Be more selfish!
After more than forty years doing voluntary work in the UK and abroad, performance consultant and conference speaker, Frank Newberry, has examined his motives and concluded that he has personally benefitted most from any ‘good works’.
Frank also challenges us all to ‘be more selfish’ and do more voluntary work
LET me be clear from the outset - I believe that when you donate to an organisation like, say, ‘Comic Relief ’ you are being very charitable and indicating your support for a good cause. However, when you volunteer by doing, say, a fund raising project for the same good cause, you are consciously taking things to another level. In deciding to do this, I suspect you may well have asked yourself, ‘What’s in this for me if I do this?’
In this article, I will not be going into how any organised charity work could raise your visibility in the community and have real benefits for you - which it will - I shall, instead, confine myself to the need for you to do voluntary work that will advance the turfcare professions, i.e. your efforts would help all turfcare professionals (especially you) to achieve greater recognition and better pay and job security.
Why do people volunteer?
I suspect that there are lots of reasons that cause people to volunteer. These can be personal, social and spiritual. I also believe that different combinations of factors cause people to give up their time and effort. In my experience, these factors can be grouped into four main facets:
1. The aim of the voluntary work is meaningful to them, i.e. to advance their profession
2. They feel a sense of loyalty to the cause, or its leader, or to other volunteers
3. There is something in it for them personally, i.e. recognition, responsibility, social rewards, and development opportunities.
4.Fear of the consequences, i.e. ‘If I refuse what will people think of me?’ (or) ‘If I don’t volunteer, who else is there who can do a quality job?’
How do turfcare professionals volunteer and what do they volunteer for?
In my twenty-two years working in this sector, I have noticed unique characteristics which play a part in how volunteering takes place. We tend to notice the more visible work of those who volunteer for the two turfcare membership organisations - the IOG and BIGGA. We know that these
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volunteers attend local or regional meetings, they organise training days, social events; they feed information and ideas into their HQ functions in Milton Keynes and Yorkshire. Then there are the elected volunteer Boards serving at different levels that are held accountable by the memberships every year for the key decisions they have or have not made in the year.
But, in my experience, a majority of turfcare professionals are not naturally collaborative. They do not take easily to committees, meetings, public speaking and debate. It seems to me that they are discharging their desire to volunteer by doing regular and unpaid mentoring of younger or less experienced staff.
Again, in my experience, a majority of turfcare professionals love to coach and guide people to a higher performance level or into a position of greater job security. This desire to help people in our profession is not always seen in other professions where people are more competitive and more jealous of their achievements and, therefore, are not willing to share their wisdom with others.
Many turfcare professionals volunteer by running turfcare classes, year in and year out at their local college. Others work up an enthusiasm or an expertise in a particular aspect of the profession, and then speak at local education days or at Harrogate Week or Saltex and, increasingly for
Pitchcare.com, at various events throughout the year. At the Golf Industry Show in Orlando recently, I observed that at least 80% of the seminars were run by volunteers. Turfcare professionals will travel miles to hear the practical ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ of their experienced and knowledgeable peers in the profession.
Voluntary work in pursuit of these ends (to advance the turfcare professions) is a constant need. Without the efforts of passionate people in the past there would have been little or no progress and there is, I suspect, little prospect of greater advancement without more passionate volunteers in the future.
Speaking personally, I have to confess that,
on more than one occasion, I have volunteered for something purely on the grounds that the work needed might not get done at all if I did not volunteer or, worse still, might not get done to a standard that I would find acceptable!” Whilst this may sound egotistical, I know I am not alone in having this particular motivation.
Looking beyond my concerns about the likely end result, I have had to accept that my motives have been selfish to some extent. Perhaps in my impatience, or my arrogance, I could not rely on anyone else to do something that I thought was important for the profession.
If I do a good job, or at least show willing, I also get some recognition or acknowledgement for my efforts, which might make me feel good about my labours or myself. My three main positive points though are that:
1.People will often do good works like volunteering for selfish motives
2. It should not really matter what motivates people to do positive acts
3. Our concerns about motives should not prevent us beginning - or doing more - voluntary work.
On the downside of volunteering there are at least three main issues:
1. Compassion fatigue, i.e. ‘I keep giving, and all I get in return is more demands on me’
2. Building a dependency on yourself, i.e. ‘No one else does it as well as you do - keep it up’
3. Losing the balance in your personal life, i.e. your family life and your health start to suffer
Addressing the downside of volunteering
How are organisations, which rely on volunteers, addressing the downside of volunteering?
At Harrogate Week in January, the very first ‘Volunteers Workshop’ was run. It was well attended with experienced volunteers of all ages, from the UK and abroad, mingling with people who were just checking out if volunteering was for them or not. The
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