Immigrant Services Society Of BC With Jonathan Oldman, CEO

Strong leadership and a commitment to community can transform lives, and this episode dives deep into the power of immigrant services to do just that. Douglas Nelson welcomes Jonathan Oldman, CEO of Immigrant Services Society of BC, to explore the vital work of supporting newcomers in building secure futures in Canada. Together, they discuss the challenges and triumphs of delivering resettlement and integration programs, adapting to policy shifts, and fostering collaboration within the social profit sector. Discover how values-driven leadership and a focus on organizational culture create lasting impact for individuals and communities alike.

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Immigrant Services Society Of BC With Jonathan Oldman, CEO

In this episode, we have Jonathan Oldman. Jonathan is the CEO of the Immigrant Services Society of BC or ISS of BC. Jonathan has been a long-time leader across our social profit sector, having led organizations in a number of different areas over a number of years. In our conversation, he shares what he’s learned, what he’s still curious about, how he stays energized as a leader, and how he managed the issue along with his colleagues of immigrant settlement and resettlement services becoming a political and social issue over the last number of months, how they use that attention to improve their organization’s performance and the services that they provide. I learned a lot in this conversation with Jonathan and I hope you enjoy what he shares in the conversation that we have. Thank you for reading.

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Welcome to the show, Jonathan.

Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Jonathan, not only are we happy to have you on because we’ve wanted to have you on for a long time, but also the area of immigration and resettlement services has taken on a heightened interest in the Canadian political context and the challenges that your organization and many others in this space are facing as a result of increasing numbers of newcomers to Canada. It’s a really interesting part of our social profit sector, and I’m looking forward to jumping into it. Let’s do that now. Tell me a little bit about the Immigrant Services Society of BC, who you serve and how you’re positioned in our social profit sector.

About The ISS Of BC

Yeah, that’s great. Thank you so much. ISS of BC, we welcome and we support newcomers to Canada for all types, helping them build strong and secure futures here and working to make sure that they and the communities in which they settle able to thrive. We work with a broad network of partners and we deliver community settlement and integration services, employment and career supports and languages and skills training.

We have specialized services that include urgent support for newly arrived government-assisted refugees, that includes temporary housing and for refugee claimants. We have an incredible team of over 450 staff and almost an equal number of volunteers. In 2023, that team served over 25,000 clients here in the lower mainland and in different parts of BC and we’ve been a leading member of Canada’s settlement services community for over 50 years now.

To me, and I’ve been with the organization for a few years, so I still see myself as relatively new, what’s most remarkable behind that figure are the individual journeys, the journeys of hope and ambition and resilience from newcomers and our engagement in truth and reconciliation helps us keep in the forefront of our minds that other than indigenous peoples, that ultimately, we’re all settlers here in Canada. Today’s newcomers are no less determined than the newcomers of the past to build that secure and positive future for themselves and for their families. They bring incredible assets, drive and skills to our communities. Our job simply is to help them realize their full potential.

I think you and your colleagues do really invaluable work to support the growth of Canada now and in the future, as do all newcomers to Canada. I think a lot of our readers, and I’ll include myself in this, we’re surprised to hear you talk about the scope and the scale of the organization. How has the organization grown over the last number of years?

The Growth Of ISS Of BC Over The Years

It’s grown hugely. We started in 1968 as an organization. We’ve had some staff who have been with us for over 30 years. I think it’s been part of the story, partly a story of the social service sector that in the last quarter century or so, that governments have increasingly relied on organizations like us to deliver services. It’s also been part a story of the growth of immigration and humanitarian services in an organized way in Canada in a deliberate way and partly a sort of a deepening of an understanding of what newcomers need to be successful.

We’ve expanded our scope, we’ve expanded our reach, the depth of work that we do, the numbers of people we work with, and it’s been a really fascinating, I think, organizational journey as lots of not-for-profits will recognize that journey from bringing grassroots, volunteer driven, then a few services and then something happens to catalyze the action. For us, it was a for humanitarian arrivals all those years ago. Just things snowball and grow. Part of the challenge is helping the organization keep up with that growth in terms of its capacity, infrastructure and professionalism.

I think one of the issues we talk about on this show quite a bit, but I think particularly relevant to your organization and your part of the social profit sector, is the world outside of our organizations tends to be changing much more quickly than the world inside of our organizations. You mentioned you’ve been with ISS of BC for a few years. What have you seen in terms of an organization accelerating to keep up with the pace of change outside its stores?

Yeah, it’s been a huge challenge. We talk about the nature of change, the pace of change, our ability to manage change all the time in the organization. Being in the sector that we are in, we have to respond to a lot of outside forces and sometimes those are predictable and sometimes that they’re not predictable or we think we are able to predict them and we get surprised. I think we try and do our best to be responsive, flexible and agile and we talk about that in terms of our organizational culture a lot. However, it’s easier said than done, and there’s a lot of work that has to go on underneath the service to be in a place where you can be agile and responsive. That’s not something that you can just do if you don’t have the capacity and the preparation in place.

Yeah, it has to be a way of working rather than just something that happens on a given Tuesday. Back in October 2024, this is an example, the federal government announced they were planning on reducing the number or reducing the goal for newcomers to Canada over the next three years. When you see a headline like that, or hopefully you got a heads up, but when those kinds of announcement comes, are those unpredictable things that you can’t predict within your organization?

I think there’s always elements that we can’t predict. I think 2024 has been a very interesting one in the settlement sector because of how much attention immigration has got in the Canadian media and political discourse. I talked to my colleagues who have been around for a lot longer, and there are phases like this, but the 2024 has been a particular phase.

We were expecting some of the changes, some of the adjustments that were announced in October 2024. There’s a lot of detail beneath the surface of the headline numbers, but we were expecting this because there has been a growing sense of unease around immigration numbers and the understanding and the support in the community. We knew that there was going to be an adjustment, and I don’t think any of it was totally unexpected. There are various different ways of looking at it. We try and take stock and pivot. There’s an economic dimension to this and the economic analysis behind immigration, but there’s also political and humanitarian aspects to it as well. It wasn’t a surprise, but at the same time, we then have to deal with the volatility that comes downstream from all of that.

The Complexity Of Refugee And Immigration Services

Let me ask a profoundly naive question. I may have a guess at the answer, but when the federal government announces that the target number is going to come down by 20% or so or come down significantly, does that mean that you have 20% less work to do in the coming years?

No, it doesn’t. The government did announce a reduction of about 20% for 2025 permanent arrivals. We could talk for an hour about all the different categories of immigrants and newcomers and we’d get that technical, but we have all the arrivals from the last few years that have been significant and numbers were growing post pandemic. Those people are already in the system and we’re already working with those.

Yes, there will be a different number of arrivals and they’ll be coming through different routes and different categories in 2025. There will be a slowing down over the next 2 to 3 years of arrival numbers, assuming that those numbers don’t get revised again. We also, as a sector, deal with other aspects of immigration, not just economic arrivals or family reunifications, that there is a bit more control over the numbers.

We serve refugees and while targets for the number of, for instance, government assisted refugees that are going to arrive, we don’t know what will happen around the world. A few years ago, we couldn’t have predicted necessarily what was going to happen in Ukraine or what happened in Afghanistan. We also support refugee claimants. It’s part of this country’s role in the world, and refugee claimants are not something that you can put target on or limit on.

One of the incredibly interesting things about working in the sector is the complexity of this. It’s hard for governments to manage. It’s hard for our sector to respond to. It’s an incredibly important part of Canada’s social fabric, its economic fabric, our cultural fabric, and everyone is working really hard to try and make the system work. It’s hard for everybody. I give everyone who works in this sector from the politicians and the government organizations and ministries to the people in our sector enormous credit because it’s hard work.

I think that as a starting point. It’s complex and it’s hard. It allows for a bit more grace and forgiveness in the conversation when you’re working with partners, when you’re working with such complex issues. I am interested in how you translate that complexity of the work you’re doing, the services you’re providing, the environment in which you’re operating with your board.

Working With A Board To Navigate Change

One of the phrases we often do in our work with organizations is we encourage leaders to not use words like complex or complicated because they’re often push words, like, “It’s too complex. You wouldn’t understand, Mr. Or Mrs. Board member. Leave it with us,” which puts the management team on the defensive. The boards hackles get up and it’s good for our business, but not ultimately very good for the organization. There is so much change. It is such a dynamic environment in which you’re operating. How do you, as CEO, connect that complexity, that pace of change to the conversations you’re having with your board?

First of all, we have a board here. We’re lucky enough to have a board and have had generations of board made up of individuals who are incredibly committed and knowledgeable about the work that we do and want to take time to understand the issues and to engage with the questions. Many of our board members have got personal experience of being immigrants themselves or working with immigrants. I think it’s about trying, to come back to that earlier point around working hard, to be agile, flexible and responsive and doing the work to keep the board up to date with what’s happening in the context of the environment that we work in. When we have strategic decision moments, we’re prepared for it.

I haven’t said this for a while, but this makes me recall that board work is almost like being on a sports team. It’s 80% training for 20% performance. It’s all about being able to, when you get to that moment of, okay, we have a big decision in front of us or a strategic fork in the road, do we go left or do we go right? We’ve done the work that makes board members feel confident that they have the analysis and the information they need to take that decision.

Board work is almost like being on a sports team. It's 80% training for 20% performance. Click To Tweet

What do you do as CEO? What do you pay attention to or what skills are you using when you are giving the board that confidence, that analysis that has taken place, that the issue has been properly formatted for them to jump into?

I pay attention to the questions I’m asked. I think really strong boards, the strong boards that I’ve worked with over the years, they ask great questions and those questions really open up the conversation, get me thinking differently, get me to pause, get me to think again about perhaps some of the assumptions or the conclusions that I have. I look to the boards that I work with to coach me and to mentor me and to push me into thinking differently. When I sit on a board and I sit on a board as well of another social impact organization, that’s what I try and do as well. I try and think less about what’s the point I want to make, but what’s the right question to ask in the moment.

Lessons On Leadership And Board Relationships

That’s the magic of being a good board member. It’s good questions. It’s not necessarily good points. In your experience, you’ve mentioned that you’ve been at ISS of BC for a few years, but this is not your first CEO or executive director role by any means in the sector. Staying on that topic of working with your boards, what are some more of the lessons or is there one particular lesson that comes to mind that you would give to that you would share with someone who is just entering their first role or was aspiring to be an executive director one day soon?

The thing that that jumps to mind is about values alignment and culture alignment. This is the third or fourth time I’ve been in an ED or a CEO role, different sort of situations. The best moments I’ve had with boards was when I feel that we are values aligned in how we were looking at the world and looking at the organization.

As I’ve got through my career and I’ve had the opportunity to look at CEO or executive director roles, I’ve always looked at how aligned is the board’s values and the culture of the board that flows from their values with the rest of the organization. I think where things have become difficult or I’ve seen difficulties between CEOs and boards is when CEOs are working hard to build a set of values and a culture in an organization, but the board seems to be operating slightly separately or independently from that and not aligned.

I think that’s where things become difficult and where sometimes CEOs and executive directors feel a little caught in the middle, having to translate one set of values or interpret or make one set of values work with a different value system one way or the other. That becomes hard. I think the lack of alignment become very clear in those situations.

Navigating Leadership Transitions And Challenges

There are times when it feels like the wind is at your back and everything’s going in the same direction and you really feel like you’re on a shared journey, shared purpose, shared destination, and then something can change. It’s usually not obvious what that one thing is that sets off a chain reaction of other small changes where the wind switches direction and it’s glowing in your face as the leader. Have you had that experience of having the wind shift on you and how did you address that?

I think that boards change with sometimes with their leaders and their chairs and the boards and the current board that I work with, I think, has done a lot of work on its own governance and its own approach. It is very resilient in a sense that the chair can change or executive roles can change, but there’s a continuity in how the board operates. I have been in times where it feels like when the board chair has shifted, that there hasn’t been that sort of foundation and then things become unpredictable and then it becomes hard.

The boards are very resilient in a sense that the chair or executive roles can change but there's a continuity in how the board operates. Click To Tweet

However, over the years, my experience with boards in this sector has been overwhelmingly positive. I think that a lot is asked of board members go back and use that cliché word of complexity. It’s not easy being a board member. We ask a lot of these volunteers give us their time and most people are pursuing their own careers and their own lives. My experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I think part of that as well has been having conversations with individual board members and understanding what they’re in it for, what’s bringing them joy and what’s bringing them value from being on boards and really helping each of them so you have an individual relationship as well as a group relationship with boards, I think.

One of the pieces of advice I got when I was first moving into my first CEO role was the question to ask every new board chair you get is, “What does success look like for you,” understanding what’s motivating that board chair? All of my experience has been very closely aligned to the what matters most to the organization, the continuity of the board’s values. Usually, board chairs have a reason why they say yes. Sometimes they forgot to duck when they said who wants to be the chair and they’ve been nominated, but often they have a pretty clear idea about what it means to be chair, what it means to them personally.

I think it’s so valuable for executive directors as CEOs to know the individual motivation for each new chair because it will be slightly different. In rare cases, it can become a challenge, but for the most part, it’s just being aware of what success looks like for the board chair. That’s just good CEO-ing. That’s not a verb, but it’s good for leading the organization

Ultimately, all of this work often comes down to building good, strong relationships and taking the time and care to do that. That always pays dividends, I think, in the end. Understanding people and where they come from and, as you say, their motivations and their concerns and what triggers them and what their risk tolerance is for different things is really pivotal. You have the foundation when something urgent happens that you can fall back on all of that and you can work together and you can work collaboratively and you can get through those difficult moments when the organization is facing challenges or difficulties.

All this work often comes down to building good, strong relationships. Taking the time and care to do that always pays dividends. Click To Tweet

When is it okay for a CEO to say, “I don’t know,” to a question that the board is asking them?

I think it’s okay to say that whenever it’s true. I try to follow up that question with, “I’ll find out,” or, “That’s something I should know more about and let me educate myself and come back to you.” Sometimes, following up with a question, which is, “I haven’t thought about that. Why is that relevant? Why do I need to know that?” Answering that we’re not sure or we don’t know, I think, is the only response when it’s a genuinely true situation. Board members I’ve worked with over the years have a very good antenna, and you are making it up on the spot.

The reason I ask that is anytime I speak to someone who’s been in an ED or CEO role for any extended period of time, they’re very comfortable or tend to be very comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” Even then, of course, following it up with what you do next to either know or understand where that question’s coming from. I think it’s something that’s very difficult for new leaders to say because they’ve been put in the position of being the CEO and they want to have the right answer. They want to be the smartest kid in class and be able to raise their hand when the teacher asks a question when and come in with the answer.

I think as complexity of the board management relationship, complexity of the organizations in our sector continues to increase, “I don’t know,” I think, is probably going to be a far more common answer than not to a lot of the really probing questions that board members are asking. It makes good sense for leaders to get comfortable with saying, “I don’t know.”

I think for me as well, as I reflect on it, I have moved around the sector. I’ve worked different organizations with slightly different missions and focuses, and I come from a background of, when I was in the UK many years ago, called general management. I’m not someone who’s been clinically or professionally trained. I’ve built my career around trying to be a good practitioner of organizational leadership and I’ve had to surround myself or enjoyed working in teams with people who have the content expertise.

There’s incredible expertise and knowledge here at ISS of BC and there have been in all the organizations I’ve worked with. I think perhaps I’ve always been comfortable with saying, “I don’t know,” because I’ve never been hired from my specialist knowledge about immigration services I’ve learned or mental health or anything else I’ve learned as I’ve gone. I think, that’s always allowed me to ask the question and to say, “I don’t know,” because frequently, I don’t.

It happens to be true. I think the other thing you put your finger on, often, individuals are hired into these leadership roles not because of their content expertise or that is a part of it, but ultimately, it is their view and their approach to leadership that boards are hiring executive directors and CEOs for. That is going to necessitate you saying, “I don’t know,” when it comes to those content-specific questions. Jonathan, you have touched on it a couple of times that you’ve been someone who moves around in leadership positions, not willy-nilly by any means, but quite thoughtfully. I’m curious, as you’ve taken on CEO roles throughout your career, how has your approach to leadership and leading organizations changed?

I think it’s continuously evolved. Sometimes it shifts on a daily basis, not on the basis of job to job. I think that, over time, I’ve become more focused on, and this returns to a theme we’ve already talked about, values and culture in an organization. Fundamentally the job of a CEO or an ED is to help strengthen an organization’s culture and leave it in a stronger position than when you found it. I think of myself more as a values-led leader the more I do this work. I’ve also come to see leadership as organizational leadership is very much around understanding the phase that an organization is in, what you are here to do for that phase, that cycle. When that cycle is coming to an end or is starting to loop back again, figuring out whether you are the right person for the next cycle.

We, as CEOs and executive directors, particularly those of us who are not the founder-member, founder- CEO, there are many of those in our sector. I have enormous respect, and I’ve learned so much from those folks who have built their organizations from the ground up over many decades. I think there’s a generation now of CEOs who are not in that situation and they’re looking at what does the organization need in this next phase and this next cycle and what can I bring to it?

It’s not about seeing oneself as temporary, but it’s about understanding, for me, what do we need right now and what I can offer in this next phase and know those things are aligned, and if they are, let’s get on and do some great work together. If they stop being aligned, then let’s think about what the organization needs. Increasingly as well, what fills me up as a leader, you’re only going to be successful in these roles, which are incredibly challenging and unpredictable. If the roles are responding to something that you want in your career at that particular moment, something that gives you satisfaction and purpose, if that isn’t there and that can change over time, then it’s time to move on and do something different.

We had a guest on the show last season, Mohini Datta-Ray, Planned Parenthood Toronto, who talked about that being CEO of an organization for a season . She made the distinction between being temporary and said temporary is not a good way to think of it. You make decisions differently if you see yourself as not fully part of the organization, but that it’s really important for leaders to view themselves as impermanent in the life of the organization. You are embedded and important for a period of time. When that period of time passes, in her experience, she wanted to find the next challenge, the next organization that she was going to be leadership.

I am sure you’ve met lots of leaders, and I’m sure you have had times in your career where instead of moving on into the organization, you just evolve or take on the next challenge of the organization you’re leading without getting the some of the side effects that that can accompany that founder or some CEOs get over an extended period of time.

Yeah, I love that notion of seasonal. That’s a lovely way of framing it and I might steal that.

She’s very generous with it.

I think it’s spot on. I think that perhaps there’s an expectation in our sector that CEOs or executive directors are buying in forever. I’m not sure that’s a healthy way to look at it. Yeah, you have to be fully engaged. It’s not about somehow not being fully committed to the moment or to the journey that the organization is on, but I think being able to take a step back and say, “What do we need right now? What can I offer? Is that aligned,” is a really healthy way of looking at leadership and now it has to be accompanied by building the capacity for the future and succession. I firmly believe that all CEOs should be thinking about succession from almost day one, and that you’re sitting in the seat in a sort of very humble and realistic way.

I’ve learned this in my career. Not only you can’t predict what’s going to happen, but you also need to build the long-term sustainability and strength for organizations. Going back to the conversation about board chairs change, CEOs change and is there the capacity and strength in terms of other leaders, but the sort of the bench strength in the culture of the organization that leadership can sustain with changes? I did my Masters of Leadership and Training at Royal Roads, like a lot of people in our sector. There were lots of discussions around the notion of servant leadership and the ability to be able to exit without the organization stopping being able to do its work or leadership being able to function. I think that’s a really important concept to start with when you’re doing these roles

A Magic Wand For Non-Profit CEOs

If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about the role of CEO in our sector, what would you change?

I think it’s a cliché and a truism that our sector works on the scarcity model. We are always trying to do the best that we can with far fewer resources that we need, particularly around organizational capacity building. I think it would be something to do with having the certainty of investment in an organization in terms of the infrastructure so that there was less time spent trying to figure out how to sustain and build that. You could spend more time thinking about the impact that you have in the community and the cycles that we go through of boom and bust, if you like, where because of the expectations that not-for-profits land their finances on a dime every year, that it’s really hard to take that long-term approach to organizational investment.

I’m getting away from your question, but it’s something around having the certainty and predictability around that infrastructure piece and then will also allow us to take decisions about what services we’re providing. Are we in the best place to deliver something? Should we be working with partners differently without thinking, “How does this affect our core organizational funding?” I think that there are too many disincentives in our sector to take decisions just to stay in something because we need to have the top-line revenue that goes with that.

I just want to second and wish that I really had a magic wand to give you to make that change. One of the things in your answer there, the really important point that I want our readers to take away from that is that a focus on building organizational capacity is not intention with delivering on your core purpose and delivering the services that are expected of your organization. Building organizational capacity is about creating the space to think about how to do it more effectively, more expansively. It’s not a distraction from the work that your funders are intending you to do. Find space, however narrow, to focus on organizational capacity to enhance your organization’s ability to deliver on its core purpose.

Building organizational capacity is about creating the space to think about how to do it more effectively, more expansively, and more effectively. Click To Tweet

Yeah, it’s absolutely critical. The way that we still have to apologize or somehow justify in our sector investment in our organizational capacity is beyond ridiculous still. Yes, many organizations, including ISS of BC, have to show that we’re using public funds in a prudent, thoughtful and judicious way. However, the standard that this sector, so I’m not talking about ISS now specifically, but this sector is held to, in terms of that dreaded word, administration, is ridiculous.

When you are looking at the work that we do, the people that we support in our communities, the front line of so many of the most important and most difficult social issues that our communities are facing and I think there’s a growing understanding of the need for flexibilities. I’m not painting everyone as looking at our sector this way, but we still have to over-justify how we are investing in our organizations. I think that’s a real frustration for everyone in this sector. There are not many leaders in this sector.

Jonathan, as we come to the end of our conversation, I want to conclude with our closing question that we ask all of our guests. Jonathan, what are you looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to the next generation of service delivery approaches that we’re developing as an organization. Post-pandemic has shifted a lot of how our services are delivered, and I’m really excited about the next version of ourselves in terms of how we serve people. I’m really looking forward to ongoing dialogue around building a better understanding and reinvigorating support for immigration in the communities that we serve.

I’m looking forward to building the next best version of our organization. We’ve been around since 1968, but we know that there’s a better version of ourselves out there in the future. I’m looking forward to all of those things. On a personal level, I’ve just sent two kids off to university in different provinces and I’m looking forward to seeing them again at Christmas. It’s hard not having them in my life every day in the same way that they were for many years.

I want to thank you for being on the show but also thank you and all of your colleagues at ISS of BC for the great work that you do in building a better candidate for today and in the future. Thank you, Jonathan.

Thank you. Thanks for shining a spotlight on our work.

Important Links

• Jonathan Oldman – LinkedIn
• Immigrant Services Society of BC
• Mohini Datta-Ray – Past Episode

 

About Jonathan Oldman