text. And so for me, experience is quite important because I need to figure out, how do I do this in a way that works with my weird brain. So much of the way I work is coping mechanisms for what works and doesn't work for my brain. But I know plenty of people who are just like, I just need to read books, and that is the one way that really works for me. 

Tania:
So, yeah, I would recommend trying out all three. Education, experience, exposure. But then there's nothing wrong with any one of them. So find the one that works for you and just keep pushing yourself a little further outside your comfort zone. 

Amy:
And is there a top area where you think leaders in the movement can improve their skills? I actually feel like this question sparked me to think sometimes the challenge is that the leaders don't know that there's areas in which they could improve. So is it a challenge you identifying those areas for that person without them knowing or requesting it themselves? 

Tania:
Yeah, I mean, we very rarely assume that the apparent problem is the real problem, you know, or the self-diagnosed issue is the actual underlying issue. And that has to do with skills, that has to do with systems. Often people will say, can you help us with this particular thing? But then we can actually dig a little deeper and find out there's something beneath that really needs to happen first in order for it to arise to the surface. So we never expect people to come and accurately self diagnose. I think we're all quite bad at that. I'm bad at it for myself. There's just something really useful about having a person that isn't you being able to take a look at what's going on. 

Tania:
Okay, my first answer is a combination of answer to this question and answer to your last question of how do leaders best learn, which is reflection skills and reflection habits. I think most of us assume, and even in the examples that I just gave earlier, that we learn by doing more, more, more, more, more. There's actually some really interesting research that shows that pausing to reflect on our past experiences accelerates our learning. There's one study that I often think about on surgical teams that in one condition either practiced more surgery, in another condition paused and reflected on their past surgery experiences, and then they measured how quickly both of the groups made progress in their skills, and the group that paused to reflect made more rapid progress than the group that got more practice.

Tania:
And so both to the point of how can we learn more quickly or more effectively to be good leaders? And the question of what skills do leaders need? I would say, number one, is that reflection skill and practice. By practice, I mean, like, carving out time, having whatever it is. Maybe it's like 15 minutes once a week where you just jot down. What are my reflections from this past week? What was it that I did that seemed to work? What was it that I did that maybe had consequences that I wasn't anticipating? What can I learn from it? Just kind of consolidating our past experiences. It accelerates our learning. It also allows us to model the importance of pausing and reflection, because, again, we tend to be in this, like, next thing. Next thing, go, go. We're always running out of time. 

Tania:
There aren't enough resources. And that kind of scarcity approach to leadership or to life tends to. Yeah. Minimize how thoughtful we can be, how joyful we can be. And so when we do it ourselves and when we invite others to reflect, it really allows us to just get so much more richness out of the experiences we've already had instead of just sort of, like, trashing them. All that effort, all of that pain, all of that struggle, we can get so much more out of it when we pause to reflect. So some of the practices that I really love are either one is that personal reflection, the other is pausing as a team, at least once a month to do just a really quick retrospective. 

Tania:
The questions could be something like, what's been working really well about how we've been working together, and what's something that we might want to improve about how we've been working together, and what's that one thing of our discussions that we want to focus on this next month and having that ritual, having that cadence can really be transformative. Little by little, you're catching patterns that are causing friction, and you're also creating this kind of, like, shared a sense of it's us versus the problem instead of it's us versus each other. That's one I could definitely share more, but I'll pause there. 

James:
It's good. It's important to pause. 

Tania:
You're right. 

James:
I feel like it'd be ironic if you just steamrolled straight into the next one. That's really cool. Yeah, I mean, I kind of do it a little bit personally. I have a journal and built into every week, there's a bunch of prompts where I'll reflect on my week I find super useful, and. Yeah. But I'm also curious, like, how. What are the kind of systems you have for yourself to do this? Do you have some kind of, like, document and you have, like, a scheduled time in your calendar where you open that document and you answer your problems? How do you kind of build this into your life and work?

Tania:
I’m so excited that you're asking this question, because this is something that. These are systems that I personally feel just very grateful for, that they exist in my life. So, one is, I do what's sometimes referred to as morning pages. So the first thing I do in the morning before checking email or my to-do list or anything else is I just have a Google Doc, and I've been doing it for, like, maybe five, six years now. I'll spend 15 minutes just, like, free writing anything that's in my brain. And that could be work related. It could be like, why did I just have that weird stress dream? That was my last night. So many cats in my stress dream last night. Sometimes it's like, oh, I feel kind of sad or I feel kind of anxious, and I'm not actually sure why. 

Tania:
And so that's been a really cool space to just be like, okay, thank you, emotions. You're here. Instead of me trying to not feel sad, let me actually check in and see if I can learn something from these signals that my body is giving me. Yeah. And a lot of it is, like, the leadership stuff in 2020 leading through a pandemic. At the time, I think we were, like, 100 employees. I think we were maybe bringing in, like, 3 million a month in revenue. 

Tania:
And then the pandemic hit, and it just plummeted to maybe 500,000 in revenue, which maybe sounds like a lot in our world, but when you've got overhead of, you know, I think it was probably, like, $20 million, and all of a sudden, the money isn't coming in, and, you know, not only are clients cutting their budgets, but the money that they were supposed to pay you is now delayed. I think, like, that morning writing just saved me. That, and adopting two pigs, that was also very helpful. But that morning writing, I was like, okay, what have I learned? What's in my mind? What do I need to figure out? Otherwise, it was just constant state of, like, panic and overwhelm. And there's a lot of research. 

Tania:
A psychologist named James Penny Baker, who found that just the practice of writing for 15 minutes a day can be used to overcome reactions to traumatic experiences, depression, anxiety. It can boost creativity. There's even one study that they did that found that people who couldn't find a job for a really long time, I think for over a year, they put them through this program of writing for 15 minutes, just like, free writing for 15 minutes, and it actually significantly increased their likelihood of finding employment. It just takes a really thoughtful conversation with ourselves, basically. So that's one practice I'm so passionate about. The other is, as a team at Scarlet Spark, we have a lot of kind of pause and reflect rituals. So, at the last Friday of every month, we do a quick retrospective. 

Tania:
Sometimes it's 15 minutes, sometimes it's 30 minutes, where we just say, what have we learned? We do have a. A spreadsheet that we use to capture those patterns. And then once a quarter, we look at them again and we say, do we want to do anything about this? Are there any patterns that have emerged? And once a year we look at it as well.

James:
This is, like, things that are going well, things that weren't going well, and you'll log both, and then you're also acting like, oh, is this still a problem ending this quarter? Should we actually. Are we still doing this good thing. Is that the kind of stuff you're looking at? 

Tania:
Yeah. Yeah. And should we do anything about it? Every once in a while, we'll be like, well, that month sucked. Like, that was a really stressful month. Should we do anything about it? And we go, probably not. Let's just log it. And then if we notice that the next month is really tough, and the next month is really tough. Then let's see if we need to solve for it. So a lot of it is just logging it. We also do a version of that just around client work. So we call it our consultants, what we call it our consultants unite. So once a month, we say, what have we learned from working with clients? And so we log that as well. And then one other way that we do kind of a pause and retrospective is what we call our thumbs check. 

Tania:
And so what that looks like is once a month, we each meet one on one, and we're a small team, so that's quite easy. And we either give a thumbs up, a thumb in the middle, or a thumbs down for how we've been collaborating, one on one. And that's our opportunity to exchange feedback. Often it's feedback for each other. Sometimes it's feedback for ourselves. So I'll be like, don't even give me the thumb. I know that I screwed this thing up. 

Amy:
Don't give me the thumb. 

Tania:
Don't give me the thumb. And that's a really, again, super helpful place. Of course, we give each other feedback regularly, but this is kind of like our catch all in case.

James:
Like a release file, just in case you don't do it. There's always this set point. 

Tania:
Exactly. And I know it sounds like a lot of pausing and talking. Maybe once a month that looks like 2 hours combined, but the hours and hours it saves us is, I wouldn't even know how to count it, because we just are so efficient as a result of having those conversations. 

James:
In what ways do you think it makes you more efficient as a team? 

Tania:
Simple example could be were preparing for Aviv and weren't as clear as we needed to be with who is responsible for what when it comes to prep work. So, like, who's scheduling meetings, who's preparing the materials that we wanted to distribute? How are we letting people know that we're going to be doing a workshop there, that kind of stuff? And so we, through our retrospective, went, oh, we need to tighten our systems for when there's this very cross functional project. We need to make sure that there's project plan where we can, you know, just outline for each other who's doing what. If we had that, I think we would have probably saved about 10, maybe 12 hours in miscommunication and doing double work where I went, oh, you did that? 

Tania:
I thought I was doing that. Redoing work where someone made something, and then were like, oh, that doesn't work for this audience that were hoping to give it to. And so it was just like a messier interaction than we're used to. But now, because we've had that retrospective, it's just going to be smooth sailing without us having to redo work or accidentally double do the work. 

James:
And I guess also, at the same time, if there's any kind of tension between you all, it also kind of helps relieve that so you can work more effectively on things in the future without any of this resentment that you said is very toxic. 

Tania:
Exactly. In the past, one of the people on our team brought up, like, I noticed that you two made this decision without me. I felt left out. And were like, oh, my gosh, great that we know that because now we can better at. So we do. For example, in our weekly Friday meetings, we do a quick FYI section where we let people know, what are we each working on? And that's an opportunity for someone to be like, ooh, I actually want to be involved in that. And so we eliminated, hopefully most opportunities to accidentally leave each other out and, yeah, and create that feeling. 

Amy:
And are there any other skills that you think are particularly needed, maybe specifically in leadership? 

Tania:
Yes. So there are four, actually, that I could summarize really quickly that really we see as the foundation of all other skills. So number one is question skills. Number two, clarity skills. Number three, we think of as outward skills. So being able to read people, being able to adjust your approach based on what's most going to resonate with that individual. So that's outward skills. And then number four is inward skills. So can we understand ourselves and our own needs and adjust how we're working to bring out the best in ourselves? Everyone, everywhere needs to ask better questions and more questions to look for opportunities to see if there's something that's blurry or vague or potentially misaligned to create clarity. Outward skills and shifting perspective.

Tania:
 Inward skills, I would say within animal protection in particular, that's the skill that we're probably weakest in because we're so focused on everyone else. And I guess I won't stress that more because I've already talked quite a bit about it, but I'll just say it's really important to have that skill of what do I actually need? Which of my own energizers or just, like, physical needs am I neglecting? And what culture am I building by consistently neglecting myself? And is that ultimately going to harm our ability to achieve our mission.

James:
On the first as well. I found that to be so useful on the questioning skills and clarity skills. I think it's so rare that someone will get annoyed at you for asking too many questions. But then if you don't ask enough and don't get enough clarity, and then you do the wrong thing where there's misalignment, that's just way worse. Like, the downside of asking too many questions is basically nothing. And people are, oh, they just want clarity. This is great. And now even more aligned. So I find that to be super important and no risk kind of manoeuver, basically, yeah. 

Tania:
And if you are ever concerned, because again, that could be a different one cross culturally, where asking a question, especially if you have some position of power, could be perceived as like, you're testing me or you don't trust me, but then you can, if you are ever concerned about that, you can just combine questions and clarity. And you could use what we call a framing statement, where you go. The reason I'm asking is, or I actually don't yet have an opinion on this, or I do have an opinion, but I actually think your opinion matters a lot more since you're the one doing the work. Can I ask you some questions so that together we can understand this better? So just explaining why you're asking the question. But yeah, absolutely. 

Tania:
The effort required, the risk required, none of that is significant compared with the massive benefits of people feeling involved. You actually building up people's capacity to solve problems instead of being the problem solver yourself. Just again, driving more clarity. With clarity, it's like imagine navigating a space without being able to see it or feel it. It's going to take you a long time and you're going to make a lot of mistakes. As soon as we're able to observe the entire space, we're able to just be so much more efficient. And again, it's more fun and more joyful. So clarity enables that for everyone. 

James:
Do you have any kind of easy wins or low hanging fruit that kind of leaders or people management can do to kind of, I guess, do these skills more or just actually improve? 

Tania:
Yeah, I'd say probably the first is that retrospective cadence that I mentioned is just whatever thing you want to get better at, just create some sort of cadence where once a month we say, like, how are we doing and what's something that we could try. The other that is kind of issue agnostic or issue neutral, meaning this will work for you regardless of what you're trying to tackle, is kind of an a norming exercise where you go, all right, it seems like we're having some friction around communication or around feedback or around, I don't know how we use Asana, whatever it is, project management software process that we really have found to be very easy and efficient is getting together and saying, okay, what's the problem? What's the goal that we're looking to achieve? 

Tania:
And let's all just come up with one idea each for something we could implement for one month. Let's look at that list of ideas and we're all going to vote one that we want to stick to for one month. Do it for an entire month, and then at the end of the month, look at it and go, did we fix it? Are things better? If so, great, let's keep doing it. Or no, that didn't quite fix it. Let's try one more on a meta level. The skill there is taking the issue to the team and solving the issue together. Very often we see leaders feeling like it's all on them to fix a problem, whether it's at an organizational level or even tension between two people. 

Tania:
And as leaders, it could be very tempting to just be like, it's my organization or it's my team, it's my responsibility to fix it. But there's so much power that comes from just taking it to the team and being like, team, I think this is a problem. Do you think it's a problem or I think this is an opportunity. Do you think it's an opportunity? What are some suggestions or ideas we have and now let's select one and implement it. Not only does that mean that there's less burden on you as a leader, it also means the rest of the team is building that skill of improving the organization or improving the team with you. There's so much research that shows that when an idea comes from us versus being told to do something, we're significantly more motivated by it and committed to it. 

James:
Maybe for the last little bit of chatting we can talk about. So you've written three books now, is that right? I read one of them, which is called Leader Lab. I would highly recommend it. It's extremely practical and tangible book I read on my Kindle and I have like the most highlights or highlights of any book of 150 if I want to know. Wow, super useful. And I thought I got a lot of- in terms of all these very nice tangible frameworks around, whether it's coaching or feedback, as well as I guess I found it useful how you kind of prioritize some of the skills. You wrote this book, I think, over three, maybe four years ago now from when you actually wrote, I think, came out in 2021. 

James:
Have your views changed that much on the book in terms of the way you prioritize? What are the most important skills or the traits? Yeah, anything that comes to mind there. 

Tania:
Well, first of all, I would say that book was based on research that we conducted as well as research outside of LifeLabs Learning by looking at really large samples. And in our case, we had over, I think it was like 100,000 managers that we got a chance to study at the time, and we looked at research conducted by other psychologists. The nice thing about that is that my own views weren't the driving force. It was like, what is the data showing us? I would say that book, The Leader Lab, is very much encapsulated in the assumption that we should always try to make every relationship work. Let's not give up on people. Let's make sure that you're approaching leadership and management through this lens of how can I create a great environment for people? How can I bring out the best in people. 

Tania:
I think the piece that I don't know that my opinion on it has shifted, but maybe I feel more strongly about now is that. But there are absolutely times where it's better to part ways. And I see that quite often in animal advocacy, not because of, because I don't believe that people can change and everyone is deserving of opportunities and clarity and respect and all that kind of stuff. But so often we're just sort of going, okay, I know this person isn't a great fit for the role or the organization. It's pretty clear they know it, but we're not doing anything about it. 

Tania:
And often that comes from a place of compassion and care for the individual or feeling like we're letting them down if we say, look, this just isn't working, or even having the conversation of if these things don't change, then we can't work together. So I think that I wish I could have added a chapter to The Leader Lab, and maybe if there's another edition, maybe I will. Of when is it time to part ways and how do we do that? With kindness and respect and shared power as well. It shouldn't just be about I'm breaking up with you. It should be a, hey, let's look at the facts. You've been stressed out. The results haven't been there. This is the impact on our mission. Let's part ways. Let's either end your employment now, or let's come up with some sort of off boarding plan. 

Tania:
And I think that we don't do that enough and we don't feel, I guess, confident enough that is an ethical and important option, at least to consider. 

Amy:
Maybe it's also that resource load that were talking about before that you're sort of thinking, well, I know it's not great, but at least somebody's doing the role, like 50%, and I don't have the time now to go through a hiring process and replace that person because I'm overloaded and there's so much to do. So let's just keep trudging along in this terrible state because at least something's moving forward, even if it's baby steps. So, yeah, I think there's so much at play there in assessing, again, those reflection moments, do I just need to stop, step back, let that person go, and then we can all move forward? And in the long term, I think probably everyone knows that's the right thing. It's just finding that time to reflect on that. 

Tania:
That's a really good point. I think it's also sometimes we underestimate how much time goes toward someone who is either a bad fit for the role or the organization. Both your own time, the team's time. And not just time, but energy. Right. It's not like every hour is just like, you have 60 minutes to achieve tasks. It's also like, how is my brain and body feeling? Like, do I have the motivation to do it? Do I have the creativity and that kind of stuff? Yeah, I find that a lot is like, we don't have time to do, whether it's considering termination or something else, it's like, we don't have time to do this healthy thing. My perspective is like, you don't have time not to do this. Get it? It's so hard, it's so painful. 

Tania:
But that investment that we have to pay in so that it pays dividends later, or it's paying off your credit card now so that you don't have to pay that higher and higher interest. 

James:
I think it's interesting you said in the, maybe the for profit and tech space, people are trying to fire fast, you're trying to slow them down, but here, actually, it's the opposite. And I wonder if it's this because maybe people in the animal movement are just more empathetic and less excited about letting people go because obviously it's not a fun thing to do. But yeah, I think agreed with what you guys just said is it's just super important. And I don't remember if it was your chapter on feedback in this book. Maybe it was another book I read, but it kind of makes me think of the same thing. It's like, it's almost like a disservice to the organization in that case. 

James:
Like if you don't give feedback, you're like holding back the organization from being its like its best possible self and in our case, like helping as many animals as possible, which is like, I think I should be super inspiring. It's like. It's almost like you should be like compelled to give feedback when you think it's appropriate. And I guess I feel the same about when someone’s not a good fit for the role. Its like how is this hindering our mission and helping animals? And it makes me feel like, oh wow, I really should act on this. And that feedback bit also kind of makes me think its the same kind of idea for letting people go. Sadly. 

Tania:
Yeah. Stepping back and almost to Amy’s question too, of finding the right balance of over investing or underinvesting in people. It’s kind of, again, that practice of why am I doing this? I’m not doing this because of my personal preferences or my feelings about this individual. I'm stepping back and I'm questioning what's ultimately healthiest for our organization. And of course you want to just consider that individual on the other side of it in the context also of our mission and our entire team and our capacity to achieve the results that we're looking to achieve for animals. 

Amy:
Well, all three books will be linked in the show notes and the resources. I can't wait to read The Leader Lab, been recommended by James a number of times. So I will get on that and recommend that listeners do too.

James:
I’m like your number one fan on Goodreads. I'm like five stars. Let's go. Actually, you have really good reviews on Goodreads, by the way. I was like, it's one of the highest I've seen for a while. 

Tania:
It's really okay. Thanks. Thanks. I generally try not to read reviews. I do for workshops. Absolutely. But books, there's just something about it where I'm like, I don't know you and I don't know where it's coming from or your context, but okay, maybe later today. 

James:
It's very positive. 

Tania:
I'll do it. Thank you. 

Amy:
Awesome. Well, yeah. Such an insightful episode. So much in there. Really deep with content and tips and just a real warm sense of the purpose. Right? Why we're all here, why we want to work hard. Why it's important to have those really healthy cultures and practices within our organization. So to close up then, I'm keen to hear from you about any news that you're grateful for or anything you've heard that is exciting recently.

Tania:
I knew you were going to ask this question. This is, for some reason, a question I have struggled with. It's giving me a little mini existential crisis, because I'm like, why can't I think of good news? Tell you my most honest answer when I thought of that question. We recently got our doing business as DBA approval for Scarlet Spark after eight failed attempts. This is a one and a half page form that we've submitted over and over. It is literally the only reason I go to the post office is to submit this form over and over, just for- as an example, the first time it was rejected was we didn't put a period after ink and we want-

Tania:
So when we first started the organization again, we thought the mission was going to be different or the mission was going to be the same. We thought the work was going to be different. We really wanted Spark in there. We wanted Scarlet Spark. We wanted to do the official thing of getting approval to officially be Scarlet Spark. I don't think anybody even cares whether we have this form. I don't even know if the government. I don't even know if the government cares if we have. Why did we have to do this so many times? Big shout out to ADP, Animal Defense Partnership. James Hondura there a lawyer took pity on us. They provide free legal guidance, by the way, amazing to animal protection organizations. And James was like, we're going to fill this form out together. I'm going to be here for you. 

Tania:
And finally, was it two days ago, we got approval and our team was, like, wildly happy about this ridiculous form that took so long. It just kind of goes to show how many things get in the way of actually the mission and actually doing it. 

James:
Congratulations. That's amazing. 

Tania:
I'm so irrationally happy about this. 

James:
As someone who also does, like, some charity operations and, like, annoying legal stuff, sometimes it can be a huge, like, you know, dangling bad thing over your head. Like, oh, my God, I haven't got this for the third time in a row. So I can. I can imagine the relief. So I'm very happy. 

Tania:
Thank you. Thank you. 

James:
Do you have any recommendations for listeners about any of the topics we've spoken about? Maybe ways to learn or upskill in leadership, management, coaching, whatever it is? Would you recommend? 

Tania:
Check out our website scarletspark.org dot we have these skills that I've talked about. We have resources around them. The book that I would recommend related to what we've been talking about with like the inward skill and how we think about time. A book that really was transformative for me is called 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Berkman. Have either of you read that one? 

James:
It's funny, I just started it last night and I was laughing because I opened my kindle and the first thing is like, it's like in the long run we're all going to die is like the headline of the first chapter. I was like, wow. I'm like, this is a bit heavy for Wednesday night. 

Tania:
No, it's not. It's so beautiful. It's so good. He also has a newsletter, it comes out once a month and each time it's like, okay, this is my little mini therapy session that's going to help me reset and keep building a really healthy, positive relationship to time. Because I talk a big game about the importance of healthy, sustainable ways of working. There was definitely a time in my life where I was working 80, 90 hours a week, particularly through the pandemic, because I was terrified about people losing their jobs and their livelihood in the midst of no one being able to hire them. Just so many bad habits just stuck around from that. And I've just had to work so deliberately to rebuild how I use my time, how I think about time. 

Tania:
And this is just such, I think a really important book on this topic. It will make you think about your mortality, but within animal protection we see death and talk about death so often, like death and suffering will just casually come up in just about every conversation. So I think that we can handle thinking about it for ourselves. Yeah, that's probably the number one that I would recommend. LifeLabs Learning, my former organization. They also have workshops on leadership skills. Actually, the book The Leader Lab is based on the training that we did through that organization and they offer free group training to nonprofits if you check out their- to small nonprofits. But small is like most nonprofits. Yeah, I think it's like 50 employees and under, it's called the Catalyst program. I'll give you a link to that as well. 

Amy:
So obviously as you've recommended, it would be great for everyone to check out the Scarlet Spark website and we'll link your books below and the other recommendations that you have. I think they're all going to be snapped up and super useful for leaders and people working in the movement. So thanks for that. But is there anything else you want to one-line pitch right now? Are you hiring? Do you need volunteers? Anything else you need? 

Tania:
No, at this point, we're not ready to hire. I would love that. I would love to start figuring out our volunteer program. We're not there yet, so biggest pitch is just to sign up for our workshops and office hours. The workshops, even if you can't attend, we will send you the video if you feel like you don't have enough time. Again, just think about it as, like, little tiny investments. You dedicate an hour of your life, but you will save 10 hours or 20 hours later on. Feel more confident and joyful in the work that we're doing. Again, we're just surrounded by death and suffering, but we're also working toward this beautiful vision of a world for animals who are flourishing, not just not dying, not just not suffering. 

Tania:
And so I think using some of that passion for this beautiful vision, at least for me, really helps me go, okay. We're looking to create a world where animals flourish. Let me contribute to my own flourishing so that I have the energy and the passion and the motivation to be able to achieve that vision. 

James:
I love that. Well, Tania, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This has been super interesting. And, yeah, I feel like I’ve learned a lot. And, yeah, there's lots of great resources in the show notes. People who want to look at the tools, sign up for the training sessions, come to the office hours. Please check it out. And, yeah, thanks Tania for coming on.

Tania:
Thank you all so much for what you do. Long time listener, first time caller. So thanks for coming. 

Amy:
Thanks, Tania.