We’re volunteering to lead a neighborhood team for the Obama Campaign for Change (www.barackobama.com). Often the work that needs to get done in political campaigns doesn’t seem to fit under the rubric of “Collaboration” . The work often seems like grunt work — making phone calls, knocking on doors, getting voters registered, etc. However, we think that if we approach this with a “Collaborative Frame of Mind” (which by the way the campaign staff is encouraging) and not with a “hierarchical” frame of mind we will be more successful with the volunteers.
We have an inital one hour meeting with potential team members planned for this week. What we plan to do at that meeting is build on the Obama Campaign for Change guiding principles that are being taught to all campaign workers: Respecting + Empowering + Including. All those who are working on the campaign are being taught these guiding principles. We’ll communicate them to the neighborhood volunteers as well. Then becauseTrust is so important to all team efforts, and since we haven’t worked with 99% of these volunteers, we intend to build “quick trust” by stating the expectations for team members up front in the form of the following guiding actions:
- Connection: Being with other(s) (Presence)
- Community: Being together for a common purpose
- Collaboration: Doing for a common purpose
- Commitment: Staying together
- Contribution: Sharing time & talent
These guiding actions come out of our many years of working with both volunteer and non-volunteer teams. By articulating the specific guiding actions of Being, Doing, Staying and Sharing with the end result of these actions being Connection, Community, Collaboration, Commitment and Contribution we believe that the team members will have a clearer understanding of what is expected.
We’ll let you know how the volunteer team members take to the guiding principles and the guiding actions; and whether trust was established more quickly by making these statement. Ideally, if we had the time, we would work with the team on establishing the team expectations.
What do you think of the guiding principles and guiding actions?
