Energize Book Blog

The third and fully revised edition of From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement has just been sent to the printer! It’ll be available for sale in March. Until then, here’s another excerpt to whet your interest. It introduces an idea new to the 3rd edition: for your volunteer program to sail smoothly, you need to get middle managers on board.

Middle Managers Are Key

Every decision must be implemented across and down the organizational ladder, relying along the way on the buy-in of middle managers: branch or affiliate directors, department heads, unit supervisors, and others for whom volunteers become a factor in their teams’ effectiveness. These key people convey overt and subtle messages about expectations and can become an obstacle to effective volunteer involvement by not encouraging their team members’ attention to volunteers. In the worst cases, this can amount to sabotage.

Are your middle managers supportive of or resistant to volunteer involvement? Do they understand their “once removed” volunteer support role? Do they have the skills necessary to help their direct reports develop volunteers for the greatest impact?

Middle managers may feel that volunteers drain staff time from priority work. Because these supervisors evaluate employee performance, they have substantial influence over how staff  in their units approach all their responsibilities.  They can be great allies or real obstacles to success. Here’s why:

• Middle managers set the tone for how things are done in their corner of the organization. Their personal beliefs and attitudes about volunteers will shape the way staff and volunteer teamwork is supported (or undercut).
• Because middle managers train new employees to do their jobs properly and evaluate employee work performance throughout the year, they substantially affect how their staff members approach any area of responsibility, including volunteers. Do they have the vision and expertise to establish expectations and standards for working with community members?
• They have the authority to approve work assignments created for volunteers by the staff. So, if a middle manager’s image of volunteers is that they are mainly nice but not very skilled, staff in that unit will design volunteer positions with low expectations (and self-fulfilling prophecy will produce volunteers who don’t care to be challenged). Conversely, middle managers who raise the bar on what volunteers are asked to do will help an organization to attract more highly qualified people.
• Middle managers set the agenda for staff meetings and individual supervision sessions. Do they regularly make time to focus on volunteer involvement in their department, unit, or branch? The inclusion or absence of volunteer-related issues on the agenda sends a message,  is it that volunteers matter or don’t?

Employees can infer from their supervisors that spending time with volunteers is a diversion from their “real” job, to be done (if they wish) only after other, more important work is completed. Or supervisors can visibly recognize and reward staff who help volunteers to do well!

The point, as always, is not to assume that middle managers are on board with what it takes to support those who are expected to supervise volunteers. Take time to discover what this layer of management really thinks and win their enthusiasm for volunteer involvement. Otherwise, frontline staff will be caught in the middle, expected by top executives to put effort into partnering with volunteers, but undercut at the unit or branch level by the person most influential to that employee’s job assessment.

Include middle managers in planning sessions, training, and evaluation of the volunteer program so that they feel ownership of volunteer participation in their unit or department. Make sure that they, too, receive personal recognition for their efforts. They need to see that volunteers help their department to “shine” and are contributing to, not diverting from, accomplishing goals.