The X-Factor: Volunteer Management
Do you have an X-Factor on your resume?
In a competitive job market with mobs of talented, qualified, experienced people fighting for a handful of coveted jobs, how will you set yourself apart from the masses? After re-reading the last sentence you may have noticed I've left out your education, to which I respond: I see your Masters degree and I raise you a PhD.
An X-Factor is a skill-set or outside-the-box experience that peaks an employers interests. X-Factors give a company insights into who you are, not just what you do, and that could be the difference maker.
From my own personal experience, volunteer management is just such an X-Factor.
I was 25, it was my first true leadership experience outside of sports and academia, and I was nervous. I was leading a non-profit recreation centre & program that relied solely on a team of volunteers. Early in my career I attended a fantastic leadership conference. I listened intently, taking great notes and gleaning juicy nuggets on workplace culture, people management and an assortment of best practices for leaders. I'll never forget one CEO who shared an interesting practice he uses to assess a leader's competency before he hires or promotes them. He assigned each potential hire to lead a team of volunteers on a given initiative for six months. If they survived leading this initiative, he went on, then they were given the leadership position within his company. Now I've heard of shocking corporate cultures where one CEO even made his employees crawl around in public...I'm still not sure what the end game was there. But surviving a volunteer leadership position, how hard can that be?
Four challenging years later, I finally see the wisdom in this CEO's choice to place his people in such a unique crucible. Over this time I have doubled the size of my volunteer team, adding many and removing some (telling someone you don't want their free time is not easy, but if you shy away from it your growth will falter and you will instead lose your best people). We have created our own culture and buy-in has never been higher. We took a program that was barely functioning when I stepped in and built it from the bottom up. Truly it has been an invaluable professional experience with some very unique challenges.
So, here is how leading a volunteer initiative/team will change your professional life, give you a unique skill set and make you a must hire for that coveted corporate leadership position.
1. Authority Is Earned Not Inherited
Traditional leadership positions, even entry level ones, typically include inherited authority. When you are hired, by nature of your title, office size, pay-scale and scope of power, you inherit the compliance of your team. The foundation of your authority is based on the fact that you are the vessel through which your subordinates are reviewed, retained and released. When you step into the leadership of a volunteer team, this basic platform is pulled out from under your feet. Earning your authority becomes the only road to success. Learning how to lead in a way that earns respect and solidifies authority without it being assumed will greatly increase your ability to lead effectively and empower your team. Having to work for something is always better than being given it. You will experience a greater sense of ownership and will also receive greater buy-in from your team. Win, Win!
2. Inspiration Is Your Only Incentive
When you lead a volunteer team initiative you will discover immediately that your most useful tool for getting the maximum effort out of your team is through inspiration. You must learn to inspire those around you in a way that makes them want to give more, do more, impact more. The beautiful thing about volunteers is that they are donating their time because they already believe strongly enough in the cause to sacrifice for it (unless they are doing community service, that can be more challenging, yet still achievable). A great leader will learn that in his or her own selfless service to the team and cause, he/she will inspire greater sacrifice to the cause collectively. With no underlying promise of financial gain, an accomplishment like this is something to be celebrated. Imagine your effectiveness when you return to your regular leadership where there are the traditional financial incentives. No matter the environment, if you can inspire those around you, you will experience success on a long term scale.
3. Defined Values
A workplace culture is only as good as it's underlying values. If the values of a company are unclear to your team, or not being adhered to by those in leadership you might as well cut your productivity and effectiveness in half. Any policy or value that applies to one level but not another will breed divisiveness. Managing a team of volunteers forces you to clearly define the core values of your initiative, values which all levels are accountable too. How else will you be able to attract volunteers with pure intentions, repel the others and keep your best people fired up?
For example, in the non-profit fitness centre I run for at-risk youth, we needed to have a clear vision on why we were there. It's so much more than lifting weights with kids. Through some team exercises we came to the consensus that we were there to “restore manhood” in the young men we work with by modelling how a real man handles his responsibilities. We would achieve this by mentoring with consistency, intentionality and through selfless service within but also outside of the gym. One of our tag lines became, “doing legs on chest day”, which for any gym fanatic is a big deal. We all love doing chest workouts and detest the pain of training legs. It's our culture specific way of saying, we're here for the kids, not ourselves. It is very difficult to create accountability without actual paid employment. With these core values it became easy to hold my team to our mission description, because we had ALL agreed on the definition of our values. Any violation at any level was met by peer to peer accountability applied from each member of the team, not just me. Once we began operating with clear core values the gym program ran more smoothly, was more effective and attracted major growth in our attendance numbers!
A leader that lives the values is more important than one that simply dictates them, because their effectiveness is multiplied by each team member that buys into those core values.
4. More Immediate Influence (for you young leaders)
This one should definitely appeal to young leaders. Due to the constant need for good leadership in volunteer initiatives, you will be given advanced opportunities to develop your own leadership style and exert creative influence on a much bigger scale than with a traditional entry-level job. Developing this sense of self, while gaining confidence and experience will multiply your growth as a leader exponentially. All employers are looking for leaders with fresh, bold perspective, and when you have these attributes in your wheelhouse as a young leader you have drastically increased your value.
5. Collaborating vs. Commanding
Leaders of volunteer teams develop into excellent collaborators. In other words, this is fertile ground for becoming a true team player. Authoritarian, totalitarian, dictator style leadership will not work in this type of setting. Fear tactics just aren't effective on someone who can walk out the door at anytime. It is truly surprising how many leaders still rely on this style in the workplace. Collaboration builds team engagement and the strengths of a fully engaged team will always outweigh the competency of an individual.
I read once that a great leader is one who is okay with being the dumbest one in the room! Not all the time of course, but if you have put together a talented team you should have people serving that are better than you at certain aspects of your initiative.
Making use of these people and humbly deferring to them will generate incredible results! A collaborative leader is able to give credit and eat blame, a command-based leader keeps credit and dishes out blame. Which do you think is more effective in the long run?
So, if you are looking to move up the leadership ranks in your given career path, experience leading a volunteer team should score your resume some major, eye-brow raising second looks from potential employers. You will develop valuable skills and learn how to overcome adversity in new, creative ways. Above and beyond your own growth, you will also have made a positive, lasting difference in your community!
What are you waiting for, get out there and start serving your way up the corporate ladder!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ryan Dueck is the founder of Six Degrees Freedom, a platform from which he speaks, writes and coaches with a passion for helping people Live & Lead with Resilience. Ryan survived a catastrophic neck injury on a football field in 2009 and traveled to Europe to receive a rare reconstructive spine surgery that saved him from paralysis. Now living with implants in 4 of 7 levels of his neck, he seeks to inspire others to thrive in the face of adversity. Ryan completed his Kinesiology degree at the University of Manitoba and has worked in the health, wellness & fitness industry for 10 years as a personal trainer, coach and as the director of a non-profit recreation centre for at-risk youth.