You are called to serve others with passion. This is true regardless of your job title. Many of us do this serving through a staff or cadre of volunteers whom we are charged with overseeing. Those people need you to be at your best as a leader to help lead them to their highest levels of effectiveness. Here is a challenge to give to your staff to COF.
CAPACITY- produce with excellence at a high rate.
1. Know your yearly goals, have them posted and make sure that is where most of your work is heading. I want to know your goals and how you are progressing towards them that week with specific actions.
2. Don’t get sucked into La-La Land. If you work on a computer, a funny youtube video is only one click away, and then another, and another.
3. Have accountability for your time. Know I will come check on you at times, asking what are you working on. It keeps us all honest. However, if I have to babysit you, you won’t be here long. Also, we all do a time audit (free tool) at least three times per year.
OWN- your responsibilities handling them like would if your whole area were its own small business.
1. Be an initiator. If an webpage is out of date or we need to recruit new talent, don’t make me be the one coming and saying, “When are we getting the new content up? What is our recruitment strategy?” If you are stuck, come to me and say, “We have an web event ending, what is the most important next event?” or “Here is my recruitment strategy; does this work for you?”
2. Be an innovator. If you are over the web area, come to me saying, “Here are the newest trends; we want to attempt this?” Don’t get trapped in maintenance mode, it will kill us. If I am the one coming to you for innovations constantly, we are in trouble.
FINISH-make sure you are hitting deadlines and have the right polish.
1. Hit deadlines. Never surprise me with a “woops.” If we are going to miss a deadline, I want to know why and by how much so I can provide you ideas to get us there on time.
2. No sloppiness. Don’t make me ask, “Why was it okay with you that such a poor quality of product happened?” Spend the last 10% of energy to make sure it has the polish that it needs to communicate. We can always disagree over the concept of something initially. Once me make a decision to go in a direction, make sure we are clearing the bar before something gets sung, hung, displayed, or executed. It is usually a lack of effort or fatigue in final stages that makes the concept sloppy or well executed.
If people are missing the marks of COF-ing, you must ask them, “What is your passion?” If it is not in the area they are in, they need to move laterally or move on so someone else who COFs with passion can step into their role.
