I’ve talked in multiple blogs about the different aspects of building a successful association: The 5 Keys to Association Success, Leveling Up Your Member Engagement, Tap Into the Power of Processes for Your Business and Association, among others. These articles share important tools and techniques that I’ve developed over decades of coaching associations—tools and techniques you can implement to see a difference in how effectively your association gains, engages, and retains the kind of active members it needs to thrive.
Today I want to talk about something that makes all of these tools and techniques easier to implement and more powerful: culture.
We can think of culture as the personality of an organization: It is positive or negative, welcoming or standoffish, collaborative or territorial. In an association, culture is especially important. As an employee of a business with a bad culture, you might stay because you’re paid well, you need the benefits or you like the work you’re doing. Because members of an association are paying dues to be there and not being paid for any volunteer work they might do, they’re much less likely to stick around if they don’t like the feel of things—even if they’re otherwise getting value out of the membership.
The good news is that as a leader in your association—whether you’re the executive director, a board member, a committee chair or even just taking the lead in organizing a meeting—you have a lot of influence over your association’s culture. The even better news is that it is the nature of culture to spread. Whatever’s at the heart of your association, whatever attitude you and your leaders live, that’s what your members will experience and reflect back to you. When you cultivate a healthy culture, it resonates through your entire organization, building on itself and growing ever stronger.
But how do you create that kind of culture? We’ve all experienced bad cultures that run us down and great cultures that energize us. We know a good culture when we see one, but how do we take the culture we currently have—whether it’s not great or not as great as it could be—and transform it into a culture that is truly positive and empowering for everyone? Culture is so nebulous, after all. Surely there aren’t any concrete, easy-to-implement tools and techniques out there to impact culture.
Of course there are! In this blog, we’ll cover three of the most concrete and easiest to implement: Caring Calls, monthly mentoring meetings and self-care.
The #1 Most Important Thing You Can Do: Caring Calls
If you do only one thing to nurture a culture of connection for your association, please let it be this: Make Caring Calls. Caring Calls are, hands down, the #1 most important thing you can do to strengthen a good culture or fix a struggling one.
What are Caring Calls, and why are they so important?
Think about the last time someone called you out of the blue, just to check in. It’s such a great feeling, isn’t it? That’s because it’s a Caring Call: a call whose entire point is to say, “Thank you,” or “I appreciate you,” or “How are you doing? No, really, how are you doing?” Caring Calls are personal. They’re not about anything but the person on the other end.
I say Caring Calls are personal, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them in a professional setting. The fact is, professional relationships shouldn’t be all business. If the only time we call, email or text is to say, “Where’s that report?” or “Why isn’t such-and-such done?”, we’re missing a great opportunity. When we’re only focused on getting things done, we can become so checklist- and task-oriented that we forget that it’s not checklists and tasks that get the work done. It’s people, and people are motivated to help people they care about.
That’s why we get that feeling of warmth and gratitude when someone takes the time to say, “Thank you,” or “I appreciate you,” or “How are you doing? No, really, how are you doing?” That warmth and gratitude is what it feels like to have someone invested in your happiness and success. When you feel that someone is invested in you, you want to be invested in them right back. That’s why building genuine relationships is the most vital part of networking—and the most vital part of any organization’s culture.
This is what’s so remarkable about Caring Calls: Making them is something we do for someone else. When you make them, you are completely focused on what you can do to make another person’s day or week better. Yet they also have a positive impact on you. You get your own warm fuzzies for making someone’s day, and you’re building a relationship that benefits you both. When you start making Caring Calls on a regular basis, you’ll find yourself more rarely needing to say, “Where’s that report?” or “Why isn’t such-andsuch done?” That’s because when you invest in another person’s happiness and success, they’ll invest in your happiness and success in return, in part by doing better work for you.
Who do you make Caring Calls to?
Everyone! I don’t mean you personally have to make Caring Calls to every single member of your organization; that’s not feasible. It’s like a phone tree from back in elementary school: The person at the top of the phone tree calls a layer of people beneath them, and each of those people call the people in the next layer, and so on, until every one’s gotten the call about the snow day or the special assembly. If you’re an executive director, you make Caring Calls to your board members. They make them to their committee chairs, and the committee chairs make them to the members of their committees.
How do you make Caring Calls?
There’s just one rule for making Caring Calls: no business. You’re not checking on that report or seeing how planning for the membership drive is going. You’re reaching out to see how someone is doing personally.
Here are a few questions to help you get started:
- How are you doing? No, really. How are you doing?
- Did you do anything fun last weekend?
- What’s the most interesting thing you’ve read or watched lately?
If you know about the person’s hobbies or family, ask about them:
- It’s been raining a lot lately; how’s that affecting your flying lessons?
- This is your son’s first year of college, right? How’s he settling in? How are you doing with him being away?
- How did that big anniversary trip with your wife go?
Don’t shy away from the hard stuff: If you know someone well enough to know that their mom has been having health issues or that they’re healing from an injury, it’s okay to ask about those things. That’s what people who care do.
Finally, the #1 most important question you can ask on a Caring Call is: Is there anything I can do for you?
That’s it! I encourage you to get started today by making just one call. I think you'll be amazed at how you can really make someone’s day with just a phone call, and what a positive impact it will have on the culture of your association.
Pro Tip: It’s totally normal for Caring Calls to feel awkward at first. Frontload your list with a couple of people you’re most comfortable with or who you know a little better than others.
By the way, I’ve got a great one-sheet on Caring Calls.
Holding Monthly Mentoring Meetings
Caring Calls are a personal investment that you make in your leaders and members to develop an overall culture of connection and support for your association. You’ll see the result in the excitement and motivation that people bring to the work they do for your association. The next step is to make sure they have the skills, tools and support they need to really rock the work you’ve delegated to them.
I like to joke that people think there are three steps to delegating:
- Giving the work to someone.
- Getting mad.
- Taking the work back.
It’s only kind of a joke, though, isn’t it? So often, we wait until we’re completely overloaded to start delegating; then we don’t have the time or energy to do more than wish, hope and pray the work gets done right. The solution is monthly mentoring meetings: regular, scheduled touchpoints where you and your leaders sit down and talk about how work is going. The agenda is simple; it consists of just five questions:
- What successes have you had since our last meeting?
- What would you like to accomplish next?
- What are the next three steps you need to take to accomplish each of those things?
- What challenges do you have that you need help with?
- What resources (equipment, money, volunteers, knowledge) do you need to be successful?
At the end of the meeting, lay out what actions you’ll take to make sure the person you’re delegating to has the resources and support they need to meet their challenges and accomplish their goals. Then follow through! Don’t forget to set a date for your next meeting; it’s always easier to get something on the calendar a month in advance, than scramble to find time days before it’s time to meet again.
Pro Tip: Starting and ending the meeting on a positive note gives you both momentum for your next steps, even if those next steps are challenging. By celebrating successes upfront, you show your appreciation for your delegee’s hard work and your confidence in them. Assuring them at the end of the meeting that you have their back gives them confidence that they have what it takes to meet any challenge.
One last note: The most important thing to remember about mentoring meetings is that—like Caring Calls—they aren’t about you. They’re about empowering and supporting the person you’re delegating to so that they can be awesome at their job. And just like with Caring Calls, the outcome is beneficial for you both.
Taking Care of Yourself
So far, we’ve talked about taking care of other people through Caring Calls and monthly mentoring meetings. But remember what the flight attendant says every time you get on a plane: In the event of an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on first.
That goes for life, too. If you’re not taking care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone else. If you’re overloaded, overworked and overstressed, the people around you will be, too. So first things first: Take care of yourself. For actionable advice about doing that, please listen to my podcast Getting Assistance for Your Association and check out my blogs Take the Recharge Challenge and The Recharge Challenge Revisited on how to start taking care of yourself.
Pro Tip: A lot of us aren’t very good at putting ourselves first, so let me point out that self-care isn’t onesided: In addition to having more energy, more time and more passion for the things that matter, you’ll also—without any extra effort—be a role model for those around you. You’ll be living proof that being a leader doesn’t have to mean being overworked, and that will inspire more people to become more deeply involved in your association. That, in turn, takes even more off your plate.
So, please, start today. Talk a walk. Have coffee with a friend. Watch the sunset. Do something just for you.
Bringing It All Together to Create a Culture of Connection for Your Association
The verb associate means to connect, and that’s what our associations are all about: connecting our members with business leads, with education, with a network and with each other. That connection doesn’t appear by magic; we create it by fostering a culture of connection. The top three ways you can do that are by making Caring Calls, holding monthly mentoring meetings and taking care of yourself.
- Caring Calls are the #1 thing you can do to cultivate the kind of vibrant, supportive culture that your association needs in order to grow and thrive. That's because when people know that you care about them, they care more about you, your organization and the work you've asked them to do.
- Monthly mentoring meetings ensure that your leaders and volunteers have the skills, tools and support they need to get their work done more effectively and efficiently.
- Taking care of yourself makes you healthier and happier. It gives you the energy and space to be excited about your work again—and it models for others how great it can be to get involved.
Are you ready to get started? Decide who you’re going to make your first Caring Call to, set up one mentoring meeting and take a few minutes to do something for yourself. I know it can be intimidating, taking those first steps, so maybe the thing you do for yourself today is getting some help getting started. Please
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