Tuesday Travel Tip: Help Others Help You

{Photo found via orgsites.com}

I know someone who has trouble getting others to help with projects. He works at an organizations where volunteers could be doing many of the tasks, but fewer and fewer people have been involved. He thought it was due to people's busy schedules, the lack of commitment to volunteer organizations, or maybe even the economy. However, that would not explain why volunteering went down just as he took over the organization.

So I challenged him to ask a volunteer. The volunteer was polite and didn't say much. He had to ask more than one volunteer. Finally, a teenager told him she would no longer be updating the bulletin boards, and she told him why.

"You never like what I do. I think I'm done and then you come and correct everything, and tell me there's a better way. I feel like I'm doing it wrong all the time."


If you don't allow people to do the project their way, soon they won't want to do the project at all.

This leader narrowed things down to a few issues:

• He had a very clear vision for how he wanted everything to be done, and didn't always communicate that vision. 
• He had trouble allowing people to do projects and solve problems in their own way.
• He didn't always rank what projects were vital to the organization and must be done exactly right, and what projects were open to interpretation.  
• He was looking for factors outside himself to explain a drop in volunteerism, when really he had the capacity to improve it himself.

It came down to communication, trust, prioritization, and taking responsibility. Those are huge things to work on, but knowing what the issue is helps him start the journey.

Whether you are leading an organization or just need someone to transfer your luggage, allow them to understand what needs to be done and to accomplish the task in their own way.
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