We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Pj Cowan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi PJ, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

My first experience in hiring a team came over a decade ago, in my early 20s. This was at my first non-profit job out of college and one where I never expected to assume the role of program manager.

I showed enough ingenuity, passion, and persistence to earn the trust of my bosses. And, after some very poor decision making by the prior program manager, I found myself being promoted, despite having never hired someone in my life. I was given some advice and tertiary support from the higher ups, and then left to my own devices, self educating and intuition. For better or worse.

Needless to say, after an extensive process, I made a poor first hire. In less than a year, we needed to go in a new direction. The person who had a great resume and “on-paper” accolades did not have the right emotional, interpersonal or organizational skills.

The good news is that the success of our programs and fundraising left me with an opportunity to make two new hires. In that next and final chapter in my first team building story, I veered off the obvious path and leaned into candidates with passion, community networks, and evidence of their own resourcefulness and ingenuity. This was an essential first lesson in looking for the individual ingredients to develop a good candidate as opposed to a perfectly already assembled dish.

PJ, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a human relations-oriented non-profit program manager and developer. In my 9-5 and volunteer work, I serve multiple nonprofit organizations that help improve the lives of hospital patients and marginalized community members. My specific passions are in music and animal/foster care.

I have over a decade’s worth of experience in grant writing, non-profit organizing, program development and advocacy.

I’m most proud of my work to help revive and rebuild live-music programs in 5 cities across the country at Musicians On Call.

In addition, I”m very proud of my efforts as a board member of Pawster Nashville, which helps foster pets during times of crisis to make sure pet owners and families never have to give up their furry loved ones because of hardship.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

My first piece of advice is get a therapist and build emotional awareness. We are dynamic and complicated beings. Our emotions, experiences, life challenges don’t just disappear in the work space. Build that awareness and share your experience with those you work with, in the right context.

Understand the “why”‘ for each team member and take time to discuss and revisits those answers.

Keep everything in the right context and be flexible with your goals. What’s the stress level of your team? And why is that the case? If you’re not sending people to mars, or conducting heart surgery, do you really need to run such a high pressure workspace?

If you know you have a great idea, let it breathe and evolve at it’s own pace. The more you force an arbitrary timeline of goals, the greater risk of suffocating that potential. The more you are open to what’s immediately around you, and let go of your initial expectations, the more successful your team will be and new opportunities will follow.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Speaking specifically to the experience of helping lead the launch of a new non-profit. Crowd sourcing, small local grants, and partnerships with local businesses can go a long way. Build a working board that can help supplement early operational and strategic needs, before building their fundraising capacity. Lean into cohorts and parallel organizations – share resources, knowledge and create space to discuss your experiences!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pawsternashville.org/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pj-cowan-6b5a576a/