Hot
Topic Archive
September
2005
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Managing
volunteers is like herding sheep (Australian style)
By
guest Hot Topic writer Fraser
Dyer
Warren
Bennis, of the Leadership Institute at the University
of Southern California, once wrote a book called Managing
People is Like Herding Cats. It is a great title (and
an even better book) which I've decided to plagiarize
having learnt something about sheep farming in Australia.
Here
in England farmers keep their flocks together by confining
them to fields surrounded by thick hedges. Even in
my native Scotland, where sheep are free to roam over
moorland, cattle grids and wire fences stop flocks
drifting too far away. What I've learned about Australian
sheep farming [and I guess this only applies to some
of the more remote areas] is that there is no need
for fences. You just show them the waterhole and they
won't drift too far from there.
It's
a good metaphor for managing volunteers; to what extent
do we try to restrict and control their performance
rather than create an environment to which they are
drawn and enabled to contribute in fabulous ways.
I'm concerned that the increasing bureaucratization
of volunteer management - which has had a very positive
effect in many regards - is sometimes applied so rigorously
that volunteers become too constrained to do their
jobs well. At the same time our selection procedures
or training requirements are in danger of becoming
so fussy and paternalistic that we create barriers
which keep volunteers out of our organisations.
In
Wales, recently, a group of 26 meals-on-wheels volunteers
resigned en masse after the local authority announced
that they should all be trained in spotting signs
of abuse in older people, and must be vetted for a
criminal records check. Sue Pickavance, Director of
Volunteering at Wales Council for Voluntary Action
- which supports and resources volunteerism in Wales
- wrote about the situation in the UKVPM's newsgroup:
" [The volunteers] are well known locally, respected
and trusted by the people they deliver to. All of
the volunteers 'looked out for' their clients, reported
illness or concerns and did many additional little
acts of kindness."
"The
local authority wrote to the volunteers telling them
that they wished the volunteers to attend training
on 'elderly abuse' and as a consequence to undertake
police checks. Before the local authority took this
action they were strongly advised not to go about
it in this way but to discuss it with the volunteers
first. They apparently chose to ignore this advice,
with the unfortunate consequences."
Obviously
we want clients and service-users to be safe. But
this episode cuts to the heart of the leadership crisis
taking place in many organisations. Do you enable
people to perform effectively or dictate the terms
on which they should do so? This is the difference
between leadership and management.
Managers
are organizers. They coordinate activities to ensure
goals are met within agreed budgets, policies and
procedures. Management is all about control , and
you can only really control activities which are repetitive
and predictable. There is a clear need for management
within organisations, for example in controlling financial
resources or monitoring production tasks. Suppose
you ask a group of volunteers to put together a mail-shot
for you. You will certainly want to set up a system
to enable this repetitive task to be done speedily,
accurately and at the lowest cost.
Yet
often the work that volunteers undertake is not of
this kind. They provide person-centred assistance
that requires them to offer themselves in the service
of another. When a volunteer listens, assists, or
supports they are engaging in a unique interaction
with another individual. The outcome is going to be
different every time, in the same way that every conversation
you have with your friends is different. It is dynamic
.
While
we most certainly need to set boundaries on volunteers'
conduct - a line over which they must not cross -
we start to create problems for ourselves the more
we try to control the dynamic that volunteers bring
to person-centred services. When the performance of
people is managed (controlled) rather than led (empowered)
situations like the meals-on-wheels crisis will arise.
Leadership
is not about control, but about vision, inspiration
and motivation. Leaders create environments in which
volunteers collaborate with the organisation to deliver
effective services. This requires a wholly different
skill-set from management. It is the people side of
the business where we must learn to negotiate, give
feedback, encourage, coach and cooperate. Leaders
serve their teams by creating a workplace that attracts
volunteers to become part of their mission.
Part
of such leadership requires recognizing the capabilities,
strengths and attributes of the team at your disposal
so that you can incorporate them into the work programme.
The temptation that managers face, and this is perhaps
at the heart of the hurt felt by the meals-on-wheels
volunteers, is to impose their own methods of ensuring
good performance without acknowledging what is already
present.
Such
control measures often fail to recognize that they
are only as good as the imagination and foresight
of the person who designed them. It is also the case
that a desire to control often stems from a lack of
trust, from a manager's insecurity about letting the
unpredictable take place (there are sometimes good
grounds for this, especially where an organisation
has not taken care to recruit the right volunteers
for the job in hand) . But person-to-person volunteering
activities are unpredictable.
In
the same way that you can't know exactly what will
happen when you pick up the phone to call someone
else, a volunteer supporting a client is engaged in
a dynamic unpredictable activity. Our job as leaders
is to create a setting where we can let the magic
of that happen safely and effectively. That requires
giving volunteers not just the right resources but
room to breath, to be themselves and bring the best
of what they have to offer to their work.
How,
then, do we create 'waterhole' volunteer programmes
which attract the right people and give them space
to be brilliant?
That
is one of the questions Andy Fryar, Martin J Cowling
and myself are going to be addressing in the upcoming
workshop Turn Your Organisation Into a Volunteer Magnet
(Sept and October 2005). I'm truly excited about the
opportunity to meet with you and work together with
you in exploring how we develop volunteer programmes
that strike the right balance between management and
leadership.
It's
not too late to...
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