Everyday there is an opportunity for leaders of volunteers to develop and improve their leadership capabilities and this doesn’t necessarily need to involve expensive training, specialist skills or knowledge. By simply taking the time to reflect and evaluate our experiences, behaviour and actions we can have a profound impact on our personal growth and professional outcomes.

Benefits of Practicing Reflection

Practicing reflection can strengthen emotional intelligence by increasing self-awareness and self-regulation. Through regular reflection, a leader of volunteers may be able to facilitate continuous improvement and problem solving which are vital components to increasing the sustainability of your volunteer program.  From a personal perspective, it can help increase confidence, productivity and job satisfaction.

Questions to Reflect on

Relative to your recent work experiences, deliverables or personal interactions, some important questions you may wish to reflect on include:

• What worked well?
• What could I improve?
• What do I want to change?
• What did I learn?
• Did I achieve the goals I set out to? 

Opportunities for Reflection

The role of a leader of volunteers is typically very busy.  So, how do we find the time to apply reflection into our busy day? Reflection doesn’t need to be a lengthy process and it can be built into your current processes so that it becomes a natural every day action. Creating reflection checklists for standard work can assist with making this effective and uncomplicated.

It is important to regularly engage with your volunteers and request feedback in person or via a survey on their experiences. In addition to this engagement, opportunities to consider building reflection into include:

• Conflict resolution/difficult conversations: Following a difficult conversation with a volunteer it is valuable to pause and reflect on how the conversation transpired. Were you adequately prepared prior to the conversation and did you have all the necessary information? Were you happy with how you managed your own emotions during the conversation? Did you pay attention to non-verbals and actively listen to the volunteer? Was the issue resolved and are you happy with the final outcome of the meeting?
• Recruitment: At the completion of each volunteer recruitment intake, reflect on the success and impact of the intake. Were the number of volunteers recruited adequate for your program’s needs? Do the volunteers recruited have the appropriate skills, experience, availability and attributes required for the role? What recruitment avenues did you utilise and was the return on investment satisfactory? Was the content provided to applicants appropriate and informative?
• Reward and Recognition: As part of each reward and recognition event/activity reflect on the outcomes. What lessons can be learnt and taken on board for your next event/activity? Did the event run smoothly? Do you need to adjust future run sheets? Was the venue successful? Were the volunteers and staff satisfied? Was there adequate food, activities, opportunities for volunteers to connect? If you provided gifts or service recognition was it appropriate?
• Training: Following the delivery of volunteer training it can be helpful to reflect on whether the training outcomes were achieved or not. Did the training flow nicely or do you need to make some adjustments? Was the content structured and sequenced to promote effective learning? Did the delivery mode and resources cater to different learning styles? Was there adequate opportunities for the volunteers to connect with their peers and to ask questions? Were the activities interesting, relevant and appropriate?
• Projects: This applies to specific volunteer projects e.g. skills-based projects, corporate volunteering or a project you have undertaken yourself. Were the project objectives met? Were the expected time frames adequate? Were any resources or costs involved sufficient?

 

Building reflection into our role of leading and engaging volunteers can bring enormous personal and professional benefits. We can learn from our experiences and be brave in questioning ourselves and in doing so grow our ability to learn and improve. Reflection can be an activity you commit to yourself or one in which you engage a mentor to guide you through. Either way it is important to pause to reflect on your successes and actively re-frame mistakes as learning opportunities.

Reflection is crucial for the continuous improvement of your organisations engagement with volunteers. Do you apply reflection to your role? Please share how you build this into your daily work life and any questions or situations which you have found useful to reflect on.