Supporting Volunteers as Project Leaders
Volunteers who are prepared and supported throughout their service experience are more likely to volunteer again. Continuing support and development are especially important for volunteers who serve in leadership positions.
It is important to maintain a personal connection with project leaders. After orientation and training, you will still want to coach and mentor the leaders to help individual leaders grow their thinking and capacity to lead.
Your goal is to help leaders develop their thinking and capacity. Provide clear guidelines, due dates, reminders, and clarification of requirements. More importantly, know your leaders’ strengths as well as the areas that need more development, so that you can better help them develop their skills. Make sure they own the project. If you foster their development as you do for staff, your program is more likely to retain a strong and growing body of committed, qualified project leaders.
Decide if you want to support project leaders formally or informally. Formal support can include regular, scheduled meetings; task-specific training; or volunteer committees. Informal support occurs as it is needed rather than at scheduled times and can include calls or e-mails to check in with leaders and see how their project is progressing. Provide opportunities for volunteer leaders to share best practices and learn from each other, such as casual gatherings at a coffee house or on-line discussion groups.
Coaching
Coaching is the informal support that happens through on-going conversation and collaboration. Coaching can happen before a challenging event, in the midst of action, after a triumph or defeat, or during a pause between assignments. The key elements of successful coaching are:
- A trusting, honest, respectful relationship between the coach and coachee
- Time for preparation and reflection
- Clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and expectations
- Effective listening skills
- Strategic questions that promote thinking
- Data collection and thoughtful feedback
Active listening is an important part of coaching. To be an active listener, remember these tips:
- Be calm and patient.
- Don’t assume you understand what the speaker thinks and feels.
- Ask clarifying questions.
- Summarize or paraphrase what you are hearing.
- Don’t be designing what you’re going to say while the other person is talking.
- Don’t try to be a great problem-solver by advising.
Coaching questions are used to help people clarify and develop their thinking. Below are some examples of helpful coaching questions:
- What do you hope to accomplish?
- How did it go?
- What happened?
- What did you think?
- What worked?
- Why?
- How do you know?
- What would you like to do differently next time?
Delegating to Project Leaders
Through orientation and continuing support, you are preparing project leaders to take greater responsibility and truly own their projects. However, you should continue to work with the leader to accomplish the project goals. Delegating tasks to volunteers requires careful preparation. When delegating tasks, consider the following:
- Give assignments in terms of results, not just activities or tasks.
- In order to accomplish something, a project leader needs a sense of what she is trying to achieve. Therefore, define jobs as something to accomplish (e.g., $500 raised), rather than as something to do (e.g., write a grant proposal).
- Explain as precisely as possible what she is to do.
- Explain the importance of the particular task.
- Show her you have confidence in her ability to carry out the task. Be more interested in results than in how it is done.
- Be certain that the person you choose is capable of doing the assignment and has the necessary knowledge and training to do it.
- Define the level of control. Tell project leaders how much authority they have in making decisions.
- Let the person know before the start who will be responsible for making decisions.
- When appropriate, delegate authority to make decisions along with the responsibility for carrying out the task.
- Communicate any guidelines and parameters that must shape their decisions.
- Be specific about deadlines.
- Help set priorities
- Make resources available and offer the assistance necessary to accomplish the task.
- Be aware of the types of support someone might need and the type of support you can provide.
- Make sure there is proper access to tools and resources to get the job done.
- Determine criteria for success and agree on how results will be judged.
- To be satisfied about his work, a project leader needs to get some feedback that indicates the degree of success he is having. Before the project, determine criteria for success and how it will be evaluated.
- Establish reporting points along the way.
- Setting times to check in with the project leader provides the opportunity to meet and discuss progress and helps you avoid those meetings that occur only when things aren’t going well.
- Giving someone your undivided attention at a regular meeting lets her know that you care about the work she’s doing and how it is accomplished.
Some of this material is adapted from resources by Hands On Greater Portland and L.A. Works, two member organizations of Hands On Network.
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