A Q&A with Sailing Industry Leaders Rich Jepsen and Larry Ledgerwood
Sailing organizations of all types and sizes, regardless of resources, are routinely faced with the task of recruiting, organizing and motivating staff and volunteers to collectively align behind greater organizational initiatives. Considering this task prompts some questions.
How do our organizational goals align with our volunteers objectives?
How can we play to our volunteers strengths while offering opportunities for growth?
How do we keep it fun to ensure they are enjoying their involvement?
These questions and more were addressed by two sail training industry leaders, Larry Ledgerwood and Rich Jepsen, at Sailing Leadership Forum 2016 in San Diego last February. In their presentation, “Servant Leadership: The Art of Science of Listening to & Supporting your Employees,” they discussed the challenges and factors involved in creating and fostering a positive culture of collaboration and inspiration in a community atmosphere that produces results.
US Sailing conducted a Q&A with Rich and Larry for a detailed examination of these leadership best practices.
US Sailing: The Challenge of a Great Vision: What are some common challenges leaders are faced with when creating a vision that requires universal alignment with volunteers/employees?
Rich and Larry: It is too common that the leader presumes that the greatness of the vision is enough to bring the volunteers and staff along. Why wouldn’t everyone want to get on board with this incredible, cool vision? However, that presumption can lead to difficulty.
People contribute for their own reasons, so getting alignment requires more flexibility from you, the leader, than it does your employees. You need to find a way to make the vision be relevant to them and support their reasons for being there.
We like to reference the paddling canoe example from our presentation. As a leader you need to get everyone across the lake in a canoe. It is important that you articulate that vision and look to gain alignment with the crew. What you need is a group of people that will get in the canoe and paddle effectively. Some of them may be there for the challenge, some for the exercise, some for the social aspects, some for the satisfaction of working on a team and some want to see what is on the other shore. Each is there for their own reasons, not necessarily yours alone.
This is alignment of action. You need for all of them to paddle effectively. The fact that they are doing it for their own reasons and motivation is fine. In order to get maximum alignment and commitment towards a vision, you need to know why each person is participating.
Challenges can arise when the hard work of building a team has been left undone or partially done. Humans are emotional creatures. If they feel unsafe, disrespected, or not cared for, they will almost always be resistant to any vision that doesn’t include a paycheck.
If you have properly cultivated your relationship with volunteers and employees, so they are inclined to run through walls for you when you need them, it can be much easier to get alignment.
Challenges around the actual execution of the vision are also an issue. It’s easy as a leader to dismiss inconvenient opinions as narrow minded, fearful or territorial. It’s also easy to fail at communicating the challenges your team will face trying to realize this vision. You have only communicated enough when your staff starts to tease you about how much you are communicating the vision. Also, listen actively to each concern and question of every person you need on board. Take that intelligence to heart. It doesn’t indicate you have to accommodate ill-conceived notions, just give them full and fair airing and serious attention. Good volunteers and employees will get on board if they feel heard, appreciated and their perspectives are respected.
Finally, visions can often be unrealized because the right people aren’t on the bus. Resistant, territorial, unskilled people can derail even the best vision from the most compassionate and thoughtful leader.
Take a hard look at yourself as a leader and the people with whom you’ve surrounded yourself. Are the right people on the bus? Are those people in the right seats? Do the heavy lifting to move folks within the organization to responsibilities better suited to their skills or liberate them to find their passion in a different team.
US Sailing: Strengths and Growth: How do you weigh the balance of offering volunteers and employees opportunities for growth and to learn new skills with leveraging their existing skill set and background?
Larry and Rich: This is one of the hardest things to justify when you and your team are going flat out. It is expensive, and not always appreciated by employees who have a ton on their plates and fail to salute your attempt to improve their lives and worth to the organization.
If you have a culture of continual development, employees will appreciate the value it brings to their lives, even if it is an inconvenience.
Advanced planning and budgeting for formal professional development is required. Carefully balance what your staff wants to learn most with what will help the organization the most. Stick to your guns when appointments for development start to conflict with ‘urgent’ priorities’ and ensure seminars/webinars are attended. Admittedly, formal training is expensive and can’t be the only avenue for sailing organizations. Most of the professional development can be done while helping to execute on the plan/vision/mission. Cross train your team by identifying who is an expert at what and give them the task of mentoring/training another employee in their particular area. Get them working in teams as much as possible. This breeds a ton of cross pollination without expense.
Another concept that was discussed in our presentation referenced the work of Douglas McGregor, a prolific writer on leading organizations. McGregor believed that the only area that we can actually have influence over people is in the intersection of the set of their needs and the set of the organization’s needs. We used the two overlapping circles here in the form of a Venn diagram to represent this idea.
There are several important lessons in this simple example. The first one echoes what is at the core of the alignment discussion. They will do what you want them to do for their reasons not yours.
The second lesson is that the degree of your influence is directly related to the overlapping sets of needs. Starting with the assumption that as a leader you know the organization’s needs, in a way to increase the overlap is to more fully understand the employees’ or volunteers’ needs. And from that knowledge, a leader can express how performing the tasks that the organization requires will help them accomplish something that is important to them, which really takes us back to alignment.
US Sailing: Making it Fun: This is sailing after all, and they may be volunteers, but things still need to get done. How do you keep it fun while stressing the importance of making deadlines and completing projects so that your organization can create a quality product?
Rich and Larry: In a sailing organization, it is easy to create ‘fun’, obviously. However, fun, after work sailing events which are, for sure, really important, only go so far. Making it ‘fun’ is actually more about the following:
– Make sure folks are doing what they are good at. This almost always is fun because people with talent for something like doing it. It comes naturally. They feel successful and they get easy recognition for doing something that looks hard to others. If someone loves fixing boats, avoid trying to force them to be answering the phone or doing the financials or even teaching sailing.
– Have a flexible work calendar that provides everyone the opportunity to participate in the sport in their own way. Day sail? Race out of town? Coastal cruise in the offseason? This is professional development free to the organization and reminds them why they are in this industry.
– Shower your volunteers and employees with appreciation. Remember to say to a volunteer or employee at the end of their day with you something like, “thanks for the day, I’m glad you’re here.” Or catch them doing stuff unusually well by making public remarks so the subject can hear, something like, “Ray has a really refined way of handling those nervous students when it’s windy, doesn’t he?”
US Sailing: Investing in People: How do you reinsure that your employees and volunteers have ownership over the programs and services being offered and how does that foster a positive culture of inspiration and motivation?
Larry and Rich: The number one rule for getting staff and volunteers to own what they do, and, in some instances, the hardest rule, is to accept mistakes and omissions as part of the process of dealing with people. It is critical to allowing them the safety and freedom to take ownership of their responsibilities. In an environment when they really feel judged by results rather than micro-managed, they will get more brave, more creative and work much harder, because it is theirs to create.
As for positive culture of inspiration and motivation, in addition to hiring good people, giving them the tools (equipment, training, time) and staying out of the way, as described above, make it clear to everyone that you want an environment that is about learning. And learning is about making mistakes. Just as we ask our instructors and coaches to do, we want to create an emotionally safe environment to make mistakes. We want to evaluate mistakes without a bunch of energy or judgment; but more to enhance the learning. This doesn’t mean you avoid calling mistakes out. It does mean that you do it privately, directly, with respect and with the staffer’s best interests at heart.
If you’ve hired well, with this cultural leadership, your team will do the rest and will inspire and motivate themselves and each other.
In closing, here are 11 points to keep in mind when providing leadership to volunteers and employees.
- Remove obstacles
- Continue to demonstrate they are the most important part of your business
- Bind them to the organization so they will go through walls
- Create jobs for them that are interesting and challenging and that are growth oriented
- Do What You Say You Will Do (DWYSYWD) – Walk the Talk
- Provide public praise and private F&B (frank & beneficial) conversations
- Be the first one to admit a mistake
- Avoid favoritism and reward excellence
- Create and maintain a fertile environment
- Be interested in your employees travails
- Know the difference between being fiscally prudent and being cheap with employees
- Get and keep control of your ego