203 – Preventing Volunteer Burnout – New Research with Paul Clarke

February 26, 2026

Episode #203: Preventing Volunteer Burnout – New Research with Paul Clarke 

Volunteer burnout is not always caused by time, workload, or lack of commitment. In many cases, it happens when leaders begin to feel less effective in their roles. As confidence and enjoyment decline, even experienced volunteers may start to disengage or step away. 

In this episode, Tobi Johnson sits down with leadership performance coach Paul Clarke to discuss new research on why volunteer leaders struggle under pressure and what organizations can do to better support them. They explore the gap between knowing what to do and being able to apply those skills in real-world situations, along with the emotional and organizational challenges that impact long-term retention. 

If you lead volunteers or are building a leadership pipeline, this conversation will help you rethink development, communication, and support. You will gain practical insights to strengthen resilience, improve retention, and create an environment where volunteer leaders feel confident, connected, and motivated to continue making an impact. 

Volunteer Burnout – Episode Highlights 

• [00:49] – Why Leaders Burn Out 
• [04:30] – Paul’s Coaching Journey 
• [10:15] – GAA and Grassroots Sports 
• [19:27] – Methodology and Surprises 
• [24:32] – Early Warning Signs 
• [30:15] – Five Competencies Overview 
• [31:26] – Authenticity Under Pressure 
• [33:12] – Emotional Intelligence Under Stress 
• [36:06] – Governance Managing Up 
• [37:09] – Managing Upward Conflicts 
• [40:26] – Beyond Performance Connection 
• [43:11] – Data Versus Belonging 
• [48:56] – Peer Learning Mentorship 
• [55:39] – Relational Culture Fix 
• [59:47] – AI Curiosity Future 

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Management Progress Report  
• VolunteerPro Impact Lab  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #185 – To Burnout & Back: My Secret Struggle with Long COVID  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #035: 6 Ways to Prevent Burnout in Nonprofits  
• Find Paul on LinkedIn  
• The Leaders Coach 
• ‘Fine Lines” Weekly Leadership Newsletter (complimentary sign-up link)  
• Follow Paul on Instagram  
• Pauls’ Email  

 

Contact Us

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

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Episode #203 Transcript: Preventing Volunteer Burnout – New Research with Paul Clarke

Tobi: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and we are going to dive deep into volunteer leadership. Why do volunteers stick? Why don’t they? Why is burnout an issue? What prevents burnout? And I’m going to come with some research y’all. We are not just talking about what we think, we’re talking about what we know.

And you know, burnout for leaders is one of the biggest threats to volunteer sustainability. It’s particularly relevant right now. There’s increased expectations on volunteers. There’s reduced staff capacity in many nonprofits. Retention seems to be getting harder than recruitment for some organizations and.

All in all, it’s just difficult sometimes to get people to step up. You know, yesterday I was emailing a volunteer pro impact lab member, and she was talking about some of her struggles with longtime volunteers and leaders in her membership based volunteer organization. And she said experienced longtime volunteers and retirees are reflecting on how much they’ve done over the years, which we appreciate, but they’re also feeling tired and it’s someone else’s turn to be the leaders while the younger volunteers are working while hauling around their children to sporting events, feel they don’t have any extra time and don’t want to commit to anything more at this time.

So, it’s not only burnout. It’s also just people feeling stressed overall. If it’s not specifically clinical burnout, it can be that just people are feeling fatigued and it’s leading to a resistance or hesitant to joining in as a leader. But our guest today, and I’m going to introduce him in a minute, is going to talk about burnout and stress as not a lack of training or knowledge, which we think, you know, hey, if we just train our volunteers well enough, then they’re gonna want to step up.

In fact, I was having this very conversation with this volunteer Pro Impact Lab member. I was sharing, you know, leadership development, do you have leadership development in place? And she said, yes, we have actually have a very deep leadership development program. I said, okay, well then that’s not the issue.

Well. Our guest today is going to talk about the fact that it’s not about lack of training or knowledge, it’s actually about leadership competencies collapsing under pressure. And we’re going to break these down and unpack this. It’s going to be a fantastic conversation. But before we even get started, I want to introduce our guest.

Our guest is Paul Clark. He’s a performance coach with the leader’s coach. Paul is a leadership development specialist and consultant who works at the intersection of human performance and organizational behavior. Having recently completed his MSC in sports directorship with distinction from Manchester Metropolitan University, which I actually know, I’ve actually been there.

Paul, by the way, his research uncovered something that challenges everything we think we know about leadership development. That competency doesn’t just fade under pressure, it collapses. In entirely predictable patterns, which I can’t wait to hear about. And coaching systems we rely on are how are we gonna prevent that?

So, he argues that they’re fundamentally misaligned on how leaders actually learn. Paul now works with grassroots sport organizations around the world, helping them move beyond the knowing, doing gap that quietly undermines their coaches and volunteers. He’s not your typical academic turn consultant.

Think less lecture theater, more conci. I love that his work asks an uncomfortable question. If your leaders know exactly what to do, why do they consistently fail to do it when it matters Most welcome, Paul. That is a great question. I love it.

Paul: Thank you.

Tobi: Well, let’s, let’s just jump right in and I want to set the stage though, and I always like to ask my guests on the Volunteer Nation Podcast to tell us a little bit about yourself in the work you do.

How did you get into sport and specifically sport leadership, which in the uk also in the us in Australia, I know in New Zealand, in the air, in the places I’ve been, sport is often very much a volunteer driven type of endeavor. How did you get into what you’re doing now?

Paul: It was a kind of a natural evolution in some ways.

So, if you wind the clock back. 20 odd years back, 25 years, maybe a little bit more when I was going to say when I gave up football, but maybe when football gave me up.

Tobi: I feel you. Dude, I remember those days. I was like two ankle braces and two knee braces. And then I was like, okay, you’re done anyway. Oh

Paul: dear.

So yeah, so as most people do, just went straight into coaching, just cold. And then it evolved from there and from something that was going to be for six months, 25 years later, I was still at it now. In the meantime, I was working in business and startups and had a career in corporate as well. And then it just pretty much told me just this natural evolution towards, and a curiosity around, you know.

How does all of this happen? How does sports performance happen? And then that brought me into kind of understanding that at a deeper level and then helping coaches understand that and then helping people in business. Because people in business are obviously very curious about the lap over a sport and what goes on in sport and how it’s applicable to business.

So that’s kind of brought me to where I am today.

Tobi: So, you were volunteering as a coach? Yes.

Paul: Yeah, correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both. I mean, I was working, I was for, probably a lot of that time was paid, but then at the same time, because of just the, because of the unique situation in Ireland where I was doing that, I was also doing volunteering at the same time.

It sounds a little bit mixed up, but it’s just, it’s the, it is the nature of the beast.

Tobi: Yeah. I think a lot of people have that balance or, or unbalanced, depending. Why do you think, you know, based on your perspective from sport, why do you think volunteerism is so important in today’s world?

Paul: I think it’s pretty simple, Tobi.

It comes from the heart because there’s a heavy. Emotional engagement from volunteers. You know, they’re kind of, in many respects, priceless. You can’t put a price on them. That’s why they don’t get paid. They’re priceless. It sounds a little bit corny, but that’s just a fact because what they do comes from the heart.

Of course there are, you know, there’s logic involved and rationale, et cetera, et cetera, and an intelligence. But it’s what they bring from the heart to the whole piece. And that makes it very meaningful, makes it very deep, and it sets a, I guess it sets a toll and sets a legacy that people other people then plug into and they kind of go, okay, because you know, this person, or people look like they’re getting as much back from their efforts.

So I’d like a piece of that, and that’s, it just keeps the ball rolling in that regard, I think.

Tobi: Yeah. Yeah. It, I, I totally agree. I mean, a lot of what happens in our communities is a sort of quiet group of people making things happen, and there’s so much that wouldn’t happen without volunteers.

Paul: Well, I think, so I think it, it harks back to tribal behavior of.

Thousands of years ago that hasn’t left us. It’s still in the DNA, it’s still the way we behave and it’s about your local tribe and you know, doing what you can for the health of the tribe. And that’s, in today’s terms, that’s what volunteer is and really is. It’s, you know, it’s what ’cause in on inside your own four walls for want of a better phrase.

And doing your bit too, to maintain that and promote that.

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. So, let’s dive into this research you’ve done.

Paul: Sure.

Tobi: What drew you to study burnout amongst long-term volunteer leaders? Why this particular group? What brought you to, you know what, I’m going to study this particular thing. ’cause there’s certainly many things you could have studied.

Paul: So really, I was looking at it, I kicked off, my initial kind of thinking was factored around the organizational sustainability of the largest amateur sport and organization in the world where I had been part of for many years. That’s the Gaelic Athletic Association, GAA for short in Ireland. And I was kind of looking at that through the lens and saying, look, if volunteerism is getting more and more difficult, more and more challenging, but the GAA is built on that.

And I was kind taking the 40 year view, the long-term view, how can it stay successful and sustainable over the next 40, 50 years? And there’s obvious answers to that. But some of that I kind of went, no, we got to blow the dust off this a little bit and peel back the layers and we begin to understand like really what’s at the root of this.

So this is where I came to the whole crux of the thing around volunteerism.

Tobi: Hmm, interesting. Had you felt, when you were doing volunteerism in your, in your lifetime, have you ever felt the pressure of showing up in your volunteer leadership? Was there a personal sort of connection here?

Paul: Yeah. Is the answer to that in the sense of.

Pressure that you put on yourself because you want to do such a good job for yourself and for the people that you’re working with. And that brings about a number of pressures, and we’ll kind of move it, we’ll kind of move on to talk about that. But things like knowing what to do, but not being quite able to execute mm-hmm.

In the wild, for want of a better phrase. And that, that brings about its own pressures, but then the pressures then lead to diminished enjoyment, et cetera. So, you know, I could really kind of identify with that, having been inside, looking out and outside looking in.

Tobi: Mm-hmm. So tell us about your study. Who, with GA, a Tell, tell us a little bit more about the organization, how it engages volunteers who participated and you, you really focused on experienced volunteers with versus brand new volunteers.

Is that correct? Tell us a little bit about the, the design of the study.

Paul: Okay, so basically the GA is a grassroots sport and organization that’s volunteer led and quite unique in the sense that it’s quite tribal. So you generally, not generally you, do you play for the team where you come from? Okay, so there’s a heavy emotional engagement there.

So, there’s no kind of transfer system in place. And I’m sure people move from town to town, city to city, and that they’ll join with a new club. But largely the club that you’re with at the start of the club, you’re with the finish. So retention in the sense of finishing, playing and coming back in, coming in the back door again, going around to coming, sorry, coming in the front door again to start as a coach or administrators, heavily encouraged.

So, like that. Then the whole success and sustainability organization is based on that at grassroots level and at national level as well. And it’s kind of, it’s like it’s a federated structure as well. So, you have the clubs, then you have committees, then you have local committees, local councils, and all the way up, which is kind of strange for a small place like Ireland, but kind of pertinent to one of the things we’ll talk about later on.

So really what I didn’t, I kind of understood then from looking at other sport and organizations that, and when I say I talk a lot here, but sport and organizations, but the listeners told me, can kind. Take out sporting and insert whatever it is they’re part of. Okay. Because the overlap is, it would become quite obvious that the longer we chat.

So, for most sporting organizations, retention’s an ongoing concern, okay, at grassroots level. And volunteer coaches will do 2, 3, 4 years and then burnout and dropout. And obviously that has a knock on effect on players, participants staying involved as well. Now at the same time, clubs, organizations, they’re investing in things like Coach Education and CPD, but they still tend to struggle with the same issue.

Now. It’s probably not new information for you, but what might be new is that I believe we’ve been looking at retention almost as an operational problem. So you know, we need to have better facilities, we need to have more resources, improved programs, and that’s all valid investment. Okay. Absolutely. I’m not knocking that for a second, but my research suggests we’re missing something a little bit more fundamental.

The root cause is just not simply operational, it’s also leadership competency. Gaps in volunteers that really only emerge under pressure and current development approaches, as I see, aren’t really addressing this at all.

Tobi: Interesting. Interesting. So, I’m going to back up for a minute. Because I want to explain the context a little bit, even though I, and I think you’re right.

I think your research can apply elsewhere, not just within sport, but let’s, let’s get the context really clear for everybody. So, the sport, grassroots sport organizations, they’re unpaid, they’re players from the community. What type of sports are you talking about? Are you talking about football it, for the listeners who are in other countries, we mean soccer in the US but or elsewhere there.

They know what football is. But are there other sports as well that are part of this sort of, or is it one type of sport? Everybody’s,

Paul: yeah, so it’s in the Gaelic athletic associate in ga. There’s football, but it’s Gaelic football. It’s Irish football. Ah, it’s like this hybrid kind of game between Got it.

Rugby Australia worlds football. There’s also hurling, which is the fastest field game in the world. Then there’s the female version of that, which is called Kamogi. And then there’s obviously ladies football as well. So, this goes from, you know, age groups of six year olds up to 46 year olds, just depends on when you want to finish.

So that’s the context there, you know, and it’s built on clubs. There’s two, 2,200 clubs around the country in Ireland that are all part of the same association. And then there’s obviously, there’s a high performance element to the game as well. But that’s not really what we’re talking about today. We’re kind of talking about the more volunteer driven piece.

Yeah.

Tobi: I have a similar, I had a similar situation when I was a child coming up in, into football or soccer. When I was in middle school. I started playing and, and we had a club in our neighborhood, in our community. It was a, it was a cluster of neighborhoods, really. It was. And we had teams from age, you know, 3, 4, 5 years old, little half field soccer games, little kids running around, you know, bumblebee soccer, like clustering around the ball, not even knowing which direction they’re supposed to go all the way up to high school level.

Club soccer, and we had coaches, volunteer coaches for every team. I was on a team, my brother was on a team, my sister was on a team. We all had the same colors of uniforms and we would go and travel and meet with other teams that were in other neighborhood clubs around our local region. So, I’m assuming it’s something like that.

Paul: Yeah, correct. Yeah, that’s, you hit the nail on the head there. It’s really all about in GAA, the main KPI is very simple. It keeps people involved.

Tobi: Yeah,

Paul: that’s it.

Tobi: Yeah.

Paul: End of, I mean, it’s like, as I said, there is a performance high performance element tool, but that’s not for today’s conversation. But outside of that, it’s all about keeping people involved.

It’s all about a lifelong journey. It’s all about belonging. It’s all about, you know, play and stay in the GA. That’s a tagline that’s used heavily and. It’s, yes, there’s a sporting element to that. Of course there is, but there’s also the societal social element.

Tobi: Mm-hmm.

Paul: Because, you know, for the obvious benefits of volunteerism and you know, there’s that reciprocal effect that you benefited from it for 20 years, 30 years, whatever it might be, that, you know, there’s almost like a.

A duty, but a welcome duty to put back in again.

Tobi: Mm-hmm.

Paul: For the next generation. Mm-hmm.

Tobi: Mm-hmm. And I would say in our league, that was not the case. So our coach did not ever play for the league. He was an older dude. I don’t, I don’t even know why he coached. He liked to volunteer, but he liked to get out the house.

I don’t know. But it wasn’t as community based in that way, that where there was an expectation to give back. So, this has a community element that I think might be distinct from other sporting leagues in other countries.

Paul: A hundred percent. Jeremy, we’ll, we’ll kind of, we’ll touch on it later on when we start going into research, the mechanics in it.

But there’s a term I use called Community embeddedness. Mm-hmm. Which is, it’s kind of heavily predicated on identity, a sense of belonging, a sense of place, and really kind of, you know, your place in the community is a huge element to this and how you feel about that. It’s not just a sport, you know, the GAA clubs are not just sports venues.

They’re part of identity. They’re part of local identity and national identity.

Tobi: Yeah. It’s interesting. I was watching the Olympics last night. It was streaming the women’s hockey. Go. Go. USA. We’re doing great ice hockey, but I was also watching a little bit on Norway and why Norway has so many Winter Olympic year after year.

They have, or Olympics after Olympic. It’s not every year, but they win the most medals and they do it because they have community-based sport that starts at a very young age. Kids can do it for free. They’re, you know, they provide all the, they have these ski jumps that these little. Like five year olds were going down these ski chops and they get all that, you know, they do these community based like cross country ski and it’s all fun and it’s nothing to do with achievement until you get to age 13.

And then if you’re showing extra, you know, talent, then they start to groom you for, you know, higher level stuff. So, it was really interesting, the community based approach was, was resulting in. Medals across the board and a highly, a highly productive, tiny country producing all these gold or gold, silver, and bronze medalists from a community based approach, which was the thing that I was, you know, I was most interested in.

I wasn’t interested in their coaching methodology or anything like that. I was like, wow, it’s community That is the most powerful here. It is the most powerful indicator of success in sport for this country, which was amazing.

Paul: Yeah, it’s, and it makes perfect sense if you think about it. I mean, if you use the farming analogy, you can’t, well, you can rush crops, okay, but it’s not the best thing in the world to do.

But you know, you plant the seed, you make the conditions, right, you nurture, you foster, and then the great crop comes out the other side, and it’s a little bit like that. This, the whole volunteer sports piece that some will rise to the very, very top and go do high performance. But for everybody else, there’s still a place.

There’s still a place for them. I mean, because here’s the thing, that guy or girl who might play on the second or third team, maybe not on the best team, they could become the next best administrator. They could be a wonderful coach in 10 years. You don’t know that. And that’s what I’m saying about keeping people involved.

And that’s, that’s the huge importance to this. And that’s where it’s vital that that everything that we understand, the mechanisms are drop out and burnout so that we can prevent that and stop that happening. Because there’s a huge, there’s a huge societal element to this as well.

Tobi: Yeah. There’s a, there’s an impact and, and I think people, if we don’t address it now, it would maybe become too late.

Paul: Yeah, for sure.

Tobi: Um, and we’re seeing some drops in volunteering rates around the world. We’re seeing some drop in just native interest. But let’s talk, so when you did this study, who participated and how did you go about the research? Tell us like the methodology.

Paul: So, I. Quick background. I interviewed seven active coaches with a lot of coaching experience across grassroots levels and some at age grade level as well, representative level.

Now, I deliberately didn’t choose retired coaches reflecting on the past and telling old war stories if you like. These folks are still today active practitioners, excuse me, dealing with these challenges right now. So they have old scars and fresh scars if you like, which is vital. So the research context, as we said, was GA, a Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland.

But the findings, again, they’re directly relevant to Ali. Any volunteer driven organization that openly kind of stay. Okay, you know what we’re looking at a few retention challenges here. So what emerge really, Tobi, wasn’t what I was expecting. What the coaches really said unanimously was that their issues weren’t really rooted in.

Typical sporting things like technical knowledge or tactical understanding on the job stuff, if you like, but it was more around what we unveiled as five specific leadership competency gaps that manifest under pressure.

Tobi: Okay. What did this surprise you? I mean, were you expecting, when you went into this research mm-hmm.

Did you have a different hypothesis? You were like, okay, I’m going to figure out like there’s a training methodology or there’s some something operationally that an organization could do and we’re good. What was your expectation and what did you find differently?

Paul: Yeah, I mean my, my thing was that I thought it was probably a bit, it was Jewel.

I thought at the time, at the start there was a bit of operational, almost like, you know, the volunteer comes in, they’re handed a bag of footballs and all the best now. Bye-bye. And they’re left on their own. So there’s a little bit of that. That’s what I thought. And also the whole piece around continuing development and coach education.

I felt that really in its present, guys wasn’t fit for purpose in the sense that. And we’ll touch on it later on in the sense that it’s still very much classroom based in the same way as it was 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And I’m not saying that should be just all cast aside. That’s not what I was thinking at all.

It was kind of in the back of my mind kind of going, is that really consistent with what we know now about adult learning?

Tobi: Mm-hmm.

Paul: And that was kind of, that was what was in my mind. But then some of that came out, but then other things came out as well that I was a little surprised with too.

Tobi: So, what was, what was the sort of big takeaway before we dive into the details?

So, you thought, well, okay, it’s about support. Maybe it’s about not coming back, or they’re not staying because it’s about support and not feeling supported. Maybe it’s about our training, the way we deliver training. Maybe we haven’t updated our methods and we’re not, you know, working with adults the way we should.

And so, you came into thinking about these things. What’s the big takeaway and what surprised you? And then you were like, oh, we got to go in this direction instead.

Paul: Yeah. It was very much factored around the fact that these coaches know what to do. They know their job. Okay, but. You know, because of, as I identified five gaps and if we kind of make, bring those altogether, there’s a ripple effect with them all.

But because of these things, they were increasingly find it hard, finding it hard to do a great job all the time. And that was bringing in levels of frustration that were compounding and becoming very hard to deal with. And there was the, this kind of sense of downward creep in terms of their personal performance and their enjoyment.

And when those two things intersected, it’s like, you know what? I’m not sure this is worth it anymore. I’m not sure if this is good for me anymore.

Tobi: Yeah. I want to, I want to tease this out a little bit because I think it’s really interesting. It’s two things that you’re pulling out there that you’re calling out.

One lacks enjoyment, but I think in some ways the lack of joy enjoyment comes from the pers the perspective that. They’re not working at full capacity because you, you also think about people in a sport. I think this goes for volunteers in general, especially volunteer leaders. They generally have a spec, they have expectations of themselves.

They all have expectations of making a bigger difference. And if they question their capacity to make a difference, then that starts to impact there, for sure. Enjoyment. Right?

Paul: Yeah. That’s a, the, their sense of control and self-actualizing and all of these kinds of things, being in charge of their destiny for want of a better phrase.

Sounds a bit big, but you know what I mean? Yeah. Once that begins to erode it, it attacks their sense of self-worth. And when that starts to happen, you know, the enjoyment piece, all of that, the fulfillment piece that begins to crumble, it’s toxic to those, to the enjoyment, the fulfillment, that once those things are gone, it’s like, as I said, there’s that process of downward creep.

You just think, oh, you know what, I’m not, what I’m, what I’m giving here is just not worth it. I’m just not, I’m not making a dent here at all.

Tobi: Yeah, so people who are listening are listeners who manage volunteer leaders and lead volunteer leaders and support volunteer leaders might be asking themselves, huh, are my volunteers suffering in silence?

Or is, is this going on in my organization? Are there any, when it comes to volunteer burnout in this sort of slow role of a way that it happens, it’s not like an, what you’re saying is it’s not an immediate thing. It’s a, it’s a gradual, yeah. Sort of degradation. It’s compounded over time.

Paul: Yeah.

Tobi: Yeah. When it comes to volunteer burnout, what’s a one warning sign people should start looking at right away?

Like if they’re, they, they’re like, oh, wow, Paul’s calling out this thing that’s happening with volunteer leaders. Maybe it’s happening with mine Is, are there any clues that people should be looking for?

Paul: I think on the basis of the conversations I had with people and just in my own life as well, I think you keep this awfully simple and it’s just, this is like a.

This is not a test or anything, but it’s like a screen. It’s almost like a simple question to ask volunteers. You know, on a scale of one to 10, how much are you enjoying this?

Tobi: Mm.

Paul: Now here’s what I mean. If I say to you, Tobi, you know, in your volunteering world right now, you know your role roles, gimme a quick score out 10, how much you’re enjoying it, you know, I’d say

Tobi: eight.

Paul: Eight, cool. You know, but a lot of people I think would start to say sevens or sixes. Now here’s the thing. You can’t outperform your perception of yourself and how you feel. So, if you’re saying to me, uh, about six Paul. That’s as much as you can give. You can’t outperform that. Yeah. And that’s, if that slides to five, you know, you’re not going to ever say to me, Paul, it’s 5.9 out 10.

But the problem is that it will start to decrease, it’ll start to slip. The more these things impact to 5.9, 5.8. 5.7, 5.6, the problem then is that is a knock on effect with participants. They see that, they feel that, they hear that in you. And so there, there’s frustrations and discontent and malcontent everywhere with everybody.

And it’s almost like driving with the accelerator, sorry, driving with your foot on the acceler, the gas in the states. Oh, driving with your foot on the gas and the brake at the same time.

Tobi: Yeah.

Paul: Your, your wheels are spinning.

Tobi: Yeah.

Paul: And that’s the problem. It’s like you’re running very fast to stand still, so hence something’s going to give eventually and it’s like begins to impact self force.

So, I think. As, as simple as that question sounds, I think it’s a wonderfully good indicator as a conversation starter. So, you know, to even say to somebody, if they say to you, ah, got a six, Tobi six out 10. Okay, interesting. Why did you not say eight out 10? And then we begin to understand what they’re feeling, what they’re what, you know, what’s going on inside.

And it’s like, you know, we begin to empathize, you know, understand, and then when we understand we can address,

Tobi: yeah. Absolutely. Let’s take a quick break and after the break I want to talk about, I want to get into those five leadership competencies. Sure. That you found were, you know, crumbling of under pressure that we could develop, help volunteers develop.

Because I agree, I find that sometimes people have leadership competencies in their work lives that for whatever reason don’t translate into volunteerism. Like they don’t see that there’s a connection, right? Yeah. There are people that run companies and are successful in business and do all these things and then they get into volunteer leadership and it all goes out the window.

You know, like, well, yeah, you actually have some of these things that can help you stay resilient. So, let’s take a break from my chat with Paul Clark on how to prevent volunteer burnout. We’re going to get real specific. Now y’all we’re going to talk about these competencies, so don’t go anywhere. We will be right back.

Paul: Hey, are you looking to upgrade

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That’s where the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab comes in. When it comes to effective volunteer engagement. Our bespoke volunteer strategy Success path model, which is the heart of our resources and strategic advising, will help you transform your volunteer strategy from fundamental to a fully mature what’s working now approach and all in less time.

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If you are interested in learning more, go to ball pro.net/join and we’ll share how to get started and what’s involved. Again, that’s ball pro.net/join. All right, everybody. We are having a fantastic conversation with Paul Clark on how to prevent volunteer burnout. We’ve talked about his studies, how he was working with a sport organization, researching volunteer leaders, and talking about.

The way that community shows up, the reason for community. And then we started to get into this really good conversation about how our feelings of efficacy or competency, if we don’t feel that way as a volunteer leader, it can impact on our joy and then thus impact our resilience or just our willingness to stay volunteering.

But Paul, let’s talk about those five leadership competencies that you feel collapsed under pressure. And can you share, can you just walk us through the basics and share, first of all, what is, what is it, what’s the definition? And maybe some examples. And then after we go through this, we can talk about what are some of the remedies.

Paul: Yeah, for sure. And again, I stress that Tobi, we’ll talk from a sports perspective, but people, the listeners, can overlay or overlap anything onto this. Take out the word sport insert, whatever their thing is. So the first one I identified was authenticity. Under pressure. This is gap number one. So. Coaches, I spoke to face constant political pressures.

So for example, stakeholders in the club want favored players selected committees. Mm-hmm. Committees prioritize results over development, or C, competing interests just demand compromise. And most coaches know the right decision, but they choose the expedient one because it’s easier. Okay. Now,

Tobi: yeah,

Paul: Players, the participants, they see it, they feel it, they hear this contradiction.

And what I mean by that is it’s like what you said versus what you did when it mattered. Okay? Yeah. Now there’s an importance to that and here’s why it matters. Those players aren’t stupid. And your experience as a volunteer or the coach’s experience as a volunteer is heavily tied up in, in the experience the players are having.

So, the player would hear you speaking and talking about fairness and development in October, and then they watch you cave to political pressures in February the next year. Okay. And then this disconnect begins to happen. So what you did versus what you said versus what you did when it actually cost you something and then trust begins too.

And the coaches feel that and they go, oh, this is not good. This is not good. And it has nothing to do with their sporting prowess and everything to do with the feeling that’s there, the sense that’s there. And once that relationship, that trust erodes and breaks, it’s gone. Yeah. It’s kind of gone forever.

It’s too hard to mend, and maybe not immediately, but inevitably the gap becomes so big that. Things like care gets affected, you know, the level of trying gets effective and ultimately then they stop showing up.

Tobi: Yeah. Interesting. What’s the next one? Emotional intelligence.

Paul: Yeah, emotional intelligence challenges then.

Okay. So. What we want to look at here, it’s clear that modern teams contain radically different personalities requiring adaptive approaches. Okay? So you’ll have, say in a sporting context, you have some performance driven athletes who want to make it in the game, okay? Mm-hmm. Then you have socially motivated participants, and then you have just guiding girls seeking identity, fun in a sense of belonging.

Now, under stress, for example, after a team loses a game or just, you know, over little routine little tensions and conflicts within the group, coaches lose the ability to read these differences and adapt. Okay? So, what they do is they revert to a default mode, which runs a high risk of alienating everyone who doesn’t respond to that singular approach.

Okay? So, the one size fits all and the coach knows this and feels this. Across the interviews, I found something interesting. Coaches do not lack emotional intelligence generally. So, volunteers do not lack emotional intelligence generally, but they do lose it under stress. Mm-hmm. And again, if you take, say after that, you know, little bits of tension after losing a game or tense meetings, that’s when self-regulation collapses.

And so, they know theoretically that different people, different players, need different approaches. It’s obvious, but the theory disappears under pressure, and they tend to then revert or to default, which can be sometimes and be a little bit too aggressive or demanding, or one, the whole one size fits all thing.

And there’s a few people within the group that will respond to that and they kind of become the core, say 20% of them. But what about the other 80%? Okay. They’re the ones then that kind of, I guess, dictate what the overall experience is like and you’ve just alienated them. Maybe not on purpose, but you have, and then.

They check out, which means your kind of, your sense of work, your sense of self, your sense of doing a good job is really negatively affected and because you’ve lost them and it’s that, it’s just because of that, that emotional intelligence piece and how it just begins to crumble.

Tobi: Yeah. I mean, I think people feel bad.

They know that, you know, I’ve seen this in my own leadership when I was leading staff.

Paul: Yeah.

Tobi: The more stress, the more it was my way or the highway.

Paul: Yeah, for

Tobi: Sure. Right.

Paul: Yeah.

Tobi: Because I just didn’t have, early on, I remember this early on when I was an early leader, you know, just. Not really understanding and, and I can see how, you know, in any team, yeah, you can have some high performers and they’re the easiest to talk to.

Sure. And they’re motivated by my way or the highway. Mm-hmm. Because they like that tough love approach and they’re, you know, they’re just your high achievers, but you can’t win games with. Or you know, you can’t win competitions with just the high achievers that you know in, in football. You just can’t, one person can’t or two people can’t.

Sure. Yeah. You know, Dr. Dribble down the field and score the goal. It’s very rare. Right. So interesting. Well, let’s talk about governance. Complexity was your third finding. I found that one quite interesting.

Paul: This one goes across the board. Okay, so the third gap. So, if we can look at the sports coaches, they’re trained to manage downward and sideways.

So, their players, their training sessions, their practice sessions, their little management teams, et cetera. But they’re not really trained to manage upward through club committees and federated structures. As I said earlier on, now that that navigation and competence told me that creates like kind of organizational inconsistency.

So, there’s the things like contradictory messages and a bit of administrative chaos and then leadership conflicts can arise out that. And everyone experiences this as an as an instability, which leads to insecurity. And then that is obvious like direct causal effect will accelerate and drop out. And this one surprise people a little bit because it’s quite invisible.

Yes. So, coaches, stroke volunteers, they don’t see their own incompetence at navigating upward. They just experience the consequences. Alright.

Tobi: Yeah.

Paul: So, if we take what happens routinely in sports clubs, there’s contradictory messages. So again, I go back to the coach saying, look, development’s a priority, but then the committee demands results.

Okay. Right. So, there’s a conflict there. The coach prioritizes long-term progression, all good stuff. But the committee makes short-term decisions and investments that don’t really support that. So again, there’s a conflict there as well. There’s a tension there built in. And all of that again creates instability for everybody.

For players obviously, but then for the coaches as well. ’cause they’re like piggy in the middle, they’re kind of like, what’s going on here?

Tobi: Mm-hmm.

Paul: And that again, breeds your insecurity and insecure people don’t and won’t commit. They hedge. So, they keep their options open. It doesn’t mean they walk out the door straight away, but they keep their options open and they’ll drop out When something better comes along.

Tobi: Mm.

Paul: That gives them a better feeling.

Tobi: Mm. I can tell you this is happening in the Premier League right now.

Paul: Yeah, for sure. Every day

Tobi: I’m listening to this, I’m like, okay. Those of you who are listening, you’re like, premier League? What’s that? Yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a football league in the UK. I’m an absolute total fan.

I watch it all the time. I’ve been, I’ve been following for years and. I see how these coaches that we’ve been, you know, they replace coaches and this is, this is not community based, this is professional football, but they, they go through coaches, not like in the us, in the us you keep the coach for the season.

That’s it. You know, we don’t change coaches mid-season. That’s not how it works. But in professional, in the premier league, the coaches change a lot. They get fired; they quit whatever. It’s happening like all the time. And you know, we, we often, because the, the team is still there, right? Yeah. Sometimes they’ll bring players on, they’ll sell players, whatever.

But you know, it’s the same team. And, and now we, my husband does a lot of following the sports media. Around the Premier League and we start hearing about the, the board of the organization, et cetera. And the conflict between the board and the, and the coach. Yeah. And it is, it is like, I think it is, some of these, you know, who’s ready and fit for play.

Is this a long term or a short term goal? We’re going for, you know, all that good stuff. So this managing up through governance, I was just, it just struck me. I’m like, that is going on in the Premier League right now.

Paul: But I think it’s, it goes on in every organization and said it’s largely invisible and that’s the problem.

You can’t quite reach out and touch it, you know, and it’s hence the frustrations.

Tobi: I would say that our listeners who are volunteer resource managers, whether paid or unpaid, also feel this pressure as middle managers. They, this is a common in our own volunteer management progress report research. We’ve seen this come up over and over and over again, this lack of buy-in from and really a lack of understanding of their work and really a frustration with having to manage upward when it should be understood.

Of course, if volunteerism is a strategy for the organization to reach its mission, that the leadership should understand that and understand how to facilitate that and support it. But there seems to be a complete lack of understanding across the board. So, I find this really interesting that it’s not only at the volunteer manager level, but it’s happening at the volunteer leader level as well.

Paul: No, for sure. Yeah, and it’s, it kind of brings us on to gap number four as I identified and. I’d just say to people in this one when I start talking, that it might kind of go, that doesn’t really apply, but it’s what I’ll come to halfway through when I’m explaining the gap. So, gap number four is connection beyond performance is what I called it and mm-hmm.

So, it’ll be clear that many coaches and sports coaches are increasingly adapting professional sports methodologies for, say, amateur players who aren’t pursuing professional careers. Okay?

Tobi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul: So, stick with me here, everybody, and by themselves, right? They’re not bad interventions, but there’s a trap.

Okay? So professional sports methodologies, they look sophisticated and very smart. So, things like data analytics, performance metrics, video analysis, it all feels like progress. So, it’s introducing new ways of doing old things, if you like, and. For the 20% that are say, pursuing just a pure performance focus.

That’s brilliant. It’s super. But for the majority, and this is the important piece, when communication begins to center on statistics and data rather than personal connection, you create what I alluded to earlier on in our chat this com community embeddedness failure. Okay? So, in sports, the club just becomes just a sports venue, not part of anyone’s identity.

Okay? Mm-hmm. So, one coach said it perfectly, okay, connect, he said to me, Paul, connection and interaction are being lost in, in quickly growing clubs. We’ve got to have more of a focus on the social and fun elements, alright? Mm-hmm. And because of this, your volunteers. Players who aren’t, say the top performers experience diminished belonging.

And that is a knock on effect to the volunteer. ’cause they’re looking at this and going, what am I doing wrong? And what are you trying to do? All the right things. Bring in all these cool, smart, new ideas and they’re backfiring What’s happening here? Because everyone just then just begins to show up, crack this and leave.

Okay. There’s no deeper connection. And when other things in life come along, you know, like you work part-time, job, relationships, socializing, what have you, what gets dropped, the thing that’s least embedded in somebody’s identity and that’s problematic. You can’t do right for doing wrong. Almost like you, you are introducing all these new smart methods and they’re backfiring.

And that has a huge negative impact on your experience as a volunteer because you, you blame yourself because it’s something that you brought in to do well and do good and then it backfires. So it’s on you and it’s kind of, it’s like turning the mirror on yourself and it’s like. It brings about upset, frustration, angst, tension, all the bad thing.

All the bad things.

Tobi: So really in this is so relevant to volunteer engagement today across organizations. In volunteer impact and KPIs, outcomes, et cetera. The sector as a whole is feeling the pressure to prove the worth of the enterprise of volunteerism. Right? And yes, as managers, we need to know that our interventions are making an impact.

Right? Of course. Yeah,

Paul: of course.

Tobi: And our organizations are under pressure to show and prove to funders, whether they be individual donors or major funders, that the investments are having an impact and their engaging community in this solution, whatever it is. What I’m hearing from you though, is that when that.

Data collection and data analysis are shared back with volunteers, and I’ve had my own experience with this. I remember. Reporting back to my volunteers, you know, hey, here’s how many people we served and do, do, do, do. And they, they, they tell, they were telling me like, all you care about is the numbers. I’m like, what are you talking about this is the way, this is the knowing the numbers is the way to get the result.

Sure. In the future to predict how we’re doing, you know, as a management professional, I’ve got to know my numbers, but for them it had little to do with what they were actually doing. Which is a people business, right? Yeah. Correct. They’re in the business of people. And so, the connection that it was counterintuitive, I mean, it was counter to their identity as volunteers to like, numbers almost made it, you know, I don’t know, put a smudge on it or something.

Paul: Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s a language you see. I mean, you know, I’ve worked with data as well in sport and what we failed to grasp with that data is a language. And we can use that language of people who don’t understand that language. And then they get scared. Yes. They get scared. Yeah, they just, they have this sense of diminished understanding and they see that as like, am I daft?

Am I missing something here? Is there something wrong with me? And that again, impacts the whole experience negatively.

Tobi: Yeah. Yeah. So, if you want to share impact in any way, you’ve got to translate it into people.

Paul: Correct.

Tobi: Right. People speak, right, yeah.

Paul: Correct.

Tobi: Into connection, identity. And, you know, for, for coaches, I think that’s winning, isn’t it?

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, and it’s, it’s again, it’s used in the language that they understand that they can buy into, and it’s a two-way, it becomes a two-way conversation rather than just, you know, an adult child type thing where you are telling them the statistics. Yeah. And they’re, they’re just sitting there sucking it all up, going, okay, and what,

Tobi: yeah, exactly.

And there’s so much data now. I mean, you can look at heart rate, you can wear like Sure. You know, you, there’s so much data you can collect. So, let’s go on to the, the knowing doing Gap.

Paul: This is the big one. This is the big one. Okay. Awesome. So, here’s the frustrating thing. Okay. Current CPD development approach, education approaches.

Okay. Create the gap.

Tobi: C, B, D for folks that don’t know what

Paul: CCP D is, sorry. Yes. Continuous professional development.

Tobi: There you go.

Paul: So, ongoing training, ongoing development. So here’s something a little bit controversial, but I’ll flesh it out. Okay. These current development approaches for volunteers, they create the gaps they’re supposed to fix.

Okay. O let let mic

Tobi: drop.

Paul: Yeah. Let me unpack this one. So in the sports world, coaches and clubs, they invest in courses. The coaches attend courses, okay? Workshops, et cetera, et cetera. They learn theories, they get certified, but then they struggle to apply any of this knowledge under real world pressure.

Now, why is that? Okay? Because education and CPD, continuous professional development tends to be front loaded, classroom based, and standardized. Okay? And learning happens in classrooms, but application happens under stress. Okay? In the wild, if you like,

Tobi: right?

Paul: So. These coaches, these volunteers struggle to apply any of their learning under pressure on the, say, the training or practice field or the playing field.

And one of the coaches I spoke with, he’s actually a long time coach educator, because we were talking on, on, on the basis of anonymity, of course. But he said to me, even though he’s, he every week he’s engaged in coach education, he said, look, Paul, he said the coach education approaches as they are today are not fit for purpose.

We also need to involve things like mentorship with regular touch points. Mm-hmm. I, we’ll come to that in a second. So what coaches actually need and what actually develops competence. Okay. Things like peer learning, observation of experienced leaders, and just in time supports for when challenges arise.

None of that really exists systematically. So we certify people as developed or qualified, but we’re leaving them unprepared for the actual challenges and retention critical moments that determine whether people stay or leave. Does that make sense?

Tobi: Absolutely. And I would argue that in general training fails in that area, not only continuous professional development.

Yeah, for

Paul: sure. Yeah.

Tobi: Yeah. But preliminary induction and orientation is often conducted really fast. Bootcamp style has nothing to do with like the real world.

Paul: So if we, can you flesh this out and give it a bit more practical expression? What’s there right now is things like front load of courses, standardized curricula, theory-based classroom learning.

You know, kind of a very in the job focus, if you like one and done certification. But really what coaches were telling me is that, Paul, what we actually need, and what we’d love more of is kind of ongoing peer learning communities. Yes, you need some classroom stuff, of course, but let’s layer in ongoing peer learning communities, you know, diagnostic approaches that will help simply identify specific knowledge gaps, experiential learning, using kinda real life scenarios.

And then, you know, taking in your interpersonal skills, your emotional intelligence skills, and really upping the ante and that stuff, you know, have some just in time supports for when they’re facing actual challenges and not the theoretical challenges six months earlier. So it’s not about making the current programs, the current training programs slightly better, it’s more about rethinking what development and adult learning actually means, and moving from being an education provider to a learning facilitator.

Looking at this as a lifelong learning journey for your volunteer. Okay. And then it move, it allows us to move and evolve from front loaded certification to just an ongoing journey of competency development. And we, again, we can kind of unpack my suggested of all development framework. Sounds awfully grand, but it’s very simple actually.

Tobi: Yeah. Yeah. And I would agree with this 110%. It’s interesting because I think the entrepreneurial business community has already figured this out. I, I’ve been part of mastermind groups, for example, I’m in a mastermind group right now of membership site owners because we have our volunteer pro impact lab and so I involved in continuous professional development myself as a business owner.

It helps me help. Those that I serve, and it’s why we are cutting edge and continue to be cutting edge because we’re constantly learning and bringing some of that into our communities that we serve.

Paul: This is the thing you see, you do it naturally and it’s just because there’s not big fancy terms on it.

You just kind of go. Oh, okay.

Tobi: Yeah, and I mean, it’s, it’s an investment to be sure. Entrepreneurs, people are making some money on this for sure. And I’m not, but, but as a member of these, these mastermind communities, what generally happens there is a learning element, but it’s mostly you’re on WhatsApp or you’re in a learning community, you’re sharing ideas, you’re asking questions.

You have a leader or facilitator who’s asking for accountability. Like, Hey, what’s everybody working on this week? People are sharing, they’ve tried something, they got a result. The result was what they expected, exceed what they expected or didn’t. The group gives feedback, it’s very active. And then you have mastermind calls where you’re actually presenting like, here’s, here’s, here’s what I need feedback on.

So it’s very active and I find it to be like within the first call. I had been mulling over a decision for months in my own head, and after the first call with this particular group I’m part of right now, immediately I had, I had clarity and I was ready to take action. And so it’s not only the information and the perspectives that you get from each other, but it’s also the confidence that it gives you.

Because you know that even if you fail, there’s going to be a group you can go back to and say, okay, I failed. What do I do differently? Et cetera, et cetera. So there’s a trust and there’s a feeling of we’re all in this together because we’re all There’s

Paul: a safeness. Exactly. There’s an absolute safeness. And that’s the huge thing.

And it’s like, you know, we can talk models all day long. Mine was talking about, you know, diagnose and then direct and apply and reflect on all lovely terms. But it’s exactly what you were saying there, Tobi. It’s like you have a stronger sense of control, a stronger. Sense of self-actualizing, you know, you’re more confident because you’re not having to react anymore.

You’re responding. You’ve got a community to plug into. There’s a bit of mentorship going on. It’s all great stuff, and it’s not theoretical. You know what I mean? Yeah. It’s actually happening. It’s practical and it’s happening in a way that works for you in your life. And this is what I’m saying about volunteers.

Yeah. There has to be probably a little bit of core classroom stuff. Of course. I’m not saying throw that away, but once that’s in the bag, let’s bring in what you are speaking about there, where people are kind of identifying what they need to know a little bit more about whether sick, communication skills, whatever it might be, and then they can plug into the Just in time supports the mentorship, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune at all.

It’s just tweaking what’s there already.

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, volunteers could be recruited and trained to be the facilitators. A hundred percent longtime

Paul: volunteers. Yeah, yeah, for

Tobi: sure. Yeah. Yeah. This can be grown with from within. You don’t need to hire a consultant to come out and facilitate your leaders,

Paul: you know?

You know that if you kind of work away as a volunteer for five, six years, that you’ve got this reservoir of insight that you will then be used and, I mean, used in the best possible sense to share and groom the newer generation of volunteers. So there’s this sense of responsibility. Yeah, there’s a sense of ownership.

Yeah, there’s, it’s huge. It’s, you know, and it’s not revolution. It’s just gradual evolution.

Tobi: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. You

Paul: know, and that’s the key thing. It’s not the radical, it’s all practical stuff with good theory behind it. Of course.

Tobi: Yeah. And it requires folks to stick around to evolve to that.

Paul: Yeah.

Tobi: That level.

They have to be with the organ. So I find myself in my life, you know, I’m in, you know, early sixties, I’m getting moving towards retirement and I see my identity changing.

Paul: Sure.

Tobi: From. The front person presenting everything to, now we’re gathering together, I’m assembling a community of people to work with me, that I’m gonna move into a mentor role and I’m gonna move out of the front frontline and start growing.

Although, you know, I think we’ve been influencing at Volunteer Pro, we’ve been influencing, and Tobi Johnson associate with my business, we’ve been influencing the field for a long time. But this is even more active of helping people come up and be successful in their careers.

Paul: You’re shining a light on the path for people.

So really what you’re doing is to go back to what I was saying earlier on around the whole thing around tribal behavior, is that you are evolving upwards to becoming one of the, the tribal chieftains.

Tobi: Yeah,

Paul: that’s what you’re doing and that’s, you know, aspirational and people see you doing that and kinda go, oh wow, hang on.

So I, how can I actually do that too? Oh wow. That’s cool. So it’s like, it’s this path of lifelong learning but spiraling upwards all the time. So it’s not just the glowing, the lovely glow inside you get from contribution. There’s also appealing to your sense of progression.

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a human need is to progress.

Yeah. And to find meaning in your life. We’re almost at the top of the hour in, in our conversation, so I wanted to leave with a couple more questions. Yeah. First is just, what are a couple of other things aside from like moving from like a traditional classroom-based training to more of a masterminding mentorship community, peer to peer model?

What are other things based on what you learn that you’re recommending that organizations do to prevent, you know, volunteer burnout

Paul: talk. And that sounds, you kinda go, what do you mean by that, Paul? I really mean exactly that. That the lines of communication get opened up completely. That there’s no golf balls in the holes, that we dissolve all of these things and get people talking and people understanding each other from the top down, the bottom up.

That everyone’s aware of what’s going on. You know, put away the spreadsheets for a little bit and just actually speak to people and feel their lived experiences and understand them and address them. So as that everyone feels, oh, they’ve got my back, they’ve truly got my back. They’re listening to me.

They’re not just, it’s just not a corridor conversation. You know, that they’re not just ticking boxes, they’re actually listening to me. And then, you know, the future actions are heavily predicated on what the leaders in the organizations hear on an ongoing basis, because they’re going to hear Colin stories, but they got to get out their offices to do that.

Oh, and that’s not, yeah, that’s not having a goal with these people at all. It’s just suggesting that it’s, it can be as simple as that. Tomorrow they can start doing that.

Tobi: MWA management by walking around.

Paul: Yeah.

Tobi: You know, like, and, and it requires, I think a, a, a value, a culture that values relationships because I think we’ve become in the nonprofit sector, you know, I’ve, we, I’ve heard people say, well, volunteers should be treated like employees.

I’m like, oh, no they shouldn’t. No, no, no. ’cause that’s not why they’re there. Yeah. You know, but you know, with respect, yes. But some of the other things, no. But, you know, I think. When we value productivity with a capital P and we value a certain way of productivity with a capital P and a sort of industry model, you know, you’re from Manchester, that’s the, the home of the birthplace of the industrial Revolution.

And so if we’re looking at volunteerism from that industrial revolution, productivity, business, even technology perspective, and we’re leaving aside the relationship. Piece of it, we’re actually losing in the long run that the, the leaning into like making things more like a business and losing the relational aspect of it.

You know, going back to my comment about Norway, they spend time with their kids having fun doing sport outside. There is no other goal. In fact, they don’t e everybody wins. They don’t even have timers and things. They just, the kids are out doing sport for fun. They give, you know, and people say, well, everybody shouldn’t get a medal.

Well may these kids, everybody gets a medal up to age 13 until they really decide whether or not they’re gonna, you know, go, go do something more. You know. So this community relational piece is really leaned into similarly here. This is what I’m hearing from you, that this relational piece is a way to understand if any of these five gaps are in play.

Yeah,

Paul: and that’s the thing. It’s like, it’s important the volunteers. And turn around and say, they see me. They hear me, they feel me. The leadership. The leadership. You know? And if you’re a true leader, if you’re a true tribal chief, then that’s your job. Your job is to see people, truly see them, truly hear them, truly feel them, and make them feel that sense.

And if you’re doing that, you’ll retain them. Of course, there’s bumps in the road, of course there’s issues, but you’ll tend to understand the issues far sooner and be able to address them, respond to them far quicker than when they become just this animal that’s out control.

Tobi: Yeah, I could not say it any better.

So let me ask you one last question before we wrap up. What are you most excited about in the year ahead?

Paul: Oh, what am I most excited about? Personally?

Tobi: Personally or professionally?

Paul: Doesn’t

Tobi: matter.

Paul: Yeah, really. Getting into AI and learning about it on a practical level. Kinda really having fun with learning it and not just from the point of view.

So it’s, there’s an aspect of saving time, Tobi, so that I can invest that time in other cool things. But yet it’s really kind of understanding the possibilities with it. And every time I play with something like Notebook LM or Claude or something like that, I kind of, I end up shaking my head going, no way.

This is magic. This is like,

Tobi: yeah,

Paul: this is voodoo stuff. Yeah. You know, I mean, it’s crazy and I think it’s like a lot of people aren’t kind of jumping into it because there’s a lot of bad press about it, and I get that too. But I think it’s cool for people to understand how it can save them some time, that they can then reinvest into things that mean a lot to them.

That’s kind of, that’s, that’s really exciting.

Tobi: Yeah. And it’s going to be very interesting in the next few years because it’s, it’s developing so quickly.

Paul: Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. A rate of knots.

Tobi: Now, right now we have AI and AI agents. Pretty soon they’ll, there won’t be both things’ll, just blend. It’ll just be,

Paul: yeah,

Tobi: yeah.

It’ll just blend and the, and the, yeah. It’s, I was reading the other day about an AI community of AI agents. It, there’s no humans involved. It’s an online community. It’s so trippy. I’m like, the robots have their own community now, y’all.

Paul: But it brings up a question. If the robots can have an online community, why can’t volunteers?

There

Tobi: you go. There you go. So how can people learn more about your work? Obviously there’s so much more to to learn and you’ve been developing frameworks and ways for people to implement this. How can people learn more about your work, get in touch with you if they’re interested in learning

Paul: more? Sure.

So I’ll give all my details. You put ’em in the show notes, but attend to any content I have. I tend to either put it on LinkedIn and then every week I’ll do, it’s like a weekly leadership, a weekly newsletter for leaders in sport business where just I kind of address things is, you know, topics or subjects I’ve been having issues or difficulties with that I’ve had to figure out so that I can share those learnings with people over a four minute read if you like, condense it all down into four minutes, but you can sign up for that.

It’s all free. On my LinkedIn page, if you just search for me, Paul Clark or the leader’s coach Paul Clark, you’ll find me on LinkedIn. That’s where the bulk of the stuff will be, will be put.

Tobi: Excellent, and I will include that in the show notes. So folks head on over to the page and, and subscribe. Your newsletter sounds fantastic.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Paul: It’s good

Tobi: fun. This has been really good. I mean, it’s been a deeper look at leadership, I think you know, the subtleties of it. Yeah. The subtleties of why people are making decisions, why to to leave, you know, how volunteer burnout is playing into this. Whether it’s a slow burnout or a quick I’m out.

I think it’s just really helpful for us to re really look at industry research like this and academic research like this and be able to translate it into practice. So thank you so much for bringing this to the show and helping explain it in a way that people can actually walk away and take practical steps.

So I really appreciate it.

Pleasure.

Tobi: So thanks everybody for joining me for this episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend who could also benefit from Paul’s wisdom. And also, of course, we love ratings and reviews. Give us a rating of five. We’d love five ’cause that’s that way we can reach more people in our community and also give us a review.

Tell us what you think, and we will see you next week. Same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody.