An interesting theme ran through several conversations I had over the past few weeks. People are frustrated in volunteer roles. Non-profit leaders can’t figure out how to engage volunteers. They want to know how to motivate people, which can be especially tricky in situations where pay isn’t involved. In this case, for volunteers.

Interestingly, the frustrated volunteers were exactly the type of people the other group was looking for.

After spending a significant amount of time in the non-profit sector and working with military reservists and cadets, I saw several very comprehensive programs established to lead volunteers effectively. Quite frankly, those efforts kept those who didn’t know how to lead employed and gave consultants a decent revenue stream.

(While you’re here, don’t miss this post next: Can You Name the 9 Essential Qualities of a Leader?)

Leading Volunteers vs. Employees

In my opinion, the only difference between leading a volunteer and leading employees is a system of compensation.

I recall a staff meeting when a manager started complaining about volunteers who were given tasks, and when that staff person checked in after a couple of months, the work was not done to her satisfaction. I spoke up and asked, “what would you do if one of your paid supervisors left another employee for months with poorly defined tasks and then got angry when it wasn’t done right?”

The response … “I would discipline them!” Really! The only problem I had was to figure out if this person was the pot or the kettle.

A terrific friend of mine who is a very accomplished businessperson and a community leader of the highest order related to me was asked to participate in a membership drive.

At the inaugural committee meeting, a consultant sat everyone down. Next, they instructed all of the volunteers on what they must do as part of the committee. These volunteers are all very accomplished in their own right. For them, being treated like five-year-olds must be very off-putting.

How would you respond if this was your boss talking to you like that? Let alone how you might respond
as a volunteer.

(Do you have volunteers working alongside paid staff? Then take a look at this post next)

I served with volunteers who, when given authority, and responsibility, and were held to account, led the responses to some of the most complex disasters of our time. I saw reservists (when treated like the professional soldiers they were) accomplish superhuman tasks.

How to Motivate People When Pay Isn’t on the Table

If you want to know how to motivate people, paid or not, it might take going back to basics. Consider what motivates you, other than money, and imagine those same things motivate your volunteers.

Here are some ideas.

Whether paid or unpaid, people want to:

• Have honourable and engaging work to do
• Receive clear expectations
• Feel they are part of something bigger than they are
• Be employed at or above their current capacity
• Get respect and appreciation

Could you use a little more guidance with motivating and leading your team? We should talk. Click here to read about my one-on-one coaching and get in touch.

Did you learn a lot about how to motivate people in this post?

Here are three more to read next:

• Stop Trying To Manage Your Boss; 8 Tips To Partnering With Your Boss
• The Biggest Management Lie Ever Told — Micromanagement Is Bad
• 5 Steps You Can Use To Build a “First Team’ Mindset

This post was first published in 2017, but it was updated in 2021 just for you.

Recently, someone asked me how I know whether a client will succeed in achieving organizational health.

Read what organizational health is

It is a great question.

While several factors are involved in making such a prediction, I’m convinced that one indicator demonstrates that a client really “gets it” and is likely to experience the transformation that only organizational health can bring about. Though that indicator isn’t directly related to teamwork, Clarity, communication or systems, it connects all these disciplines in a way that nothing else can.

What I’m talking about are meetings.

Yes, meetings.

Not the kind of meetings that non-healthy organizations have, where every issue under the sun gets thrown onto an agenda, nothing seems to get decided, and unimportant topics and PowerPoint presentations take up valuable time. Executives check their watches, waiting for the painful ritual to end.

I’m talking about meetings with Clarity, focus and intense interaction.

Most of our clients immediately understand the importance of the model of the meeting I propose, and they excitedly adopt it. Adoption is rarely a challenge, as my approach is simple and practical. The more significant obstacle they face – and this is a litmus test – is whether they will have the discipline and courage to stay with those meetings over the long haul and keep passionately focused on the most critical issues.

Solving a problem is one thing; continuing to exploit that solution after its novelty has worn off is another. Too many leaders struggle with discipline, getting bored with consistency and continuity and searching for something new and exciting. And many of them, even if they do stick to the structure of their meetings, lack courage when entering the danger around difficult topics, choosing a more harmonious path instead.

How Healthy is our team? Take the survey

The myth is that meetings are inherently flawed.

 For some reason, we have accepted that meetings are a necessary evil of organizational life. Worse, we think all meetings are painful and unproductive time wasters.

But the fact is, bad meetings are a reflection of bad leaders. Worse yet, they take a more devastating toll on a company’s success than we realize.

Fortunately, for those willing to challenge the notion that meetings are unfixable, it is possible to transform what is now tedious and debilitating into something productive, focused, and energizing.

However, the key to improving meetings has nothing to do with better preparation, agendas or minutes. To address the problem, leaders must understand why they are so bad, take a contrarian view of meetings and apply a few basic guidelines.

Meetings are bad due to two basic problems.

• First, meetings are boring.
• Second, most meetings lack context and purpose. They are a confusing mix of administrivia, tactics, strategy and review, all creating unfocused, meandering and seemingly endless conferences with little resolution or Clarity.

The Meeting Agenda That Creates Drama and Clarity

            Lightning Round (Report) – (What and where does each individual need help on work that is deemed the “Most Important Right Now”)

            Organizational Clarity – (Confirm Clarity – every time to ensure the meeting is focused on the right work)

1. 1. 1. Why Do We Exist?
      2. How Do We Behave
      3. What Do We Do?
      4. How Will We Succeed?

What Is Most Important Right Now? (Thematic Goal)

How to decide what is the most important thing to be working on

Today’s Topics (should be directly connected with achieving the Thematic Goal)

1. 1. 1. Topics for discussion
      2. Topics for strategic meetings – are there subjects so strategic and essential that they require their own meeting
      3. Decisions
      4. Cascading Communications Messages

How to be the Chief Reminder Officer

Closing Thoughts

The fact is, running a healthy organization is neither sexy nor comfortable.

Leaders who want to be stimulated and entertained more than they want their companies to succeed will often find it too taxing.

They’ll be easily tempted by the latest fad or flavour of the month, which almost always means their meetings will become scattered, unfocused and inconsistent.

What is particularly ironic about all of this is that eventually and inevitably, those meetings become boring.

And so, here is my advice to any leader considering the journey toward making his or her organization healthy: know that one of your primary responsibilities, perhaps the most important, is ensuring that your meetings are outstanding.

Make them a constant, living example of teamwork, Clarity and communication.

As unsexy as that may seem, there is no greater predictor of organizational health than well-run meetings. 

Question: What is organizational health?

Organizational health is essentially about making a company function effectively by building a cohesive leadership team, establishing real clarity among those leaders, communicating that clarity to everyone within the organization, and putting in place just enough structure to reinforce that clarity going forward. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave.

Read about the ‘First Team’ Model

Question: Why does organizational health offer a company its greatest opportunity for competitive advantage?

Addressing organizational health provides an incredible advantage to companies because, ultimately, health becomes the multiplier of intelligence. The healthier an organization is, the more its intelligence it can tap into and actually use. Most organizations only exploit a fraction of the knowledge, experience and intellectual capital available to them. The healthy ones tap into all of it. Addressing health helps companies to make smarter decisions faster, without politics and confusion.

How healthy is your organization? take the free survey!

Question: Why are so many of today’s smartest companies losing to underdogs?

I have found that some of the underdogs are more apt to shed their preconceived notions about running a business and allow themselves to gain an advantage around a different set of principles. The key ingredient for improvement and success is not access to knowledge; it is really about the environment’s health.

I have worked with many great, healthy companies led by men and women who attended relatively modest colleges, people who would admit to being just a little above average in intellectual capacity. When those companies made wise decisions that set them apart from their competition, journalists and industry analysts incorrectly attributed their intellectual prowess’s success. The truth of the matter was that the underdogs weren’t smarter than their competitors; they simply tapped into the adequate intelligence they had and didn’t allow dysfunction, ego, and politics to get in the way. Conversely, smart organizations don’t seem to have any greater chance of getting healthier by virtue of their intelligence. In fact, the reverse may actually be true because leaders who pride themselves on expertise and knowledge often struggle to acknowledge their flaws and learn from their peers. They typically aren’t as easily open and transparent with one another, which delays recovery from mistakes and fuels politics and confusion.

Question: Having worked with companies for so many years, is there anything that still surprises you?

Yes, I still get surprised by what I see in companies I work with, even after all these years. Some of that surprise is just a function because no two people, and thus, no two organizations are exactly alike. The nuances are interesting and keep me on my toes. But ironically, the biggest surprise I get is being reminded repeatedly that even the most sophisticated companies struggle with the simplest things. I guess it’s hard for me to believe that the concepts I write and speak about are universal. I don’t know that I’ll ever come to terms with that completely.

Question: Why are so few companies skilled at overcoming dysfunction?

Leaders often complain about worker productivity, politics, turnover and other signs of dysfunction but feel addressing the problem is either a hopeless endeavour or too touchy-feely. Even if the leader understands the need to address dysfunction, more often than not, they tend to naturally gravitate right back to the parts of the business they feel most comfortable with (usually in areas like strategy, finance, marketing, etc.).

Question: What’s “the wuss factor,” and how do you overcome it?

The “wuss factor” happens when a team member or leader constantly balks when it’s time to call someone out on their behaviour or performance. Many leaders who struggle with this will try to convince themselves that their reluctance is a product of their kindness; they just don’t want to make their employees feel bad. But an honest reassessment of their motivation will allow them to admit that they are the ones who don’t want to feel bad and that failing to hold someone accountable is ultimately an act of selfishness. After all, there is nothing noble about withholding information that can help an employee improve. Eventually, that employee’s lack of improvement will come back to haunt him in a performance review or when he is let go.

How healthy is your organization? take the free survey!

Question: What’s the best way to run an effective meeting?

To answer that question fairly, it is important to be clear about what kind of meeting you are in. I find that all too often, leaders have one meeting a week where they put all issues into one big discussion, usually called the staff meeting. They combine administrative issues and tactical decisions, creative brainstorming and strategic analysis, and personal discussions into one exhausting meeting. The fact is the human brain isn’t meant to process so many disparate topics in one sitting. This exhausts people. For a meeting to be effective, there needs to be greater clarity and focus, which means there needs to be different kinds of meetings for different kinds of focus. So, being clear about what kind of meeting you are in helps everyone understand the purpose and what they can expect for outcomes. The four meetings include:

• Daily Check-ins – administrative information exchange
• Weekly Staff – tactical issues and goal-related activities
• Ad hoc Strategic- strategic meeting that takes on one single big topic
• Quarterly Off-site Review – developmental meeting and review of business fundamentals

Question: How can someone who’s not in the upper levels of their organization make an impact on its health?

While it’s true that no one can influence an organization like the leader and that without a leader’s commitment and involvement, organizational health cannot become a reality, there are many things that employees deeper in an organization can do to make health more likely. First, they have to speak truth upward in the organization. Most leaders, even the struggling ones, want to get better. When an employee is courageous and wise enough to come to them with respect, kindness and honesty, most leaders will be grateful. Without honest upward feedback, a leader cannot get better. Beyond that, people deeper in an organization can focus on making their own departments healthier and not getting too distracted or discouraged by their inability to change things outside of their “circle of influence,” as Stephen Covey says. By focusing on their own departments and their own areas of influence, they provide others with an example to follow.

Question: What’s something I can do tomorrow morning to get started?

The first thing anyone can do immediately to begin the process of making their organizations healthier is, to begin with, themselves and their team. A leader has to understand and embrace the concept of being vulnerable, which inspires trust in the leadership team. That trust is the foundation for teamwork, which is one of the cornerstones of organizational health. If a leader cannot be vulnerable, cannot admit his or her mistakes, shortcomings or weaknesses, others will not be vulnerable and organizational health becomes impossible.

Question: What’s the first step any company can take to start achieving organizational health?

The first step in becoming healthy is to get the leadership team together, offsite, for a couple of days of focused, rigorous, honest discussion. Nothing touchy-feely, but rather a practical session around everything from how the team behaves to how it will succeed to what its most important priority needs to be. That first session will provide the momentum a team needs to lead the organization to health.

How healthy is your organization? take the free survey!

Cartoon Credit to Creator: Andrew Toos 

Have awkward silences become a rule of thumb in your meetings?

Are you frustrated that people seem to be sitting on their hands and not participating in important conversations?

Read more about why meetings are the linchpin of Organizational Health

We have all had that feeling of frustration when even the free coffee and snacks aren’t working to boost team participation.

‍If your team seems reluctant to share their thoughts and opinions, your team members may not be the problem—it is most likely you.

‍Silence usually means people are holding back, and it’s up to you to understand why.

‍It’s your responsibility as the leader to foster an open space for participants to feel motivated and comfortable to speak up. But how?

‍

Safety can get your team talking.

During World War Two, they said that ‘loose lips sink ships’ and, in our case, ‘tight lips’ sink meetings.

‍One of the top reasons your team isn’t participating is because they don’t feel comfortable doing so. It’s important to understand those reasons before seeking solutions.

‍Often employees are pressured to be on their “best” behaviour. They would do anything to avoid looking ignorant, incompetent, intrusive, and negative. This means they often don’t ask many questions, keep their head down, don’t admit mistakes, don’t offer new ideas, and shy away from critiquing the status quo.

They may fear that if their share their opinions, that information may result in other repercussions.

If your team is focused on managing these impressions and doesn’t feel encouraged to speak up or share their opinions on improving the team or workplace, you have a problem with your Organizational Health.

‍What Is Heck Is Organizational Health? 10 Questions Answered by Steve

Patrick Lencioni is the standard-bearer of Organizational Health and has observed that companies with a trusting, accountable and safe workplace perform better.

‍What is a trusting, accountable and safe workplace? It can be defined as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.”

Organizational Healthy workplaces, employees and managers are encouraged and are expected to speak up.

‍Organizational Health isn’t about lattes, gyms or quiet rooms. It’s about giving candid feedback, openly admitting mistakes, and learning from each other. Team Leaders who encourage a climate of open reflection and learning are the most productive and successful.

‍Improving meeting performance requires clarity of objective and healthy conflict.

 When an organization lacks clarity of objective or healthy conflict, team members hesitate to share uncomfortable information with those who hold power within the organization. Or worse, they only share what they believe the people with power want to hear.

‍Why won’t we share because of the amygdala? When the amygdala perceives a threat, you go into a fight-or-flight mode. This instinct was useful when sabre tooth tigers prowled the woods, but it’s not effective when you need to think strategically and collaborate with colleagues at work.

Your team can combat the brain’s defence mechanism by cultivating organizational health. Everyone is encouraged to share ideas, spot problems, take risks, and keep your team talking, engaged, and productive.

How?

‍Allow equal participation for all

6 Tips to Speak Confidently in Meetings (Even When You’re A Bit Scared)

Another common reason that may be keeping your meeting participants from speaking up is the structure of the meeting itself. Do your participants know that active participation is expected? Is one team member taking up most of the time by giving long-winded answers?

Try these strategies:

• • Establish expectations before a meeting starts to have everyone on the same page before the meeting gets off track.
  • Set time limits for each person to say their piece. This allows everyone to speak but gives equal weight to each person’s perspective.
  • Call on people reverse order of seniority to share their comments and thoughts without being swayed or silenced by more senior people on the team.

‍Democratize the meeting invites

So everyone feels comfortable participating in the meeting, allowing the team to decide who is invited collectively. Take a look at the invite list and really consider if anyone besides the team really needs to attend.

‍‍Incorporate introvert-friendly strategies

It feels natural to fall into a conversational rhythm whenever friends get together, with the talkers talking and the observers sitting back.

‍This is true with workplace teams, and it becomes tricky when one or two people dominate the meeting conversation. As a manager or facilitator, it’s important to make your meeting a fair playing ground for all types of people, especially the introverts in the room.

‍You can effectively encourage introvert meeting participation by utilizing timed discussions, anonymous voting, choosing the right time for the meeting, and open-ended answering exercises.

‍Increase your own vulnerability

3 Action To Not Kill Vulnerability On Your team

One way to establish trust is for the team leader to be vulnerable and admit their own mistakes and flaws. Demonstrate the behaviour you’d like your team members to display in the hopes that they follow your example. By sharing your mistakes and weaknesses with others, a relatable connection is created that leads to better conversations.

‍Make the meeting a routine.

Even if your last meeting was successful, but it was a long time, your team members will likely forget the conversational feeling of that meeting. Instead of one-time or infrequent meetings, make a point to meet with the team regularly to encourage ongoing learning, contribution, and improvement.

4 Actions To Ensure That Your Leadership Adheres To The ‘First Team’ Model

Robert Hartley is the Head Coach of the Calgary Flames. A rookie member of the Flames had a great game and scored his first NHL goal. Asked by a reporter if he was happy for that player’s big night, I recall him responding: Of course I am happy for all of my players when they have a good game, but I am never satisfied!

Do you know when I feel satisfied?

When I am all fat & full and sleepy after a huge turkey dinner.

I was always happy for my team members when they closed a big deal, nailed a project, or just had a great day. I drew great energy from their enthusiasm and loved to see them grow & bloom. But I was never 100% satisfied because I knew they could always do more and do better.

I knew that the seeds of complacency would be sown by allowing myself to be satisfied with their accomplishments. That is the path to becoming the ultimate mediocrity.

If a person or department seems to be running on autopilot, then a curse of satisfaction & complacency has set in. As every aspect of business is a work in progress, you and your team should be continually looking to improve performance, learn, find self-improvement, do things better, and improve skills and abilities.

Great leaders embrace the process of discovery by never giving up the quest for information. They control their destiny so that no one else controls it for them. They are never 100% satisfied as there is always room for improvement.

Here are seven indicators to show you when You shouldn’t be satisfied with your leadership:

1. Nothing is being changed. Leadership is about something new. It’s about change. If nothing is changing — you can do that without a leader.

2. No paradigms are being challenged. Many times the best change is a change of mindset — a way we think. Leaders are constantly learning so they can challenge the thinking “inside the box.”

3. You’re not asking questions. A leader only knows what they know, and many times, the leader in the last to know. A significant part of leadership is about discovery, and you only get answers if you ask questions.

4. There are competing visions. Leaders point people to a vision. To a crystal clear & singular vision. One of the surest ways to derail progress is to have multiple visions, as this divides energy & people and confuses instead of bringing clarity.

5. No one is complaining. You can’t lead anything involving worthwhile change where everyone agrees. A sure-fire measure if people are being led if there is if people are complaining. We knew there was a problem in the Army when the soldiers went quiet and weren’t griping.

6. People aren’t being stretched. Understand well; a leader should strive for clarity. But, when things are changing and challenging, there will always be times of confusion. That’s when good leaders get even better at communicating and listening.

7. People being “happy” has become the goal. Everyone likes to be liked. But, the end goal of leadership should be accomplishing a vision — not making sure everyone loves the leader. Progress hopefully makes most people happy, but when the goal begins with happiness, in my experience, no one is ever really made happy.

Keeping a laser-like focus, all the time, on your objectives and never drifting from the big picture is key to extraordinary leadership …, not satisfaction.