Case Study: Volunteer Leadership in a Public Broadcasting Station
Project Name: Volunteer Leadership in a Public Broadcasting Station
Project Director: Chris Cartwright
Project Location: Pacific Northwest
Project Description: To train volunteer leaders who ‘lead’ the pledge drives. These leadership volunteers make sure the pledge drives are successful by training phone volunteers, serving the phone volunteers food and beverages, tallying donations, and giving reports to the on-air staff so they can determine which pitches are working.
I facilitated two meetings of volunteer leaders with the goal of helping them see the value in each of their leadership roles and identifying their strengths and challenges in achieving a successful fund-raising drive. I presented the Achieving Styles/Connective Leadership Model so the participants could understand that their multiple roles required multiple leadership styles. We used the model to discuss what they did well and why and what they needed to work on and why.
Project Purpose(s): To educate volunteer leaders about leadership styles so they would be able to recognize the value of their team members’ roles, and to analyze the ways in which their leadership styles support or impede their team members’ work.
Participants: There were 30 participants over two meetings. All were volunteers from a variety of work backgrounds, such as government, non-profit, and private sector. Approximately 30% of the participants were fully retired. The average age was 60 years, with a range of 28 to 80 years of age. Two-thirds of the participants were women.
Results: The participants clearly saw the benefit of their team members’ roles and responsibilities and especially the need to collaborate and cooperate in order to work together. They also identified places in the fund drive where they needed to be engaging (i.e., Personal Instrumental) and where attention to detail (i.e., Intrinsic Direct) would have been beneficial. They were pleased to see a method by which to analyze and improve their work collaboration.
General Comments: As they viewed the Connective Leadership/Achieving Styles Model, it was wonderful to see the lights in their eyes when they reflected on their own leadership styles and learned how they could use individual styles to improve teamwork.