“How do I break down barriers and encourage a group of volunteers to strive for higher performance?” That is the question Ingrid posed recently on the ChangeYourTeam Community. Having experienced a few dysfunctional and under-performing volunteer organizations myself, I thought it was a great topic to discuss here on the blog. Let’s start with why you’re in the situation you’re in on your volunteer team.
Why you put up with crappy volunteer teams
- The cause you are working for is SO important that it eclipses the petty infighting and poor dynamics. You think to yourself: Cancer is such a terrible disease. People with cancer suffer so profoundly. A little team dysfunction is a small price to pay for doing such important work.
- People are giving their time away for free and it’s not legitimate to expect that they behave a certain way. You think to yourself: Karen is so sweet in giving her Saturday every month to work at the soup kitchen. Who am I to complain if she breaks a few rules?
- You often don’t have a leader who is telling you to expect something better. Many volunteer leaders don’t know how to mobilize a group of volunteers to make an organization hum. You think to yourself: I’m not really sure how I can help. I guess I’ll just pitch in and start doing something and someone will tell me if I need to do something differently.
So, that’s probably why you put up with crappy volunteer teams. Here’s why you shouldn’t
- You’re working on something really important. It matters. You need to get traction and make meaningful forward progress before (insert important cause: another child goes to school hungry, more people die of Malaria, the school playground crumbles before your eyes). You can’t afford for the team not to be successful.
- You’re giving your time for free. This is your downtime. This is time you could be spending with your family, doing one more task at work, or having precious time to yourself. You can’t afford for your free time to be adding stress in your life.
- You might not have the benefit of a strong leader to fix things for you so you might need to contribute to a higher performing team yourself.
Get it? All the excuses for why you aren’t investing in a better experience on your volunteer teams are exactly the reasons why you need to!
Good news, you can change your volunteer team for the better.
What to do:
1. Create conversations about alignment. What is this organization trying to accomplish? What can we contribute to this very big and important issue? Get specific: is it a fundraising organization, an advocacy group, a caregiving service? You can’t be all things to all people.
Volunteer organizations are very prone to scope creep—where anything that is worthwhile that could somehow be conceived of as part of the issue gets added to the list—and suddenly the efforts of the organization are totally diluted. Help create a conversation about focus. Redirect people to other organizations if their goals are too far from the core of the organization.
Example: “This organization was founded to proactively address issues in children’s mental health. While there are important issues for children who are mentally ill, not to mention critical issues of mental health in adults, where do we want to invest our efforts? Where can we have the greatest impact?”
2. Have frank conversations about what to do and what not to do. Once you’re clear on the purpose of the organization or team, connect your activities back to that mission. Get ruthless about prioritizing. That means you’ll have to ask very clearly about what the team is not going to do.
Here’s an example: “Our #1 priority is to provide meals to senior citizens who can’t adequately feed themselves. Our second priority is to nourish them with a few minutes of company and conversation. Increasingly, we are being asked to provide routine help with other personal care issues. We want to help these people and I’m concerned that our best intentions might be taking up significant time, reducing the number of people we can provide meals to, and even increasing our liability. I propose that we refer these other requests to a partner agency.”
3. Give (and ask for) feedback. No, your teammates are not being paid, but that’s no reason for them to be able to do things that are counter-productive. Give feedback when someone is taking up too much time in meetings, when they are paying attention to the wrong things, or when they are treating you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable.
Be calm, be nice, and be direct. “In today’s committee meeting, you spent about 20 minutes on the bake sale. That meant we didn’t have time to talk about my dunk tank planning. Now I need to communicate with each committee member offline, which is far less efficient. How can you help reach a better balance among each topic in our meetings?”
Addressing team effectiveness issues in volunteer organizations is sticky because the importance of the cause tends to trump our concerns over wasted effort, because we are grateful to people (no matter how incompetent or counter-productive) who give of their time, and because we lack the leaders to get everyone rowing in the same direction. But those are the same reasons why you personally need to take ownership and start contributing to a more vibrant and effective volunteer team.
Imagine what we could accomplish if we all changed our volunteer teams for the better! I’d love to hear your volunteer stories in the comments.
Further Reading
What I Learned from my Second Dysfunctional Team
Great blog Liane!
I run a volunteer committee myself. To build a strong team, my interview process included questions like “What service does the Forum provide to business women that aligns with your values?” or “How comfortable are you with implementing the growth strategy that the group agrees on?” This ensured I created a team that was truly dedicated to the cause.
I’ve sat on volunteer committees before and what I noticed is that the members felt they were doing a great service just by sitting on the board and had no desire to roll their sleeves up and focus on the collective results of the team. They seemed to be there for their own agenda and not for the cause. I’m very grateful for the experience as I learned how not to run a team.
Liane, thanks for your roll in spreading the word about the importance of a functioning team.
Tammy, this is a great story! It’s better to have a smaller but better aligned team if you really want to get something done. Thanks so much for sharing this to encourage more people to strive for high performance on their volunteer teams.
Liane,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my wishes. I’ve been reviewing your suggested approach for the past week, and I now have a plan to put this in action. My (volunteer) board meeting is tonight, where I eagerly anticipate the response to my conversation openers. Wish me luck!
Ingrid