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Chapter 4

HOW DO I KEEP PEOPLE INVOLVED?

I an Peters had a dream—to bring the 1989 Canadian National Cycling Championships to Ft. McMurray, Alberta.

Ft. McMurray was not really a logical choice for the race. It’s a small town in northern Alberta, meaning it would be a long trip for any competitor. The local cycling club had never hosted a major race. Ian’s dream was a long shot. He knew it would take a lot of effort to win the bid for the championships and even more to keep people on board for all the planning that would be needed.

Despite these challenges, Ian and his team won the right to host the race. Now they had a new goal: To host the best National Cycling Championships ever.

The Ft. McMurray steering committee went to the 1988 race in Toronto to get a head start on their work. For the next year, the entire committee stayed deeply involved in planning and staging the race. No one left the group. They met regularly to stay on track with time lines. They got together informally in small groups to problem solve over coffee. They traded late night phone calls to celebrate successes and share frustrations.

In the end, they realized their vision. Riders, coaches, fans, and the national governing bodies hailed the Ft. McMurray race as the most successful ever.

Unfortunately, not all stories of involving others go as smoothly as Ian’s. It’s often frustrating after getting off to a solid start to see progress dissipate over time. Many people find it easier to brainstorm plans than to do the heavy lifting required to implement them. When work becomes hard or boring, it’s tough to keep people’s attention. Attendance slowly dips at committee working sessions. Or maybe people still show up for weekly meetings, but the mood becomes one of detachment rather than engagement. You find yourself longing for the debates and disagreements that peppered your earlier get-togethers.

Often the same few folks end up doing more than their fair share to get the job done. Well-intentioned teammates miss a conference call or two because of other pressing commitments. You end up as one of only two parents joining your child’s overnight end-of-year camping trip when you were positive five hands were raised when the teacher asked for volunteers during the Open House in September. The stories go on and on.

Sometimes these gaps in involvement mean you and others need to pick up the slack and work late or on weekends to get things done. In other situations, you may need to ratchet back your expectations on what you can accomplish. Another option is to concede and wave a white flag: A good idea never becomes reality because you can’t keep enough people involved to make it happen.

These bad stories look even worse when you begin calculating the up-front hours spent involving people when you could have dedicated that time to putting your shoulder to the wheel and getting the job done. You’ve made less progress by involving more people—a convincing case for the anti-involvement people.

This step is about making sure these scenarios aren’t part of your story of involving others. It’s about working with people in ways that are fun, engaging, and successful—about bridging the gap between making plans and achieving results.

When things are clicking in this step, people work from their strengths, excited to be part of the team. Plans are clear and progress gets made. No matter how busy they may be, people find time to contribute. Instead of shying away from tough challenges, they embrace them. The work draws people in. You don’t have to force them to participate—they want to stay involved.

How do you make this happen? The keys are:

• Remind people why they got involved in the first place.
• Keep the key people involved.
• Support people so they want to stay involved.
• Keep an open mind about who stays involved.
• Don’t worry if a few team members choose to opt out.

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Remind People Why They Got Involved in the First Place

Look for opportunities to remind people about the larger purpose of the work they’re doing. When you are buried in daily to do’s, it’s easy to lose the meaning of the work. To prevent this, help your team tap back into their original hopes and dreams. Talk with them about the progress being made toward your vision. Get back in touch with the enthusiasm you all felt when you first got started. It’s easy to stay involved when you are enthusiastic.

When people stay involved, an organization or community can build plans on a longer time frame. Freed from the burden of having to finish projects quickly, groups no longer have to “think small” when “thinking big” is what’s needed.

Here’s an example. The Performance Network was a small community theatre in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It produced a variety of plays on minimal budgets with amateur actors and operated out of a cramped warehouse with a pole in the middle of the seating area.

One day, the board and staff of the theatre decided it was time to think big. They put together a ten-year strategic plan to transform the theatre. During the next decade, through the ongoing work of scores of people who continually connected back to this original vision, the transformation they envisioned unfolded. Today The Performance Network has become the only professional theatre in Ann Arbor. Housed in a beautiful new play space, the company has won many regional awards for the quality of its productions, even earning national acclaim from playwrights and critics. These results could never have been achieved in the short term nor if people had not been reminded why they chose to get involved in the first place. The only way was through the sustained effort of many people over a long period of time.

That’s the power of keeping people involved.

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Keep the Key People Involved

Regularly reassess your needs for involving others in what you’re up to. Because certain people were helpful as you launched your efforts is no guarantee that they’re the right ones to help you complete them. How many times do people feel forced to sit through meetings when they have nothing to offer? In their minds, they have made their most valuable contributions but keep getting notices of the next meeting, keep receiving minutes from the last one. Well-intentioned invitations to keep these folks involved leave them feeling there is no way out of this never-ending cycle.

A surefire way to keep people involved over time is for them to do work that is needed. Involvement gets a bad name when it becomes involvement for involvement’s sake. When we’re doing work that matters, it’s easy to stay involved. When we’re contributing from our unique abilities, we stay engaged. Here’s a tool (Figure 4.1) you can use to make good decisions about whom to keep involved in your work.

When you continue involving the right people over time, you will make better decisions and get the work done faster. If you get stuck along the way, you can draw on their perspectives and it’ll be easier to come up with innovative solutions.

What do you do about those folks whose help you no longer need? First, pause and reflect on the value they’ve added to your efforts. What have you been able to accomplish because they chose to get involved? Get specific. People will appreciate hearing these details when you thank them for their contributions. Reframe what you might feel is an awkward situation of “dis-inviting” into a celebration. Set time aside and bring others together to publicly acknowledge those who have helped advance the work so far. Often at the same time we’re worrying about how to ask someone to no longer be involved, they’re wishing they had an elegant exit strategy in hand.

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FIGURE 4.1

THE KEEPING THE RIGHT PEOPLE INVOLVED TOOL

Ask yourself the following questions to get clear whom you need to keep involved in your work over time:

• What things do I still need to get done given where I am with this work right now?
• How many people do I need to complete each of these to do’s that are now on my list?
• What knowledge, skills, and experience will they need to get these jobs done well?
• Who is already involved that I need to keep involved?
• Who has been involved in the work so far that I don’t need to continue involving in the future?
• Who else do I need to recruit to join our team to finish the work?

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If you ever do find yourself with someone who wants to continue participating past the point of their being useful to the team, you need to be clear with them. Thank them and explain why you don’t believe they’ll be able to add value in the work ahead. If they can convince you otherwise, you have just recruited one very committed player for the future. If they can’t, stand firm and be prepared to carry on without them.

Support People So They Want to Stay Involved

The most important point to remember about the support you offer others is that they should experience it as supportive. You get no credit for anything else. People don’t want to stay involved in work where they don’t feel supported. The best way to find out what people will experience as supportive is to ask them. You probably won’t be able to respond to every request you receive. Don’t worry about that or shy away from asking because of it. For most folks it may be the first time anyone has asked them this question, so you’ll be getting a “kid in a candy store” answer. That’s okay. Identify a few key items on the list that you can provide immediately. Make a list of others you can go to work on. Also be honest early on and let people know anything that you see as out of reach. All of these strategies will help your team move forward. It will also help you earn your team’s trust and respect.

People are seldom provided the emotional support they need to stay involved with efforts over the longer haul. Work becomes a series of tasks to complete instead of something people have passion for and commitment to. You can make sure this does not happen to you by learning why people care about the work they are doing. Take time to talk together about what would happen if you fell short of the mark. What is it about this particular project or initiative that captures their imagination? Why do they believe they’re the right people to be doing this work? These questions start conversations, and conversations are good. They breathe life into the purpose, visions, and goals you developed in your planning.

Listen to what people say and, just as importantly, for what they aren’t saying. Speak your truth about your hopes and fears, and create a safe place for others to do the same. These dialogues will leave you more invested in each other and the work you are doing together.

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People also feel supported when we celebrate their accomplishments. Celebrations are often withheld until the end of a project or forgotten altogether. Don’t make this mistake. Plan a few interim parties. Take an afternoon off; pick up the tab for a team lunch; take everybody bowling or dancing. The more you surprise people with how you’re celebrating, the more they’ll want to stay involved with you and the work.

There is a teacher in the Ann Arbor, Michigan, school district who conducts class as if her students were attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the celebrated Harry Potter books. Each day is one celebration after another for the kids. Her students are so involved in their learning that they earned the highest scores for their age level on the annual statewide tests. Have fun pushing your organization’s boundaries in celebrating your team’s successes.

Keep an Open Mind About Who Stays Involved

People sometimes ask us what to do with troublemakers. This is a critical issue since the effective involver needs to manage the tension between keeping troublemakers involved and keeping those struggling with the troublemaker on board at the same time. The initial answer about what to do with troublemakers is, “Welcome them and treat them as your friends.” This means putting yourself in the troublemaker’s shoes and understanding why you interpret his behavior as troublesome.

The effective involver knows that troublemaking is in the eye of the beholder. Most people (unconsciously) judge their own behavior by different standards than they apply to others:

• “I am a realist, but you are cynical.”
• “I am providing needed information, but you talk too long.”
• “I stick to my principles, but you are obstinate.”

One result is the tendency to label others as troublemakers, even when what they do is not much different from what we would do if we were in their shoes. Instead, try to understand the world from their point of view. This means suspending your natural desire to convince the troublemaker of the rightness of your position and listening—really listening— to their point of view.

When you meet up with a troublemaker, start by giving the troublemaker the benefit of the doubt. If the troublemaker is a “real” troublemaker, there will be plenty of time to do what happens all too often: ignore them, appease them, punish them, or otherwise make them irrelevant.

Pay attention to what about the troublemaker is getting a rise out of you and others in the group. Do you want to get on with the work at hand and feel like the troublemaker is dragging you down with questions, concerns, or resistance? Is it possible you might be trying to work too fast? Do you find yourself in a constant series of arguments with your troublemaker over substantive issues related to the work? Could you have locked in too early on your positions and be blind to new information that could influence your decision? If you assume your troublemaker has value to add to the work you are doing, what might that value be?

Set limits with your troublemaker about the what, when, where, and how long for any conversation. This puts a fence around the conversation, making it safer for both of you. In a group, troublemakers will often say, “Everyone here feels this way” so they appear to be representing the group when they may be just speaking for themselves. Ask the rest of the group, “Who else feels this way?” This allows you to check out whether or not the troublemakers are speaking for themselves or if they truly are representing the group’s opinion. It also helps to be explicit about the trouble you are having with the troublemaker’s behavior. Talk about the troublemaker’s behavior and its impact on you. Make specific requests for different behavior.

What do you do when none of this seems to work? Excuse them from further involvement. When you ask a troublemaker to no longer be involved in the work you are doing, you send a message that those who have trouble working well with your team don’t belong on it. In the short term, this may lead to more productive and amicable meetings. In the long run, you’ll be compromising the creativity and commitment you can count on from reformed troublemakers. Before you lose these valuable contributions, reach out one more time and see your troublemaker as your best friend.

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Don’t Worry If a Few Team Members Choose to Opt Out

Even if you do everything in your power to keep others involved, you may lose a few recruits. If someone is determined to end their involvement, let them go with thanks for their past efforts. Spending lots of time trying to cajole them to stay will only make you frustrated and them feel defensive.

If people aren’t free to leave something you’ve involved them in—no strings of guilt attached—then others won’t feel free to join you. Instead of involvement, you’ve created a form of coercion. Trust the process when a team member asks to opt out. Believe in an abundant world. There’s another fresh-faced recruit around every corner. Celebrate someone’s departure as we talked about earlier. Learn from them what made for the best aspects of their being involved with you in this work. What was most difficult? Take what you gather from these “exit interviews” and apply the lessons to the work ahead. If you focus on the benefits of having people involved, you’ll begin getting a good reputation in the organization or around town as someone people will want to get involved with. And that’s a great way to keep people involved.

Chapter Checklist

The best ways to keep people involved are:

• Remind them why they got involved in the first place.
• Keep those people involved over time that you need involved over time.
• Support people so they want to stay involved.
• Stay open to who stays involved (“troublemakers” can be your best friends).
• Don’t worry if a few team members choose to opt out.