The voluntary sector has to equally recognise the value of manager, leaders and millennials warns team development expert
There is no point in having a brilliant fundraising strategy unless you have an equally brilliant team to carry it out.
That was one of the important messages stressed to those at the Institute of Fundraising’s Scottish Fundraising Conference in Glasgow this week.
Speaking about how to recruit the right managers and leaders Caryn Skinner a director of Sharpstone Skinner, which is a consultancy specialising in team and leadership development, challenged the sector to recognise both roles as important and warned nothing will get done in organisations unless the right people are there to do it.
The thing I am most concerned about is that often management isn’t valued
Charities should strike the right balance of having managers who can plan, monitor and make sure campaigns run well, with leaders who can look to the future for new ideas and keep an over view of what is going on, she said.
“What I find in the voluntary sector is that we have really good manager and really good leaders but the thing I am most concerned about is that often management isn’t valued so leadership is seen as something that is much more valuable,” she said.
“It is rewarded higher. But if you think about it you cannot deliver anything unless you have managers making sure it is all happening and planning it all.
“I’m really into the idea of valuing both. It’s not one or the other. I think managers need to develop into leaders but leaders need to come back and do some management sometimes.”
Skinner also said that perhaps charities should look to treat millennials, those born from the mid 80s onwards differently to generations in the past in order to get the best out of them.
“They are probably the first generation that have chosen the voluntary sector very clearly as a career path a lot of us in my generation fell into the voluntary sector,” she said.
“Millennials won’t respond to the carrot and stick approach anymore.
“They respond to being nurtured, to being stretched, to being challenged but in a very supported way so they don’t want to stay in environments where they are just asked to ‘jump that high’ but nobody gives them a trampoline to get there.
They are not brilliant at taking criticism so we have to ease them in to that kind of thing and show them that criticism is a way to grow.
“They want more subtle things and they will job hop to get better experiences so we need to make sure we are responding to that.”
In a wide ranging session, and follow up TFN Live interview (above) Skinner also gave advice for new managers in the sector warning against trying to revolutionise a team immediately.
“There is something to be said about getting to know the challenges in the team as a manager.
“It’s about giving yourself time to understand that, understand the context you are working in now and establish relationships with people and not go in changing everything almost for change sake because you want to establish yourself or make sure that everybody knows you are the manager.”
