Accountability must work in all directions. Holding subordinates accountable is easy; holding your leaders and your peers accountable is harder, but critical. They should know that you expect them to have the highest standards, and they should hear about it (politely) when they don’t. When you are in charge of a good team, they set the expectations for you at least as much as you set the expectations for them. I recently fulfilled a long-time wish when I entirely skipped the first PT formation to go out for breakfast, something I’d never done before in my whole career. I was more than a little sad that no one called to check on me. Later, I learned my absence was noticed, but no one felt they had the authority to call me out on it, so I had some discussions with the relevant people. It was a good breakfast, but a better teaching point, I hope. Holding your leaders accountable, perhaps by asking the hard questions in the meetings, tells them what your expectations and needs are and helps keep them on the straight and narrow. When as a leader you don’t get any feedback, it’s very easy to wander far afield. Everyone… needs someone to hold them accountable.
I prepared and scheduled this blog more than a month ago. Since then, I have experienced first hand the consequences of holding a supervisor accountable. There’s nothing easy about it. But for all the reasons stated above, I did it. And will continue to do so.
After a few decades of professional work, I’m getting less circumspect about my experiences. There are things I was afraid to say, or to admit to, 20 years ago, but now feel need to be shared, to help others pursuing a similar career path and to remind some folks in power of some things they should be reminded of. I’m in a good position to share them, per my decades of work and diversity of experiences. This blog is one of many coming from that feeling that it’s time to say it – whatever it is.
Many years ago, I trained as a journalist. I even worked as a professional journalist for a few years. But before graduating from university, I realized I didn’t want to be a journalist. Before I left university, I started working in public relations for a nonprofit, and then I was in charge of publicity for the entire season of my university’s children theater series. We broke attendance records. I loved it. So I’ve done communications work ever since for nonprofits and cause-based programs, except for a few breaks to manage programs and projects for nonprofits or the United Nations.
I love applying what I learned as a journalist to the work I do with nonprofits – I think it’s why I’m successful at getting media coverage. And I love writing with the purpose of promoting, even explaining, a program or project. For nonprofits, I find such writing easier than a lot of other people, because I believe so much in the fundamental importance of the third sector and the public sector to everyone’s quality of life. That innate motivation makes it easy for me to be motivated to write for most any nonprofit or government mission. I feel great inspiration in why most nonprofits and government programs exists, whether it’s a winterization program or a new musical or a new approach to community meeting facilitation, and I think it shows in what communications products – press release, web pages, social media posts, speeches, video scripts and more – that I make for them.
But writing for causes I immediately find worthy is not without some big challenges. And the biggest for me is the reaction from co-workers or funders reading a draft of something for the first time. The expressed shock of some of them, even suppressed outrage, that things are incorrect or aren’t perfectly clear can be exhausting.
Of course, the first draft is imperfect. Of course, you will need to edit what I’ve written. I knew that going in. Didn’t you?
Very often, the person that asks me to write a press release or slide show presentation or video script has nothing written at all, not even an outline. I have to draw my material for the first draft from talking to them, from researching online, and if I’m lucky, from printed or online material I’ve been able to track down, like a grant proposal. I do my best with what I can find, and when I provide that first draft, I’m not thinking, “Here it is, all perfect and ready to share!” I’m usually thinking, “Here it is, ready for your edits, because I know how much easier it is to edit than to write from scratch!” I expect edits!
One of my least favorite phrases is this: “I don’t know where you got this from”, referring to some graphic or quote I’ve included in my draft. Please note that I’m not AI (artificial intelligence) and I don’t make things up; whatever it is, I found that graphic or quote somewhere, from a different communications project I wasn’t involved with, from a headquarters, from another nonprofit – somewhere credible and reliable. Or, perhaps you explained something, in terms I cannot use, and so I had to interpret them – and it turns out your explanation wasn’t as good as you thought it was.
One of the best ways to know how good of an explainer you are is to explain something to a person, and then ask that person to explain it back to you. And that’s what you are doing when you ask me to write something you need to communicate with others.
In addition, so much of effective communication isn’t just saying something in one particular way, and expecting the reader or listener to understand. Rather, it’s about saying things in multiple ways, and the reader, or listener, gets the meaning from those different ways you have said it and that they have heard it – more than once.
When you get that first draft, don’t panic that it’s not perfect. Instead, think about how much easier it’s going to be to edit this than to try to write it entirely from scratch.
It’s fine to say, “I don’t like this” about a sentence or graphic, but be able to say more about why. Are the words too big? Do you feel like it could be interpreted to be saying something you don’t want said and, if so, what is that something?
It’s fine to say, “I haven’t heard this way of saying it before. Did this come from somewhere else?” I always have the source material for just such an occasion, like when a client thought I had made an inappropriate leap in logic in how I described one of the programs she managed, and I was able to provide the web pages of her affiliate’s headquarters, as well as other affiliates, that used the same descriptions.
Is the way you have been describing something really better than the alternative now being offered? You may be far closer to the subject matter than the person that wrote this press release draft, and that person may be thinking about the audience, people who don’t know as much as you do about the subject, or who may even be hostile about it.
Did the writer have to follow a particular template provided by a funder? Can the writer make the changes you want and still follow the template the funder wants followed?
Did the writer actually do what you wanted and you are now realizing it’s not what you wanted? That’s okay! It seemed like a great idea to adapt that poem or song lyric a certain way, but now that you see what that would look like, it’s okay to say, “I’ve changed my mind.”
Remember that the writer just did the heavy lifting and you now get the far easier role of editing and altering. Thank them for that heavy lifting!
I live in the Portland, Oregon area, and a few years ago, the area experienced record-setting heat. In response, various city and county governments set up cooling centers: spaces in libraries, churches and convention centers where people without air conditioning and people who are unsheltered could come, with their pets, to get relief from the dangerous heat. One county government tweeted out several requests for volunteers, including one that said volunteers were needed “desperately.” I decided to amplify the message by posting it to various online communities I’m a part of, including posting it on the subreddit for Portland, Oregon. I highlighted some points in particular from the web site where people were to express interest in volunteering:
Must be 18+, have compassion for all guests. Social service experience helpful.
Please keep in mind that emergency response operations may be very hectic keeping you quite busy for extended periods. You may also experience very slow uneventful periods of time. Such is the nature of emergency and disaster response. Please take time before your deployment to prepare for this working environment.
These are 9-hour shifts. These locations are open 24 HOURS.
I did alter the message to say cooling center volunteers were needed URGENTLY, rather than desperately, because I think desperation is never a good place to recruit volunteers from.
The message was upvoted more than any message I’ve ever posted to Reddit. But there was also significant backlash. The criticisms fell into three areas:
Why aren’t these positions paid? Why are these volunteer roles instead?
Why are the shifts 9 hours instead of 4?
Why didn’t the city plan better & start recruiting sooner?
It’s a shame those first two questions in particular weren’t answered by the recruiting agency in their messaging. As regular readers of my blog know, to not say why positions are volunteer rather than paid is always a big no-no. And saying “we don’t have the money to pay, so these are volunteer!” would not be the answer I am looking for (and probably not most of potential volunteers either).
As for the third comment, I don’t know that the city didn’t start recruiting sooner; I didn’t look on HandsOn Portland, VolunteerMatch and AllforGood, for instance, to see if they had started recruiting there. I don’t know that they didn’t have notices on their own web site sooner than what I saw on social media. So I hesitate to criticize them for how they have recruited in terms of when and where.
I did take issue with one comment that was made, and pushed back at it:
Way too much money and benefits expenses being expended on volunteer “coordinators”
I noted in my response that managers or coordinators of volunteers are some of the lowest paid people at any nonprofit or other agency, and rarely is their only role managing volunteers. I also said:
Volunteers aren’t free: someone has to recruit them, read the applications, interview them, screen them (often, background checks, reference checks and extensive interviews are required), supervise them (both to ensure their safety and client safety, and to make sure they’re doing what they are supposed to), support them (train them, answer questions on demand, etc), record their hours and their accomplishments, address problems, and report regularly to senior staff about what the volunteers are doing. It’s a tough job, made harder by people who think volunteers are free, think volunteer management is “Hey, we need volunteers, come on down!” and the work all magically happens, and balk at coordinators who ask for better training for themselves, software to manage volunteers, etc.
Nonprofits have GOT to do a better job of addressing misconceptions about volunteers and volunteer engagement. This is just yet another example of why.
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Do you head a nonprofit or non-government organizations (NGO)? I have a challenge for you. It’s a simple challenge, but a revealing one, and I’m daring you to do it:
Make this list, entirely on your own, with no consultation with others, of each person at your organization that you believe is supposed to be primarily responsible for:
responding to someone that emails or calls and says they want to volunteer.
meeting with / interviewing someone for the first time that wants to volunteer, getting all the necessary paperwork from the new applicant, etc.
orienting/training someone that will volunteer and what that orienting or training consists of (watching a certain video? going over the employee policy manual? getting a tour of facilities?)
inputting all of the volunteers’ information into a central database.
letting volunteers know about organization events or activities they would be welcomed to join or that they may be asked about from the public they work with.
following up with volunteers to see how their experience is going.
trouble-shooting on behalf of volunteers.
firing a volunteer.
recognizing and rewarding volunteers.
tracking volunteer contributions and reporting such to the organization.
interviewing volunteers that leave, to see why and to address issues.
Now that you have your list, then, at your next staff meeting, ask your staff these same questions. And learn two things:
If you are right.
If the staff that have these responsibilities knew they had these responsibilities.
Don’t be surprised if, in fact, you are wrong about who is responsible for what, nor surprised that there are staff with these responsibilities that didn’t know it. Reflect on these discrepancies and think about how you are going to support staff that didn’t know it was their responsibility to manage a piece of working with volunteers.
And then, finally, ask for a progress report on each of these tasks. And don’t be surprised to hear, again and again, “We’re behind on that. We’ve had other priorities. Sorry.” Because unless you have a dedicated manager of volunteers, someone whose sole responsibility is to support and engage volunteers, it’s very likely all those other people who are supposed to have at least a piece of volunteer engagement as a part of their roles – the marketing director, the fundraising manager, the thrift store manager, etc. – aren’t doing it regularly. And with that, you’ll finally understand why your organization doesn’t have all the volunteers it needs and why volunteers don’t stay.
And maybe then you’ll stop saying, “Well, people just don’t want to volunteer anymore!”
Any organization that involves volunteers needs to have safety policies and procedures to protect both volunteers and those that they serve, and if the volunteers interact with vulnerable people or could be in one-to-one situations with ANYONE, there needs to be even more extensive safety policies and procedures.
What do safety policies look like?
Screening steps for volunteers could be the volunteer applicants:
providing real names (not just nicknames or screen names), residential addresses (not just a PO Box), phone number, etc.
providing the name of the volunteer’s current employer and previous two employers, or the name of where they are currently enrolled in school and how many hours they are taking.
answering the questions “why do you want to volunteer?” and “What do you hope to experience as a volunteer” and “tell me about a time you interacted with a person in crisis.”
providing professional and academic reference checks (employers, teachers)
providing personal reference checks (friends, family)
undergoing a criminal background check
undergoing a credit check
being in a probation period and extra observation at first
going through required training
Supervision for volunteers could be:
Volunteers required to use an email the organization has set up and know that ALL emails are archived and could be reviewed at any time.
Volunteers required to work in pairs or paired with a staff person.
Staff that created the volunteering role meeting with the volunteer once a month or once a quarter AND meeting with other volunteers and clients about that volunteer’s performance.
Policies for volunteers could be:
Never being alone, one-on-one, with another volunteer, a paid staff person or a client.
Never using any electronic communications avenues other than a specific email or online platform (no texting among volunteers, for instance).
A prohibition on a volunteer giving personal contact info to any client.
A mandatory reporting by the volunteer if a client gives that volunteer personal contact info or tries to contact that volunteer outside of agreed-to communications avenues (WhatsApp, TikTok, etc.)
Mandatory reporting to management of suspicions of inappropriate behavior relating to sex by volunteers and clients.
etc.
Again, these are just EXAMPLES. And what safety requirements a volunteer beach cleanup group is going to have is NOT going to be the same as what a mentoring program for young people will have.
But whatever you have at your organization, whatever you require, should be detailed on your organization’s web site – NO EXCEPTIONS. And if they are not, it has to be assumed you don’t have them. And if you are recruiting volunteers to work with vulnerable groups or one-on-one with anyone, your post is going to be deleted here unless you have info on your web site on the steps you employ to keep volunteers and those they were safe.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
Quit saying that to be productive, staff – employees, consultants and volunteers – need to be onsite.
Quit saying that, to be productive, we need to return to onsite meetings.
Quit saying that, to build trust and to be more personal, we need to be talking face-to-face in the same room.
Stop it with that nonsense.
Why do you think face-to-face meetings are more productive or are better ways to build trust in a team? I have had enough time wasted in onsite meetings to last a LIFETIME. I have sat in more onsite, face-to-face meetings than I can count where nothing was accomplished.
I’m not saying never to have onsite meetings. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t ever work together in the same time and place.
But this assumption that onsite meetings are somehow automatically better, more productive, have more personality, allow people to get to know each other better, is just BOLLOCKS.
If your team doesn’t trust each other, if your team feels it can’t rely on certain members, if your team isn’t communicating well with each other, none of that is going to be automatically solved by changing from online to onsite meetings.
None of what makes for an effective meeting automatically happens just because you are meeting onsite. NONE of it. Quit implying that it does.
Effective meetings, whether onsite or online:
have clear agendas that are communicated before the start.
have an agenda that is results-oriented/mission-focused.
start at the time they say they will and they end at the time they say they will.
are effectively facilitated so that attendees stick to the agenda and scheduled decisions are made.
allow everyone to speak within the time frame given.
The meeting facilitator needs to have recognition from members to be the person to remind attendees if the discussion period for an agenda item is finished now and it’s time for a decision, or when to table a decision for the next meeting. The facilitator needs to be empowered to remind people who didn’t read the meeting materials beforehand that, in the future, they need to do that.
Case in point: I served on a board for three years. Our meetings became vastly more productive when we moved ONLINE because of the pandemic. I even got to know some of the board members more in our online meetings – the side chats on Zoom allowed truly EVERYONE to express their opinion, even their humor.
Meeting face-to-face, in the same place and time, does not magically create better communications and does not automatically create a sense of team. If your online meetings aren’t working out the way you want, the problem is probably not that you are all online.
Want to learn more how to effectively work with people online? The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The lessons here are focused on engaging volunteers, but all are easily adapted for working with paid staff. If you want to learn how to leverage online tools to communicate with and support volunteers, whether those volunteers are mostly online (virtual volunteering) or they provide service mostly onsite at your organization, and to dig deep into the factors for success in supporting online volunteers and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.
If you have benefited from any of my blogs or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
Volunteers need support. Just like most humans, they cannot memorize an operations manual, they are going to be asked questions they don’t know the answer to, and no matter how benign you may think the roles and tasks for volunteers at your organization are, volunteers WILL sometimes face a situation where they need to talk to someone, immediately, for guidance. And if they don’t have that, they will feel frustrated, angry, even scared, and definitely unsupported.
Do volunteers at your organization know exactly who to call or text when they face a situation they don’t know how to handle, or when they are asked a question by a client that they don’t know the answer to, or when they are dealing with an angry client, or when they are feeling unsafe? And will that call or text get answered immediately?
Are volunteers encouraged to seek help in the aforementioned situations? How, beyond telling them in the volunteer orientation they should do so?
I believe very strongly that immediate support for volunteers should always be just a phone call or text message away.
Someone at your organization must be available to volunteers for consultation and direction throughout their service. That should go without saying. But I also believe that, for volunteers working with clients or the public in ANY capacity, immediate support for those volunteers should be just a phone call or text away.
For your volunteers, if they face any of the aforementioned scenarios: do they call or text the manager of volunteers? An employee that is the manager of the program they are participating in? A lead volunteer? A WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal or Slack group where they will get a response quickly?
And do you evaluate what you have told volunteers, to see if they are using it and getting the answers they need, and getting those answers quickly?
It is impossible to anticipate all problems. It is also not appropriate to have to have an immediate answer to every question – maybe things can wait for an email reply or for a regularly scheduled staff meeting to discuss them. But volunteers should know who they can call or text with a question they feel needs an immediate answer, or for a request for guidance in a situation they deem urgent.
It’s also a good idea to detail for volunteers exactly what you mean by urgent, as well as what an emergency situation is where they should call 911 first. Talk about possible scenarios together – don’t just issue a written memo.
And volunteers, if you are realizing you need more guidance, ask for it! Feel free to share this blog with those you work with at a nonprofit or government program and say, “I think we need this. Here are some things I’ve faced and I wish I’d had someone to call or text for guidance…”
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
Articles are everywhere saying nonprofits and government programs have seen a severe drop in volunteers since the start of the pandemic. Many imply that a growing number of people don’t want to volunteer and that’s fueling the drop in volunteer numbers.
It’s absolutely true that there’s been a drop in the number of volunteers at many organizations all over the world, not just in the USA. But the implication that people, especially people under 50, don’t want to volunteer is BOLLOCKS.
This drop in volunteer numbers has been coming on for a long while, but the pandemic sped things up. So many nonprofits have been seeing their volunteers get older and older, even dying off, but new, younger volunteers not replacing those that leave. Why?
Spend a week on Reddit, especially the volunteer subreddit, and you will see young people repeatedly posting messages that they want to volunteer, but don’t know where to look, or don’t know what’s available, or don’t know how to express interest, or have been trying and not getting responses to their applications. Many don’t know how volunteering really works – they ask if volunteers get paid, or are shocked that they have to go through training for certain roles. Most seem to think nonprofits do work that anyone that just walks through the door can do, right away.
There’s also a change in what volunteers want. Many don’t just want to do work for free for you; they want to feel like they are making a difference, or they want to have an interesting experience, or they want to develop skills for their career, or they want to have fun. None of those are bad reasons to volunteer. And the pandemic has changed how people value time and personal interactions: they now have a much lower tolerance for having their time wasted. One of the things I keep hearing is that people now want experiences, not things – that includes meaningful, enjoyable volunteering.
One of the most popular blogs I have ever written is Diagnosing the causes of volunteer recruitment problems. If you have seen a drop in the number of volunteers you involve, you need to go read it. And as I say in that blog:
What worked to recruit volunteers 30 years ago doesn’t work now; if you are having trouble recruiting volunteers, it’s overdue for you to take a hard, in-depth look at both how you recruit, what your in-take process is like, and the volunteer opportunities you have available.
No more but we’ve always done it this way. STOP IT! Times have changed. AND they will keep changing. Either change how you talk about volunteers, support volunteers, engage volunteers and recruit volunteers or stop complaining!
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One of the things that differentiates me from other consultants and trainers regarding volunteer engagement is that I don’t just read and research and present: I also manage volunteers and I regularly volunteer myself. So much of my training advice, web pages and blogs have come from these first-hand volunteering experiences.
Every volunteer has a different “want” out of a volunteering gig, to make it worthwhile for them. For me, as a volunteer, it’s that:
I’m on-boarded quickly.
My time when I’m in training or actually volunteering is respected / isn’t wasted.
I feel like I’m actually doing something worthwhile as a volunteer for those served by the organization or the “cause” (I don’t do the work and wonder why it matters).
I feel supported in the volunteer role, I’ve been giving the prep I need for the role (I don’t feel like I’m foundering/set up for failure).
I feel like everyone wants everyone else to succeed, people don’t try to play “gotcha” with each other, there are not any ugly hidden agendas going on, there’s no delight in someone making a mistake, etc.
If I get even more out of it – if I have fun, if I get skills I can use in my job, etc. – that’s great too, but those four points are what are essential for me. And rarely do I undertake a volunteering gig that hits all those four points.
Helping at a blood drive in August hit all four of those points.
I’ve been promoting Red Cross volunteering for people who want to get started volunteering for many years – but I decided it was overdue for me to give it a try myself. So I went to the web site, read up on opportunities, and signed up for a few roles I thought I had time for and that looked interesting to me. None of the online volunteering I was interested in is available right now (they have enough volunteers for those tasks), but they really need people to help at blood drive events, and my commitment would be just one shift a month, so I signed up.
Filling out the initial application took a while – the Red Cross requires a lot of information in the volunteer application. But I think that’s a good thing: it screens out people who can’t make a commitment to reading information, filling out a form correctly, etc. – something any volunteer with the Red Cross will need to do in any assignment.
Then I did a phone interview with a volunteer that’s in charge of screening, then watched a video on YouTube, and then went through a live online training with a veteran “blood donor ambassador” – the name for volunteers who help sign in people at blood drives, make sure they get snacks and a rest afterward, etc. And all of that time is logged on my account already as volunteering time – I didn’t have to do anything.
We are a one-car family, and that means, most of the time, I do not have access to a car. I was able to sign up to help at a blood drive a short, direct bus ride from my home, in a nearby town. I had signed up for my first gig within minutes of my interview, and it was just two weeks away from that date.
I showed up at the event, 30 minutes early (as the video explained), and it turned out that I was the only volunteer ambassador there – meaning I was checking everyone in. I was very nervous since I thought I would get to “shadow” someone. Instead, it was all me – the site manager showed me how to check donors in, and the first donors, all veteran blood donors, also helped me (I think they loved being the experts to guide the newbie). And for the rest of the day, that’s what I did: donors showed their ID, I scanned it with a scanner, I checked off their name, I gave them a nametag, they had a seat and then got called up for the donation.
It was easy, it was interesting (nice to chat with people, interesting to watch how they go through the different stations of donating), and there was about 30 minutes when no one was scheduled and I was able to eat the lunch I brought.
If you are squeamish, don’t worry – you don’t ever have to see any blood, since you are facing away from the donor tables. And if anyone were to throw up, it’s NOT your job to clean it up (no one threw up, BTW, but we did have one guy faint).
If another volunteer had shown up, one of us would have been at the registration table and one of us would have been at the snack table, chatting with people who had just given blood, to make sure they were okay and ready to leave after 10 minutes or so. Had it been a larger event, there would have been two people registering and two people at the snack table.
If you are looking for an easy, interesting volunteering gig, I highly recommend you sign up to be a blood donor ambassador. You get to pick which event(s) you help at. It gives you insight into how the Red Cross works (the Red Cross does a lot more than blood drives). And you can sign up for as many blood drives as you want – if there is one every day in your area (which there is in the Portland, Oregon area), you could easily get 25 hours, maybe even more, of volunteering in a week, if you can volunteer on weekdays (more if you can do weekends too). I highly recommend this for people that are required to do community service – you may have three weeks from the time of sign up until you start, but you can get hours in quickly if you have time during the day.
In addition to Blood Donor Ambassadors, the American Red Cross needs:
Blood Transportation Specialists
Disaster Action Team members
Shelter Services staff members (being a blood donor ambassador is a good way to see what the intake process is like for emergency shelters)
Disaster Health Services Team (if you are a licensed healthcare provider)
Administrative help
If you dream of being deployed to disaster zones elsewhere, you first have to have deep experience as a part of your own local Red Cross in your own area (disaster action teams, shelter staff teams especially).
And if you are with an initiative that’s struggling to attract volunteers – what is the Red Cross doing that YOU should be doing regarding volunteer management? Note that I didn’t deal with any paid staff as I went through the onboarding process – my screeners and trainers were volunteers themselves!
A few months ago, I decided to test my own advice that I have posted on the subreddit regarding volunteeringmany times, that if you volunteer locally with the American Red Cross, you might get asked to deploy to a disaster somewhere else in the USA.
Welp – that’s exactly what’s just happened: I just got an email sent to all volunteers:
As Hurricane Ian hit Florida with dangerous winds, rain and storm surges, Cascades Region is in alert and standby modes in preparation of volunteer deployments. As we monitor the situation we look to current Red Crossers to train in both deployable and local volunteer roles to continue supporting the mission and our impacted communities.
And there’s a link to something called the Deployment Interest Form, and more info about information events (2 virtual, 3 in-person) to share deployment processes and training.
Folks, it really, really does work: volunteer LOCALLY with your American Red Cross chapter, in any capacity, and you will get info on trainings for disaster response, and if you complete that training, you may get invited to deploy to a disaster zone to help.
The crisis in Florida and the East Coast caused by this latest hurricane will go on for MONTHS. You could be a part of the response! Fill out the form, get the training you need – ASAP.
Google researchers, the People Analytics team, studied the qualifies of effective teams at Google. Code-named Project Aristotle – a tribute to Aristotle’s quote, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (as the Google researchers believed employees can do more working together than alone) – the goal was to answer the question: What makes a team effective at Google?
Research from Google’s Project Aristotle found that the most important dynamic of a successful team is members feeling psychologically safe. This occurs in environments where no one else will embarrass or punish others for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.
Reading this was like a punch in the gut for me. For any job that hasn’t worked out, that I couldn’t wait to leave, this was always the primary problem I faced with supervisors.
I hope that all managers of people that see this do a deep, honest examination of the culture of their own departments and companies with regard to this kind of fear-based way of working. But I hope managers of volunteers look at the culture around volunteer service as well. And I hope you won’t get defensive if the evidence you gather points to toxicity in your program or your entire organization.
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
