By Deb Boelkes
If you’ve ever been a volunteer, or led a group of volunteers, you know first-hand that everyone has multiple priorities vying for their time, energy, and enthusiasm. Inspiring anyone to prioritize your volunteer group’s efforts in the overall scheme of their lives can be challenging.
Like herding cats, recruiting and optimizing volunteer endeavors can be the ultimate test of a leader’s ability. So, how can you keep a team of volunteers motivated, engaged, focused, and dedicated to working in synergistic unity when you can’t pay them to do so?
Let’s get right to the bottom line: Heartfelt leadership is what the most effective leaders rely upon to succeed, regardless of whether they can offer monetary incentives or not. Heartfelt leaders know that what binds teams together is passion for the cause, assignments that play to each individual team member’s strengths and involve tasks they love to perform and find energizing, and having a leader who genuinely cares about helping everyone succeed in support of the mission.
In my August post, we talked about the keys to employee engagement. These same things apply equally well to volunteer engagement. Britt Berrett, now the former president of the award-winning “Best Place to Work,” Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, shared his belief that “Purpose and Meaning—to do what you do with purpose and meaning” is the key.
I believe this is especially true for volunteers. If the mission of your cause doesn’t fully resonate as meaningful to a volunteer (Why are we here? What do we hope to achieve? What are the guiding principles we’re going to live by?), or when bureaucracy and minutia take precedent over action and impact, volunteers are likely to lose interest.
Keep in mind that environmental factors can evolve over time—sometimes to the point of modifying the purpose and meaning of the mission. When whatever it was that originally inspired team members to join ceases to exist, it may not be possible to keep those same individuals engaged, enthused, and loyal to the cause. When things go sideways and encouraging communications aren’t forthcoming from the leader to reassure wavering volunteers that “this too shall pass,” some of your kittens are likely to jump out of the box in search of a new home.
For several years I have belonged to a volunteer group of women dedicated to providing scholarships, grants, and loans to women at various stages of their undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate studies. Virtually everyone I know who joined this volunteer organization did so due to their passion for and commitment to the mission of helping women attain the necessary degree(s) to achieve their career goals.
Interestingly, most of our volunteers quickly discover something far more important drives our dedication to the organization: a love for and devotion to each other. We truly enjoy our time together. We care about what’s happening in the entirety of each other’s lives. We are there for each other when things go wrong in their world—like an illness, or a death, or some other calamity.
Our interpersonal bonds have become even more important to us than pursuing the official mission of the organization, especially since so many colleges and universities now put more emphasis on equity— allowing men to compete in women’s sports—and the hiring of professors who enhance their LBGTQ+ employment metrics. Because of this shift in collegiate priorities, many of our members have lost the motivation to pursue our official mission. Why should we expend the time and effort to send women to schools that aren’t focused on helping women succeed?
Fortunately, there are no fundraising police holding us accountable to financial goals. No one is going to fire us, so we focus on our esprit de corps instead, at least for now. Hopefully someday the educational environment will change, and we’ll get back to fulfilling our stated mission. Until then, we’re happy to simply fund raise and sit on the money.
You may be wondering, just what is it that creates such a loyalty between team members—whether volunteers or employees.
In our book The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a Best Place to Work Culture, Dr. Mark Goulston asked Paul Spiegelman, Founder of BerylHealth and the Beryl Institute—a company that won nine “Best Place to Work” awards and was voted #2 “Best medium-sized company to work for in America”—about creating a culture of loyalty. Paul had this to say:
“We did that merely by caring for our employees in the totality of their lives—if we gave them a great environment, if we let them have some fun, if we showed we cared about them when they had an event in their life that was important to them (a birth, a death), if we helped them and showed we were interested in them as a person, they would do anything for us. It created tremendous loyalty. They worked harder, and it did more for our business.…We focus first and foremost on people…. That drives loyalty.”
If you’ve read my previous blogs here, you know that I revere the late UCLA basketball coaching legend John Wooden, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1960 for his personal achievement as an outstanding player, and again in 1973 as an all-time great coach. Ever since I was a freshman at UCLA, watching Coach Wooden lead his team to win the NCAA national championships for the seventh straight season, I’ve been inspired by his gentlemanly, down-to-earth demeaner and common-sense leadership style. Some of the most important leadership secrets to success I ever learned about creating esprit de corps were thanks to Coach Wooden. Here is just a sampling:
- Leadership is not about being in charge—It’s about taking care of those in your charge.
- Building team spirit is the responsibility of a leader—It’s the ability to get everybody in a group eager to put “we” ahead of “me.”
- Great teams are made up of a variety of players, each having their own strengths.
- Kindness makes for much better teamwork.
Think about the volunteer (or other) organizations you’re familiar with where team members love what they do and take pride in working together to accomplish a mission. What would you say are the driving forces behind such displays of esprit de corps, team pride, and loyalty? What do you believe motivates them to succeed as a cohesive unit?
It seems to me that such cultures emanate from heartfelt leaders, regardless of where those individuals fit on the org chart.
I hope you’ll always strive to be a heartfelt leader—one who magically creates esprit de corps because of who you are—someone who truly cares about making others’ lives better. All it takes is a little courage, caring, and kindness. Simply be the authentic you and strive to be your best, doing what you love, while showing those around you that you care about them. Put “we” ahead of “me,” and encourage others to do the same.
When you do that, you’ll undoubtedly create esprit de corps for whatever cause inspires you.