By Tim Sloan
Particularly when you’re running a larger officials association, it’s a great idea to get some of your membership working on committees to support your mandate. Among the many plusses is that you can get people involved with certain projects who have a passion for them. Motivation is important to most success. If recruitment is a big deal, for instance, then there is no better person to choose than someone who doesn’t mind doing the spade work to give that initiative some legs. You can probably also find some people who want to help with assessments, training and mentoring — even with putting together the banquet, to name a few.
At this point, you might be muttering something about “wanting something done right” and “doing it yourself,” which might work out just fine for you, but is a tad short-sighted. Eating your own seed corn is always a temptation because it’s so tasty, but it has its drawbacks in the long run. One problem is that you, regardless of the quality of your own work, deepen the ruts in your buggy path by setting yourself up to do all the work, all the time. That has several drawbacks: First, your programs might go stale through your self-imposed inbreeding; a disenfranchised membership is a fractious membership. Second, some people are like you and want to do the work and you would be well-advised to indulge them. If you hold them off, they might get bored or feel excluded and set off in search of greener pastures. Another thing to think about is that some of your membership might be executive material but you will never be sure unless you try them out on a challenge; if you don’t put them on a committee, how will you and they both know if they have the right stuff to follow in your footsteps someday?
But the biggest kicker might be that, perhaps — just maybe, they can do a better job than you. Great leaders don’t necessarily know how to do everything well — but they know how to find someone who does. In my own little world, I realize that my perception of reality is nested in my own skill set, comfort zone and philosophy. If it were up to me, for example, Chez Big Bucks would be where we’d have the banquet every year. They have a ribeye to die for and a Caesar salad that purrs all the way down … but it may not be for everybody’s budget. I’ve found there’s always somebody within the organization who knows someplace where the meat is clearly bovine in origin, that has comfortable surroundings and can pamper everyone for $10.75 a plate. When you look out over that sea of humanity in your meetings, if you don’t see experts beaming back at you, you’re losing touch with the membership. Use them.
OK, how? It’s always a good idea to appoint people to committees for a very short term and to avoid putting them through elections to qualify. The latter is important because your “experts” may be the types who have neither the desire nor proclivity to kiss babies and get themselves elected. You probably have many members with neither the time nor the patience for running for office, but who would cheerfully make the rounds to the area high schools to lay hands on some new membership material. Put succinctly, more people come out of the woodwork to perform a specific task for which they were selected than want to be elected to do a number of things, some of them not as fun. As for the first part of the equation—giving them short-term mandates — it’s the simplest way of dealing with the duds you sometimes encounter. If a person does a good job, keep asking him or her back. If they don’t, circle their exit date on the calendar.
Once your committee people are selected, there are a few things to remember to do. First, give them a clear set of expectations for their role: “Find new members,” doesn’t cut it because you’re being as vague as you are apparently indifferent. “Find us 10 new members by the end of baseball season and spend no more than $300 out of our general fund to do it,” makes everyone begin feeling like part of the solution. Second, give them some oversight. Insinuate yourself into their meetings somehow and keep up with what they’re doing as they go along. If they’re on the right path, you come off as offering encouragement and support. If they’re getting bogged down, off-base or doing little of anything, then you can step in and become more assertive before all is wasted. A great leader knows what’s going on as opposed to thinking he or she knows what’s going on. Third is to give every idea a committee has 15 minutes of life. Avoid the temptation to reject the ideas and proposals they might hit you with on first impression. Reward the time they’ve invested in the job you assigned them and let them sell you on what they’ve come up with. If you use your verbal judo skills properly, you will either open up to their suggestion or find a way to get them to talk themselves out of bad ideas, if they really are. Sometimes leadership is nothing simpler than getting people to think for the organization rather than themselves.
Managing programs and committees is a big part of the executive’s job in running a successful officiating organization. Get the people who will do the best job into the right roles and then share ownership of their efforts and achievements with the entire organization for best results.
Tim Sloan, Davenport, Iowa, is a high school football, basketball and volleyball official, and a former college football and soccer official.
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