Narrow Boat Trust - where are you?

[Guest]

<lust>

 

Please - you are not my type.....

[RLWP]

Please - you are not my type.....

 

Not you, you chump. Your pile of BMC pornography, that's another thing altogether

[Guest]

Not you, you chump. Your pile of BMC pornography, that's another thing altogether

 

Thank god for that, big boy....

[sociable_hermit]

Yeah, quite sure.

 

What you said was that it's impossible to introduce discipline without wages. That's rubbish. If you have a team of dedicated volunteers they will work all the hours god sends (possibly too many for their own good) and they will also recognise the need for responsibility and standards of behaviour and workmanship. Indeed these things help build a good working team because volunteers like something to aim for. They will also recognise the need for a reasonable disciplinary process, because their primary motives are 1. the furtherment of the society they work for, and 2. the personal desire to do a good job. People who sabotage the job from within go against both those principles, so they aren't very popular.

 

Refusing to join an organisation in the first place is a different matter. You can't discipline someone who doesn't work for you. Why would you want to, anyway? If they don't work for you, they don't work for you.

 

Some voluntary organisations deliberately make the first stages of volunteering the hardest, just to test whether the new volunteers are serious or not. It's also a way of showing volunteers that, although they work for free, there are still some rules which have to be obeyed. However there is a distinct tolerance level for this. Volunteers will accept rules where there is a clear need for them, and also a pay-off ("if I behave myself, I will get to do x"). In that respect it's a form of social contract:

let me Wiki that for you

 

If you don't want to volunteer, you don't want to volunteer, and that's that. But if you do volunteer then you do so knowing that certain standards of conduct etc. will be expected of you, same as they are in a paid job. The difference is that you want to keep coming back to work because you find the work / challenge / social life / responsibility rewarding, rather than the pay.

 

Voluntary organisations that don't treat their staff with respect will end up not getting anywhere near the best out of them. But being too soft can be as bad as being too severe. No-one likes being shouted at or picked on, but no-one likes being ignored or undervalued either. A sense of pride and professionalism is essential in creating good teams, and this does involve an element of structure and discipline.

 

P.S. Tea??

 

I'm on Sneck Lifter, if you fancy one...

[Natalie Graham]

Oh I agree wholeheartedly.

 

 

Are you sure? - did you read the whole of Natalie's post completely??

 

 

Yeah, quite sure.

 

I'm not.

[sociable_hermit]

I am.

 

Having a reasonable disciplinary process within an organisation, and applying it to volunteer members where appropriate, is entirely different to the initial recruitment process.

 

If people don't like the way a club or society operates and decide not to join, that might be for the best. If they did join and then stirred up lots of trouble, the ultimate disciplinary action would be to ban them, so effectively they've just taken a short cut through that entire process by simply not joining in the first place. If your personal aims and objectives don't line up with an organisation, then chances are it isn't the one for you.

 

It's only an issue if volunteers are in short supply, and more people walk away than join. That could be because the rules are too strict and inflexible (the uniform thing, for example). On the other hand it could be that they're not strict enough, and you have lots of bored, dissatisfied volunteers within the ranks. Both situations are equally bad for a voluntary organisation, and both require organisational change.

 

The key thing I have been disputing all along is this idea that volunteers don't respond well to rules. If the rules are reasonable and can be justified, they can actually help volunteers to develop, because they have targets to achieve and responsibilities to take on, and so forth. Being committed to an organisation means adopting their rules, and challenging them in a reasonable manner if that does ever become necessary, rather than throwing one's toys out of the pram at the least provocation.

 

You can't give non-membership as evidence of non-obeyance of rules. Why would a non-member obey the rules of a club they don't belong to? And if they don't belong to your club, why would you care anyway? Recruitment from outside and obeyance of rules on the inside are two separate issues.

[Guest]

[sociable_hermit]

That's nice.

 

Incidentally, you don't pay your dog, do you? So why does he stick around, even though you impose rules?

 

Is it the fringe benefits (food, warm bed), the job satisfaction (fetching sticks, shredding junk mail, guarding the car) or the top quality leadership and friendliness from your good self?

 

Chances are it's all three.

 

Take away the rules and the leadership and I guarantee that in the short term he'll have a whale of a time, but in the long run he'll be a confused, lonely and unhappy dog. He might even wander off entirely.

 

Nuff said?

[Guest]

Nuff said?

 

Yup -

 

apart from the fact that the point I was actually making was you are like a dog with a bone....

Edited July 27, 2010 by NB No Deadlines

[sociable_hermit]

Thanks.

 

I'm more interested in discussing things, though, rather than gnawing stuff.

 

It amazes me sometimes how difficult it is to explain things that should be simple.

 

Anyway I'm off to bed now, once I've buried my keyboard in the back garden...

[Natalie Graham]

I'm not.

 

 

I am.

 

Hmm. it seems that you agree with me disagreeing with you. How odd.

[twbm]

Just popping my head round the metaphorical door to point out that everyone else has gone. Could you put the chairs back against the wall and turn the lights out when you've finished. Thanks very much.

[sociable_hermit]

Hmmm.... I dunno....

 

Hmm. it seems that you agree with me disagreeing with you. How odd.

 

You're not disagreeing with me, that's why! You may think you are, but I'm not sure why.

 

The origins of this off-topic discussion, about 8 pages ago, was the assumption that you can't expect too much of volunteers (principally NBT volunteers) because they're volunteers so you can't set rules or have disciplinary procedures for them.

 

You can, though. It happens all the time.

 

What you're saying is that the standards adopted by one particular group put you off volunteering with them.

 

Yes, that happens too.

 

The two things aren't the same, though.

 

The fact that you felt discouraged from joining does not somehow mean that it's impossible to have well-trained and disciplined volunteers working to high standards within an organisation. It is. The fact that you chose not to volunteer somewhere doesn't disprove this. In fact in a way it proves they DID have rules in place: ones that you objected to. But presumably others choose to accept them and volunteer there? That's the "social contract" element I mentioned before. When you join a group you agree to abide by their rules, because you want to do the work and also because, hopefully, you can see the value of those T&Cs in running the show. If you don't agree, you don't join. You might choose to join another group with values more closely attuned to your own. You might take up golf or drinking or become addicted to daytime TV, I dunno, it doesn't matter. But if you do join a voluntary organisation, you accept their rules when you do so, and work within them thereafter.

 

There are many factors involved in managing volunteers, some of which have been discussed here. Establishing the right rules, standards and managerial attitudes is essential in getting the best from people, paid or unpaid. With voluntary organisations it's also essential to get the balance right in order to recruit and retain staff, that's true. But that DOESN'T mean that volunteers cannot be managed effectively, for their own benefit and the benefit of the group / trust / society they're working for.

 

I really don't see why this is so hard to understand.

[Guest]

Just popping my head round the metaphorical door to point out that everyone else has gone. Could you put the chairs back against the wall and turn the lights out when you've finished. Thanks very much.

 

Well I did but somebody's crept baclk in and turned the bloody lights on again...

[Natalie Graham]

Hmmm.... I dunno....

 

 

 

You're not disagreeing with me, that's why! You may think you are, but I'm not sure why.

 

I disagree.

[alan_fincher]

Meanwhile as Barry said and as I predicted, the new liverly is attracting a lot of positive comments. This is the best one I have in my archive taken by Trevor in July just before the run:-

Well,

 

I saw Nuneaton and Brighton for the first time over the last few days - they were tied up below Grove Lock near Leighton Buzzard.

 

I have to say they look massively smartened up over previous years.

 

This is us passing them, also in our new paint job.

 

It looks like NBT have an excellent choice in colour scheme, but I simply can't imagine where they got their inspiration!

 

[carlt]

Looks a bit of a tight squeeze, through there.

[twbm]

Looks a bit of a tight squeeze, through there.

 

Enough already!

 

Colours mostly inspired by Johnstones colour chart and Timothy Taylors.

[matty40s]

Enough already!

 

Colours mostly inspired by Johnstones colour chart and Timothy Taylors.

 

 

In which order??