Everything but

Hi Reader

Last year, for my MSc research, I sat down with seven experienced volunteer coaches with over a century of leadership between them. Good people, the kind every professional & sports organisation is quietly built & sustained on.

I asked them about leading under pressure, and they talked freely. They spoke at length about their players, the parents, the committee, the club, the NGB. It was all engaging, honest & thoughtful stuff and several told me, almost surprised, that it was the first time they’d said any of it out loud. I came away with hours of recording and pages of notes and highlights.

It was months later, going back through the interviews, while prepping a journal article, that something started to nag at me. Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with anything they'd said.

So when I dipped back into the interviews it eventually hit me. Across hours of conversation there was hardly a word or sentence about themselves; not one of them described a point where they'd stop their role. Not a word. No limit, no line in the sand moment. They'd finally spoken & shared out loud for hours, but none of it was about them.

I'd been listening for answers…but that meant I almost missed the most important thing in the whole process.

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I’m certain you'll have your own version of this. It might be a person working in your commercial department who says it's tough out there but they're feeling good about the future.

It could be the player who tells you "I'm fine" when every bit of you knows he or she isn't.

It could be a partner that walks in the door every day this week and says they’d had a good day but something about them says they’re hurting.

And, in the world I’m working in now, it’s the volunteer or volunteer-leader who steps away and says it was just time.

As far as I could tell, none of those seven coaches wanted out. When we talked about what would actually help, they asked for someone alongside them. You know, regular contact. People to share the stories with.

So their silence doesn't strike me as a warning sign exactly. It’s more like people who put their hand up and want to keep it up….but nobody is asking how heavy that arm is getting.

Here’s something that occupied my thoughts for a while and it’s a hard question for whoever leads people like that.

Are you listening for what isn't being said?

That means noticing the pause, or the laugh that comes a beat too quick. Or contradictory body language. Or the answer that somehow always ends up being about everyone else. Or just something in their eyes that belies their words.

It means then saying what you think you're hearing, and asking, "Am I wrong on this?"

It's a no-oriented question, and people find those far easier to answer honestly (but that's a newsletter for another day!).

In professional & sports organisations these days there's a lot of energy going into the front door right now. Recruitment drives and open days for volunteer leaders are normalised, and in some places new perks & incentives strive to sweeten the deal.

But in your organisation how many people are watching the back door?

I operate at the intersection of organisational prosperity & human performance.

Most organisations I work with have already tried the usual fixes i.e. better recruitment, new values statements, extra training, appreciation programmes, and ended up in the same place. The problem is rarely the process; it tends to be the gap between what volunteer leaders look capable of on paper and what they can actually access and sustain under real operational pressure while running a day job, a business or a practice at full load. That gap stays invisible until it is costly, and if you have been around that loop once and you are finished pretending the next programme will be different, you are in the right place.

www.paulclarke.ie

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