By Frank Julie

Assisting people in their development is one of the primary tasks of a leader and manager in a NPO. In fact, it is the task. To build the capacity of staff and volunteers ensures the reproduction of the organisation, the final test of leadership! It ensures that the vision and mission can be taken forward when the leader has to move on. An effective leader allows others to develop as leaders and not blind followers. An effective manager works herself out of a job. An organisation can rise or fall based on the quality of leadership.

The same principle also holds true for staff and volunteers. The quality of staff and volunteers also determines the future growth of the organisation. It determines how management is held to account. An organisation can only grow if its members grow. And leaders must set the example. You cannot assist others in their development without developing yourself first.

If you are unable to help people develop themselves as leaders and managers then you are busy with the wrong work. Then you have already failed as leader! This does not imply that everyone is capable of becoming effective leaders and managers at the highest level of the organisational hierarchy. Actually a very few people are destined to become effective leaders and managers in organisations at this level.  But where you see potential, you must create an environment for it to flourish.

Remember that people develop themselves. No one can develop somebody else. Self development is always a choice. Even if you attend workshop after workshop, you may still be unable to develop yourself. What you take and apply from a workshop depends entirely on you. An organisation can only create a conducive environment for staff and volunteer development to flourish. This can be done by making available material and financial resources or allowing members the necessary time to develop themselves. Another way is by creating a learning environment through constant mentoring, coaching, creative confrontations and continuous support.

Assisting staff and volunteers to further their development starts with recruiting the right people. Where I came from, we decided to abandon the most basic rules on recruitment. The reason was simple: Working with marginalised youth I believed that we should give everybody who showed some enthusiasm to make a difference a chance to work in the organisation and develop themselves. This worked for some people, but for the majority it was disastrous.

Some of those who showed enthusiasm were simply looking for a job to survive. That is why in most cases the wrong people were recruited with very bad consequences. And it was not their fault. They should never have been recruited in the first place. Jobs were designed for them and not the other way around. In situations like this, the result is that you try to cover for people’s weaknesses and do not focus on their strengths. The young people had been set up to fail and as a leader I had to take responsibility.

It is like a cricket captain who is forced to set a field for a bad bowler! You are bound to lose the game before you start playing. There is more pressure on the other players. In an NPO that pressure will mostly be absorbed by the director, causing her to lose focus on the strategic functions within the organisation for which she is appointed. A dangerous situation indeed! By the time she has to get to her own responsibilities she is too tired dousing flames. Can you really blame the member recruited by you? No! You are responsible and therefore you have to act to correct this mistake.

What are the lessons?

1. Always recruit people’s strengths and not their weaknesses. Recruit what they can do.

2. When recruiting people, protect the integrity and objectivity of the process that you follow to recruit them. Even if a family member should apply for a job, make sure that they are also subject to the same process.

3. When someone is recruited make sure the person is put on probation, i.e. a trial period to prove herself. Make sure the person is given the opportunity to apply the strengths that they marketed to the organisation. Give her an assignment to complete and then make an assessment. A period of three months for a person in an operational capacity is adequate. In a strategic position like directorship or senior programmes officer a six months period will do. It takes longer to settle down in these positions. When you are in a more operational capacity your work tends to be more technical in nature like financial administration, etc. But in a strategic capacity your work is more about building relationships and this can take time since the people you have to build relationships with are mostly outside the organisation.

4. When people are appointed and do not perform, first make sure the person received the necessary training and support to do the work. If the person did not perform despite careful induction and proper training, then reconsider the person’s position. Remember, to appoint a person is easy but to let them go in NPO’s is difficult, especially when the person is senior in the organisation. At this level they might spoil for a fight to retain their position. The pull of financial reward can sometimes be very strong especially when other options for employment are limited. For example, I know of a director who ensured that the entire board left but he was adamant that he would stay on despite evidence of mismanagement and incompetence.

5. Make sure a temperament analysis is done to determine the placement of people. Self-placement is desirable but not always possible. This can take too much time.

6. When helping people to develop in their jobs, apply the principle of going slow but not going low.  What does this mean? Simply that it is better to work with someone for a longer time to grasp a particular skill but without compromising on standards. High standards in an organisation allow people to respect themselves and the organisation. In an organisation where standards are low people lack respect for themselves and their beneficiaries. Management must never tolerate low standards! And high standards start with management. You must set the example. And remember, the standard of today cannot remain the standard of tomorrow!

What about evaluations?

1. When evaluating people, do not use the evaluation as a judgement tool, i.e. to get back at somebody. Evaluations should be used as a tool to facilitate people’s development. An evaluation must be holistic, i.e. it must cover both work related performance and personal development. No organisation employs only half a person (i.e. his work skills) but a whole person. Where an evaluation is linked to salary increases or promotions you are bound to compromise the purpose of an evaluation. In this atmosphere people may start to lie and deceive. You are bound to get all the wrong information from the right people. In fact, you will be setting people up against each other since staff members who are always at each other’s throats know that during evaluation time they will get back at each other.

2. Encourage three forms of evaluation namely:

Self-evaluation: The member takes responsibility to consciously reflect on her own performance and learns to take corrective action before a structured external evaluation. When the structured evaluation takes place she will already have thought about her work, where she performed well and where she needs to improve.

Peer evaluation: This is a person working very closely with the staff member. Avoid a peer who is also a close friend (emotional relationship). This will compromise the objectivity of the process. Friends usually tell each other what they want to hear and not what they should hear. No evaluation is however free from subjectivity but close friendships are likely to maximise it.

Management evaluation: If you are a manager or director supervising the member directly or the member reporting to you, then this is your task. Check the consistency of feedback about the person being evaluated. Where there are major deviations, debate this and get clarity. Since the evaluation is used as a tool of development, everybody will be more open because the purpose of the evaluation is not to penalise but to discover strengths and to build on them.

And remember, directors also need to be evaluated by their board (to whom they report) with some staff involvement. A questionnaire circulated to staff that report to a director can be a good instrument to assist the board with such an evaluation. And there is no need for directors to be defensive about evaluations. The idea is simply for opinions to surface to assist the process of identifying strengths and sometimes blind spots.

3. When assisting others in their development, especially where a hard skill is trained, note the following stages of learning the person will follow:

4. The first stage is unconscious incompetence. Here the person does not even know that he is incompetent, e.g. that he cannot drive a car or write a funding proposal. She does not even know that cars exist. Once the person becomes aware, then they enter the stage of conscious incompetence, i.e. they become aware that they cannot do something. The third stage is when after some training they manage to address their incompetence and is able to do something e.g. driving a car albeit with fits and starts. They will still look at the gears and be fully aware of what they are doing when they drive or write a proposal. This is called conscious competence. The last stage is when the person, after continuous correct practice and more correct practice, simply gets into her car and starts driving without even being aware of the procedures she follows. They simply write proposals without thinking too much about it. This is unconscious competence.

5.  As a manager you will normally spend the most time with a person during their training at the second stage of conscious incompetence. At the third stage of conscious competence you will start to supervise the person less to build self-confidence and to show that you trust them to make mistakes but to correct it on their own. At the fourth stage you hardly interfere in the work of the person since they are now fully competent.

6. It is good to speak of following objective processes of recruiting the right people but we all know that most small organisations cannot afford to pay big salaries and as such regard this as a luxury. Forget about having the money to finance these processes! This is unfortunately the hard reality. There are many NPO’s who appoint people in various positions due to past and present friendships, comradeships or party political affiliations, etc. Some people were very close in the heat of the liberation struggle and sometimes shared the same ideological thinking. How do I know this? Well, I was also guilty of such appointments! Although this is understandable, it is wrong! Most of my challenges with people development were exactly with this kind of appointee who actually did not perform and were not capable of performing because this is not why they were selected in the first place. The objectivity and integrity of recruitment processes were dangerously violated and it came back to me with a vengeance! With the structural unemployment that we face you can forget about people willingly giving up their positions of non-performance for the prospect of perpetual unemployment. For those who do, it is more of an exception than the rule. I know of only one person in my experience that simply decided to move on when he realised that he was wasting his time in the organisation. The majority cling for dear life to their positions! And they will even demand salary increases and bonuses. All over South Africa we find this phenomena playing itself out in government, especially local government with municipal managers appointed for political reasons and not because they are managerially competent. So, nobody should be surprised that they are not delivering essential services. They were not appointed for that reason in any case!

So, as a manager, what is your staff-, volunteer- and board development plan for this year? And what is your own plan? If you take people development seriously in your organisation, then you will have a plan to guide you. If you don’t, you are in serious trouble!

Frank Julie is an independent organisational development and transformation consultant and the author of “The Art of Leadership and Management on the Ground” (A practical guide for leaders and managers to build sustainable organisations for permanent social change). For more information about the book and to download articles on fundraising, effective management and leadership, visit www.frankjulie.blogspot.com. Please email feedback on this article to frankjulie@telkomsa.net.

By Frank Julie

Assisting people in their development is one of the primary tasks of a leader and manager in a NPO. In fact, it is the task. To build the capacity of staff and volunteers ensures the reproduction of the organisation, the final test of leadership! It ensures that the vision and mission can be taken forward when the leader has to move on. An effective leader allows others to develop as leaders and not blind followers. An effective manager works herself out of a job. An organisation can rise or fall based on the quality of leadership.

The same principle also holds true for staff and volunteers. The quality of staff and volunteers also determines the future growth of the organisation. It determines how management is held to account. An organisation can only grow if its members grow. And leaders must set the example. You cannot assist others in their development without developing yourself first.

If you are unable to help people develop themselves as leaders and managers then you are busy with the wrong work. Then you have already failed as leader! This does not imply that everyone is capable of becoming effective leaders and managers at the highest level of the organisational hierarchy. Actually a very few people are destined to become effective leaders and managers in organisations at this level.  But where you see potential, you must create an environment for it to flourish.

Remember that people develop themselves. No one can develop somebody else. Self development is always a choice. Even if you attend workshop after workshop, you may still be unable to develop yourself. What you take and apply from a workshop depends entirely on you. An organisation can only create a conducive environment for staff and volunteer development to flourish. This can be done by making available material and financial resources or allowing members the necessary time to develop themselves. Another way is by creating a learning environment through constant mentoring, coaching, creative confrontations and continuous support.

Assisting staff and volunteers to further their development starts with recruiting the right people. Where I came from, we decided to abandon the most basic rules on recruitment. The reason was simple: Working with marginalised youth I believed that we should give everybody who showed some enthusiasm to make a difference a chance to work in the organisation and develop themselves. This worked for some people, but for the majority it was disastrous.

Some of those who showed enthusiasm were simply looking for a job to survive. That is why in most cases the wrong people were recruited with very bad consequences. And it was not their fault. They should never have been recruited in the first place. Jobs were designed for them and not the other way around. In situations like this, the result is that you try to cover for people’s weaknesses and do not focus on their strengths. The young people had been set up to fail and as a leader I had to take responsibility.

It is like a cricket captain who is forced to set a field for a bad bowler! You are bound to lose the game before you start playing. There is more pressure on the other players. In an NPO that pressure will mostly be absorbed by the director, causing her to lose focus on the strategic functions within the organisation for which she is appointed. A dangerous situation indeed! By the time she has to get to her own responsibilities she is too tired dousing flames. Can you really blame the member recruited by you? No! You are responsible and therefore you have to act to correct this mistake.

What are the lessons?

1. Always recruit people’s strengths and not their weaknesses. Recruit what they can do.

2. When recruiting people, protect the integrity and objectivity of the process that you follow to recruit them. Even if a family member should apply for a job, make sure that they are also subject to the same process.

3. When someone is recruited make sure the person is put on probation, i.e. a trial period to prove herself. Make sure the person is given the opportunity to apply the strengths that they marketed to the organisation. Give her an assignment to complete and then make an assessment. A period of three months for a person in an operational capacity is adequate. In a strategic position like directorship or senior programmes officer a six months period will do. It takes longer to settle down in these positions. When you are in a more operational capacity your work tends to be more technical in nature like financial administration, etc. But in a strategic capacity your work is more about building relationships and this can take time since the people you have to build relationships with are mostly outside the organisation.

4. When people are appointed and do not perform, first make sure the person received the necessary training and support to do the work. If the person did not perform despite careful induction and proper training, then reconsider the person’s position. Remember, to appoint a person is easy but to let them go in NPO’s is difficult, especially when the person is senior in the organisation. At this level they might spoil for a fight to retain their position. The pull of financial reward can sometimes be very strong especially when other options for employment are limited. For example, I know of a director who ensured that the entire board left but he was adamant that he would stay on despite evidence of mismanagement and incompetence.

5. Make sure a temperament analysis is done to determine the placement of people. Self-placement is desirable but not always possible. This can take too much time.

6. When helping people to develop in their jobs, apply the principle of going slow but not going low.  What does this mean? Simply that it is better to work with someone for a longer time to grasp a particular skill but without compromising on standards. High standards in an organisation allow people to respect themselves and the organisation. In an organisation where standards are low people lack respect for themselves and their beneficiaries. Management must never tolerate low standards! And high standards start with management. You must set the example. And remember, the standard of today cannot remain the standard of tomorrow!

What about evaluations?

1. When evaluating people, do not use the evaluation as a judgement tool, i.e. to get back at somebody. Evaluations should be used as a tool to facilitate people’s development. An evaluation must be holistic, i.e. it must cover both work related performance and personal development. No organisation employs only half a person (i.e. his work skills) but a whole person. Where an evaluation is linked to salary increases or promotions you are bound to compromise the purpose of an evaluation. In this atmosphere people may start to lie and deceive. You are bound to get all the wrong information from the right people. In fact, you will be setting people up against each other since staff members who are always at each other’s throats know that during evaluation time they will get back at each other.

2. Encourage three forms of evaluation namely:

Self-evaluation: The member takes responsibility to consciously reflect on her own performance and learns to take corrective action before a structured external evaluation. When the structured evaluation takes place she will already have thought about her work, where she performed well and where she needs to improve.

Peer evaluation: This is a person working very closely with the staff member. Avoid a peer who is also a close friend (emotional relationship). This will compromise the objectivity of the process. Friends usually tell each other what they want to hear and not what they should hear. No evaluation is however free from subjectivity but close friendships are likely to maximise it.

Management evaluation: If you are a manager or director supervising the member directly or the member reporting to you, then this is your task. Check the consistency of feedback about the person being evaluated. Where there are major deviations, debate this and get clarity. Since the evaluation is used as a tool of development, everybody will be more open because the purpose of the evaluation is not to penalise but to discover strengths and to build on them.

And remember, directors also need to be evaluated by their board (to whom they report) with some staff involvement. A questionnaire circulated to staff that report to a director can be a good instrument to assist the board with such an evaluation. And there is no need for directors to be defensive about evaluations. The idea is simply for opinions to surface to assist the process of identifying strengths and sometimes blind spots.

3. When assisting others in their development, especially where a hard skill is trained, note the following stages of learning the person will follow:

4. The first stage is unconscious incompetence. Here the person does not even know that he is incompetent, e.g. that he cannot drive a car or write a funding proposal. She does not even know that cars exist. Once the person becomes aware, then they enter the stage of conscious incompetence, i.e. they become aware that they cannot do something. The third stage is when after some training they manage to address their incompetence and is able to do something e.g. driving a car albeit with fits and starts. They will still look at the gears and be fully aware of what they are doing when they drive or write a proposal. This is called conscious competence. The last stage is when the person, after continuous correct practice and more correct practice, simply gets into her car and starts driving without even being aware of the procedures she follows. They simply write proposals without thinking too much about it. This is unconscious competence.

5.  As a manager you will normally spend the most time with a person during their training at the second stage of conscious incompetence. At the third stage of conscious competence you will start to supervise the person less to build self-confidence and to show that you trust them to make mistakes but to correct it on their own. At the fourth stage you hardly interfere in the work of the person since they are now fully competent.

6. It is good to speak of following objective processes of recruiting the right people but we all know that most small organisations cannot afford to pay big salaries and as such regard this as a luxury. Forget about having the money to finance these processes! This is unfortunately the hard reality. There are many NPO’s who appoint people in various positions due to past and present friendships, comradeships or party political affiliations, etc. Some people were very close in the heat of the liberation struggle and sometimes shared the same ideological thinking. How do I know this? Well, I was also guilty of such appointments! Although this is understandable, it is wrong! Most of my challenges with people development were exactly with this kind of appointee who actually did not perform and were not capable of performing because this is not why they were selected in the first place. The objectivity and integrity of recruitment processes were dangerously violated and it came back to me with a vengeance! With the structural unemployment that we face you can forget about people willingly giving up their positions of non-performance for the prospect of perpetual unemployment. For those who do, it is more of an exception than the rule. I know of only one person in my experience that simply decided to move on when he realised that he was wasting his time in the organisation. The majority cling for dear life to their positions! And they will even demand salary increases and bonuses. All over South Africa we find this phenomena playing itself out in government, especially local government with municipal managers appointed for political reasons and not because they are managerially competent. So, nobody should be surprised that they are not delivering essential services. They were not appointed for that reason in any case!

So, as a manager, what is your staff-, volunteer- and board development plan for this year? And what is your own plan? If you take people development seriously in your organisation, then you will have a plan to guide you. If you don’t, you are in serious trouble!

Frank Julie is an independent organisational development and transformation consultant and the author of “The Art of Leadership and Management on the Ground” (A practical guide for leaders and managers to build sustainable organisations for permanent social change). For more information about the book and to download articles on fundraising, effective management and leadership, visit www.frankjulie.blogspot.com. Please email feedback on this article to frankjulie@telkomsa.net.