156 – People-first Leadership & Strengthening Teams with Dr. Rob Lion

April 3, 2025

Episode #156: People-first Leadership & Strengthening Teams with Dr. Rob Lion

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi Johnson invites Dr. Rob Lion onto the show to discuss people-first leadership and fostering stronger collaboration between paid staff and volunteers. Dr. Rob Lion is a professor, consultant, and principal of Black River Performance Management, who shares expert insights on creating a human-centric organizational culture. Together, they explore key strategies for effective communication, trust-building, and conflict resolution—essential elements for nurturing a supportive and engaged team. 

The conversation also highlights actionable steps that volunteer coordinators can take to enhance volunteer engagement and make a lasting impact from their position. By focusing on leadership strategies that prioritize people, organizations can create an environment where both employees and volunteers feel valued and motivated. Whether you’re a leader, coordinator, or simply passionate about volunteerism, this episode offers practical tips to help drive meaningful change through strategic leadership. 

People-first Leadership – Episode Highlights

• [03:42] – Diving into People First Leadership with Dr. Rob 
• [03:57] – Dr. Rob’s Journey and Insights 
• [18:07] – Challenges and Solutions in People First Leadership 
• [38:02] – Developing an Operations Plan for Volunteer Teams 
• [38:21] – The Importance of Making Meaning in Volunteering 
• [39:22] – Challenges in Job Descriptions and Hiring Processes 
• [40:18] – Integrating Volunteer Frameworks into Practice 
• [44:24] – Addressing Volunteer Coordinator Challenges 
• [46:02] – Building Relationships and Trust 
• [55:32] – Handling Conflicts Between Volunteers and Staff 
• [01:01:32] – The Role of Socialization in Volunteer Programs 
• [01:06:19] – People First Leadership and Community Building 

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Impact Lab 
• 2025 Volunteer Management Progress Report – The Recruitment Edition  
• Volunteer Nation Podcast Episode #121: Intuitive Leadership in Volunteer Coordination with Fran Horwich 
• Volunteer Nation Podcast Episode #022: My Fave 6 Nonprofit Leadership and Management Wins  
• Volunteer Nation Podcast Episode #017: My Top 12 Nonprofit Leadership Tips Learned the Hard Way 
• Volunteer Nation Podcast Episode #101: Tap the Power of Psychological Contracts with Pam Kappelides  
• Black River Performance Management  
• Find Rob on LinkedIn  

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #156 Transcript: People-first Leadership & Strengthening Teams with Dr. Rob Lion

Tobi: Welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and today I have such a treat for you. We are going to talk about this hot, hot, hot topic around. People first leadership, but specifically how are we strengthening and building teams between paid staff and volunteers? I know that this is a hot topic because so many of you are talking about it when you participated in our volunteer management progress report survey this year, and it is such a challenge for folks, and it really is about leadership. 

We talk a lot lately in evolving our practice from this very HR paperwork focused volunteer management that the pendulum kind of swang way out there. And we all thought that that’s what we must do to, to have effective programs. But the pendulum has swung, it is swinging back. And I think we all realize that humans are, humans are humans. 

And that we have specific motivations and psychologies, and belief sets and values and those are the things that really drive whether people get engaged and stay engaged with organizations. And so, there’s a lot of talk around people first leadership, but I thought today I would bring on an expert. 

So, we’re going to be talking about people first, leadership and strengthening teams with Dr. Rob Lion. He’s the principal of Black River Performance Management in a professor of human resource development at Idaho State University. And. He is got some tips to share, and I think you’re all going to love this and he’ll, he’ll talk a little bit more about his passion around nonprofits, so I won’t be a spoiler there. 

But Dr. Rob Leon is a pro professor, speaker, and consultant with over 20 years of experience in leadership, organizational development and performance improvement, known for his innovative people first approach. Rob specializes in helping organizations build human-centric sustainable systems that fuel growth and success. 

Drawing on his expertise in human behavior and workplace psychology, he demystifies leadership and equips clients with science backed strategies to enhance culture, build stronger teams, and drive meaningful impact. Rob’s work focuses on aligning individual strengths with organizational needs and ensuring that leaders and their teams can thrive together. Rob, welcome to the pod.  

Rob: Thank you for having me.  

Tobi: Yeah, this is going to be a good conversation. We’ve got, again, I’ll, I’ll post some links to these in the chat, but just wanted to mention, we’ve talked about leadership in the past, episode 121, intuitive Leadership and in Volunteer Coordination with Fran Horwich. I’ve talked in episode 22 and episode 17. My own leadership tips and management wins. I share the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’ve also talked about psychological contract theory with my friend Pam Kappelidesfrom Latrobe University down in Melbourne. So, we’ll, we’ll link to all those. If you want to get your leadership game on today, that’s what you might want to check out. 

But let’s talk with Dr. Rob and dive deep into how volunteer staff teams can be more productive and how leaders of volunteers can help strengthen the collaborations between paid employees and volunteers. So. Rob, to get us started, tell us, tell the audience a little bit about yourself and the work you do. I introduced you a little bit, but kind of tell us about your journey and, and why this specific topic.  

Rob: Sure. As you mentioned, I’m a professor and I’m a consultant and a business owner. I’ve owned a couple businesses over the years. The thing that’s awesome for me from where I sit right now is that I teach students in the same areas that I work with clients. 

So, I’m wrapping up a course right now on psychological safety. Next week I’ll be out on the coast with a group, and that’s going to be a part of our conversation, right? So, what I get to do is spend the time with my students, digging deep, diving deep into the concepts, using the theory, using the frameworks that we’re finding in the research. 

And then I get to distill it and in and, and translate it into actionable pieces for my organizations, which I know is not easy. I know that’s the shortcoming of academics and as it interfaces with industry is that it’s, it’s tough to read academic research and say, look, this is something I could do something with now. 

So instead, what our company has done is we’ve built up models based around a variety of different frameworks and, and processes. Mm-hmm. So that, mm-hmm. Everyone that we work with, we bring them through a curriculum and, and so they don’t need to know the science behind motivation in human behavior. They get a little bit of an introduction at a real application level specific to their industry, specific to their organization. 

And then they use the tools to go ahead and help them troubleshoot and work through those things. So that’s what I do. We have several nonprofit clients. I run here in May, my wife and I will be running Idaho Leads, which is a retreat in the mountains for executive directors in our state. And we bring ’em through kind of a bootcamp of our models and tools and personality assessments and things like that to try to get them a fast crash course in understanding self and others better to get them back out and to do the good work they’re doing. I have background chair of strategic planning board chair of YMCA, so I came through. 

Nonprofit paths a variety of different ways, and it’s, it just happens to be one of our client groups we work with, and I, as an individual am pretty mission specific, mission focused as I live my life. So, it’s, it’s been a nice fit for us.  

Tobi: So, how did you get involved in HR in the first place and, and sort of people first leadership. Did people first come to you right away or was that something that you evolved into and why? Human resources of all the things you could study and org development? I’m always curious about people’s origin stories.  

Rob: Yeah. So, I didn’t start with people, I started with solutions. What I realized was after I finished my master’s and working in industry and, and having a, a lot of responsibility as it relates to training people. Not in an HR role, in a management and leadership role. I started to realize that, look, this training is not the most effective way for us to accomplish specific tasks, certain tasks, it is. But for a lot of things, we were throwing training at, that wasn’t the solution. And that’s one of the things we still see now. 

Like I would ask your audience as you look at training endeavors, is that the correct intervention or solution for the problem we’re observing and, and, and really often it’s, it’s not the correct, it’s, it’s really expensive, really ineffective, especially when the majority of the people are already skilled in that area. 

I started to wonder more and more about that. And then eventually I found a doctoral program that brought me, I had, I was able to choose paths. Did I want to continue this training or did I want to get into organizational performance and, and people performance. And I got into the performance stuff. 

I got really good at building solutions that addressed organizational needs. We take deep dives, lots of diagnostics, lots of analysis, investigations. But what I discovered was after I would leave that organization, because many groups just wanted the solutions, they didn’t want to keep me around to roll it out and integrate it. 

What I realized was that the solutions weren’t sticky enough. They didn’t stick around. And now if I could have been a part of the rollout and the transition, I could have helped influence that better. But most of the time that wasn’t the case. They, they, they wanted to move on it with their own implementation. 

So, what occurred to me is that I needed to spend more time understanding the people that are touching the system. Right? And you could take the best process, you could take the best performance efficiency improvement model, whether that’s like kaizen, lean, all these different things. But the common denominator is still, people are touching these things and maybe making a mess out of them, right? 

I learned more about human behavior. That to me became the clue that, look, I’ve got to understand how people behave and, and in some respects we’re very different. But in other aspects, we’re very predictable and very similar, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so, if you can navigate that space, you could have greater success in working with others. 

And that, that the, this, that theme will come full circle, I think today as we talk about volunteers. But that’s where I started to spend more of my time. And then I went through some life quakes and some transitions and started to prioritize my own health and wellbeing more as I was continuing to refine my study. 

And so kind of that balance of peace with purpose was kind of where I’m at now and where I’ve been journeying into. And so that’s what puts that priority on the people. I think about this. Look, if we’re working eight hours a day, five days a week. And we have eight hours of sleep. Let’s just assume that someone gets eight hours sleep. 

That leaves eight hours of discretionary time in there, right? And that’s a little de discretionary because a lot of that leftover eight hours is still not ours, right? We must get to work, we must get ready for work. If you’re going to throw the gym or the dog walk in there, if you have children and you’ve got to shuttle them off, you have to pick up groceries if you have to cook dinner. 

So, all of a sudden, we have eight hours of working hours, eight hours of sleep or so, and then this, this extra pot of time that’s ours, isn’t really ours. We might get two hours out of that once we finally get rid of all that other stuff to ourselves a day, it maybe even if that, if we’re lucky. And so, what had occurred to me is that look, these people are giving their best hours and best years of their life to an organization and. 

And they deserve something in return and, and you could say, yeah, they get a paycheck. And sure that’s, that’s true. But there’s more to that, like how do we want to be treated in those eight hours every day over the course of that week, over the course of that month of right. So, I take this community centric approach to organizations and teams. 

I think of it not as a family, but as a community. And, and communities can be dysfunctional, they can be really healthy. And it’s just like our own local community or neighborhood community or national community, whatever you have, you could have either end of that, that spectrum there. What is the quality of the community do we want among our staff, among our supporters, whether it’s board members, volunteers, client recipients, end users, things like that. 

And so that’s what really became clear to me that, look, we have this obligation as organizations. To bring a certain level of fulfillment and support to people. Help them unpack what it means to be human and a person and a member of this community. And then they take that wonderful information home and then they share it with their families and improve their life outside of home. So that’s kind of, I guess, a long answer to maybe a simple question. Sorry.  

Tobi: Well, it was a little No, it’s great. It shares a little bit of your philosophy. I love this idea of balance piece with purpose. I mean, I think that’s almost a developmental stage in humans. Development. Because you and I, I imagine we’re similar ages are not too far apart. 

Yeah. Where you get to a point in life where you’re like, looking simply is better. Self-care is not now it’s not an option. Right. Becomes like radical self-care. And I think after covid, so many people are suffering from long covid and exhaustion and just the pace of life nowadays that volunteerism, if you’re not using people first, leadership principles, and we’ll talk about this in a minute, but. 

You’re just not going to keep people or attract people to spend that. Precious and I talk about the most precious thing people have, it’s not their family, it’s not money, it’s not their job, it’s not a car, it’s not whatever things they like, it’s their time left on the planet. It is the most precious thing, and so when people give that to an organization, we must take care of it. 

Mm-hmm. Right. Because it is the most precious resource, and it’s a dwindling resource that we need to help foster and allow that resource to grow in, in everybody. Because time also is relative. Like if people are enjoying their time, sometimes if we’re in flow time constricts, but the quality of the time is what matters. 

So, let’s talk about people first. Leadership. What does it mean to you and how does it transform organizational culture and team dynamics?  

Rob: Yeah. So, if I could preface this with, I, I don’t believe that you could either, priority, you have to prioritize either performance or culture. The two can exist together. 

Sure. And when you do exist together, we’re nimbler. Mm-hmm. We’re more responsive and we’re future proofed. Okay. That’s, that’s my general belief. And so, for me, people first culture is recognizing that you have people that have needs. That are at this job for a variety of different reasons, some of which don’t know why they’re there, some of which would do it for free. 

What we’re trying to do is to create this environment where they all get to lean in, learn from each other, and, and, and, and do the work that we’ve set out to be the work for this company, this organization, this, this business, whatever you have. And, and there’s a level of awareness of the needs to sup the need of the organization to support the need in the development of the individual. 

Tobi: When you say people first, what are some sort of activities that you would say, okay, I see this going on. This is a people first oriented mm-hmm. Nonprofit, let’s, let’s talk, or volunteers, if you see something going on in the way that, well, an organization, the way they treat their paid staff and volunteers. 

Often, it’s very similar. Not always though. Sometimes volunteers are treated like second class citizens, but, or sometimes better too. Like it just depends. Or sometimes better. Yeah, sometimes better. Not very often, but anyway. It depends if they’re board members then they’re treated differently than rank and file often. But, what kinds of things would people be doing if you, if you were walked into an organization, a nonprofit, and you said, oh yeah, this is a people first environment.  

Rob: Yeah. I look for energy. I look for sound. I. I look for looks right. Are people engaged? Are they supporting each other? Are they acknowledging each other? How they move from space to space? Are they just looking to get there without making eye contact? They don’t have time for this, right? Does this appreciation that time is a resource? But at the same time, we don’t, we can’t afford not, we don’t have time not to have time to spend together, right? 

And it has this energy and this tone that you can pick up. In fact, it’s, it’s, it can be infective contagious because of how it makes you feel when you’re around these people, when that synergy’s firing, when, when things are happening and not, it’s not always good either, right? Sometimes organizations have tough things to deal with, but it’s, it’s what you’re hearing and what you’re watching when they’re getting down to work and prioritizing team care, team outcomes before self needs pieces that relate to that. 

That’s what I hear, and that’s what I see. And then when I interact with them, because I will, I’ll do several different things when I work with groups, I will go to their fundraisers. I will, I’ll go to their award ceremonies as a supporter. I will maybe do a keynote, but I won’t run off afterwards. 

I’ll stick around for socialization afterwards. And, and that’s where you really pick up who’s on their best behavior in certain places versus who’s just happy to be here, who’s appreciative for this opportunity. And, and I have some great clients that have done a wonderful job of cultivating this, where their people are just, they’ll do anything for that person because they feel seen, they feel heard, they feel respected, and, and at the end of the day, they know that person has their back. 

There’s no doubt about that. And that’s a great measure because not all people feel that way about their leaders. Right. And you, you think about having a difficult conversation with someone. If, if, if you and I are having a difficult conversation and I’m bringing you some critical feedback and you know I have your back, regardless, it’s going to be a lot easier to swallow that pill than, than if you and I are, we don’t have a relationship. 

And then I try to bring that it, the, the terms are different, the exchange feels different, and then therefore the consequences afterward, the, the down river flow is different after that.  

Tobi: What do you think are the challenges for organizations in implementing a people first particularly nonprofits? 

Rob: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I was thinking, I sure am talking about stuff but not giving any solutions. So, let’s get into some of that as we talk about that. So, one of the, one of the things is that we don’t know what we don’t know. And so most supervisors say, look. Let me know if you have any questions as it relates to this new task or this job or this project we’re working on. 

Well, the tough thing is, that that person probably has questions, but they don’t even know where to start with them, and they don’t want to go ask, say, I can’t figure out even what the question is. I’m so in the dark here. So, so that’s a part of it. So normalizing, so creating a culture where questions are supported and encouraged and mm-hmm. 

That, that there’s not this power differential between the leader and the team so that people feel like, Hey, if I have to go to the leader with my question, I feel like I’ll be treated well, not looked down upon, and, and the same thing’s true with my colleagues. Now, when you have all those things working out together, whether it’s colleagues or leaders, and you have those dimensions of those dynamics, that’s a healthy culture that then the byproduct of that is that when I need to look for solutions. 

I know I could count on my coworker. I don’t need to go to my leader anymore. In fact, in these vibrant cultures, when we do this right, people start self-leading and team leading and they lead the leader out of it. So, the leader could do the leader’s work as opposed to troubleshooting, managing, being the negotiator or the mediator between groups that are not playing well together. 

We don’t know what we don’t know. Understanding people is really important, in my opinion. One of the biggest factors we have, in my opinion, that creates problems and conflicts for us is language that we don’t necessarily have the same definition for most terms. Now you go through a academic program or apprenticeship or something where there’s language for the processes, for the tools, for the systems, that standard. 

But once we get outside of that we get into the squishy area of working with other people. Right, it’s different. So, when I say the word motivation, you might have a different, you would likely have a different definition than myself and the other 12 people in this room would have different definitions too. 

So that doesn’t serve us well. So, let’s take that even further and deeper. One of the things we really wrestle with in organizations is quality communication. What is the nature and the quality of communication we’re having among our team? If so, this is a tricky thing. We know ourselves well, but kind of not that good. 

Right? And when I say that I, what I mean is that. It’s in our heart a lot more of how we know ourselves. We know how we feel when we hear things and see things, but we can’t necessarily articulate it. And then if I try to articulate it, my words are probably different than your words, different than the next person. 

One of the things I believe organizations can do, and this is what we do consistently, especially with they’re nonprofits, is we start them out with behavioral, psychological personality assessment that looks at communication patterns, tactics, preferences, things like that. That at least puts us in this spectrum together. 

And it helps us see where we are similar and different from each other. Because what we do know is that without this knowledge, how I communicate to you is in a manner of how I’m hoping and expecting you to communicate back to me. Sure. And that’s not necessarily true. And so, if I don’t have the knowledge that there’s different types of communicators out there and different sorts of behavioral patterns, I can’t appreciate what’s happening. 

Not to mention I can’t package my message in a way that’s going to land well with you. So, I think one of these very basic things is let’s get the team together, do some kickoff, get to know people better through a very purposeful process. One of the tools that people use for, for communication preferences and motives and things like that, and there’s so many different ones out there, and, and some are better than others, some cost more, some have more research to support them. 

The bottom line is, is that. They’re out there and they establish a foundation for us. So, I’ll give you an example. One, one of the things that often happens is I’ll take a call from, because our, our business is over 90% referral based. And they’ll say, hey, I want you, I want you to do, or I want Angie to come in and do what she did with this other group here. 

And I say, okay, happy to do that. Let’s talk about this. But first, why don’t you tell me a little bit more about your organization, right? Because just taking a training concept from one group and then plugging it into the other group is not a solution. It, it’s, it, it, we want to determine what the actual issue is at hand here, because I want to be a good steward of your resources. 

I want this to be an investment, not an expense. So, I’ll do a quick deep dive with them to get a sense of whether what Angie did with that other group is going to land or not, and. And, and if it doesn’t, I’ll say, hey, we’re happy to do it, but I don’t think that’s going to fix what you’re looking for here. 

I’d recommend going this path. We can do this too. And Angie’s awesome and she’s a lot of fun and she’d love to do it. So anyways, we work with them to figure these things out because it does give us a foundational aspect where all other development starts from, right? Like, how do you build trust when you don’t have proximity and interaction? 

And just because you sit near each other, and you have to work with each other doesn’t really cultivate trust. It can over long periods of time. But how can we expedite this through purposeful design, purposeful interactions so that we can do this quicker? Right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you think about that, the socialization process is huge for new employees and volunteers. 

And what I mean by that is if you want to retain new employees and volunteers among a wide number of variables, one of the crucial pieces is getting them socialized early in the onboarding process so that they feel connected with others, so they don’t feel like they’re just standing there in the corner if no other new person’s here, or no other volunteers here. 

And so that’s one of the things we can do, and that’s a part of this framework of how we, how we strategically and purposefully invest in people so that we create the conditions for them to thrive. Basically, it’s like I’m the master gardener. I know what’s best for the growth of my garden in terms of water, nutrients, sunlight, the plants don’t know. 

Just like the employees in many instances don’t know because they don’t have that awareness yet. Our goal is to educate them and bring that up through the process. But what we do is we do things very strategically and purposefully so that. So that we create those conditions for them to grow and thrive. 

Tobi: Let’s go into a little bit more detail here. Your website says, work should fuel the human spirit, not drain it. And I could not agree more. And I think that the same can be true of volunteerism. Yeah. It should propel us, not delete, not deplete us. What strategies I hear a lot from leaders of volunteers, they’re kind of your classic middle manager. They’re, they’re, they’re bringing in a lot of them, the folks we work with are bringing folks in from the community and then insourcing them into their organization. 

And they work in a volunteer services department. Sometimes they’re a department of one and. We heard a lot in this, our last survey that executive leadership doesn’t understand us, doesn’t support us, and they feel like their executive should do more. And I’ll say, well, you’re an internal consultant, you know more about volunteer engagement than anybody else in your organization, so you’ve got to be able to influence and manage up. 

Yeah. What are the strategies that nonprofit executive leaders should use to ensure that volunteers are enriched and energized by their contributions, and maybe by sharing that we can help our leaders of volunteers. We also have executive directors listening to start to advocate for specific. 

Initiative, strategies, methods, whatever, to make sure that volunteers aren’t burnout, obviously not, not asking somebody to do more than they’ve committed to. That’s an, that’s a no brainer. But I think there’s something about our soul. And we can, we can in work, if we’re in a state of flow, we can, we can do things forever because we’re just having a great time. But what are specific, purposeful strategies executive leaders can kind of initiate from their space?  

Rob: So, I want to break this into two different parts, right? Because where you started with this was that, volunteer coordinator, staff member mm-hmm. Not an executive. Right? Right. Right. Mm-hmm. And the, and the disconnect between the two. 

Right. The first thing we need to do is we need to get them both on the same page. They need to enhance the quality of their conversation so that they understand each other, right? So once again, if we don’t have good modes of communication, for example, we see a tendency of, in terms of behavioral profiles in nonprofits, we see it overwhelmingly to high tendency of nonprofit employees are a slower pace in, more introverted, and when I say slower pace, just it’s the way they, they move, they think, they process information a little bit more risk averse. They like stability more. They like working for a cause and a mission. And so, it’s a typography of a person, but most of our CEOs that we’re working with in those teams are extroverted, fast-paced, demanding in many, many, many instances. 

So, right off the bat, if we could run that diagnosis, we know that if my volunteer coordinator is withdrawn, soft spoken and timid, and my, my director is, could possibly be abrasive, intense and fast paced. There’s a failure to launch right there, right off the beginning in terms of them connecting if the volunteer coordinator doesn’t have the skills to do this or, and if the CEO or the ED isn’t being mindful of the differences and dialing it back to invite that conversation. 

That’s one of the first areas that we would tackle. That is a really important area because the lack of communication between that is bottlenecking the situation. And, and, and the, the spinoff of that is dangerous in the sense of someone feels that they’re not supported when the, the ed’s like, oh, I support them to the moon and back that, without a doubt. 

But they, they’re not speaking the same language, so, right. We need to work through that. And that’s just not volunteer coordinated. That’s just not the VC to the ed. Th this is every le every leadership sub rank leadership rule with someone that is of a different. Style than them. Right? Yeah. So, we must do this throughout the whole system. 

Tobi: Yeah. I often, when I’m working with folks in our community or in our courses or folks I’m coaching, I. I’ll ask them to complete the sentence. I will feel supported and I ask people to get specific about the behaviors they’re looking for. Sometimes it’s, I will feel supported when I get invited to the strategic planning sessions because volunteers are integrated throughout our organization, or I will feel supported when. 

Some of my budget proposals get approved or that I even get to look at our budget or know what it is, or I will feel supported when my ED shows up at our volunteer recognition event and say a few words and be educated about our volunteers. Or I will feel supported when my coworkers are, will openly embrace volunteers in their department instead of fighting me on it. 

Those are the kinds of like specific, and I, and I’ll say, you’ve got to know what you want first to initiate that conversation. And then you’ve got to think about the when. When you’re thinking about managing up, knowing the language of leadership. It’s data, right? It’s ROI. Do you have the data on volunteers and volunteer impact and the return on investment? 

And sometimes it’s difficult because they’re not given, it’s sort of a self-fulfilling cycle when. There’s little investment in volunteer services, like not, not the right software, et cetera. And so, gathering those impact data is difficult. And so, trying to advocate when you can’t back it up with data, it’s, it’s a challenge for folks. And I say it, you’re not the only middle manager that’s experienced this dynamic.  

Rob: Yeah. So, we can soften a lot of this, right? So, what they’re doing is identifying areas that would be, that they could recognize, right? But the quality of the culture offsets that. Right. So, when I have a strong culture, healthy, vibrant, supportive culture, ed, all the way to the, the newest volunteer. 

I give that person grace when they don’t show up to the banquet or this, right? Because I have a better understanding and appreciation of what they’re doing. Where are they? Maybe even it’s a self-care day for them. But they’ve shown up so much for me and I’ve acknowledged that, right? So, part of this is mindset and this is stuff that can only occur through, through purposeful work. 

So, there’s that piece. The other piece I want to go back to is the question you asked where I said, let’s do this in two different parts, right? We did it with the chief volunteer. The other part of it that’s super important, this is how we integrate volunteers better, is to recognize that their needs as a volunteer are really not too different than our needs as an employee. The status of payment might be the only thing that makes us different between the two, right? So the volunteer is choosing to be there. Which, right. They’re not being court ordered. Let’s just make that assumption. Right.  

Tobi: Well, sometimes, but yeah. But you know what I mean, in general, or they need like, or they need service-learning credit. 

Rob: Yes.  

Tobi: But other than that, yeah.  

Rob: But, I just think, think of it in terms of why have I stopped volunteering? Why have other people I’ve known stopped volunteering? Why are my clients’ people stopping out from volunteering? And it’s, it’s this, it’s this tension between the organization does not want to come across bossy to a volunteer because they’re so appreciative that the volunteer of the goodness of their heart would find time to help us do this initiative. 

The problem is, is that if you’re afraid to give them direction and instructions, that volunteer, that’s motivated, that’s interested, that’s eager and willing. They have their yard gloves on already because they’re ready to get down to work at the habitat site. But if we don’t make good use of them, they’re not going to come back. 

Right? And so, we have to resolve the difference here. We have to raise the attention to, to help people understand that, look, they are effectively new to this task. So, they need you to approach them with a certain level of structure and support to help them understand what they have to accomplish in this task. 

Now, maybe this person at the habitat build has built his own cabin. He has this experience. So, he doesn’t need you to show him how to frame a house. But he needs you to give him permission to know where to begin and where to direct his energies and interests. Right? And so, part of this problem we run into is that people are questioning themselves as it relates to how do I provide provisions of support? 

There’s an old concept that I love, and this is true for volunteers as well as it is for our own staff. It’s called Challenge and Support, and the idea is that people need to feel for people to be engaged and feel like their time’s well spent, the task needs to be challenged enough, but not too over challenging. 

And that the support must be sufficient, but not too supportive and not withdrawn altogether. So, you talked about flow. That’s how we get into that flow state is that there’s a balance between these things that it’s challenging enough. It’s interesting enough it, I have sufficient resources to keep building progress. 

This is what’s missing with most of our systems that I work with in terms of, as it relates to volunteers, that volunteers are viewed as an afterthought in some instances, especially when you, you’re taking them from that coordinator’s office and dispersing them into different divisions. So, the coordinator might have this knowledge, this insight, but the person over at food distribution doesn’t. 

They’ve just been working in warehouses and, to some extent they’ve just been grinding with people around them and forklifts, and that’s been their life. So, suddenly there’s a volunteer there. They’re happy, there’s a volunteer there to help ’em, but they are uncertain how to put them to work. 

They’re not sure if they want to pick up boxes. They’re not sure if they know how to stack these things. They, they, they’re, they’re running through their mind of all these uncertainties and unfortunately, they’re not asking in many instances, what would you like to do? This is what we’re working on right now. 

How would you like to be a part of this? Yeah. And, and so it’s that concept where we started this first example was the relationship between the EED and the volunteer coordinator. Once we have, we have resolution there in terms of what volunteers are for our organization and how we support them, then that, that must be bled out into the system as a part of our practice. So, we’re integrating them properly.  

Tobi: Yeah. Yeah. I think in some cases, the responsibility for supervising volunteers isn’t even included in the position description of the employee. It’s an, as you say, afterthought, total afterthought. In fact, when it’s not in your position description, it’s not even fair to evaluate you on it because it’s not in your position description. 

Right. Yeah, and there is some training in this case, I think training. Does help some kind of framework of a very simple framework of, Hey, here, here here’s a simple framework. You could even give people an acronym of when a new volunteer shows up. And then having the volunteer coordinator do all the legwork and brief that supervisor on who this person is, what are they interested in, what are their special skills? 

So, we’re not just dumping people on people. And you can imagine in most nonprofits, they’re understaffed. Absolutely. And so, you’re running around like a chicken with your head cut off and suddenly you must stop everything. And I also think there’s, there’s room for scaling and it, you must have a culture that respects volunteers enough to say, you know what? 

Volunteers can lead around here. Mm-hmm. And I was working with an organization last summer and developing an operations plan for them. And one of the parts of the program model was, you know what? We’re going to have volunteer team leads at every site and their job is to welcome. Every new volunteer comes and goes every day. 

It’s not the same people all the time. And so, their job is to help them get settled, to do that work of helping someone get settled and begin to feel like they’re making a difference and so that they can start making meaning. I think volunteering is a lot about making meaning. We have expectations about the meaning volunteering will have in our lives, right? 

We are living up to a promise we’ve made to ourselves about making the world a better place. And sometimes we’ve made that promise to other people or it’s part of our family culture or whatever, but it’s something that we want to, we want to be proud of ourselves, but if we’re in an environment where we can’t make meaning to say, oh, what I did today, the meaning of the work I did today, I’m proud of that. 

Yep. Right. And, and that’s when the dopamine starts hitting and the oxytocin and all the like great hormones, the feel-good hormones for helping other people because we are hardwired. For compassion. That’s how our brains work, you know?  

Rob: Yeah. You said a lot of things there that can be unpacked. I am thinking about job descriptions, that this might not even be in the job description, let alone is the rest of the job description accurate? 

Right? Right. Let’s back that up. The food chain in turn or timeline in terms of who did I hire for this position, if it wasn’t in the job description or if it was in the job description, what’s the quality of our process of screening and hiring to begin with? Like there’s all these places that, yeah, to the untrained eye, they’re just stuff, but. 

When you’re trying to work through performance issues and troubleshooting, you see where all these little gaps exist, right? These, these things that are based on assumptions that we didn’t measure in the screening process. And now these people in this position and they, they met the minimums, but it doesn’t mean they’re proficient in any of these things. 

And then now we don’t know what to do with them. So, what’s the implication for us in terms of both onboarding and upskilling? And, and then the other thing you mentioned was about, well dispersing this information, you think about it, some of our clients work in environments where they must do bloodborne pathogen training and education and PPE and responses and stuff. 

Well, we can develop the same type of volunteer framework to integrate into our practice just as we have these PPE procedures to keep ourselves safe. Right? Like, so a lot of this stuff is, like you mentioned, we’re skinny, we’re lean. It’s tough when you’re limited to staff. What’s even tougher is when you don’t have the expertise. 

Like that’s, that’s a little bit more of the truth here is that it’s a lack of expertise in many instances because they’re so busy fulfilling missions based on the talents, they have that right, that most, and this is not just nonprofits, this is. Every organization. It’s a, it’s, it comes down to what are the resources available versus what are our needs. 

Yeah. And at some point, we need to invest in addressing some of these things, whether it’s us internally as, as one office in this community, or maybe it’s a part of the overall agency and its affiliation. So let me give you an example. We work with different groups at the conference level for their national association or regional associations to provide tracks in their conferences of these sorts of things we’re talking about. 

Sure. For them to come, they’re already paying to be there. It costs ’em an extra 150 bucks to sit in a session that might cost them $4,000 back on their site. You know what I mean? Like, so these, there’s, there’s different ways for us to, to slice and dice this, to integrate this awareness into kind of best practices, better practices, effectiveness, things like that. 

Tobi: Yeah. Let’s take a pause from my conversation with Dr. Rob Lion about People-First leadership and how to strengthen your volunteer staff teams. We will be right back, y’all, and we are going to do a case study, so it’s going to be juicy, so don’t go anywhere. 

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Tobi: Okay, we’re back with a conversation about people-first leadership with Dr. Rob Lion. So, we’re going to dive into a case study and this challenge is liked by so many nonprofit organizations and frustrates volunteer managers, as I mentioned before, are in that middle management role without direct oversight of their co-workers. 

So, I thought, Rob, you might be able to add a little bit of guidance here. Many of our volunteer coordinators are frustrated with their coworker’s resistance to working with volunteers and their lack of leadership skills. 

And we talked a little bit before the break about, partly it’s about is it in the job description? But even before that, have we hired somebody for this role? Who has the skillset of leading others, or are we going to provide training or, and frameworks that help them do this in an easy way. But there’s other things they can do, I think. 

What do you recommend volunteer coordinators do to influence and pen potentially change this environment from where they sit? They don’t have total power to say, okay, everybody’s job description. Sometimes it’s that people first leadership, it’s that person to person where you can influence somebody without having, of course, you’d want to have the infrastructure supporting this, like the, the volunteer supervision, the expectation. 

The KPIs around how many volunteers you have engaged in your department. But a lot of times that’s missing. So volunteer coordinators are taking this on. They’re saying things like, look, I want to make, help make this happen in my organization. So, what can they do from where they sit in their space?  

Rob: So, let’s assume that I’m the volunteer coordinator. And I’m a new hire. So, the first thing I need to do is make sure I’m getting out of my office socializing, right? Getting to know other people and, and actually turning if you need to, because as I mentioned, if we look at the profiles of nonprofit employees, a lot of them are more withdrawn and more introverted, very mission focused, but not necessarily interested in getting out and, and meeting people and not having comfort with that until they develop that skill and that develops over time. 

So maybe they need to, as a part of their integration process, have this conversation with the ED that I need some cover, I need some assistance, I need some introductions, I need some handholding and some certain areas. Right? Because I can’t, I can’t help and I can’t get feedback if I really don’t have a rapport with someone. 

Tobi: Yeah, right. Exactly.  

Rob: So, let’s start with that and make that assumption. So, also knowing if I consider my clients, the people that are in these positions, they might also be desk. Locked in terms of their behavioral preference, I would rather sit here and work on what I can do to make volunteerism better for this organization than getting out and meeting with those people and interacting with those people. 

Right. There’s a lot of comfort when you’re new in your office because it’s a safe place, and that is something that we quickly develop habits in, that we have a hard time breaking later of getting out and doing the work to serve and engage with others. So, I would really look at being mindful around that. 

And for me, as an introvert myself, I would probably calendar this. I would bake it right into my calendar because my natural tendency is not to do this. I’d bake it into my calendar that I’m going to go to the warehouse on this day. On this day I’m going to go to the kitchen. On this day I’m going to go visit. 

Whomever and, and, and make it a process and get to know people. My next step in this would be to start to test the waters and ask them about their experiences about volunteers and working with volunteers. People like people asking questions of themselves.  

Tobi: Mm-hmm.  

Rob: People are less thrilled when someone comes and tells ’em something. And so, by cultivating curiosity, we could bring people along a lot more. Not to mention, when you listen and you listen hard, you get to read between the lines. You get to hear missteps, sensitive issues. You get a new lay of the land in terms of this person’s experience with whether it’s their own team, their past teams, their past organizations. 

So, it’s starting to build a level of awareness that, hey, if I, if I need to work with you directly, I have some awareness here. And by the way, because I sat there and listened to you, you feel like I’m a good listener. We have rapport. Now, eventually I’m going to move that into very direct questioning. Might not be in the same session. 

I take that information all back and start to pull together my thoughts, because as, as the volunteer coordinator, I have a certain level of expertise and passion for this role, right?  

Tobi: Mm-hmm.  

Rob: You’ve just got to remember, not everyone else has both of those. And so, I know what those targets look like. I’ve been to the conferences, I’ve learned best practices and engagement, but the key is, is conferences often leave out how do we get to those points with people that are not on board yet? 

So, then I would go from there and start to develop a game plan to get back out and get to spend some more time with everyone. And learn about their actual experiences and what questions they have and where they’ve been tripped up over time. If this didn’t, if they didn’t self-disclose this earlier on that last visit, I’m going to get a little bit more direct now and start to hear more about what’s, what’s worked well and what hasn’t for you in your, in your position. 

Right? So now we’re three conversations in, there’s a different tenor and tone to this than in our first. Social interaction and coming in and saying, how can I help you? What, what do you need? What’s worked out, what hasn’t? You’re like, I don’t, are you the new guy? Right. You know what I mean? Like Right. 

There’s no reference point there and, and we can’t go deep fast because we have Yeah. The background, we have no foundation. And so, what we’re trying to do is we’re, we’re, we’re building, we’re building the rapport over time. We’re also, here’s another as attribute of, of many people that fall into this certain type, is that. 

We’re slower processors in terms of thinking through how we might answer a question. So, you want to see us be flatfooted, bring us all in a meeting together and spring a decision on us in a meeting. It’ll be crickets because we’re, we had no idea what was coming up. We haven’t had time to adequately process it. 

Mm-hmm. And so, we probably wouldn’t arrive at a decision, or a decision would be made, and we’d leave that meeting later. Regretting, we didn’t speak up because we didn’t have our bearings yet. So, by also tech checking in going back and forth, I’m also learning who’s a friendly, who can I potentially turn to later who has influence and power in this organization that I can turn to later. 

But also, I’ve given them time to think about these things and now they’re ready to share in terms of what they really need. Because think about it. As I mentioned in that first interaction, if I came in called and said, what do you need? What can I help you with? Look, your nose was just in an email about a problem a moment ago, and now I’m dropping this on you and you’re like, if you want to help me, you can leave right now. 

Tobi: I’m order taking now. Yeah. How many volunteers do you Yeah. What shifts and what, what skills and capacity it is. This, what you’re talking about is change management. Yeah. It really is and, and it’s, it, you can do this inside your organization. 

I’ve also, one of my first jobs out in nonprofits after graduate school was a regional outreach coordinator and I was doing partnership development. And this is exactly how it works with external collaborators as well. If you’re trying to work in a specific community, it’s the same kind of conversation. 

And I love that you’re talking about trust does take time. And what, you’re not like coming in with an order sheet saying like, all right. And I, I do think even when I would meet with organizations outside my organization, knowing their experience, they have, may have had a really horrible experience with a volunteer and said they have a bias that just says, okay, all volunteers are this way, I’m done. 

Rob: Yeah. And something, the other thing we haven’t even talked about. Is, is the downriver piece of this volunteer and their propensity to be a donor in the end, right? So, the same tactics are true for donor cultivation, fund development, change management, and what’s all in common. People, people, people, people. 

It’s winning people over and leading them and helping them and helping them and helping them feel fulfilled. And if you’re like, I, I don’t know if you collect this data, but what’s the number, what’s the factor of conversions between volunteers and as it relates to end gifts at end of life and, and a term volunteerism, right? 

So yeah, they become the people that are seeing the work being done much more so than maybe our boards are, and they are prospects for that. Other aspects of contribution to this organization. So, if we do this well, there’s so many ways we can win.  

Tobi: I mean, I always say volunteers are donors, and donors are volunteers. They’re not separate people. Yeah. Yeah. I also think people First, leadership at Core is about effective listening. If you, as you said, people are going to trust you more, the more you listen, and I think the more you share back what you think you’re hearing. Okay, so let, let me make sure I understand what you’re saying here. 

People are saying, oh wow, okay, this person is listening. They’re understanding. And sometimes we don’t understand what the person said and they’re like, no, that’s not exactly what I meant. I meant this. Oh, okay. I understand. And I think for vol, leaders of volunteers. Part of the getting out behind your desk. 

I call this working on your program versus in your program, working in your program. You’re sitting there, you’re, you’re working in the database, or you have an Excel spreadsheet with all your volunteers and you’re making phone calls and trying to fill shifts. And that probably shouldn’t be your job, and you should probably have software that helps you with that. 

And that working on your program is about those relationships. It’s about program development, it’s about that and letting your boss know, like, look, the, this takes time. This can take some time, and I need to have some of these admin tasks. I need support in these admin tasks. Otherwise, I’m going to spend all my day doing admin and none of my day building relationships, which in terms of volunteer coordination relationships are it, right? 

Rob: Yeah. They need cover.  

Tobi: Let’s take this one step further. So, let’s say you’re the volunteer coordinator. You’ve done all this work, you’ve done all, all the relationship building. People are like, all right, I’ll give it a go. And you place a volunteer and there’s a conflict. 

We had a, we had a coaching call about this last week. It was more about a small group of volunteers that were kind of toxic. And I said, you know what? You’re going to have to bring ’em into your office and have a good conversation. Don’t, they’re like, well, should I bring ’em in one-on-one? I’m like, nope. You should bring the group in and have a conversation, so everybody hears what everybody else is saying, but. 

What if there’s a conflict between volunteers and paid staff, how should there’s, this is a two-part question. How should the volunteer coordinator prepare for that ahead of time? So maybe reduce the possibility of conflict, but it’s going to happen. Conflict happens with people, and then secondly, react. What do you think is proactive in that way?  

Rob: I think we will back this up just a little bit further and we will think about this through the lens of a young or new or green volunteer coordinator. This is probably one of the things they don’t think about, and they need to add it to their list of developments. 

Right. How am I going to be mindful of when something does happen? How do I work through it? So, getting at it, I believe once again on the concept of onboarding and integration, and I. I, I think it’s important that if I’m going to make an introduction between you and a volunteer that’s going to be assigned to you, I’d even back it up first to say, can you be a part of that? 

Choosing a selection process based on what we have, because you’re giving input into that process, so you have a little bit more buy-in on the front end on this person, which I realize is not always the case, but, but when possible, it’d be great to figure these things out, to align these things. From there, I would probably have, I. 

Like a half page. Would I need to know type of overview for that, that paid staff member in terms of kicking off a, a, a volunteer staff member relationship. Well, right, like get to know them, spend some time, maybe take ’em to lunch or whatever. So, because once again, that person is already busy. Their nose might have been in their email and their brain’s somewhere else, and our volunteer coordinator could be the absolute expert for our organization. 

Not just in bringing people in but making them things successful. So, some of these little job aids are little tools that would be helpful in that process. Now when situations arise, it’s important that we hear about them. It’s important that, and this goes back to our first three rounds of touching with you, that because I’ve spent that time with you, we have rapport. 

I’m hopefully going to hear sooner than later that. I’m not sure this person’s going to work out. They said something which was kind of odd the other day. At least they’re raising attention to it so that the, the quicker we could move, the quicker we could respond to something. And I don’t mean like punitive, I mean like clarifying recasting, sorting things out, the better we’re going to be because I believe that people’s intentions are good and honorable. 

They just don’t necessarily know what’s coming out of their mouth at times. And, and it could set someone sideways really quickly. So, it’s just this level of humanity. And, and, and this is that concept of that people first environment is that we acknowledge that we are messy. We, we, we show up in a variety of different ways and first impressions are not always the most accurate. 

And, and so what we’re trying to do is we’re, we’re priming the interaction before it ever occurs so that there’s a level of sensitivity and awareness there. Yeah. And then as it, as it pokes up, I like what you said when you had a group of four or whatever, you bring them in and you work through it and you’d be direct, but we have not talked about. 

Volunteer onboarding and integration in terms of that coordinator getting that person or that group set up to interact and integrate well, right? Yeah. And that’s another important strategy is casting what the culture is. The belief, who are your people for support? If you have questions, this is what the questioning structure looks like. 

Who to reach out for what? Like there’s so many areas that that can go. South quickly because we just don’t think about these things. We’re so happy to have help and we’re so busy and we try to deploy them, and then sometimes we try to put out the fires as they arise, and whereas we could have taken a little bit more time and care early on. 

Another approach as it relates to all of this is what if we did a workshop, an annual workshop, all staff, all volunteer, right? And we know what organizations, we have certain organizations that have a tremendous bench of volunteers. They’re, they’re there, they’re committed. How can I look for a community donor to offset some of the costs for a staff and volunteer conference for my food bank? 

And it’s one day we’re doing this; we have everyone together. They get to experience some of the, the, the assessment experiences. The integration experiences, their health held. They’re brought in as part of the team and make this an annual event so that over time people are looking forward to this, hey, I started halfway through the year. 

I heard about the thing I’m looking forward to. I can’t wait to join. You know what I mean? Things like, yeah. Yes. Yeah. There’s, there’s a variety of different ways for us to accomplish what the target is. If, if someone could share with me what the problem is, or the target is. I’m more than happy to roll up my sleeves to troubleshoot it with them, to build a new design that accomplishes what it is they want to accomplish. 

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. I think too, just that when you talk about socialization, that social time allows us, it’s, it’s easy to other volunteers or other, other employees that we don’t work with most of the time. If you can get people and, and facilitate conversations or team building or whatever you want to call it, where people are disclosing in a safe way, whatever they’re, they’re willing to disclose, where people can start to identify how they’re sim similar, they’ll find they’re more, more alike than different. 

Of course, there’s differences in style, et cetera, but when it comes down to people passionate about a cause. Most people are, and, and they start to see how passionate volunteers are. And because I’ll say, oh, volunteers, I’ll be in an organization, I’ll be doing training. And people say, well, volunteers can’t do that. 

I go, well, I’m a volunteer and I do that. Do you think I couldn’t do that? So, we really question. And you don’t know who your volunteers are unless you start talking to them. You realize somebody is a retired CEO? Yeah. Oh yeah, they could do that. Or the former chair of this whole organization. We’ve had that before. 

Tobi: Yeah. Or, oh, this person has put in a $200,000 bequest when they pass away, that’s going to come to our organization. Did you know that? Oh no, I didn’t. So, we don’t know all about our volunteer lives and, and then we have volunteers who are doing some of these frontline jobs that are almost a hundred percent volunteer driven. 

That they are the experts in that, that role or that task. Because paid staff don’t do that task. Yeah. So a lot of times I would find my volunteers developing little, their own little job aids. Yep. And their own little processes to save time. They would hide them a little bit because they didn’t want to get in trouble. 

And I’m like, wait a minute, I want to see that it, maybe we can expand that little job and that little chart you created and expand it throughout our organization. So yes step up. You are the expert here.  

Rob: Yeah. You know, can I respond to something you said earlier? Sure. It was this concept where the volunteer can’t do that, right? Yeah. And part of that is that language is reflective of a mindset and a culture and, and so if we’re talking about people first organizations, what we’re really trying to do is. Really make a major shift in mindset that we’re moving away from fixed mindset approaches to a curiosity-based approach that we’re becoming learners as opposed to knowers. 

And that when someone says something like that, if we’ve done this well, the culture and the team’s been in, it’s been integrated in a way that as opposed to me responding and saying, yeah, they can do it. I, I ask questions, so what, what are your thoughts? What gives you that idea? How did you arrive at that conclusion? 

Could you have done it right? Like, because sometimes we’re just almost automatically responding without Yeah. Very, yeah. Very shallow thoughts and, yeah, and, and, and it’s. It doesn’t feel good in a questioning environment when you don’t have the foundation, but once you have that foundation, it’s really powerful. 

And then if I could take it one step further, because it starts way before this. It starts in the screening process once you get this culture piece lined up and integrated, now when I’m interviewing for whatever that position is, whether it’s a volunteer position even for manager of the Warehouse or Meals on Wheels or whatever that is. 

Right in the screening process, the application process, we’re talking about our culture as an organization. We’re talking about this team here. We’re talking about values, and we better live by them, by the way, because they’re going to figure that out through the process. But we’re talking about values, talking about priorities. 

So, we have clients that take some of our tools and they administer these assessments to every new hire. Now, even before they’re hired in some instances. But if they’re, if they don’t want to do it, then on the first day on the job, they get the assessment done. You know what the feedback we consistently get from those people in especially nonprofit organizations, those new staff say, no one’s ever invested in me like this before. 

And now I’m learning something about myself. And then on the tail of that, there’s integration pieces that are tied to that. There are development programs that are tied to that, and then they bring it back to their family. They’re learning, they’re improving their quality of life. And as we know, many of our employees are people that have already broken the cycle once, so they were consumers or users at one point. Now they’re staff members. And now if we as an organization help them develop further, they’re going to change their next generation’s trajectory through some purposeful design.  

Tobi: Yeah, I love that. I love that. That has been, this has been such a great conversation about people First, leadership. Folks, I hope you have really enjoyed our discussion with Dr. Rob. One last question as we wrap up, Rob. Mm-hmm. What are you most excited about in the year ahead?  

Rob: Gosh, I’m, I’m, I’m a little preoccupied with the uncertainty right now. What I’m most excited about is, so we’re rolling out a model that I built that helps people understand how to build community better. And that is, and this is not a sales pitch, that’s not what the intention is, but the model is built so that we could help people increase community and engagement in the organization, in the workplace, but also community engagement in. 

Social, public setting types of things. So, we’ll be in a couple months. t just went live. It’s on our LinkedIn. If you’re in Boise and you’re in, we’re doing, we’re going to introduce the model because our goal is that this model really does give you a framework in terms of how to build stronger levels of engagement and community. And what I’m excited about is that we need community now more than ever.  

Tobi: Oh yeah. I could not agree more. And volunteerism is one of those places. Civic engagement and volunteerism and community engagement. It’s one of the, those last final places where there’s not, it’s not monetized. Yeah. People are coming together and it’s one of the places still because I’ve talked with some of our community members about this and I was asking folks in a coaching call like, how is everybody feeling? Are we feeling like our volunteers? Is there conflict amongst our volunteers? Are we feeling like there’s some partisan conflict? 

And most people said actually not. Yeah. When people are engaged in volunteerism, they put that stuff aside. Mm-hmm. And they all agree mm-hmm. On the thing they’re working on together. Yeah. And so, this is still, it’s one of the last places, even in families, we don’t do this, but in volunteerism for some reason, people get together and people work with people alongside people that are very different from them sometimes. 

And. Just set things aside and get to work on the mission. And it is, is it is a place that can still draw people together. And, and so I love this idea of building community and, and it’s such a great vehicle for that, you know?  

Rob: Yeah. And, if you deploy the model on a volunteer framework, it will build higher levels of organizational commitment. 

Tobi: Nice. Nice. Well, how can people learn more about you, your work? Sure. About maybe about this model? We’ll put some links in the show notes. I’ve got your LinkedIn and your website. Anything else?  

Rob: Perfect. No, I would start there just on my LinkedIn. You could book a call with me really easily on our website. We do have a model’s page where we take things like motivation, disengagement, diagnosing performance deficiencies. So, there’s these tools on there that will give you some insight. We’re in the process of building out a little ebook so that if you want more insight on how to use each of them, that’s coming in probably about a month. 

I always put it out there that if you ever wanted to take the engagement model and we do it through, we talk it through on here, happy to do that at some point. But LinkedIn, the webpage, those are your best options. I’m around and I love. I love chatting with like-minded souls. 

Tobi: Awesome. Fantastic. We will post those in the show notes. So, thank you everybody and thank you, Rob for joining us today. I hope this has given you some insight. If you feel like this conversation has helped you and might help a colleague or friend, be sure to pass it along. And of course, we love those reviews and ratings. 

So, if you like what you see on the Volunteer Nation podcast, give us five-star rating. We’d love that. That helps us get seen by more people. And we will be back here, same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody.