Interpersonal Leadership

Relationship building is a core aspect of philanthropic practice. Strengthening one’s interpersonal leadership skills will allow for deeper partnerships with community, grantee partners, and other colleagues in support of shared goals.

This includes:

Developing and understanding of emotional intelligence and how to utilize it in communications with others
Using person-first and nonviolent communication to understand core needs of communities and grantee partners
Prioritizing the relational over the transactional to build more mutually fulfilling and long-lasting networks
Seeking to “do no harm” and being respectful of trauma, inclusive of recognizing one’s own trauma-related responses
Examining allyship and how to utilize one’s positional privilege to support others

You can also build on your interpersonal leadership by supplementing it with your personal leadership through Self-Advocacy, using it to move things within the sector through Advocacy & Policy, or taking a look at all seven ILF cornerstones here.

EPIP Interpersonal Leadership Blog Posts

Leadership Re/Imagined

Posted on January 29, 2021

What is leadership? A year ago, when I accepted the role as EPIP’s Executive Director, I sat with this question for quite some time, reflecting on the models of leadership that I had seen held up as exemplary.

Leaders are fearless.

Leaders are confident.

Leaders are focused, stoic, unflappable, and always poised.

Those models didn’t resonate with me, though. And as the year went on, and the events of 2020 came crashing down upon us like unrelenting waves upon the shore, I realized why. Any model of leadership which removes the fullness of human emotions for the sake of performing perfection was more isolating than it was liberating. I wanted more than that for myself, more than that for EPIP, and more than that for the work ahead of us.

Members on Issues: A Millenial Funder in Old-School Philanthropy

Posted on April 11, 2018

How Generation Y is Shaping the Future of Philanthropy

Reflections by Angela Sanchez, Program Officer for College Success at ECMC Foundation, a national foundation that makes investments in postsecondary programs and initiatives.

When ECMC Foundation (ECMCF) first brought me on almost three years ago, I wasn’t yet old enough to rent a car for an upcoming site visit. We were in the early stages of our staff growth and I was officially the youngest person in the office. I did the math—indeed, I was half a standard deviation younger than the average age among my fellow staff members. Only my immediate program director – a Millennial from the 80s – helped skew the average away from making me a full standard deviant. [read more]