Sign in  |  Register  |  Help

Most Read on APEsphere

Most Commented on APEsphere

Blogs we like

Resources

 
The APEsphere blog by Andrew and Angela Newton
NEWSWIRE
By Chris Jarvis on 20 Jun, 2009 - 21:09 UTC

Demote Your Staff To Create Limitless Potential.

 

Massive change is sweeping through the business world. Corporate Social Responsibility is precipitating thousands of new Employer-Sponsored Volunteer Programs. But can non-profit organizations handle the huge increase of volunteers coming their way? Maybe not. If non-profits do not reinvent their current volunteer management model, they threaten to suffocate these brilliant new efforts and disenfranchise the volunteers who come through their programs.

Non-profits and community organizations are due for a change: they must understand that volunteers are the key to achieving their mission. Unfortunately, this new understanding will require NPO’s to demote their entire staff.

Less is More
When it comes to working with volunteers, the less you do, the more you will get done. By focusing on the few things required to create a great volunteer experience, you will be able to maximize the efforts of dozens - maybe even thousands. The alternative approach utilizes volunteers to maximize the efforts of a handful of staff. This option is run by the “genius with a thousand helpers” and will consistently bottleneck the organization. It also squashes all ingenuity and energy outside the parameters of the "genius'" own comfort.

If you are the type of leader who is able to facilitate the efforts and individual contributions of others, then there is little limiting your potential. They key is found in how you perceive yourself, and what you understand your role to be.

the rest of the article

Some Conditions Apply
The instructions are simple: Don’t do the work yourself. Instead, your job is to make it possible for others to do the work. For that to happen, there are Four Conditions that need to be met:

  • Motivation. Volunteers need the right motivation. You need to take into account the three Horizons of Meaning that we have touched on previously; a) What do you hope to accomplish through the opportunities offered? b) What does the work require? c) What is the volunteer looking for from this opportunity?
  • Movement. Volunteers need to be invited into a participative role in the mission. We’ll talk more about this in the weeks to come, but the key to doing more through volunteers is becoming a missional organization. Mobilizing great numbers of volunteers (whatever that may look like for you) to take up the cause and achieve the mission has to become the foundational strategy of your organization.
  • Structure. Volunteers need you to be organized. This means understandable strategies, clear communication, a stated mission, vision and values, good metrics, etc. This is the basic stuff that enables people to function together and gain that sense of movement - precisely because we are able to move in the same direction.
  • Space. Volunteers need to be met at their highest level of contribution. Treating everyone the same is exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead, we must provide the right kind of space for people to interact with us, our community and our cause based on whether they are investigating, beginning to invest, or fully invested.


    • Carry Milk
    Ok, so the job is to mobilize volunteers to achieve the goal. Assuming this is the case, we are willing to take steps to ensure that the Four Conditions are met. From here on it’s easy, right? Well, yes and no. I’ve found that the real problem staff have with this approach is not the hard work it takes to get the organization ready, nor is it a simple change in mindset. Nope, the real hang-ups come with the face-to-face stuff.

    I remember working with a colleague at a community meal a few years back. He was a phenomenal guy, lots of talent and mad skills when it came to interacting with men and women off the street. Volunteers loved him. He was funny, charismatic and competent. Problem was, he was doing too much. The volunteers were waiting for their chance to help him out, but he was busy doing the work himself. Consequently, many of our volunteers stood around feeling a bit un-needed. The problem wasn’t our set up. It wasn’t our directions or communication. The problem was my friend. He was too helpful, too willing, too able. He was doing too much himself.

    So I took him aside to discuss how we could involve the volunteers. He was eager to listen and understand - like I said, a phenomenal guy. He absolutely believed in allowing volunteers to play a key role in what we were doing. He had helped ensure that the Four Conditions were a part of our organization. Turns out he simply felt bad asking people to do what he could easily do himself. He figured they might wonder why he would ask them to do something simple when they could both see that he could accomplish it in the same amount of time it was taking to pass it off. Made sense actually. People hate being humored. I hate being humored. Busy work feels trivial. And yet when people are investigating, this is exactly the kind of work they need and want. These seemingly trivial tasks offer a sense of belonging, purpose and achievement. (As long as the task really is necessary and not concocted.) So, I made a suggestion...

    “Carry milk,” I said.

    “....What?”

    “Grab a pitcher of milk in one hand, some cups in the other, and carry them with you as you tell the volunteers how they can help,” I replied.

    He sighed. “Why?” He was looking at me like I had incurred a brain injury since we had last spoken.

    “Cause,” I said slowly, like I was giving the answer to a clever pun. “If people see that you are busy with a task, they won’t mind doing what you ask.”

    He looked at me, grinned, and grabbed the milk.

    From that day on, we adopted the “carry milk” philosophy. It became a metaphor for dealing with the awkwardness that can accompany the assigning and accepting of tasks in a volunteer setting. The milk, or broom or rake - whatever - became the tool that allowed us to play the role our volunteers needed.


    Demote the Staff
    Your priority is your volunteer - they are your ticket to achieve the organization’s mission. Remember this as you demote your staff from “more” (do it yourself) to “less” (facilitate the ‘doing’ to everyone else). The switch has it’s perks, but it’s still a demotion, which doesn’t exactly feel good. Most of the time, staff interact with the community they are serving like a surgeon with a patient and they view volunteers as support staff - nurses handing over a scalpel during surgery. Lots of acclaim and recognition for the surgeon, with an “I couldn’t do it without all this help” for the nurses. “Demote the Staff” suggests that the doctor become the nurse, support staff, janitor - anything to make it possible for the volunteer to play the primary role. This flip is often difficult for staff, especially when they initially took the job with the organization to play the front-line role.

    Another difficult aspect of the demotion is that “facilitator” is a new job description and with it must come a change in philosophy. The former description consisted of managing people and their tasks, but the facilitator will primarily manage the processes that make the ‘realized worth’ approach possible. The Four Conditions are now the main work of the staff. If the conditions are right, then the space is mostly automated, and there is little management required of the volunteers. The object of “carry milk” is to ensure that the space is right for volunteers, rather than managing the way people work in that space.


    Making it Happen
    Here are 6 steps to tapping into the unlimited potential of your volunteer program:

  • Review your organization to ensure you have the key structures and systems in place. For a comprehensive list of areas to consider and even some free online courses, click here.
  • Make sure you understand what you want out of the project or enterprise you have undertaken. You probably already know what the work demands, but take the time to consider what your volunteers want out of the experience (probably not a plaque or t-shirt). Then, create events that allow all three of these horizons to converge.
  • Meet people at their highest level of contribution by giving them meaningful work to do. By meaningful, I mean appropriate to the “stage” in which they find themselves. A first-time visitor should never be given significant responsibility, because it is meaningless to them. They are only investigating. Similarly, failing to involve long-time volunteers who are seriously invested in your work in the significant decision making, is virtually the same as telling them they are unnecessary.
  • Sit down with your staff and explain the potential in making room for volunteers to become the primary drivers of your efforts. Guide them into understanding their role as facilitators and the managers of process, not people. Marcus Buckingham’s book ‘First Break All the Rules’ provides a great overview of this approach, albeit in a for-profit setting.
  • Give your staff the tools, whether that be milk, brooms or clipboards, to comfortably function in these new understandings. This simple piece of the puzzle may in fact be the most necessary to executing the idea from the staffs perspective.
  • Keep reading this blog. We’ll cover the final piece of this 6-part discussion next week and. The discussion will underscore why it is so important to view and utilize volunteers this way - it’s the difference between getting your job done, or changing the world.

    • Stop Treating Everyone Equally!

     

    Exceptional volunteer experiences account for the uniqueness of each person, and their reasons for volunteering in the first place. Whether you are managing your company's Employee Volunteer Program as part of the overall CSR mission, or you are coordinating volunteers at an NPO, you have to avoid one of the worst mistakes you can make - trying to treat everyone equally.


    Quick Review

    A month ago I began writing about How To Offer A Great Volunteer Experience. A month can be a long time in blogland, so here’s a little recap:

    First, we established the need to automate as much of the volunteer process of recruiting, screening, job assignments and evaluation as possible. Most NPO’s don’t have dedicated Volunteer Managers and even if they do, standard Volunteer Management Theory acts as a bottle neck in many cases.

    Next, we covered meeting the volunteer where they are at. Our positions require us to maintain the perspective of a realist and admit that if volunteers don’t ‘get it’ that’s not their problem - its ours. Provide experiences that create the space in people to learn. That’s the job, nothing less.

    Finally, we covered the idea of meeting people at their Highest Level of Contribution. This means paying attention to who people are, rather than seeing them as a sack of experience and skill sets for the organization’s purposes. People are desperate for meaning. If you can align yours with theirs, the convergence of those horizons will transform your volunteer programs.

    In the coming weeks we will discuss demoting your staff to grow your resources exponentially, and how to avoid becoming myopic by focusing too narrowly on your clients, or your “primary audience.”

    But right now we need to talk about the problem of equality.

    The problem of equality

    The most destructive part of any volunteer program is not poor planning, unclear job descriptions, late emails, or even lousy recognition programs. Rather, it is the tendency to treat everyone equally. Giving each volunteer equal ‘say’, equal privilege, equal responsibility and equal recognition will kill enthusiasm and create insurmountable obstacles for people.

    (the rest of the article)

    Of course, the ideology of social equality is necessary for societies to achieve greatness. Offering equal rights to all people is essentially non-negotiable in developed nations today. Although here in Canada women have only been allowed to vote for the past 90 years, today the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1985) is a formidable legal document ensuring equality under the law. “Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. “ One of the best known proclamations of equality is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, with Jefferson, cribbing a bit from British philosopher John Locke , stating, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Unfortunately, nobody seemed to take the idea seriously until much later when slaves were freed, Native Americans were no longer massacred as part of Manifest Destiny, and again, women were allowed to vote as of the 19th Amendment in 1920. While these developments are encouraging, we find significant societal norms that show how far we remain from operating as a people who believe each other to hold equal value.

    The Confusion of Equality and Sameness

    The problem I have is not really with equality. The problem is that we often confuse the political and societal ideals of equality with sameness. We believe that everyone should be treated fairly (I agree), that each of us has merit and worth in our own right (I could not agree more) and therefore, everyone should be treated the same (wrong!). Most of the time, when we talk about treating everyone equally, this is the sequence of thinking that goes on in our heads. So when someone shows up to volunteer for the first time, we try to give them the same opportunities, attention, responsibilities and recognition that we do those who have been coming for years. This is a great mistake and here’s why: people are not the same. When it comes to volunteering in particular, they are at various stages of realizing the worth of the opportunity, the cause, and themselves.

    The Stages of Realized Worth

    There are basically 3 Stages that your volunteers fall into:

    1st Stage - The Investigators. As this group investigates, they are generally uninformed and have loose ideas about what they’re looking for. They may dislike the work, they may stop showing up. No problem. They are some of the pool from which you will discover the best of your volunteers.

    2nd Stage - The Investing. These folks are after something. They’re still not quite sure what it is, but they have an inkling that you might be offering it. They are beginning to invest in the cause. You may notice them asking asking questions or even complaining a bit (which is an encouraging sign that they’re connecting emotionally.) They need to be seen and heard. Discover them. What are they after? What meaning do they hope to find by volunteering with you? You can recognize them because they have a quirky type of commitment which is mostly dependable.

    3rd Stage - The Invested. This group is there for the same reasons healthy people go to the gym. It’s part of their lifestyle, their brand. They believe in your cause and will show themselves to be dependable quickly (just a caution here, it’s easy to get enthusiastic 1st Stage people confused with 3rd Stage stalwart.) Take every effort to hear their ideas and involve them in the work. If they feel they have permission, they are usually power-house recruiters, because they are includers. Depend on them, and they will find the kind of reward they live for. Oh, by the way, you probably only have one or two 3rd Stage people, if any. That’s just the way it goes.

    So what does it look like to allow for people’s differences within your organization? What kind of space does each stage require? It may help to imagine yourself in each stage (we all go through them) and consider what your needs may have been at the time...

    If you are in the 1st Stage: You require spaces of discovery where you are free to investigate. At this point, pressure and obligation will only hinder you, so long term commitments aren’t really what you’re after. You’re at your best when compelled to ask better questions and go beyond what you’ve always known and believed.

    If you are in the 2nd Stage: You need permission to be a little angry and a little confused. You know that committing to this organization is akin to committing to a relationship: If you never get past the infatuation stage to start getting angry, hurt and wounded, then you probably never cared much in the first place. When things don’t matter, things are easy. You are ready for substance and you hope that the organization can prove to you that they’re ready for your investment.

    If you are in the 3rd Stage: You need a space brimming with offers of high-level, contributing responsibility. You know they know you’ll take care of the ditch-digging every time, but they respect you too much for that. You need to be treated carefully because, like a long-term relationship, this kind of commitment is rare and fragile - not to be taken lightly.

    Working with the Stages of Realized Worth

    The 1st Stage is easy to develop and manage and offers tremendous benefits to your recruiting and screening process. It essentially automates much of the Volunteer Management Cycle. You can read more about it in detail in the article “Automatic Volunteer Management: How to Offer a Great Volunteer Experience”. At this stage you will spend a little bit of time with a lot of people. This is a place of discovery for you and the volunteer. Resist the urge to develop, recruit, or retain.
    The 2nd Stage is tricky. It can go by quickly, or last for many years. Everyone has unique issues, questions, and reasons for coming to you. When they start asking better questions, showing up with regularity, making themselves more available, or getting a bit difficult to deal with, they are probably working through this stage. Offer answers to questions in the form or training, or further exposure to issues. Better questions are what we are after, so always provide answers knowing that they serve only to take us further down the road of discovery. Classes, assessments, time at a coffee shop, field-trips and introductions to broader networks of people are all helpful spaces for discovery.

    The 3rd Stage will consume most of your time and energy, and it should. You will spend most of your time with the fewest number of people. A true 3rd Stage person will pay off in spades for every investment you make. They have moved beyond the need for external constructs like your volunteer program. Drop them anywhere on the planet, and they are such dyed-in-the-wool-sold-out-for-the-cause believers they will invent ways to do what they do. Facilitation is the key word here, along with collaboration. Use their ideas, partner with them, give them what they need, resource them and then let them loose. They will recruit, promote, network, fundraise, whatever - all the time. All. The. Time. And you know why? Because they are doing it for their own reasons - not yours. There is convergence between your needs, the required work, and their needs. All three horizons have merged and now they are operating at their highest level of contribution. The only thing you can do to mess it up, is treat them or talk to them like they are 1st Stage people.

    Know your volunteers. People are not the same; they do not function within a formula and they are not children to recognize with gold stars on a chart. The more we treat our people equally, the more likely we are to lose our most valuable stakeholders without ever knowing they were there.

    NEXT on How To Offer A Great Volunteer Experience: The most effective key to really take advantage of 3rd Stage people....

    DEMOTE YOUR STAFF!
    Re-write the job description of every staff member you have. In order to run an excellent volunteer program your staff must see themselves as facilitators of volunteers rather than “bosses” working to get a job done. Staff make it possible for volunteers to do the work, not the other way around.

    John Ruggie, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for business and human rights, made the comments to a UK parliamentary committee.

     

    In reality, both international mandatory approaches and business driven voluntary approaches are problematic, he argued. The solution, at least in the short term, is to build a pragmatic patchwork of voluntary and mandatory initiatives.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    Where do you draw the line with the organization you volunteer for? There is always so much work to be done, and if you respect and believe in the cause, how do you know when you need to say ‘no’ to the next request?

    So, you’ve signed up to volunteer with a great organization, for an important cause. You’ve put your best effort into the work, and you’ve discovered it to be more rewarding than expected. So far, so good. Now, 6 months later, you hate to admit it, but these days you’re just not as enthused. Like the monotony that settles into some relationships after the honeymoon period, you wonder if the “glow” of this once new and exciting endeavor has worn off. It doesn’t make sense really, because everyone is so nice and you’re constantly being thanked, but still....the doubt keeps nagging.

    Frankly, you wonder if anyone at the organization really understands the value of your time. And it’s not that you can’t handle the more mundane work. You understand mundane - sometimes it’s just what needs to be done. What you can’t handle is being asked to do everything. Everything. If there’s an empty slot, they call you. Someone needs to stay late? Yup, you. Oh, and arrive early? Yours truly. Every time. You have a distinct sense of your dependability being taken advantage of. Even with all the “thanks,” you’re feeling a little used.

    Here’s an idea: maybe you should do a time assessment and assign a dollar value to the hours you’re spending at the organization? Except....that feels a little dirty. It’s like telling your best friend how much he’s worth to you and expecting him to respect you for it. Yeah....never mind. It just feels wrong. Still, how do you know where to draw the line?

    The good die young

    In my experience, it is the best, most loyal and invested volunteers who ask these kinds of questions. And usually, you ask them because you volunteer with a passionate, cause-driven, mission-focused non-profit. We all love to work for this type of organization. What they do matters enough that they’re able to make believers out of anyone who stands still long enough to hear what they have to say. Unfortunately, the tremendous importance of their cause can potentially obfuscate the value of the people who are there to help achieve it.

    You, of course, start out entirely ignorant of this recipe for burnout that awaits you. You dive in with absolute abandon. You find respect and admiration growing in you for the people you work with. You fall in love with the mission. You’re invigorated by the seemingly endless need for your personal contribution. Each day there is more work to be done, new milestones to achieve, greater good to give. But somewhere in there, that nagging feeling begins to creep in as you realize that the demand far exceeds your resources. And yet, you really believe in this thing, so you tell yourself to find a bit more time, create a wider margin, give just a little more.

    Next thing you know, the thanks you’re receiving just isn’t enough. Even the plaques and public acknowledgment are beginning to come across a little insincere. Do they really understand why you’re there or what you’ve been giving? You feel a pair of unwelcome and conflicting emotions building inside of you: guilt and resentment.

    Setting limits or creating a meaningful gauge can help a little, but it will always feel like you’re selling out, giving up, losing the faith. Eventually the time will come where the stress is no longer worth the effort, and you’ll take a break or decide to leave. Maybe a more suitable opportunity will present itself down the road.

    It’s all about give and take

    Okay, here’s what you do: Start taking rather than giving.

    I know, I know, it’s better to give than to receive, right? Well, yes, that’s right. But what I am advocating is sustainable giving. When you decide what, why and how much you’re willing to give, both you and the non-profit will experience long-term benefit. Giving for these reasons is healthier and longer-lasting than giving for banal praise or general appreciation. You didn’t get into this thing so that everyone would think you’re a great person. (Ok, maybe you did - but I guarantee you that’s not why you’re still there after all this time.)

    Sit down and think through why you got involved with volunteering in the first place - and specifically why you chose the organization you’re with. What was it that you connected with? What ideas reached something meaningful inside you? Who moved you to become involved? In what ways did you hope volunteering would change your life? Focus on these things and strictly limit the rest. Your enthusiasm for serving on the soup line does not obligate you to chair the board. If you came to participate in the river clean-up, you don’t have to stay late to clear out just because you’re known as the “go-to” guy. Do what you love. That’s it. This is your highest level of contribution. When you step outside of who you’re meant to be, you will inevitably diminish your contribution and begin the path to burn-out.

    I promise you this: If you focus on what you get out of the experience and give yourself permission to remain faithful to it, you won’t have to ask these kinds of questions anymore.

    It’s not that non-profits don’t benefit from new volunteers who arrive full of passion and enthusiasm. They certainly do. I mean, at the beginning, it’s mutual euphoria! The non-profit has renewed hope with someone positive and dependable to send work through, and the volunteer feels like a god with all the gushing praises like, “How did we ever make it without you?” It’s wonderful! And....it’s the beginning of a perpetually damaging cycle of enabling and codependency. When the euphoria wears off, both parties feel betrayed. The nonprofit feels their volunteer is ungrateful for the privileged work they provided, while the volunteer feels conned into bearing the weight of the organization’s survival.

    Both sides are responsible to work for the solution. Organizations must begin to acknowledge that the health and growth of the volunteer is vital to their own health and growth. Volunteers have got to stop giving so damn much, and take a little. It’s only when they are confident of the value of what they are receiving that volunteers will have anything meaningful to give.

    It is always better to give than to receive. As long as we’re giving at our highest level of contribution.

    Clearly reluctant to do anything at all about Canadian mining companies' overseas human rights impacts, the Canadian government does even worse.

     

    Governments can be forgiven for thinking that no matter what they do, the human rights and environmental activists will never be happy. Well, its their job not to be happy.

     

    Their furious reaction to the Canadian government's recent announcement to launch a voluntary code and "CSR counsellor" service "to assist in resolving social and environmental issues relating to Canadian companies" looks 100% justified, however.

     

    The Canadian government's press release simpers: "Canadian companies are often instrumental in bettering the lives of people in the communities in which they operate."

     

    Sure, when they're not being sued for alleged complicity in genocide or "alleged violent attacks by the company’s security forces on villagers protesting a proposed massive copper mine in the Andes of northwestern Ecuador."

     

    The government's initiative comprises:

    • "Creating a new Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor to assist in resolving social and environmental issues relating to Canadian companies operating abroad in this field. A competency-based selection process will be launched shortly to identify qualified candidates for this position.
    •  Supporting a new Centre of Excellence to be established outside government as a one-stop shop to provide information for companies, non-governmental organizations and others.
    • Continuing Canadian International Development Agency assistance for foreign governments to develop their capacity to manage natural resource development in a sustainable and responsible manner.
    • Promoting internationally recognized, voluntary guidelines for corporate social responsibility performance and reporting."

    This some two years after a multi-stakeholder Advisory Group to the National Roundtables on CSR in the Extractives Sector submitted a report to the Canadian government. The report, activists recall, represented a rare consensus achieved between them and industry groups.

     

    Where governments fail in their duty to regulate corporate society relations, people turn to the courts. It reminds me of the last days of the Bush administration.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    News by Impact