Inside CVC: Values Aren't Just Pretty Words on Paper: Lynda Mansson on Leadership, Trust, and Escaping Burnout

Lynda Mansson spent close to thirty years in the nonprofit sector, most recently as Director General of the MAVA Foundation, a large family philanthropic foundation. She started her career about as far from philanthropy as it gets: as a stockbroker. Today she's a leadership coach for mission driven leaders, working from a framework of six practices that separate those who sustain impact from those who burn out chasing it.

Lynda walks Steve and Philipp through why transformation problems almost always trace back to leadership rather than strategy, citing a study MAVA commissioned with Cambridge University's Conservation Evidence group that found over 85 percent of failed projects came down to people issues. She makes the case for stakeholder capitalism over shareholder value, unpacks what happens when a leader's personal values collide with their organization's stated ones, and explains why stated values without follow through are just pretty words on a piece of paper.

The conversation closes on what boards should screen for in a new CEO, and why the pressure leaders feel today is never going away, so the real work is changing our relationship to it.

If you're trying to sustain impact without burning out your team or yourself, this episode will give you language for it.

Transcript

Welcome to inside CVC, the podcast that brings together leaders in innovation and capital investment to explore the trends shaping the business of corporate venture capital. I'm your host, Steve Schmith and together with Philip Willigmann we're speaking with corporate investors, entrepreneurs and ecosystem builders. Driving the Future of Innovation. Inside CVC is brought to you by U. Path Advisors, helping corporations and startups unlock sustainable growth through strategic partnerships. To learn more, visit u-path dot com. That's the letter u dash path dot com. And to catch up on all of our episodes, search inside CVC on your favorite podcast platform or visit u-path dot com forward slash podcast. In this episode, we sit down with Lynda Mansson. Lynda spent close to thirty years in the nonprofit sector, most recently as the director general of the Mava Foundation, a large family philanthropic foundation. Before that, she started about as far away from philanthropy as you can get. She was a stockbroker. Today, Lynda works as a leadership coach for mission driven leaders, people trying to make the world a better place while running real organizations under real pressure. She's built a framework around six practices, She believes separate leaders who sustain impact over time from those who burn out chasing it. Authenticity and trust. Powerful collaboration, continuous learning, courage, managing complexity, and caring for self and others. In this conversation, we get into why transformation problems so often turn out to be leadership problems. What happens when a leader's personal values collide with an organization's stated ones, and why? Lynda believes the pressure leaders feel today is never going away. So the real work is changing our relationship to it. We pick up our conversation with Lynda on her own path into this work.

I've had for profit and nonprofit experience. I bounced back and forth in my early days, starting in the financial sector as a stockbroker. I've traveled about as far away from that as you can get now. and have been focusing on the, the nonprofit sector for the past close to thirty years. So my deep expertise is really in the nonprofit sector, sustainability, people who are working to make the world a better place. Um, now I'm a leadership coach working with mission driven leaders, people who are trying to make the world a better place. prior to that, I was the CEO of a large family philanthropic foundation, which is probably what I'm best known for. You talk about your journey and focusing on leaders that are driving execution that working to fix real world problems. So when you think about leaders and how they maybe historically have treated transformation as a strategy or execution problem, why does it so often become a leadership challenge instead? Well, I think when there are issues, you can almost always trace the root of the problem back to some issue with leadership. Sometimes when things go wrong, it's really hard to pinpoint where we might label it strategy or execution, and it might be simply that. But I think underneath that is the issue of leadership. When I was the CEO of the Mava Foundation, we supported hundreds and hundreds of different projects, some of which didn't work out the way we wanted. And we decided to do a study to look into the reasons for failure of the things that we supported. And we worked with an organization called Conservation Evidence that's based at Cambridge University, and they dug into the reasons for the projects that didn't achieve the objectives that they wanted, or were in some way labeled a failure. And in the vast majority of cases, over eighty five percent, Uh, you could trace it back to people issues. It was either weak leadership, poor teamwork, interpersonal issues, and all of that comes back to leadership. So if you can crack the issue of solid and appropriate leadership in any situation, you've created the basis you need for good performance. I like to call it adding the fuel of leadership to the fire of passion, which really makes transformation happen and makes it sustainable. What distinguishes those who can sustain impact over time? And for those who sort of burn out and revert to, short term thinking under all sorts of pressure. shareholder pressure. The list goes on. No doubt leaders are under so much pressure these days. And I see it in my practice and my coaching practice. It's probably the number one issue that I deal with is people trying to cope with the pressure that they're under, no matter where that pressure is coming from. And as a former CEO, as a board member currently, and of many other organizations previously, I've worked with lots and lots of leaders and have been able to observe them in action and see, see what works and what doesn't for them. And from that, I've been able to distill thinking around a model that has six key practices that will help leaders sustain for the long term and create positive change. And this is sort of seen as an overlay on top of basic leadership functions. I mean, everybody still needs to create and articulate a vision, bring people along with you, create positive change at the end of it. So it's sort of an overlay, particularly for people who are mission driven. And I think of people who are mission driven as people who are working for something beyond profit and beyond just themselves, and they're essentially trying to create a more societal change, a broader change. It basically means that you're accountable to something bigger than yourself. Um, these six practices are relevant for all kinds of leaders. I think they're absolutely essential for mission driven leaders. But they, I have found they have lots of residents for leaders in, in any sector working on anything. And the six practices are one, being authentic and creating trust. Two building powerful collaborations, three, learning continuously and listening deeply. Four acting with courage, five managing complexity and uncertainty, and then six caring for self and others. And obviously, there's lots we could talk about under each one of those, but together, those form a set of practices that I think help leaders sustain themselves and transformation over the long term. What I love about those is they are steeped not only in strategy, but they're very human as well. Right? In terms of human as as me as a leader, vulnerability, courage, those are hard sometimes for leaders. But also I think the strategies that you that you outline there. One question you mentioned mission driven leaders. And I'm curious if you think mission driven leadership is perhaps under under battle is is under siege in lieu of shareholder value returns or just focusing on shareholder value returns? You've seen this conversation recently on on business channels, etc., that says perhaps corporate leaders need to focus more on shareholder returns and growth and navigate or not be part of sort of the more societal mission driven efforts. Do you think something shifting in that space? It's sort of like two steps forward, one step back. I am a really big believer in the power of stakeholder capitalism and not only focusing on shareholder value. I think a lot of the problems that we see in the world and with companies flow from overly focusing on shareholder value. Obviously, companies have to provide a return for their shareholders, no question about that. But they have responsibility and interests that go well beyond that. And I think companies themselves are well served by taking these things into account, treating their staff as as humans and not robots. As you mentioned, the mission driven leadership model is very human, and it focuses a lot on the elements that are intrinsic in us, that help us perform, that helps you get the best out of people. And I think that's highly relevant in today's context. Things are very uncertain, very unsteady. The world needs leaders who can stay grounded and steady in the face of shifting waters and so much uncertainty. And I think focusing on these kinds of practices and others will help leaders do that and navigate the kind of crazy times we're in right now. Linda, it's a pleasure to have you on. Thank you for for joining us. We had many conversations over the last year on leadership, on organization on, on change. Um, and when you talk to boards, you know, a lot of boards say, oh yeah, values matter, right? And you, you know, you, you come at the top of an organization where you are transforming an organization towards a new direction, towards a new north star. Um, hopefully making it more sustainable. Um, but when, when value matters, right? Uh, it starts with yourself, right? And what does it actually look like when, when a leader is misaligned with their values? And how quickly does that show up in decisions and outcomes? I love this question. I think a lot about values and it's so important because it, it lies under so much of, of what happens. And, um, first, let's distinguish a little bit between personal values and organizational values and with personal values, of course, everyone, whether they're articulated or not, every one of us has our core values. And these are an expression of how we think the world should be what we think is important. Um, it's basically how we think the world should run is expressed in our values and they run very, very deep. These values can change over time. It's not like you're born with a set of values and you stick with them your whole life. Different parts of your life can lead you to value some things more than others, so they can shift. And there's it's really important. And I do a lot of work with clients and groups and teams on articulating those values so that people can live and work in line with the values. And that is important because if you don't, it creates a constant sense of friction that is exhausting. It doesn't allow you to be authentic. And when you come home really tired at the end of a day of work, often it's because there's some sort of values misalignment that you're having to do things that don't feel good when you're working in line with your values, things flow much, much better. It feels good, it feels right, and there's less effort required. It creates energy rather than draining energy. So I love to work with people to articulate those values and articulate what does it look like when you're living and working in line with those values, and what happens to you when you're not? Then we've got organizational values, and that's a whole different kettle of fish because that's usually they're defined sometimes in a very top down way, sometimes in a participative way. But most often when you see organizational values, they're, they're simply aspirational or outright lies, as we can see. They write down some nice words and then never do another thing about it. And the only way it makes sense to have stated values is if you then flow the conversation from there to define, okay, what trade offs might that mean? What does that look like in practice? How does that drive our behaviors? Otherwise, it winds up being just some pretty words on a piece of paper. And we've got, of course, some very high profile, great examples of, of companies that have done this. And I'll just mention a couple that are so flagrant. Please do let me tell you that this set of values, you see if you can guess what company it is, here are the values respect, integrity, communications, excellence. That was it sounds like a big four. Yeah, everybody's got those. That's another thing. Values have to be individual and not just these very generalized terms. I personally am not a fan of those kind of values. But anyway, Enron that was Enron didn't really work out for them with their massive accounting fraud, you know, deceiving investors. And then they collapsed entirely in two thousand and one, I think it was. Um, here's another one. The the set of values are ethics doing what's right and customers first. And that one is Wells Fargo. I was gonna guess that that's who created millions of fake customer accounts to be able to show higher sales. Um, let me just give you one more because they're so fun. Uh, this one is trust stability and client stewardship. And this is Madoff investment securities. the largest Ponzi scheme in history. I mean, it's just great examples of you can state the values, but if you don't do anything with them, they're entirely meaningless, just entirely meaningless. is there a way to perhaps see these things coming. Are there any are there any sort of signals to keep an eye out for? If you're, if you're one of those mission driven leaders and you see some of these signals, is there is there a way to to change direction? So I, I think the number one thing to watch out for is alignment and congruence. And it always flows from from leaders and leadership. You know, you'll have a leader who says this is important. You know, we really all need to. Whatever. Um, but if that person is acting differently, behaving differently for themselves, not demonstrating openly what it means to do what they say everyone ought to be doing, um, that's where you see the misalignment and the lack of congruence. And that's where you should sit up and take notice. I also think that, um, when, when, when things. When things are happening that clash with our own values, or where someone is clashing with their stated values, we feel it like we do. You ever sit with someone and you just feel a little uncomfortable, and you can't quite put your finger on the reason why? It's often because of that. And if you stop and think about it, you can go like, okay, this person is smiling at me and nodding their head and saying all the right things, and yet they're doing that, and I can't reconcile those things. And even when we're not conscious of it, our bodies feel it. So if we can learn to kind of tune in, tune in to the bodies and go, okay, what is where is that feeling of discomfort coming from? You can often put your finger on it. why is caring for yourself one of your pillars? Why? Why perhaps is that seen by many as soft? I think it's historical. I think it's a very traditional, dare I say it, macho view of the world. Like I should be able to just power through this. Um, I think in the, the impact sector, particularly with non-profits, there's a sense of heroic or martyrdom almost that's expected. Um, I'm supposed to work all, all of the hours that God gave day and night. Um, and if I don't, I'm failing in my mission. There's a, there's a feeling often linked to if I don't do enough, people are going to die. You know, it's often linked to, to outcomes like that. It sounds so exaggerated, but that's the feeling they're going to have. And those kinds of people just burn the candle at both ends and wind up burnt out. Close to burnout or just living under a constant state of stress, pressure and overwhelm. And it's not good for anybody. And so flipping that around and taking better care of yourself, you're never going to get rid of the things that are stressful. The stressors are always going to be there. And what we can change is the reaction to stress and how prepared you are to cope with it one question there. where the world is going right now there is this, this focus of, you have to be strong again. you have to kind of you shouldn't show any weakness, right? If I go back twenty, thirty years, how my parents grew up, right. They always were working, right. There was no room for, you know, maybe at home some, some, some form of weakness, but it was generally like go, go, go mentality, right. And being strong and build your business and so on and so forth did anything change in the last twenty or thirty years there? I think a lot has changed. I think that the world has shifted and the pressures that people are feeling in every sector arise from a few things, and part of it is what we talked about before. This shareholder value overemphasis. When you are trying to squeeze every drop of money out of the company, no matter what the cost, you're reducing the resources, you are overburdening the staff, you are expecting more and more of them. You want them to achieve more with less. You see the same thing in the nonprofit sector. Um, it's very rare to come across a nonprofit leader who says, oh yes, we're fully funded. We have all the resources we need to do the job we set out to do. They are continually under stress, under-resourced, and the resources are getting harder and harder to come by, more and more restricted. And they're battling against this, this crunch, this shrinking of possibility. So I think the whole context in many ways has shifted. That makes people just feel so much more pressure. Um, now you say, have we become weaker? It's such an interesting question. I think we've become smarter. I think people felt those pressures but never dared talk about them. They just submitted to it and lived with it because that's what was expected. I talked to a lot of leaders who struggle sometimes in managing and leading teams of these much younger workers that are just entering in the workforce, who have a different work ethic. They have different expectations, and they find it a little bit hard to cope with. And these younger people come in with what I view as a much healthier attitude to boundaries in saying, no, I'm. I'm not going to work all day and all night and all my weekends. I want to have a life. And when you're used to having a context where everyone's doing that, suddenly, um, those in leadership positions have to find a way of coping with that. And so I think that especially this, this younger generation is going to lead the way in getting us back into a situation of better balance. So how do leaders cope and how do they create that connection with the younger workforce? And I don't know if there's a there's a follow up question there, but we've had conversations with leaders on tomorrow's workforce is both human and agentic, which I think brings an entirely different sort of complexity to this as well. So on the front end, how do how do leaders cope as you describe? What kind of recommendations would you would you give? And do you have any recommendations for how leaders can connect and build trust and authenticity? Authenticity with a younger workforce. Yeah. Let's take those in in sequence. So there are lots of things that leaders can do to help stay grounded. And number one, I think is to build awareness. So to know what their stress triggers are, to be aware of, of what causes so much stress and pressure. Um, and part of the way, again, to be aware of that is to know what's going on in your body. Um, I feel it like my shoulders get scrunched. My, my, my throat gets constricted. You know, there are physical symptoms and sometimes if you just aren't aware of it, if you notice those physical symptoms, you can go, oh, is something going on here? Maybe I should pay attention to it. So number one, just know what it is that stresses you so you can help manage for it. Um, number two is be really clear on your own goals and priorities so that you can advocate better for yourself and set boundaries. It makes it easier to say no if you know, like my highest priorities are this and this and this, and I'm sorry, that doesn't fit. Maybe we can get to that later. Um, another, another thing that I see happen a lot is when you're under continual pressure, you tend to kind of whittle your life down to just work and home. Um, and it's really important to maintain a well-rounded life, to continue doing the walk with the dog, with your neighbor every Tuesday or playing pickleball or, um, singing in the choir or whatever it is you do, because it's exactly those networks and those activities that will help you in moments of stress. One other thing I want to mention, um, is, well, first of all, to be clear on your values and make sure you're living in line with your values, because that can be very, very stressful when you're not. Um. I think I'll stop there. There was something else I wanted to add, but I could go on for a long time about those sorts of things. Okay. How do you. So you can tell. I feel very passionate about this. So how do you how do you build the bridges with some of the younger generations? I think that the, um, one of the practices helps with this, which is about listening and learning. And especially as we get older, we tend to think like, okay, I've seen a lot of stuff. I know what this is all about. And we jump to conclusions. Um, we think we know when maybe we don't. And I think we need to stay in a learning posture, trying to understand, seeking to understand, um, and really listen to what we're hearing. And we all do this most of the time. We listen while we're developing our, the next thing we're going to say, we're not really listening to what the other person is saying. You know, we're just like preparing our next thing. So really listening to what's being said and taking it on board. And I think this all comes from it comes down to adopting a posture of curiosity. And I think this also helps in some of the environment we're faced with today with so much polarization. And it's hard to do. But approaching things with curiosity rather than judgment is the way to go. Really. Oh that's interesting. How did you come to that conclusion? Tell me more about that. Asking the questions and getting more information is essential. And I've done this a lot in the past. I'm sure you have too, where you get a little bit of information and you go, oh, that's what it is. You think you know what they're talking about, and you react to that thing, which may not at all be what they were talking about or what they meant. So staying in that curious open posture and asking lots of questions, I think helps build those bridges with everybody, including with people of the younger generation. Linda, you have done a lot of work around Transformation, um and also transforming towards a more sustainable future. And to do that specifically in the world we live in today, this is not a one off event, right? It's not just, you know, I know this from my previous, um, corporate, I worked for sustainability was a big, big piece of the strategy, but it's not like announcing it one time. It's not happening. It's a lot of work. So so what differentiates leaders who can sustain change over the years from those who start strong but then lose the momentum? Um, there's a few things that help there. I mean, one is certainly taking care of yourself so that you physically and mentally can sustain over a long period of time. And I think the issue of congruence and alignment that we talked about before helps keep people on board. And we haven't touched on this before, but the, um, the issue of trust and authenticity and courage come into play here, I think. Um, and I think it is really an essential skill of today to be able to build trust and trusting relationships. And if you look at the Edelman Trust Barometer that comes out every year, trust just, just just joined them at Davos. Yeah. Ah, okay. Across the board. Every kind of institution out there um trust has is steadily declining over the years. The only area where trust isn't declining is with individuals. People trust the people. They know, the people they follow and they think they know. Um, and so the ability to build trusting relationships and build trust with people you need to bring along with you is essential for sustaining any kind of transformation. Um, and this building trust is closely linked to authenticity. In fact, it's kind of a circular thing that's hard to break out of because in order to be authentic and be yourself and maybe show some vulnerability, you have to feel trust. But doing those things builds trust. So you have to jump into that cycle somewhere. And it usually starts by, um, showing authenticity. And I mean, I'll just give a little, a little example. I sit on the board of an organization and we had presentations from all of the vice presidents of all of the different programs. And the first four stood up and went, we did this. It was great. We did that, we did that, we did this. And we all went, okay. All right, okay, fine. Thank you. Thank you very much. And then the fifth person came on and she said, oh, you know, I'm a little bit nervous up here, but I'm going to do my best to present to you the great things that we've done. And we all immediately liked her. You know, it just created a different atmosphere. And we believed what she had to say. And as a funder, when I was the CEO of the foundation, trust was built through honesty and authenticity with our partners, the people, the people we funded who came in and went, everything's great, everything's perfect. We did everything right. I, you know, you know, that's not the case. You absolutely know that's not the case. When people came in and said this worked well, this didn't. This is what we learned from it. It really built trust so that when they came and said, this is a really big deal, we absolutely believed it. I had one person in particular I can think of who was so, so good at that. He ran this large initiative that we were the sole funders of, and he would come into my office every few weeks and say, here's what's going great. Here's what I'm struggling with. Here's where we hit a bump in the road. It was just all out there transparently. He wasn't trying to put on a happy picture. He was genuinely presenting the struggles they went through. And it, it it made the relationship stronger. It made our made us want to support them more to help them through the bumpy times so it can take some some courage to show those kind of things and talk to those kind of things, particularly to funders. And I'm aware of all of the issues around that. But doing it is what creates the basis of trust. A second thing that's going to help sustain things over time is demonstrating courage. And I just see so much of this, people who avoid the hard decisions, the tough conversations, avoid taking risks because they don't want to be blamed for something, or they don't want to look bad, or because they're worried what people are going to think. And inevitably not dealing with the hard stuff will will blow back on you. It always, always does. And I see it time and time again with leaders who duck the hard decisions one way or another. Come back comes back to bite them whether it's through something blowing up over here or the board stepping in because they've lost confidence in the CEO. Um, but stepping in and being able to deal with all that tough stuff is going to help sustain transformation over time. Linda, let's, let's close with some forward looking advice. Um, if you're advising a board who is interested, who's looking for a new CEO lead over a decade of disruption, AI, climate, geopolitics, a lot of the things we've talked about today, what do you think are the non-obvious leadership qualities that the board should look for? Um, I love that question. Um, I would ask questions like, do they have the ability to To create trust with others. Because trust kind of lies underneath just about everything that we need to do. Are they willing to be humble and authentic? In other words, do they have an overly high opinion of their own judgment? Or are they willing to listen to what others have to say as well? Um, have they demonstrated the resilience and adaptability that you need? Um, because nobody can set a single course these days and stay on it forever. We all have to adapt and course correct. There's so much uncertainty and so many changes in the world. And, and do they have a track record of being courageous? I think that would be one of the one of the main questions I'd ask, like, can you tell me, um, tell me a story about a time that you demonstrated real courage. Interesting. Linda, thank you so much. Such an important topic at an important Time, Steve. Yeah. Go ahead. So before you before before we end, I do I do want to ask Linda one thing because I, I saw Linda in action, uh, in, in a leadership class, um, a year ago. I'd love to hear your thoughts real quick. Is there any for our listeners or any inner practice? Um, you can share with our listeners like a, like a leader should be doing, um, to really kind of like be more conscious on the work over the next five years. Anything you can share to kind of like, you know, keep people more sane. Okay. Great. One. Um, so I mentioned before that the stressors we face are never going to go away. I mean, the world is not going to suddenly get less crazy. We're not going to suddenly have fully resourced, um, uh, strategic plans. Um, and I think a really important paradigm shift for most people that will help them set themselves up for success is to recognize that that isn't going to change because we all tend to go, oh, okay, you know, I'm really underwater right now, but as soon as this is over, as soon as that is done, or as soon as I close that deal, then it's all going to be fine. But it's not, because then the next thing comes along. So we need to accept it's always going to be there. And when you accept, it's always going to be there. We need to think about, okay, how do I change my relationship to these stressors? Nothing is inherently stressful. Something I find stressful you may not find stressful at all, and vice versa. It's not like something comes with a label. This is stressful. It's the story we create around it and the way we react to it, and the way we make space for it that determines how we react to the stressor. So I would say the number one piece of inner work is to work on how we make space for the stress and how you stay grounded in the face of it. Because it's not going to be going away anytime soon.

That's all for this week's episode of Inside CVC. Be sure to catch up on all of our episodes wherever you find your podcast or online at U Path dot com. That's the letter u dash path dot com. We'll see you next time.