Volunteer management - VM - 4.06 - operations - listening
I have participated in yet another seminar, supposedly in support of the volunteers. Once again, the volunteer coordinator has done all the speaking. Even in the part of the program that was specifically designed to solicit input from the volunteers, the coordinator managed things such that the volunteer contributions were cut short, and the coordinator did most of the talking.
In pretty much any study in regard to listening, when assessing their own capabilities, ninety percent of the population will say that they are above average in terms of listening skills. The math doesn't add up.
As an early teen, I ran across the Dale Carnegie book "The Awesome Power of the Listening Ear." It's not a great classic of literature by any means. It's not even terribly useful in terms of management literature. But it does, very strongly, make the case that if you learn how to listen to people, it will stand you in very good stead, and give you a massive advantage in all kinds of situations. Which is quite true.
I tried to practice listening. It isn't easy. We have all kinds of social and psychological factors that predispose us to talk, rather than to listen. Even if we are quiet, very often we simply don't want to communicate, and so we aren't particularly good at listening even then. But I persevered, over a number of decades, and I think that I can say that I have developed some skills in listening. And the book, and many other books that talk about listening, are quite right. Being able to listen to people puts you at a very distinct advantage. It is certainly a skill that you need to have as a manager, and particularly as a manager of volunteers.
My specialty is information security, and I frequently have to point out that business managers do not understand security. I don't understand this, since, as I have said before, if you are a manager, at whatever level, in whatever field of endeavor, you manage two things: people and risk. In security we deal with risk. But in managing volunteers, of course, you are primarily managing people. And managing people requires that you listen to them. You have to know about your people, or you cannot manage them. If you don't understand your people, you don't understand their motivations. If you don't understand their motivations, you cannot motivate them. If you cannot motivate them, you cannot get them to do what you need them to do.
If all of this sounds Machiavellian, then it is. Machiavelli was right. He was correct in a lot of the things that he said about how to manage people. That's why his book is still a classic in management literature. He does lean a little bit too heavily towards the coercive and deceptive, but the points that he makes are not wrong. Social engineering involves managing people, and managing people involve social engineering. And you have to understand people, and you have to, particularly, understand your specific group of people, in order to manage them effectively. You have to know their motivations, you have to know where their buttons are, and you have to know the buttons that will turn them off, and possibly even drive them away from your volunteer endeavour. And one of the things that will drive them away faster than any other, is not being listened to.
I have written about listening in a variety of situations, and with respect to a variety of conditions. I have written about listening with respect to depression. I have written about listening with respect to grief. I have even written a sermon about listening. And I have written a bit of a test, and practice exercise, for you to try out if you are, in fact, really interested in figuring out something about how much and how well you listen, and how to improve your own listening skills. So I'll just point to those here, and not copy all of that material here once again.
You will have heard of active listening. The people who talk about active listening well, ironically, if they're talking about active listening, they are not listening. There is a lot of nonsense talked about active listening, and there is a lot of well-meaning discussion of active listening which still isn't terribly helpful. Yes, you should be actively listening. You should be thinking about what the person is saying. You should be listening for what the person is *not* saying, as well. One of the things you should not be doing, if you are actively listening, is actively thinking about what you are going to say in response to what this person is saying. That is not part of active listening. That is a disruption and distraction. If you are thinking about what you are going to say, you are no longer listening. That is one thing to be aware of in terms of listening.
Active listening is active. It is work. If you are not tired at the end of a session of active listening, you are doing it wrong. Active listening involves listening and trying to understand what the person is saying. What the person truly means is sometimes not necessarily what they are saying, in terms of the words that they are actually producing. You have to listen, once again, for things that are not being said, and also for things that are being said badly. You have to understand that not everyone has the same skill in terms of communication. Some people do not have a great vocabulary. Some people misunderstand the vocabulary that they think they have. And some people just simply do not understand themselves. Active listening means that you have to be listening for indications for all of these difficulties, at the same time that you are listening to the words that they are saying.
If you are doing all of that, you definitely will not have any time or cognitive capability left over to think about what you are going to say in response.
You have two ears, and one mouth. That is a pretty good indication of how important listening is. You should be listening twice as much as you are speaking. And that is a minimum standard.
And that is particularly true when you have the floor. In terms of communication, make sure that you keep your own speaking as brief as possible. Make sure that you think about what you are going to say, and that you say it and as few words, as clearly, but as concisely, as is possible. Never say with twenty-seven words, what you can say with four. Prepare what you are going to say, and edit it down to the fewest possible words. That will leave you more time to let other people speak.
And, even when you are leading the meeting, other people will want to speak. Other people want to have their say. Your volunteers will want to have their say. And they will not be prepared. They will not be concise. They will not be conservative in terms of the number of words that they use. They will want to get everything that they want to say out. And that is just the reality of the human condition. They are going to want to talk, and they are going to want to have their say, and if you prevent them from having their say that is going to be demotivating for them. Yes, very much of what they are going to say will be useless, and wasting not only your time, but the time of other volunteers who have to listen while they are speaking. Too bad. This is reality. You have to keep what you say short, so that they don't have to. That's just the way life is.
You have to listen. You have to listen to their complaints, to know what they are upset about, and what about any given situation upsets them. You have to know when your volunteers are upset, and why. You have to listen to them on a regular basis just to learn what they like, and what motivates them. Why are they volunteering for you, and for the organization, in the first place? What do they like about volunteering? What do they *not* like about volunteering? What do they not like about your organization? You need to listen to all of these things. And you are not going to get it on demand. You are going to have to take every opportunity to listen, and listen carefully, to anything that your volunteers say.
Listen carefully to anything that they say that compliments you. That is going to indicate to you what they like, and therefore what is going to motivate them.
You are going to have to listen to gossip. You are not necessarily going to have to act on the gossip, and you definitely shouldn't repeat the gossip. But the gossip is going to tell you of interpersonal frictions between different members of your team. This is very important, once again. These kind of frictions, these kind of problems are going to be demotivating. Sometimes this information will let you know something about individual members of your team, and what they don't like, and what is there for demotivating in terms of their regular activities. But sometimes it will give you information about larger problems, frictions between members of your team, and possibly, if you pay attention, prevent you from allowing some problem to become deeply entrenched within the organization, which will then take much more work to repair.
Listen. Listen all the time. Listen to everyone. Listen to your volunteers' complaints about your paid staff. Listen to your paid staff's complaints about your volunteers. Listen to what your clientele have to say about your volunteers. Listen to what your volunteers have to say about your clientele. All of this is vital information. It may not be given to you in a concise form. It may be a mountain of verbal ore, which you have to refine into a small amount of actually useful information. But you have to listen to get that ore in the first place.
Volunteer management - VM - 0 - introduction and table of contents
