communication department

LCR Connection

By Rachel Houghton, LCR Public Relations Manager

Take the time to develop leaders before you recruit them. A talent for community leadership is unique. Look for this talent, rejoice when you find it, and be sure to nurture it.

Recruit new members into leadership paths early in their membership. Most new members who become involved in leadership positions early on tend to remain members. You should encourage committee managers to bring volunteers up through the ranks, and train them to ensure that future community leaders will build on current leaders’ successes.

Coach those with leadership potential. Make time in your busy schedule to work with and encourage less experienced talent. Discuss your current problems and how you plan to handle them. Ask for volunteer input. As a leader, your viewpoint takes the future of the entire community into account. Share this vision.

Recruiting

The biggest problem with recruiting new leaders is that people are too busy. New leaders are recruited from the ranks of active volunteers—people with many demands on their time from a job, family, community, and so on. An otherwise acceptable candidate may be overcommitted, burned out, not interested, overconfident, misinformed, afraid, or have some other reason to turn down the opportunity to lead.

Successful recruitment means knowing the office (and all its duties), knowing the candidate (wants, needs, strengths, weaknesses, and availability), and correlating the two.

When it is time to recruit a leader, consider that the individual may doubt his or her own abilities, may not have enough time, and may deflect your encouragement in other ways. Distinguish between good, solid reasons and mere excuses. You must answer the often unspoken question, “What are the benefits and rewards of leading others?” Present a good case. This is where you put your experience and communication skills on the line.

If the person seems unsure of his or her capability, or is not interested, try to find out why. Vagueness often suggests shyness, misconceptions, lack of self-confidence, or indifference to the assignment. Point out the benefits and satisfactions of community leadership. Let the candidate know that the nomination was made because you and others have confidence in him or her.

Becoming a community leader pays off as you add new skills and opportunities to your professional toolkit. It has been said that we become STC leaders for one of three reasons: management training, a desire to belong, or power. There’s no better training ground for management than a volunteer organization. Here, people have to be motivated, not bossed.

For More Information

Take a look at the online leadership training available from the Leadership Community Resource (LCR) Web page. This provides helpful information on leading your community to success, knowing your direction and destination, working as a team toward goals, growing your volunteers, performing community outreach, and learning about local and global Society relationships. The LCR training offers leaders an opportunity to build a leadership plan, which you can use as your community’s strategic plan or for your own personal leadership initiatives.