Personal Strategy Mobilizing Your Self for Effective Grantmaking
Whether it's introducing new ideas into your foundation or offering constructive feedback to a grantee, grantmakers can develop personal strategies to meet the "soft" challenges of grantmaking. Effective personal strategy helps practitioners use their understanding of self and role - as learner, analyst, bridge builder - to manage the tensions that come with the job. In this guide, contributors discuss the elements of personal strategy and how it helps grantmakers to leverage their strengths in service to their objectives. The guide also explores why some grantmakers are able to think and work like "naturals" - and how the rest of us can emulate their style.
Highlights
- Understanding one's role and why it matters
- Thinking like a natural in difficult situations
- Reflective practice techniques for effectiveness
What's in the Guide?
- Personal Strategy and Why It Matters
- The Elements of Personal Strategy
- Thinking Like a Natural: A Framework
- Reflective Practice Techniques to Improve Effectiveness
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Additional Resources: Personal Strategy
The organizations below offer education, training, and consulting services that are informed by role concepts. All contributed to GrantCraft’s workshops on role and this guide:
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Working Like a Natural: Techniques for Personal Strategy
1. ANALYZE YOUR FRUSTRATING INCIDENTS.
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Frustrating incidents provide good opportunities to reflect on personal strategies that haven’t served us well. By taking the time to revisit those incidents, we can better understand weaknesses in our strategies and prepare to address them. -
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Thinking Like a Natural: A Framework for Personal Strategy
The power of an analytic framework is that it provides a way to understand explicitly things we already do but don’t usually reflect on. A framework like this can be helpful in two ways:
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The Elements of Personal Strategy
Grantmakers who have internalized a strong sense of their role, their self, and their system are constantly devising personal strategies to manage swampy situations — and performing more effectively as a result.
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Personal Strategy and Why It Matters
The challenges grantmakers find in ambiguous situations are often further compounded by several tensions that come with their jobs. They work for the public good, but in private institutions.
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How Do You Build in Learning When There’s No Time to Learn?
Time is a scarce commodity - a reality that's as true in foundations as in any organization. Grantmakers need to spend time wisely on activities that add value to their daily work and increase their ability to do good work in the future. By those criteria, learning ought to get high priority, yet it's often the case that learning gets squeezed out when time gets short.
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Whether it's introducing new ideas into your foundation or offering constructive feedback to a grantee, grantmakers can develop personal strategies to meet the "soft" challenges of grantmaking. Effective personal strategy helps practitioners use their understanding of self and role - as learner, analyst, bridge builder - to manage the tensions that come with the job. In this guide, contributors discuss the elements of personal strategy and how it helps grantmakers to leverage their strengths in service to their objectives. The guide also explores why some grantmakers are able to think and work like "naturals" - and how the rest of us can emulate their style.
Highlights
- Understanding one's role and why it matters
- Thinking like a natural in difficult situations
- Reflective practice techniques for effectiveness
What's in the Guide?
- Personal Strategy and Why It Matters
- The Elements of Personal Strategy
- Thinking Like a Natural: A Framework
- Reflective Practice Techniques to Improve Effectiveness