Just no time any more

Hi Reader

It’s late on a weeknight, and somewhere a volunteer chairperson, or similar, is watching a former I’ve sat in a lot of interview rooms as a head-coach, and the sequence of events repeated in a regular, predictable way and rarely changed.

The club’s leadership would talk about their standards and their lofty expectations for the season ahead. Fair enough, by the way. I worried more when they didn’t.

Then I’d get the job, and the talking would stop. There were no notes on the players, no performance data and no one I could ring who’d sat in the seat before me. I spent the first months half blind, and then people wondered why progress was slow.

I’ve since heard the same story from volunteer leaders well outside sport. Highly capable people in their own right, stepping into a role where the last role-holder had simply stepped aside and moved on. No conversation, no folder. Off you go.

For years I just filed that under poor admin and the way things were, in general. I see it differently now.

Thanks to this week's sponsor, Shortform - unsubscribe any time!

Volunteer leaders run on, and are fuelled by, 'care'. It’s what gets them to put their hand up in the first place; but it’s not a limitless resource. It renews when something comes back for what you put in, but it runs down when nothing’s forthcoming. A handover is the first thing an organisation gives back, before the volunteer has given anything at all. When there isn’t one, the first lesson of the role is how little of their care may come back.

I know how that ‘account’ runs down, because I ran mine down. I cared too much, and for too long. It was an overplay on a strength, and it carried a heavy invoice that fell due when I couldn’t pay. Or rather, I did pay. I paid in full, on time, with pieces of myself.

The lesson, when it finally came, was about where to stop investing my care. Sadly, nobody announces that decision - you just quietly take your care back from one situation, then another, until the person in the role is going through the motions. Months later the exit form or survey simply tells you a variant of “there’s just no time any more”, but no one thinks to ask about the first day.

None of it is deliberate. It happens slowly, in the same way the care runs down.

Last week I wrote about the gap between support that’s available and support that’s offered. A handover sits right in that gap, and it costs almost nothing.

“Fine, Paul”, you might say, but what could we do differently…starting now?

Before anyone steps down, and again when someone new steps up, ask two questions and write down the answers (important this as there’s a record kept and, so, pattern recognition begins to build)

1. What landed on your lap that nobody warned you about? 2. Who did you talk to when it did?

If the last person has already gone, ask whoever has been around longest. It won’t prepare any one person for everything. But it does tell them, before they’ve given a thing, that what they’re about to give has been noticed and can be supported.

People who’ve paid in full rarely leave notes; they’ve nothing left to hand over.

My line of work is helping volunteer-led or dependent organisations keep their volunteer leaders. It starts with confidential conversations that show where the pressure is landing, early enough to understand and act it to relieve retention issues. If recruiting or retaining volunteer leaders is a live issue for you, just reply to this newsletter...drop an email to paul@theleaders.coach

Another Newsletter you might find useful....

Professional Closeness Digest

by Govert van Sandwijk

Every other Thursday: what happens between people in a leadership team, the tools I use as a facilitator, strategy, and what AI does to how teams decide. From an organisational psychologist who has worked with leadership teams from Bolivia to Kuwait to Singapore.