Sacred Service: Volunteers Create Value

Volunteers in nonprofit organizations need to be heard and valued. Here are five things you can do to inspire and support your sacred servers:

1. Succession leadership is necessary for your lead volunteers. Volunteers who are in leadership positions must not be so important to the organization that if they leave, the organization is at a loss. Lead volunteers should assist the organization with grooming the next leader. Succession planning is a must!

2. Volunteers should not be overused so that they become burned out. New volunteers bring a fresh sort of excitement and commitment to the organization. This commitment should be used justly and evenly. Coordinating volunteers and staff is critical for the organizational responsibilities – and to sustain the momentum of your volunteer base.

3. Nonprofit organizations should have job descriptions for their volunteers. In my organization, I wrote my own volunteer job description. Who better knows the volunteer job they do? As always, job descriptions should align with the organization’s mission, and be simple and clear.

4. Create value around sacred service. The current rate for a volunteer is $22.00 per hour. Indeed, volunteers bring a wealth of assistance to organizations that it would not have otherwise. Organizations should take stock in the immense value of volunteers and continually create and acknowledge the value of their volunteers.

5. Leaders in organization can create training manuals for volunteers based on the various roles available within an organization. But, training can also be created from the questions that volunteers ask on a daily or weekly basis. A great way to create a training manual for volunteers is to collect their questions and use them as a foundation for the volunteer manual.

Sacred service is a value creating, empowering act. It creates long-term sustainable wealth for nonprofit organizations. Happy volunteering!

Theory U: What is Presencing?

Class Post. Enjoy!

What is presencing? How might presencing help leaders operate from the future seeking to emerge, instead of learning from the past?

Presencing is the act of connecting to the source of inspiration and will. It allows for the individual or group to go to the place of silence and allow the inner knowing to emerge. Leaders who practice the art of presencing are creating the proper mental environment conducive to creativity and profound insight while sensing the hidden sources of idea generation (MIT Sloan School of Management, 2005).

Scharmer (2009) defined presencing as,

Requires the tuning of three instruments: the open mind, the open heart, and the open will. This opening process is not passive but an active “sensing” together as a group. While an open heart allows us to see a situation from the whole, the open will enables us to begin to act from the emerging whole. Presencing is the capacity to connect to the deepest source of self and will allows the future to emerge from the whole rather than from a smaller part or special interest group (p. 62).

Presencing may help leaders operate from the future that is seeking to emerge, instead of learning from the past through the shifting structure of attention (Scharmer, 2009). That is, for leaders to shift from the inner place from which they operate. This shift can be done individually or collectively (Scharmer, 2009). Listening is a big part of the presencing dynamic. The four types of listening include downloading, factual listening, empathetic listening, and generative listening (Scharmer, 2009). At the presencing level, generative listening involves focus on getting the old self out of the way through clearing an open space for the emerging, authentic self (Scharmer, 2009). This process creates a subtle yet powerful change in the individual. Scharmer (2009) calls it “grace or communing” (p. 13) with the inner (deeper) source in the expereince called Source dimension (Scharmer, 2009).

Barely Civilized (2012) posited that presencing is sort of a mash-up of the Buddhist be here now practice of being present and a Bohmian-dialog-thinking-together kind of awareness that is broader than oneself and is sensing the future as it is emerging in the ‘space’ between us. In Theory U, the three levels of organizational change arev structure, process, and thought. If one can change the structure of the organization without changing the processes, the change will not be effective. If one can help to change the processes without changing thinking, and it will only be moderately effective. But if you can change thinking, and look to the future instead of the past, change can be profound (Barely Civilized, 2012). This teaching is similar to the Religious Science philosophy which says that “one’s thought creates one’s world” (Holmes, 1966).

References

Brown, E. (2005). Otto Scharmer:Theory-U: Presencing emerging futures.

           Retrieved from http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/newsbriefs-0605-

           scharmer.php 

Barely Civilized. (2012). What is Presencing? Retrieved from

           http://barelycivilized.net/2012/what-is-presencing/

Holmes, E. (1966). Science of mind: A philosophy, a faith, a way of life.

           New York, New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc.

Scharmer, O. (2009). Theory U: Leading from the future as it emerges. 

           San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.