CASE STUDY IDEAS TO SUPPORT MOTIVATION AND PRODUCTIVITY IN A VOLUNTARY GROUP

 

CLIENT

The client is a leader of a voluntary group and looking for ways to inspire and motivate the team who are sometimes less enthusiastic about the mundane but necessary admin tasks, or who perhaps need support in making jobs simpler and faster to get done.

SESSIONS

The session explored the challenges of leading volunteers and the potential difference between what they enjoy doing (why they volunteered) and what needs doing (to keep the organisation going.)

We discussed the time, talent and interests of individuals and how we might better align them to tasks, and perhaps how to make takes simpler (with technology and templates) and easier (with support and guidance) and indeed how to prioritise (do, ditch, delegate or delay)

We talked about what the issues may be and came up with 3 broad themes: {1} a lack of umph, drive or passion {2} a lack of skill or experience {3} the challenge of priority and time management, getting tasks done.

We talked about how to ensure that there were fun tasks to maintain interest, enthusiasm and engagement to off-set the occasional but necessary dull tasks, and ways to share work and reward success, effort and tasks done. We explored the idea that at least 33% of the task need to be "fun" to sustain the drive for the 66% of tasks that are necessary.

We talked about how aa pile of tasks (Example say 52 tasks to be done in a year) can be daunting, but one per week, can see simple and achievable and therefore the need to package work into doable chunks that do not seem too difficult or overwhelming. We noted doing small tasks first can create a positive snowball effect of confidence, progress and commitment.

We talked about recruitment helping to share the load, and also recruitment to bring friends into the organisation and therefore making things fun to do (because you are doing the tasks with friends). This lead to a useful conversation about streamlining and improving the recruitment and on-boarding process.

We also discussed the importance of communication. {push communication}  sending things out and {pull communication} making things available to look-up, download or refer to. The aim being to standardise and simplify communication so that is is simple, clear, predictable and useful rather than simply overwhelming.

We noted that good communication is clear, concise, relevant, accurate, timely, efficient, relevant and reducing the volume and adding the quality of communication may help with coordination, collaboration and community. For example a weekly newsletter may be better than 20 separate emails. For example routing all communications via a coordinator may help with feedback and consensus.
 
REFLECTIONS

The session was a conversational coaching session drawing out possible issues and different means to address them. The session followed the agenda and priorities of the client, albeit with questions from the coach to gain understanding of the issues and elicit possible options for the client to consider what may be suitable, feasible and acceptable for the voluntary group.

IMPORTANT NOTES

The Coach engages in training and continuing education pursuing and/or maintaining ICF (International Coach Federation) credentials. All coaching conversations are confidential and the abbreviated case above has been amended so as to protect the anonymity for the client whilst providing evidence of coaching practice, reflection and learning, for the purposes of ICF education, supervision, or oversight.

All coaching engagements follow ICF Policies and Principles Resources, Terms and Conditions https://www.adaptconsultingcompany.com/coachingtoolkit/client.php

The article below provides some context to the coaching style adopted.
https://adaptcoaching.blogspot.com/2021/03/finding-your-own-coaching-style.html