Transcript: How to Stop Employee Disengagement with Clear Goals and Purpose // Kendra VanderMeulen, National Christian Foundation

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“How to Stop Employee Disengagement with Clear Goals and Purpose“

December 2, 2024

Kendra VanderMeulen

Intro: Are you a Christian leader looking to take your leadership and workplace culture to the next level? Well, in this episode, we sit down with Kendra VanderMeulen, the CEO of the National Christian Foundation, headquartered in Atlanta, to explore her journey from the corporate tech world to leading the largest Christian donor platform. You'll hear about the strategies she used to drive employee engagement, build momentum, and transform the culture of the National Christian Foundation. If you're passionate about being a leader and being a better leader in creating a flourishing workplace, this episode is for you. Don't miss it.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hi, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of Road to Flourishing. My passion is to equip Christian leaders like you to cultivate engaged, flourishing workplaces.

I’m delighted to welcome Kendra VanderMeulen to the podcast today. Kendra’s the CEO of the National Christian Foundation. And through our conversation, you'll hear Kendra talk about three transformative benefits for Christian leaders. First, you'll gain practical strategies for building momentum and driving positive change within your organization, ensuring that goals are met and aligned with your mission. Secondly, Kendra shares her insights on how to effectively engage and retain your top talent, emphasizing the importance of mission alignment and leadership development. Finally, you'll discover the value of transparent communication, strategic goal setting, and fostering a Christ-centered workplace where everyone can thrive. This episode will equip you with actionable steps to lead with excellence and purpose.

I think you’re going to love this interview with Kendra VanderMeulen. But before we dive in, this podcast is proudly sponsored by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey. Don't wait. This is a perfect time to gather vital insights from your employees to assess the health of your workplace culture. As Kendra describes, “The Employee Engagement Survey gave us the insights we needed to truly listen to our staff and drive transformation.” Are you ready to transform your workplace? Visit workplaces.org to learn more and to start your journey to becoming a flourishing workplace today.

Hello to our new listeners. Thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable lessons like this.

Let me tell you a little more about Kendra VanderMeulen. Kendra’s the CEO of the National Christian Foundation. She's responsible for guiding the strategic direction of the organization and has been fundamental in developing highly functional teams and instilling operational excellence. Her passion is to invest in and build up the next generation of leaders in the Christian generosity space. Kendra founded NCF’s affiliate office in Seattle in 2007 and served in Seattle and the Northwest region until 2022, when she became the CEO of the National Christian Foundation nationally. She's a veteran of the wireless-communications industry, having served in executive roles in Infospace and AT&T Wireless. And she's been an active board member and advisor in a variety of companies in the wireless-Internet area, as well as being active in her church and other nonprofit work. She holds an MS in computer science from Ohio State and a BS in mathematics. She's a recipient of the 1999 Catherine B. Cleary Award as an outstanding woman leader at AT&T.

So, here’s my conversation with Kendra VanderMeulen.

Hi, Kendra. It’s great to have you on the podcast. I’m looking forward to our conversation today.

Kendra VanderMeulen: Thanks, Al. It's great to be here, and I look forward to it as well.

Al: Before we dive into the leadership topic, tell us a little bit about the mission of the National Christian Foundation. And I hope most of our listeners have heard of NCF, but share a story of impact of the ministry and how you encourage generosity and good stewardship.

Kendra: Sure. So National Christian Foundation has been around since 1982, so we are over 42 years old, and we have a history of helping individuals and families steward well all that God has entrusted to them. We are the largest Christian donor-advised-fund platform. And for those who don't know what a donor-advised-fund platform or what a DAF is, a DAF, you can think of a DAF as a charitable savings account. It's a place where you can open an account, you put resources into it, you get your tax deduction when you put your resources into it, and then you can ask us to make grants to your favorite charities over time. The benefit of doing that is multifaceted, but it certainly helps you to time your deductions, to give assets other than cash easily, to be able to invest the money that's waiting to be given, to grow it, and then to be able to make grants that can be really online, easy, grant-making platform. That's what a DAF is.

We currently serve about 30,000 families. And over our history, we have privileged to have granted out $20 billion to over 90,000 charities.

We help people grow in the art of biblical generosity. We believe that God owns it all, and we have a passion to see lives changed, to the glory of God, through generosity, because we experience that when people learn to be great givers, it changes their lives, it changes the lives of the charities that they give to, and it changes the people who receive services from those charities. And so it is a beautiful picture of God's glory.

Al: And for full disclosure, Kendra and I have known each other for a long time, and I've been a long-time giver, as you call us customers, of the National Christian Foundation, and just have had a tremendous experience. And I'm glad to be one of those 30,000 families. And I can't say I'm one of the—I haven't given a billion out of the 20 billion, that's for sure.

Kendra: Well, that would be fantastic, Al.

Al: Yeah. I look forward to that day myself, Kendra.

Kendra: Exactly.

Al: But no, it's been a great journey. And Kendra started off really starting the first staff member in the National Christian Foundation Northwest group. And Kendra, what?, you've been in your role now in the National Christian Foundation in Atlanta as the CEO for three years now?

Kendra: That’d be three years in February, so soon.

Al: Yeah. Right.

Kendra, let's talk a little bit about your leadership journey. We've talked about your NCF journey a little bit, but you've had a successful career in the wireless-communications industry, including executive leadership roles, and then you transitioned to Christian nonprofit work. So tell us about that shift in your life, and why did you move from the tech world, which you were in the early stages of mobile communication, but the shift from the tech world to focusing on Christian stewardship? What differences or even similarities did you see landing in those different sectors?

Kendra: So I spent about 30 years in the tech world of mostly in telecommunications. And after 30 years, I had reached a place where I just knew I was done. And I felt the Lord really suggesting to me that I needed to leave before He was going to tell me where I would go. So I did that.

So I left the industry at the end of 2004, and I did not have a clear idea of what the Lord was going to do with me in my next role. So I just agreed with Him that I was going to wait for Him until I clearly heard where He wanted me to go. During that period, which was a two-plus-year period of waiting, I dabbled in several things, including boards for both nonprofits and for-profit organizations. And then in 2006, I attended a Generous Giving conference in Atlanta, and that changed my perspective and opened my eyes to the generosity space in a really big way. It led me to hearing the Lord invite me to help to found what was then the Seattle Christian Foundation and was affiliated with the National Christian Foundation. Ultimately, it became the Northwest National Christian Foundation affiliate. And then 2007, I actually joined NCF in Seattle.

The first few years were a pretty big struggle. It was in the middle, of course, the 2008 step back for the economy, which didn't help, trying to get this nonprofit off the ground. But I needed to learn to let the Lord do what only the Lord can do. And He taught me pretty clearly that my job is to do the best I can with whatever He's put in my hands, to get better and better at doing what I'm called to do, and let Him bring the fruit. That fruit is not my job, but doing good work well and continually getting better is my job.

And so I had the privilege of leading that Seattle-based Northwest office for 14 years until God called me to the CEO role of National Christian Foundation in 2022.

I would say the biggest difference between the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors that I've experienced has to do with mission. Our mission is not to make money or increase shareholder value, but to glorify God by helping His people grow in the art of biblical generosity. So that's just a very big missional difference.

The second big difference is in the way we treat and value people. People are really the lifeblood of almost all organizations, but they're not always treated that way. And in the tech world, I had a wide variety of experiences, from wonderful to horrible, in terms of how people were treated. And being a leader in a context where you don't agree with how people are being treated is really difficult and, I think, had a lot to do with why I got kind of burned out on the whole thing.

So anyway, we are not perfect in any way, but we always do our best to treat people with care and respect. It's an important part of who we are.

Al: Yeah. So the difference is mission and people. Yeah. Clearly, I agree with that.

So, when you came to the CEO role of National Christian Foundation, it was a season when you needed to really build some momentum for change. And NCF did an Employee Engagement Survey before you started and then again just in 2024. And you've seen a significant increase in employee engagement over the last few years. And I'll just say congratulations, near to the flourishing level, from our perspective. So, many of our listeners to the podcast are leaders in Christian nonprofits, and some of them are new to their leadership. So looking back over the last couple years, what are some of the key strategies that you put in place as you came into this situation, where you built your team and created momentum for positive change?

Kendra: One of the things that drove disengagement at NCF in the past was the lack of ability to make decisions clearly and move forward. One of the ways we talk about that symptom is that we had done a lot of strategy work over the years that was just sitting on the shelf. And it wasn't that it was bad work; it was that we didn't have the ability, really, to follow through and implement.

So at our first executive team meeting, when I joined, as a team we agreed that the most important thing we were going to do was to drive movement and momentum. That was it. We were just going to make decisions and make stuff happen. We did have a key member of our team who's a strategist, our chief strategy officer, if you want to call it that. And his job has been to help us maintain a clear eye on strategy and roadmap and to help the whole organization understand clearly what the strategy and the roadmap is and where are we on the journey?

We started by listening well through the Survey and focus groups that followed, digging into the feedback. We created open channels of communication that totally emphasized transparency. It's a big thing with me that we need to be transparent with people about the good and the bad of what's going on. We have all kinds of opportunities, from townhalls with our board meeting to all-hands meeting to constant intranet communications. And we created a specific role for corporate communications, which we had not clearly had before either. And then finally, we invested in manager training. It might be surprising, but maybe not, that training managers and giving them access to high-quality leadership training is a big part. An executive team can do a lot, but if it doesn't get through the management team to the people, it's not going to be very effective.

Al: Well, those are great thoughts, again, for new leaders, particularly, to focus on those things.

So you mentioned strategy. And based on the Employee Engagement Survey, the staff at NCF feel like there's an effective strategy and that you're meeting your goals and that there's a consensus around goals. In fact, I was just looking at the increases recently, and we asked the question, over the past year NCF has changed for the better. I mean, that's a huge improvement over where you were. And there's in a number of the strategy questions, there's consensus on the goals, and we've met our goals, and there's a great strategy for meeting the needs of those we serve. So these are important qualities of a healthy workplace. What are some of the practical ways that you and your team bring people toward goals and equipping them to meet goals? How does the senior team get input on goals, and then how do you communicate goals throughout the organization?

Kendra: Yeah. So our planning process begins every year with a thing we call dreaming. We actually have sessions that involve the senior team, but also the whole kind of next level of management, and try to understand what our dreams are for the next year, what would we like to be able to tackle. And so we start with that.

And then, we have a process which over the coming months whittles that down to a set of goals that we can actually align on and fund. And so we, in fact, just to finish that process, we are about to tie the knot on the budget for 2025. But the point is that the budget is goals driven, it's plan driven, it's not financially driven, although the financial realities are a gate, right? You have to balance both the financial realities and the goals. So we do that.

And then, we kick off the year in which we will do next year in February. And why February? Because we don’t really have our results for the prior year until the end of January. So in February, we will have an opportunity to celebrate what God has done in the previous year, and then cast a vision for these goals and priorities for the current year.

We then cascade those goals through the organization so that each person can see where their goals line up with the big picture at the top. And so then people set their goals individually based on all of that, and we check in on that throughout the year, tracking progress, making sure that we stay focused and drive clarity and consistency with every chance we get.

Al: Yeah. So start with dreaming, then create goals that you can fund. And I love that distinction, Kendra, that you say. You know, many organizations let the budget drive the goals, not the goals drive the budget. So, that's an important distinction right there. And then, kick off the year, celebrate—and for all of us, we should be celebrating what God is doing—as well as then casting the vision, cascading your goals and tracking progress. Wow. That's a great approach.

You've been involved in developing leaders and investing in employees throughout your career, and you've been involved in great organizations that have done that. And, you know, it takes everyone from frontline employees to program managers to senior leaders to achieve the mission of an organization. So how are you and your team at NCF investing in people development? You've already mentioned management training, but how do you identify potential and invest in top performers to retain employees and encourage them to see NCF as a place where they can come and bring their full selves, their full energy to the workplace?

Kendra: Yeah. We've had a big emphasis on recruiting and retaining top performers. We've done work which includes redoing all of our salary-survey information and making sure that we understand what we have to do to pay people competitively. It's important that we hire people that are mission aligned. So from the very beginning of our whole recruiting process, we're very clear about who we are as a religious organization, we're very clear about what the skills are we're trying to find, and we're very clear about what a blessing it can be for people to be able to work in an organization that shares their values and shares their faith and yet allows them to use their amazing skills that they've acquired in the marketplace and to be able to put those two things together and live an integrated life. That's how we approach hiring and onboarding people.

We have developed our own in-house technical training relative to the kinds of work that we do, which is very specific. We handle very complicated financial transactions with people, and so we built in-house training around that.

We have an annual talent assessment that we do, and that helps us figure out how to plan for succession for future leaders, for critical roles.

Our senior leaders conduct stay interviews with people who are in critical roles to make sure we know what their specific needs are, and we make a priority of making sure that we meet those needs.

We provide, also, ongoing training on soft skills, like situational leadership and crucial conversations.

And the thing that I think is maybe the biggest factor is that we spent the time to define clear leadership competencies that we expect our leaders to embody, and we help our leaders each year choose one of those competencies that they're going to focus on. These competencies are things like the ability to operate as a Christ-centered leader. Another one is being able to make movement happen. Right? So there's a whole list I'd be happy to share with you of these competencies. But we have been very clear about what we expect from our leaders. And we've been very clear that our job as leaders is to help our leaders get great at exercising these competencies.

Al: Yeah. Operate as a Christ-centered leader and to make movement happen.

Kendra: Yeah. That’s just two. That’s just two.

Al: Yeah. Yeah.

But I want to go back, Kendra, if you don't mind. You mentioned annual talent assessments. Now, that's different than an annual performance review and probably is also based on another thing. You mentioned the leadership competencies. Share with our listeners, if you would, just a little bit more about that process.

Kendra: So, yes, we do annual performance reviews. That's all part of the process. But then we have a talent-assessment meeting where we look at folks who are high capacity, high potential, or are in critical roles where it would be virtually impossible to replace them, and make sure that we understand what each of those people's opportunities for growth are, how we're investing in them, and what their kind of next steps would be in their development process.

In our budget process, another thing we do that's related to that is that part of building a budget includes identifying talent gaps. So where do I have gaps in my organization, where I need to grow some more talent or I need to acquire some more talent? And being very clear about that.

So, all of those things come together in how we then develop training programs and specific development opportunities for people. Maybe it's about helping somebody move from one role to another role, where they can grow and flourish in another role, or meet a talent-gap need that another part of the organization has. So, all of those things are part of the process.

Al: Yeah. And I’d encourage our leaders to think about that, the talent assessment, and look at that on an annual basis. And National Christian Foundation’s experienced just a tremendous improvement in their, what we call, outstanding talent. Rewarding top performers, promoting highly capable people, recruiting and hiring highly capable people, and then retaining, those are all things that have improved dramatically based on our Survey results, for sure.

Kendra: Well, I have to say, a lot of that is good, hard work, but a lot of it is just the Lord blessing us, honestly. I mean, I have been so blessed by the talent that we've been able to acquire. It's just, yeah. It's one of the things I expected to be the hardest, and it just hasn't been as excruciating as I was thinking.

Al: Well, you've got a very attractive mission and purpose, as you mentioned. You know, focus on the mission, focus on the people, and create an environment where people can excel and be their best selves. Yeah. So absolutely.

So, Kendra, as a seasoned leader, you're looking to invest in and build up the next generation of leaders in the Christian generosity space at National Christian Foundation. What are you looking for in mid-career leaders in whom you're investing, and what qualities and competencies matter most for the next generation of leaders?

Kendra: Well, I think, you know, we're looking for, obviously, smart people who've got deep experience in whatever their domain expertise is, who want to make this transition to a faith-forward organization where they can live out their values. The next thing we look for is, obviously, strong ethics and integrity. The values of our organization are critical, and our leaders have to be able to walk that out. Excellent communication skills to be able to cast vision and clarify expectations. And we need people to show openness to new ideas and to innovation. So I think those are the key issues.

We also want to make sure we find people who are willing to engage in professional development. I believe it's important to be a lifelong learner. I consider myself a lifelong learner, and I encourage others as well.

So those are the things we look for: people who know what they're doing, bring a lot of experience to the table, can communicate clearly, can be open to new ideas, and are willing to grow.

Al: Yeah. Those are great considerations.

Well, Kendra, we've learned so much from this conversation, starting back to just your openness to let God guide you from corporate career into this career and how He has prepared you for such a time as this. No question. And how, in fact, you've set up such effective approaches. I think of your five steps of communicating and building strategy, starting with dreaming and creating goals and kicking the year off with a celebration and casting vision and so on. And how you recruit and retain top performers and what you're looking for in those. As well as the talent-assessment process, which has clearly borne a lot of fruit in the process. And what you're looking for in a leader. So, this is just been a great conversation.

Is there anything you'd like to add that we've talked about, Kendra?

Kendra: I would just say that becoming a good leader is a journey. So many people have invested in me over the years, and finding a good mentor, finding good training, and practicing submitting yourself to feedback. Feedback is a gift. So that would be maybe my last comment is be patient with yourself, but be committed to growing.

Al: I often say, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”

Kendra: Yeah.

Al: Sometimes it doesn't taste good, but it's good for you.

Kendra: Yeah.

Al: Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, Kendra, thanks so much for your contribution today. And most of all, I appreciate your faithful leadership and commitment to excellence, as you call Christians to be generous and responsible in their stewardship. And thanks so much for taking your time out today to speak in the lives of so many listeners.

Kendra: Well, thanks, Al. It's been a pleasure, and thanks for having me. And thanks for all the work that you doat BCW. It's amazing.

Al: Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Kendra VanderMeulen. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with her and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing workplace cultures, please email me at al@workplaces.org.

And as we wrap up today's episode, remember that transforming your workplace culture starts with understanding where you are today. Take the next step by conducting the Best Christian Workplace Employee Engagement Survey and gathering the insights you need to create a thriving, Christ-centered organization. Visit workplaces.org to learn more and to begin your journey toward a flourishing culture. And don't wait. Your team, your mission, and your impact depend on it.

Keep listening to our weekly podcast as we continue to learn from leaders who are proven inspirational leaders exhibiting Christian character and excellence in their leadership.

Next week, join us for an exciting interview with Dr. Rob McKenna of WiLD Leaders as we focus on improving your leadership by building trust with your team.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.