Ep 18 - Successful Clubs - Talent

If you've been following along then you know that we are in the middle of a four-part series regarding what things a club can do to be successful as an organization.

In this episode, I talked about talent, and I know you're probably thinking about talent from an athlete's perspective, but no, this is about those that work in your organization.

So, I'm pulling this off of a worksheet that you can get on the www.yoursportsresource.com website if you go into Key Roles on the site then scroll down to Tools and you will see one that's titled Characteristics of Successful Clubs.

This is a checklist that you can go through and rate your organization and see how well you're doing what needs work, and where you've missed things right?

The Four Key Areas of a Successful Club for this episode are:

Number 1 -  do you have a board or leadership team that leads, manages, and empowers others to work efficiently and effectively.

Number 2 - coincides with this and that the board or leadership team needs to be composed of people who have experience and talent that enables the club to meet its goals and objectives.

Number 3 - do you have a strong focus and investment in the development of your volunteers and your coaches.

Number 4 - do have a strong recruitment pathway which really just kind of falls into place when you have a strong understanding of what you need and then you have it all documented, right?

This third part of being a successful club is how you seek out talent and how you ensure you set yourself up with talented people who have the skills you need and the capacity to deliver.

Resources:

www.yoursportsresource.com
Characteristics of a Successful Club

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Transcript

Introduction 00:00:00 

The is the Your Sports Resource Podcast, where each week you'll learn actionable strategies that you can implement, so the operations of your club, support your coaching staff and the direction of your organization. We are committed to excellence in youth sports leadership. Let's get started. 

00:00:26 

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Your Sports Resource Podcast. 

00:00:31 

If you've been following along then you know that we are in the middle of a four-part series regarding what things a club can do to be successful as an organization, not necessarily from an athlete's perspective, but from an organization's perspective. 

00:00:47 

I guess which means that you can be the best for your members and athletes as well, but I'm coming from a business perspective, okay. 

00:00:52 

So, Episode one, we talked about strategy in Episode two, we talked about performance. If you haven't listened to these please go back because it's about ensuring your foundational principles is correct and the way that you can be efficient and effective, so everybody is able to perform at their best. 

00:01:10 

So today we are going to talk about talent, and I know you're probably thinking about talent from an athlete perspective, but no, this is about those that work in and on your organization. 

00:01:24 

So, I'm pulling this off of a worksheet that you can get on the www.yoursportsresource.com website if you go into Key Roles on the site then scroll down to Tools and you will see one that's titled Characteristics of Successful Clubs. 

00:01:40 

This is a checklist that you can go through and rate your organization and see how well you're doing what needs work, where you've missed things right? 

00:01:50 

It's not an exercise to make you feel bad because no club is doing all of these things well, it's just a way for you to elevate what you're doing and to set a path. 

00:02:02 

Under talent you will see four areas and that is what I'm going to discuss in more depth today. 

00:02:09 

If you have listened to any of my podcasts or have attended any of my webinars, you've probably heard me say something like I want you to attract and hire the people you want, not just to you can get. 

00:02:22 

A big portion of that is adjusting your culture as an organization that people want to work with you, right? They want to come to you. 

00:02:30 

But the other side of that is what I'm going to discuss today, and I'm going to ask you to think about you, know truly what kind of people you want running your organization. 

00:02:43 

And by that, I mean what skills and what experiences do you need from people that would be the best for your club. Right, so again, not who you can settle for, but what skills do you need to make your organization great, okay. 

00:03:03 

First thinking it through allows you to recruit correctly, right? It puts the bar out there. It's your expectations instead of hey, we need a board member, right? It's a little bit more than that, okay. 

00:03:18 

This is how you get the people that you know, if you just ask for like hey, we just need a board member. We need more people on the board. That's how you end up in a position to where you just keep people who are going for the title instead of somebody who can actually add value. 

00:03:34 

So, you have to approach this with the mindset of what is best for you organization, not just what you can get or settle for, and you need to be okay with saying No to who doesn't measure up, okay that's a big key. Okay, so let's get into it because I think it will be easier to explain as I work through the four areas. 

00:03:58 

Number one is do you have a board or leadership team that leads, manages, and empowers others to work efficiently and effectively. 

00:04:08 

Now this one is loaded with so many things to consider, but first of all, do you have a board that knows how to lead, or do you have a leadership team that actually knows how to lead? 

00:04:18 

And by that, I mean do they set a direction and a pathway to get there? Not just a board or a leadership team that tosses out great ideas and then gets nowhere, okay, I'm talking about actual true leadership. One that sets the direction and leads pieces of work and seeks out those who have the skills and capacity to deliver. 

00:04:40 

Sometimes the board need to be those people who actually do the delivering, but they also have to have the outlook or the mindset to say hey, we need to find someone. Who has these skills so we can deliver. 

00:04:55 

It's a very different person than just someone who wants to raise their hand and wants to get into the doing right. It's from a little bit more projectionary leadership perspective. 

00:05:07 

I get hired by boards a lot more than I get hired by coaches and quite frankly boards they tend to wear me out. It doesn't mean to sound rude, but they really do want change. They want change, but they don't want to do the work to effect change, okay. 

00:05:26 

So, they don't even want to go the step of looking for people who have the skills and capacity to deliver because they just think it's hopeless. And what a horrible outlook and a horrible place to be. And I'm not saying that's every club that I work with. I do find apathy quite a bit. 

00:05:45 

Okay, so the very first part of having a leadership team or a board that wants to lead and set direction and make sure things get done is just, it's huge. You can't understate it whatsoever. 

00:05:58 

The secondary coincides with this and that the border leadership team is needs to be composed of people who have experience and talent that enables the club to meet their goals and objectives. 

00:06:11 

So, in performance, when you write the job description, it should be for the board as well. And don't be afraid to go after the right people, right? Quit settling for whoever you can get. 

00:06:23 

Go after who you need and don't settle for whoever just puts their hands up right behave as the business that you are. So again, recruit a board of people who have the experience that enables the club to reach their goals. 

00:06:38 

Depending on how your bylaws are written, it could depend on if you can have board members outside of your membership. Chances are you have someone in your membership who has the right experience you need, but you know sometimes that doesn't always mean they have the capacity. 

00:06:54 

So, they might have the right skills, but they don't have the time to dedicate to help you out. So that really doesn't do you any good, even if they have the skills. 

00:07:03 

So, whether you're allowed to buy your board or whether you need to finagle it as a consultant or somebody on a subcommittee, right? 

00:07:14 

Don't be afraid to go outside of your organization to find the people that you need, okay. You can tell your members, hey, do you know someone who knows how to do X? If so, give them our information please. We really need them to help us with this project. 

00:07:31 

And again, how you bring them on board if they can't be a board member, you know they can be a consultant. They can be part of a subcommittee. Doesn't really matter. 

00:07:40 

In the end, items one and two are about having the right people for the job. That means you need to know what those jobs are. They need to be well thought out and documented, and then you need to feel really comfortable about going after the right people, okay? 

00:08:01 

All right, I want to stop for a second and talk to you about our managed virtual services. As I work more and more with clubs, I keep getting asked. Hey, do you have someone who can make me a logo? I need help writing and formatting newsletters. Do you have somebody who could just do this or that it doesn't really matter, right? 

00:08:22 

And I usually pass that information on. Well, what I've decided to do is I've got a new program or work which is Managed Virtual Services. 

00:08:31 

So, for any number of things that you need done, come to us and what we'll do is we'll have a quick conversation, and we'll talk about what you need and what I can offer you. Almost everything that we're working on so far is as low as $15.00 an hour. 

00:08:46 

We can work on one-off projects, weekly projects, or monthly or long-term pieces of work just come to me and let me know. Let us know what you're needing. 

00:08:55 

I set this up so it could be flexible and allow you to complete tasks in efficient and affordable way, so you don't have to bring someone on full time or go out and find someone just to do one little piece of work, you can find more information at www.yoursportsresource.com/virtualservices There's an online form so you can fill it out and get going immediately. 

00:09:20 

Alright, let's jump back into the third item and that is to have a strong focus and investment in your development of your volunteers, your coaches, your athlete, and your officials. 

00:09:32 

This seems like it should be an easy thing to do, but so many clubs. I find don't really focus on their volunteers at all, which is unfortunate. 

00:09:45 

I mean, they may focus on the volunteers that work on competitions or meets. But there's so many other roles out there that you could have volunteers filling that if you gave it a little focus would just be seamless and amazing. 

00:10:03 

So, again, I think that more people would volunteer if they knew what was really expected from them. So, if you could put a little purposeful planning behind what those volunteers should be doing. I believe you will get the volunteers you're looking for it right? Because they really understand what's expected of. 

00:10:24 

It's really the unknown or the wishy-washy Ness that they don't want, and which is why they run away? Because that wishy-washy ends up being, you know, way more hours than they're willing to commit. 

00:10:36 

All right, the other side of that is that by not with your volunteers, by not having that formalized investment in your volunteers, they could go off in a completely different direction than you wanted, right? 

00:10:48 

So how are you investing your volunteers and your coaches, and your athletes and your officials is really important. They need to be made a priority. Think about them. Give them the tools to be successful, whatever that is. Support them, train them, remove roadblocks. 

00:11:04 

Let them know that you value them and their time. You value them as employees and build that culture. Then you're going to have people who are going to scramble to be part of your organization. 

00:11:17 

Investing your volunteers as much as you would in your staff. That means you might need to have several people paying attention to building this out, meaning you have someone over certain volunteers and someone else over officials and someone else over other areas. 

00:11:33 

Now obviously your head coach is going to be over your coaching staff and it's important for them to invest in their staff just as much as everything else. 

00:11:40 

But the operative word is investing in those who run your organization. Don't think of it just as one set of people. It covers various areas. It's volunteers as much as it is staff. It's staff as much as it is your officials. All of those areas need to be covered. 

00:12:00 

And the final in fourth item is to have a strong recruitment pathway which really just kind of falls into place when you have a strong understanding of what you need and then you have it all documented, right? 

00:12:13 

So that's whether you have a paid role or volunteer role. Then it becomes easier to open up that recruitment method. If you've done the work behind it, if you documented exactly what that role is. 

00:12:26 

So, what I mean by a strong recruitment pathway is you don't just look at your members for everything. 

00:12:33 

First, a setting the groundwork, what your expectations are. But that pathway is opening it up. Look past your Members, which is such a rich pool, right? But you have other pools that you can take from, right? 

00:12:49 

So, what about your past membership? Again, you should be curating your past membership list. Tell your members in your past members, hey if this job isn't for you, do you know someone? Can you tell them? 

00:13:01 

Go to your community, tell your stakeholders. Talk to anyone who will listen that you're recruiting for whatever role it is that you're recruiting for. 

00:13:10 

Don't just put it on your website or in your monthly newsletter. That’s why again, you end up with or partly why you end up with taking who you can get, okay. You haven't really actually gone after your recruitment to find who you need. 

00:13:30 

Okay, so this third area of being a successful club is how you seek out talent and how you ensure you set yourself up with talented people who have the skills you need and the capacity to deliver. 

00:13:43 

If you make talent of focus, this is what we're really move you out of having to take on whoever you can get. Does it mean it'll be easy? No. Does it mean that you're going to have to do a bit of work? Absolutely. 

00:13:58 

But again, this is a business, and you must consider it as one and treated as one instead of only thinking about the coaching of athletes, okay. In order to be an excellent club for athletes, you must look at how you run operationally. 

00:14:16 

Again, you can find this accompanying worksheet on www.yoursportsresource.com It's called Characteristics of a Successful Club. 

00:14:25 

Thank you for listening and please subscribe rate and review this podcast. 

00:14:28 

I truly appreciate your support and really hope that the works that we do at Your Sports Resource help you and other clubs reach successes in any shape that you classify success. 

00:14:42 

Thank you for spending time with me!