4 Essential Qualities NGO Leaders Need to Thrive in Uncertain Times

Are you stuck in survival mode, managing your team under pressure while feeling like you're always chasing results?

In today’s fast-changing humanitarian world, traditional leadership methods are no longer enough. With limited resources, constant change, and burnout on the rise, it's time to evolve. This episode explores the shift from results-driven to people-centered leadership—and why it's critical for creating real, lasting impact.

In this episode you'll discover:

• 4 essential qualities every modern humanitarian leader must embody
• Learn how to develop your team while getting your time back
• A few ways you can start becoming a modern NGO leader today

Press play now to start becoming the kind of leader your team actually wants to follow—without burning yourself out in the process.

What Is Your Leadership Style?  Free Quiz:

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Do you have the skills and the resilience to lead in today's dynamic NGO environment? Find out in today's episode.

Welcome to the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. The podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress. Burnout and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey peace. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Welcome my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leaders. I hope you're having a great week. As we know, there are a lot of changes going on in the NGO world, and this requires that we are able to adapt, that we are able to be flexible in the way we lead, that we [00:01:00] can work in this dynamic environment. We know how to manage change. We work with limited resources and all the while maintaining our wellbeing.

So in this episode, you're gonna discover why people centered leadership is more important than ever, four main qualities that a modern leader needs to have in order to survive in today's environment, and a few ways you can start becoming a modern leader even today.

Alright, let's get started, shall we? So you may think that you are being a good leader by focusing on getting results done and outcomes for projects, which makes sense, right? If we focus on outcomes, if we're able to achieve what's in the project goals, then we can get more funding, then it will lead to more opportunities and so on.

However really what I'm [00:02:00] seeing is that we need to be less focused on results as leaders and more focused on our teams, more people focused. We need to bring back the human into humanitarian, and a lot of us have fallen off track. And no fault of your own. A lot of times our organizations emphasize goal achievement, emphasize the achievement of projects and project results, and getting more funding and so on.

But as a modern leader we prioritize people first. When we do that, and when I say people, I don't mean communities. I mean our teams, when we focus and prioritize on our teams first, they will perform better and we will actually achieve better results than if we were more results focused first.

So [00:03:00] we need to be really bring back more empathy and people focused leadership to become modern leaders. So what does that mean? I'm gonna give you four main qualities that a modern leader needs to have in order to survive in today's environment. The first one is focusing more time building our team through coaching and mentoring and providing them professional development opportunities, this has become more important than ever.

Why? Because we are working in a environment that has less resources. That means that we are all expected to perform at a higher level, to be more efficient, and part of that means we need to grow others around us. We also need to grow ourselves and to focus on our own, skill development. But what I find is sometimes these [00:04:00] things are more of afterthoughts than they are a priority for leaders.

These are things you can do on the job, they don't need to be done outside of work or be taking a lot of time out of work, but you can do them as you are working. I've done even previous podcast episodes on how to do that.

That's one thing that I really like about the coach approach way of leading that I teach in my modern humanitarian and development leader course is that way of leading by nature is also developing your team. It's making them more proactive, more independent, and it's helping them grow. Today's environment requires that we have more productive, streamline conversations, much like I teach in my course, that you can actually have and use your time more productively.

A lot of times what I find is that leaders, what they will tell me sometimes [00:05:00] is, oh, I really like coaching, but it takes too much time. But what I find is when I observe how they are coaching, they're actually not coaching as efficiently as they could because when we are asking a lot of questions about background information and details, this is not necessary in order to have a productive coaching conversation.

And so the more effective and efficient your conversations are, , the more you can quickly move through a coaching conversation and help empower your team member while also freeing up more of your time to focus on other things. Okay. Second main quality of a modern leader is being more intentional about how we use our time.

Ensuring that what we focus our time on, the majority of our time, those activities that we're doing are leading to the impact we want. So of course, in [00:06:00] order to know that, we have to be very clear as what is the impact we want? Where are we going, what's our destination? But we also need to know and be aware of how are we using our time? Because we only all have so much time during the day.

And so it becomes all the more important to use it in a way that you focus the majority of your time on the activities that will make the most impact. And the way that I teach this in my course is by having my students do a time audit. A time audit is basically where you go through your day and you just write down as you're going through your day, what you're working on, and then you can go back and look and see are these things that I'm focusing on actually going to lead to the impact that I want, yes or no? And then you can change accordingly.

All right. Quality number three of a modern leader is to lead by example. [00:07:00] We ourselves are people. As leaders, we need to prioritize our own health and wellbeing before we can help others. Just like the classic put on your own oxygen mask before you help others put on theirs on the airplane if it's going down. Hopefully you haven't had that situation, but this is the same kind of thing. We have to help ourselves before we can really be in a state to fully help others. And that means that we need to show and demonstrate as leaders.

The modern leader sets an example of what they want their team to do as well. So that means setting boundaries on time. That saying that is okay to not always be available all of the time and that perfect is not necessary. These are some of the things that we need to be able to do as modern leaders in order to show our teams that they can do the same.

This therefore will [00:08:00] increase your wellbeing and increase the wellbeing of your team. Because listen, I promise your team that they are watching you. So even if you say you don't do what you see me do, you don't work long hours just because I am or you don't send emails really late just because I am, or you don't have to be available all the time.

Just because I am, I promise you that your team is watching you. And it doesn't matter what you say, they're gonna follow what you do. So think about that when you're thinking about how to set an example as a modern leader you want to be. All right.

Finally, the fourth quality that a modern leader has is the ability to let go of needing to have the answers or to tell your team what to do.

This is a very simple and yet powerful shift. Sometimes I find that leaders [00:09:00] have this belief that in my culture or in my organization, or in my role or with my team, it's different. Like for me, I have to be able to give the answers because that's what my team expects. What I say to that is, your team expects that because that's what you've taught them.

We can retrain our team to become more independent and to think for themselves. It's just a matter of how you lead. So it is possible, it's just a decision you make. The way you're interacting with your team makes a difference between if they're more proactive and thinking of ideas versus they are coming to you for solutions.

That's it. It's your behavior that makes the difference there. So it's not always comfortable to make that transition. And that is why I have a whole week in my course, which specifically focuses on that, how to become a [00:10:00] modern leader through introducing this new way of leading where we are reprogramming our team to think for themselves, but it is possible. I've seen it again and again.

So once again, the four qualities of a modern leader are one, focusing more time on building our team through coaching, mentoring, and providing development. Two, being more intentional about how we use our time and making sure that how we use it is actually leading to the impact we want.

Number three, leading by example. To be a modern leader, we need to be very clear about the way that we behave and how our team is looking at us as permission on how they can behave. And number four, letting go of needing to have all the answers and getting in the habit of asking our team more quality questions.

[00:11:00] Okay.

Alright. That's it for this week. Until next week, keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do or to let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz. What is your leadership style? You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will Thank you for [00:12:00] it.