126 - Community and Staff Engagement: Building Success through Listening with Feed the Children's Colleen Ridenhour

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Colleen Reidenauer, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the Chief Growth and Strategy Officer of a very large nonprofit called Feed the Children. And we're going to spend the next 30 minutes talking about you and your leadership and a little bit about what drove you into nonprofit work. Thanks for joining me.

Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm honored to be on this podcast with you.

Thanks. So let's take a little bit of the backstory. I know that you, like me and many other people, moved from corporate— for me it was from big law— into a different world. And tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, it feels like so long ago that that happened, but it's going on several decades now. And yeah, there just came a point I was working in the entertainment industry. I was doing entertainment marketing out in Los Angeles, and part of my role at the time, I was, I was asked to take on the responsibility of building out a corporate social responsibility platform. And at the time that, that was the buzz, right? Cause marketing, corporate social responsibility. And it was new to me. I'd never done that before. And I said, okay, yeah, I'll take that on. I'll figure that out. And in doing that, I just had the incredible opportunity of going out and meeting with all these amazing organizations that were doing great work in their communities. And I'd come back and I'd report on that. And then I'd say, hey guys, like, look who I met this weekend, or I met these amazing people. And not that people didn't care, but folks were so absorbed in their day jobs and doing the Hollywood thing. It really wasn't. Meaningful to them as it was to me. And so I felt I came to this point where I could go one way or the other. I could keep doing what I was doing and go down that path, or I could take kind of all the experience I had had up until then in, in marketing and media and package all that up and say, I, I could do what I'm doing in the nonprofit space and go out and raise money and have that money be going towards something that at the end of the day I could feel really good about. So that's what I decided to do. So I left and I And I never really looked back. And since then, I've been working for some amazing organizations, Feed the Children now, one of the best, and I couldn't be happier. It's a wonderful feeling to know that you're doing a lot of the same things you do in the corporate world, but at the end of the day, you can go home and put your head on the pillow and know that all the hard work that you've done is actually helping families. In my case, you know, helping families and children have a much better life and outcome.

I, I, you know, your, your story so parallels mine where I left a very successful career as a trial lawyer for 22 years to become a peacemaker. And, you know, I don't make nearly as much money as I made in those days, but you're right, I help more people in a week than I helped in 22 years.

Yeah. And it's interesting, you know, at the time when I made the shift, I thought for sure, okay, I'm, I'm leaving this job, I have all this experience, Why wouldn't a nonprofit organization want to hire me? Like, silly me at the time. And I met with so many organizations who couldn't get their head around, like, why? Why do you want to do this? Why do you want to leave this, this job, this corporate job that you have at the time? You know, it's a sexy job working in Hollywood. Why do you want to do that? Like, why do you want to leave the salary? Why do you want to leave, you know, the red carpet doing all this stuff? Why do you want to come do this? And I tried to convince them, you know, no, I really do. I really want to come in and do this work. And folks just couldn't get their head around it. And I think today, fast forward, you know, many, many, many, many years and the environment has changed so much. And I think we see today so many corporate executives wanting to kind of put that behind, that chapter behind and transition to nonprofit. And nonprofits are so hungry. To get that expertise and welcome that corporate experience coming to work in the nonprofit space. 'Cause at the end of the day, while it's a nonprofit, we need that business acumen, we need that level of expertise to help drive the business forward because it's complex. You know, nonprofits are complex organizations that need that financial expertise, that need marketing, that need all of these areas of business to help run efficiently and to be able to accomplish the visions that we have. So I think it's very different today than it was back when I made the shift. And I'm sure for you as well.

It is.

And, and, you know, at least my experience was that I learned that money doesn't make you happy.

It sure doesn't.

Serving others makes you happy.

It sure doesn't. I, I keep on my, on my computer here, all these little Post-its, little quotes of things that I hear throughout the day. And somebody said to me yesterday, which was the new one I wrote down yesterday, is happiness equals enjoyment plus purpose plus satisfaction.

Love it.

There's nothing in there that says money, right? But I thought that was a good one. So it's on my computer. That's my quote of the week.

Tell us a little bit about Feed the Children. I see ads popping up on my various screens that I see on the internet every now and then.

That's good. We're targeting you. Yeah. So Feed the Children is an organization that is dedicated to helping families and children. So we provide food, we provide essential items, so personal care items, school supply items to families who need our support. So we're really dedicated to ensuring that no child goes to bed hungry. So today we're working in almost all 50 states. We work in 8 countries around the world. And I'll tell you, it's a big lift. Hunger is a really big issue both here and outside the United States. Which is crazy to think that a country like the United States has hunger as an issue for families and children, but it's a growing issue every day. And we're out there fighting the good fight, trying to make sure that those kiddos have something to eat.

Wow.

And their families have food in the cupboard.

How do you, how's, how's the organization structured? Do you have like community-based organizations that you serve or?

That's right. That's right. So here in the United States, we work through a network of community partners. And so we have, through the generosity of donors and corporate partners and volunteers, we go and distribute food. We distribute those essential items through a network of community-based organizations. And then outside the United States, very similarly, we have country operations in, in 8 countries, as I mentioned, and we work through a variety of different channels outside the United States. To deliver the impact that we deliver.

And your job, you're the Chief Growth and Strategy Officer. What does that mean?

That's right. So just like, like it says, we're continuing to try to grow our impact. We're about to launch a new strategic plan, and all that we're trying to do is serve more and more families. And so my role is to help us figure out how are we going to do that. So of course, that takes money, it takes resources in order to be able to grow our business and to be able to serve more. And I think a lot of folks think, oh, you know, you're delivering food, you're delivering these essential items, you don't need money. Well, that's a big myth, right? Of course, we have the generosity of our donors, our corporate donors that donate products, significant amounts of product that we're able to distribute out. But it takes money to do this work too. And so part of my job is figuring out how can we scale our resources so that we can do more and be able to serve more families. So that's a really big piece of what I do is figuring out that strategy and figuring out how we can do more, raise more, and do more with the resources that we have.

So what gets you excited in the morning? You get out of bed and you say, oh boy, another day, this is going to be fun. What is it that gets you going?

Normally what gets me excited is about 3 o'clock in the morning. I start having more ideas. And so I get up in the morning, I'm like, okay, who do I need to call to talk about these ideas? So once I start firing off those emails, they're like, oh, here she goes again. She I've had some ideas at 3 o'clock in the morning. But I think what gets me the most excited is there's so much opportunity. You know, unfortunately, when there's so much need, and there's so much need out there, with that need comes so much opportunity of what more can we do as an organization. And as I said, we're getting ready to launch this new strategy. And with that strategy comes how can we not only enhance and improve the things that we've been doing for the last almost 50 years as an organization, But the world is changing so rapidly. So how can we be more nimble and evolve with the, the world around us? And with that comes the opportunity to try and test new things. And as part of the strategy, that's what I'm really excited about is how can we be more nimble as an organization and test things, you know, and, and be more reactive and, and test and, and learn from those tests so that we can be nimble and respond to that ever-changing environment. Yeah, that— I got the team jumping all around, getting excited about testing, testing and learning and living into new models and new ideas.

If I weren't talking to you and knew that you were in the nonprofit sector, you would sound like an entrepreneur in a startup.

Well, some of it is entrepreneurial. I mean, I think in the nonprofit space you do have limited resources, human and financial. You have to determine how to get creative with those things. As I said, there's huge need. You can't do everything all at once. So it, a lot of it is being entrepreneurial as to how do you manage, you know, manage those resources, figure out how to phase them and you know, how to, how to be nimble with all of that. So I think you're, you equate that pretty, pretty well that it, it is a little bit of an entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial mindset when you get into the nonprofit space.

So what is it that, that's unique that you bring to the table?

Oh, that's a good question. I'd love to ask my team that question.

You should.

Maybe. I think, you know, I've had just the great, great fortune and blessing of having worked at a lot of different organizations on the corporate side and then on the nonprofit side. So I hope that I'm bringing perspective from a lot of different sectors. I've worked on the health side, worked, you know, human services. I've worked in housing. Now I'm working in the nutrition and hunger space. And so I'm hopeful that I'm bringing a pretty broad view of a lot of different organizations, best practices, things that have worked other places, things that haven't worked other places, because I think that there's equally as much to learn from things that don't work as things that do. And so I am hopeful that that's helpful to the team as we look to grow and scale what we're trying to do. And I also hope that, you know, from a culture perspective, I'm bringing, you know, new ideas and different perspectives as how the team itself can grow from a leadership perspective. I'm, you know, always looking at the team from investing in our people as the way of the future, right? We're only as successful as our people. And so I'm hopeful that the team finds value in that, but you'll have to ask them.

How, how, how many, how many people are in the organization?

Oh, that's a great question. I think we're about 300 now.

And you're based in Atlanta?

Well, we're based in Oklahoma City actually. The organization was founded in Oklahoma City, and as with so many organizations, we've been living into this hybrid space, right? Of what does it look like to have distributed staff, not only here, but of course we're a global organization, so we've got staff all around the world now serving in the mission. So most of the staff are still in Oklahoma, but that's been changing, you know? You know, since COVID and evolving, the evolving workforce, we've got folks, you know, now all across the country. And so I'm in Atlanta. A lot of my team is in Oklahoma City, but around the country.

So does that, does that put you on the road a lot or do you get to do mostly—

I do go to Oklahoma quite a bit. I do now go around the country visiting with our donors and our volunteers. So I do, I do have a lot of frequent flyer miles. I'll not lie. Do you spend a lot of time at the airport?

So that gets me to the kind of one of the core, core topics of this podcast, and that's about listening. Tell us about the importance of listening in your work. And it sounds like you've got many different constituencies and stakeholders that you've got to listen to.

So many, so many. And I don't think you can be successful in this business without listening. And from a donor perspective, we have to listen to our donors. Right? We have to understand, you know, what is driving their intent and passion to give, to be responsive and understand, you know, their core values as it comes to philanthropy and build that relationship. It's such an important relationship when you're giving of your money or you're giving of your time as a volunteer, building that trusting relationship, so important, and that's founded and grounded in listening and building that relationship. From a programmatic perspective, we have to listen to the communities that we're working with. We have to listen to the families and to what their needs are. We can't dare to know whether we're sitting in a conference room in Oklahoma City or I'm sitting in my home office here in Atlanta. We can't dare to know the needs of the communities and families that we're working alongside. We have to talk to them. We have to listen. And build the programs that we're implementing with the understanding that we're building to support their needs. So if we're not asking and listening and having a deep conversation to understand what those are, that's not helpful. It's actually counterproductive and can oftentimes be harmful. So it's so important that we listen from a staffing perspective. How many lessons have we learned about staff not feeling heard, you know, not feeling that they are included? You know, this opens the can of diversity and equity and inclusion. What voices are at the table? Do they feel heard? Can they show up as their authentic selves and feel valued and not just listened to but heard? So I think all of those, I mean, that's just a few constituencies and stakeholders. But to have those meaningful conversations and be able to take those conversations and have actionable outcomes, so, so critical to be successful as an organization, as a business, you know, just in human relationships, I think is so important.

Yeah. Well, I say that listening is the foundational skill of life, and it's a skill that has to be learned and mastered. It's not something we innately do well. No, because, and, and if you don't, if you don't learn how to listen, then you'll never know what to do. It's like riding a bike. Hard to, hard to ride a bike without, without a, without a little bit of coaching and training.

Yes.

How do you, when you're, I, it, I'm just guessing at this, so one of, one of the passions that I pick up from you is really developing your staff, especially bringing young people up and training them and getting them to be as effective as they can possibly be considering their various career stages. How, how do you go about staff development and training?

That's a great question. And I'll tell you, it's, I think, one of the things that particularly in the nonprofit space can be challenging because we don't have endless budgets, right, to send folks to conferences or, you know, invest a ton of money in development and coursework and, and all of those things that perhaps corporations might have. Whole teams that are focused on training and development. And a lot of times that those, those are the areas that nonprofits struggle with the funding for the most, or sometimes the things that get cut the first when you're, when you're looking at a tight budget. So you have to get creative, right? This is where you, you have to lean on your creativity to focus on that. Uh, and so what I've tried to do, what we've tried to do, is find opportunities to engage staff kind of in cross-functional work teams, you know, getting them involved in projects that maybe they wouldn't necessarily get exposed to, to give them responsibilities and exposure to things that help them grow and develop, you know, stretch projects or new projects. And I think that that is sometimes welcome, sometimes too much, right? And setting the expectation that it's okay— setting that— maybe expectation is the wrong word, but setting the understanding that you might not get it right, and that's okay, right? Part of, part of the learning process is what are you going to learn from this experience and apply it the next time, right? And that goes back to my notion of like, we gotta test, we gotta test, and we gotta learn, and what are we gonna learn from these tests? And I think sometimes through that development process, folks get really scared to try new things because they don't know, right? Or they don't know how to do it, or they don't know what the outcome is going to be. And so trying to create the environment that no, no, no, like we have to test and what you think the test is going to be might not turn out the way you think it is. And that's okay. Like to me, setting the tone that fail— like failure or mistakes are only when you don't take the learnings and apply them for the future. Right. And kind of setting that mindset to give permission to fail or take a risk? Because I think a lot of folks on their development path, they're afraid to do it because they don't want to mess up or they don't want to disappoint. And so how do you change that frame of reference to give people the permission to dream big or spread their wings or come up with ideas that we can try? And so that, you know, with the resources that we have, I think giving people that space to throw out ideas and test ideas and, you know, live into that has been one way that we've been able to engage folks and, and give them those opportunities.

I think you just pointed out one of the major failings of our educational system, and that it's all based on testing, but not testing to learn, testing to prove whether you're a good person, a good student, or a bad student.

That's right.

People get their, their identity and their self-worth invested in being right and being correct and not being wrong, avoiding the being wrong because that reflects poorly on self-worth. And that creates fear and anxiety when you're being asked to fail and fail, fail often, fail fast until you succeed. And that, that's a hard one for people to learn.

That's right. It's, I can't tell you how many times a day someone will come and say to me, what do I do about this? Or what's the answer to this? I'm like, I have no idea. Like, we have to bring in like 4 other people to figure this one out, right? So I think that there is setting the expectation that, you know, I don't have all the answers. I don't, I don't know. Right. I have no idea. And that's okay. Like you don't have to know everything and you don't have to have all the answers. And even if you think you do and you get it wrong, okay, well, uh, didn't have a crystal ball on that one. Got that one wrong. So what are we gonna do about it? Like this, the world is not gonna end if that happens. Right. And so what are we gonna do about it to course correct and move forward?

I think so.

I think that that's a really important learning lesson.

Part of that too has to do with leadership, and I suspect that whether you do this consciously or not, you're creating a very psychologically and emotionally safe place to be by trying, trying to.

But again, you're gonna have to ask the team on that one.

To the degree that, to the degree that team members are willing to take risks and fail and not know they're going to get their heads chopped off, I mean, that to me is an indicator that the leadership is providing the kind of safety that people need in order to grow. And unfortunately, there are not many leaders like that.

We're trying. We're trying.

Good for you. One more question and we'll bring it to a close. What's one thing about you, Colleen, that we wouldn't have a clue about?

Oh my goodness.

Unless you disclosed it to us.

Wow. One thing. That's a tough one. You probably know this just from our conversation, um, but I'm not sure it would just come out at a dinner party or in a normal conversation. I care so deeply, and I'm so motivated every day by helping to move the needle on the issues that I've just dedicated my life to, right? And so sometimes, probably to my own detriment, but I feel like the decision that I made many moons ago to shift from corporate to nonprofit was probably one of the greatest decisions that I ever made in my life. I'm so grateful that I did that, and it drives so much of who I am and what I do every day, that if, if we can feed one more family today than we did yesterday, or than we thought we could have done an hour ago, we're doing the right thing.

People sense, but until you articulate it, don't really understand the passion you have for your work.

Yeah.

And how great.

It's just core to my DNA.

That's right. And how grateful you are to have made that decision decades ago to move into the space. I know, I think about that too. I think about that decision I made in late October of 2000 to tell my law partners, I'm done. I quit. I'm, I left.

It was a broken road to get there. I mean, I had a lot of different jobs before I got there.

Yeah.

But you know, sometimes that's what it takes. And I, I don't know, you know, how kids today, you know, who are 15, 16, 17, making decisions to go to college, and they, they have to know, you know, they're being asked like, what do you want to be when you grow up? Like, oh my gosh, I can't tell you how old I was when I had— when I decided that this was my path and how many careers I had before I got there. So I just think it's, it's okay to not know. It's okay to—

yeah, you know, absolutely. And I tell young people all the time, don't worry about what you're going to do.

Serve.

Do stuff that's going to make you happy.

That's right.

And that's not sitting in front of the television. I mean, go out and be of service to people, right?

If nothing else, it goes back to my Post-it, right? Happiness equals enjoyment, purpose, and satisfaction. Absolutely.

Well, Colleen, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been wonderful speaking with you, and you, you yourself are an inspiration to so many. Your story is remarkable. Thank you for everything that you do.

You're welcome.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this view, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.