SITE

by Margaret E. Puckett

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Leadership Institute in Volunteer Management Coaching Seminar held at the University of Maine campus in Orono. Now, training seminars can be a mixed bag – some are good and some are not so good. As a die-hard “cup is half full” kind of person I’ve generally found something of value in almost all of the training seminars I have attended over the past 35 years. But I would have to say that last week’s seminar was significantly different from any other training I have ever had.

The literature for the event said the trainer – Louise Franck Cyr (a Community Development Specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension) – “is widely known and has an excellent reputation for being a dynamic and inspiring trainer.” What an understatement! I would categorize this training seminar to be perhaps the best training seminar I have ever attended. It was a truly awesome experience! Insightful and inspiring, Louise’s powerful presentation was jammed packed with great information and wonderful techniques. I’m still trying to mentally process everything I learned and experienced. I would certainly encourage anyone to attend her training if they have the opportunity.

There were far too many “Ah …” moments during the two day seminar to recount them all in this blog entry, but I would like to share with you one that really caught my attention. It was while we were talking about establishing relationships with our volunteers. There were two questions Louise recommended we ask every volunteer. I had never thought about asking either question, but it made so much sense to me, I now wonder why I had never thought about asking those questions before.

The first question was “If I had a difficult subject to discuss with you, how would you like me to approach you?” How many times could a difficult discussion with a volunteer be much less difficult, and more successful, by having those answers?

The second question was “How do you learn best?” Well, we all know everyone learns differently. How much more sense does it make to ask your volunteers how they learn before you start trying to teach them?

Whether establishing a new relationship with a volunteer, or cultivating a better relationship with a current volunteer, it just makes sense to ask these two basic questions. After all, who knows the answers better than the volunteers themselves?

Margaret E. Puckett is Volunteer Services Coordinator at Saint Joseph Hospital in Bangor, Maine.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Managing Performance, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.