While I started my career working for family firms in NY’s fashion industry and now run my own business, the middle 25 years were dedicated to serving in the social sector (I prefer to call the sector by what it is, social, not by its IRS nonprofit tax status). 

When working in the social sector, I found myself repeating what leaders I admired said. Expressions like, “Nonprofits should run more like businesses,” and, “.80 cents on every dollar should go directly to programs.” Yet over time, I saw the contradiction in these beliefs.

To answer this question, let’s look at hard and soft skills. Hard skills have traditionally been knowledge-based, technical skills, like accounting and economics, environmental analysis and programming.  These skills can be taught in more of a one-size fits all, replicable way.  Soft skills like active listening, empathy, humility, mindfulness, self-regulation and communication, lend themselves to practice and are cultivated over time.  

If you ever wondered what kind of job a certain college major could get with that degree, the degree was likely in a soft skills area.  Soft skills are grounded in social intelligence whereas hard skills are rooted in STEM fields and cognitive intelligence. 

I continue to grapple with the question, “What is Poverty?”  The contrast I perceive between the contentment found among many living in 3^rd world countries compared with the dissatisfaction of many Americans who live in one of the richest countries and times in human history – has led me to economics.

The concept of scarcity and self-interest to access limited resources is attributed to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776 as America became a nation.  The greed we’ve sometimes seen from people on Wall Street and in other organizations makes sense in a context of extreme scarcity.  

In previous articles I’ve posed the question, “What is Poverty?” When visiting what we call third-world countries, I’ve been particularly taken by witnessing a level of abject poverty rarely seen in the U.S., yet often finding more smiling faces and less anxiety and depression than I see among even middle-class Americans. A totally subjective observation on my part, but one I’ve heard echoed by other travelers.

This might also be an observation and comment about poverty for which I was comfortable. Because as Tamra Ryan, the CEO of the Women’s Bean Project and author of The Third Law points out, there are a lot of us in the U.S. who are more comfortable looking at poverty in other countries than seeing it down the street from us. I’ve been one of those people, I’m afraid. It’s been easier to see the Girl Effect as investment needed in other countries, but I didn’t want to admit that much of what keeps people in poverty are the systemic barriers to getting out of it, and cultural systems for which I as a white woman in America have benefited.  Ryan’s self-revelation is helping me start to see my own. 

If you’re striving to sustain growth or want to get more colleagues up the mountain with you, you may be ready to go beyond being effective to leading and influencing others. It’s not easy and requires developing comfort with discomfort. Should you want help, the Ripple Affect would be honored to guide you using our independent approach for developing Strategic Alignment, Affective Leaders and Meaningful Impact.

When I told the first dozen people I named my consulting practice the Ripple Affect, they all responded with a sound – not a hmmm? in confusion, but a declarative hehh!   Something clicked.  Yet when I began handing out business cards, people looked at me like, ‘poor dear, effect is spelled wrong.’