Learn from association expert Cynthia D’Amour how to succeed as a lazy leader.
- Invite others in
- Make it fun
- Accept new ideas
- Don’t try to do it all yourself
- Dump the martyr tiara
- Toot horn for others
N: We are fortunate indeed when our careers intertwine with our passion and our purpose and our need to make this a better world. I’ve been a volunteer all of my life and I’m very proud of that. I come from a family who volunteered in the church. As a young girl, then as a teenager and as a woman, I’ve continued to do a lot of volunteer work. I love that women are changing the world through volunteer efforts. They are showing up in what I call social profit organizations.
I recently spoke with Cynthia D’Amour. Cynthia is a leadership strategist and president of People Power Unlimited. She is an advocate for developing leaders and building community. Cynthia works with both national leaders and chapter leaders who are committed to making a difference. And Cynthia is committed to helping them do just that.
She has written seven books. She’s a busy woman.
- The Lazy Leader’s Guide to Outrageous Results and
- How to Turn Generation Me into Active Members of Your Association.
Cynthia has served more than 67 combined years on boards and recruited more than 250 members.
She has served on the ASAE’s research committee and founded the Chapter Leaders Playground, an online community for volunteer leaders from different organizations.
If you want to create more success in your organization, you have to figure out how to get more people involved in making a difference. With so many budget cuts going on within organizations, volunteers become even more important to help the bottom line.
Volunteering runs in the family
Cynthia, Why do you do what you do? I know you talk about your parents and they were important in your life.
C: Actually I’m a fourth generation volunteer leader. My parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents were all volunteers. I had no choice. It’s in my DNA. My dad was president of everything he touched. So I started volunteering when I was in diapers. And it just kept going until I was eventually a leader myself. What’s interesting is my dad was also a marketer. He did international marketing for Ford Tractor. So I grew up and he was teaching me how to write marketing letters. So I grew up as a kid learning how to write letters to companies competing with my dad to see who could get the biggest response from people. And I thought that was normal. Did you write letters like that with your dad?
N: Sure—well, my mother taught me what she called the “gift of gab.” Learning how you talk to people and keep the conversation going.
C: Well, my mom taught me to talk and my dad taught me to be persuasive with that marketing background and my mom was a teacher. So between the two, I’m right in the sweet spot where genetics I guess is going to send me teaching people to be more savvy about what they do. I was great at marketing and the equivalent of a master’s degree in teaching and an MBA as well.
N: Your business background and marketing expertise and of course your people skills. Mine started in the church. My dad was a Gideon and a Mason and we actually helped start a church. So as a kid, I was always doing something, taking care of the nursery. So…my grandfather was a Methodist minister and he taught us to help those who need help by giving of our time freely. Since I was a kid it’s been part of my nature that if I didn’t have what was needed, I’d make a connection with someone who does.
this Lazy Leader stuff, is common sense. It’s respecting people, and having people use their skills in a way that everybody wins. That’s especially important to women who volunteer.
Women don’t have to do it all
C: I could say just one thing to women it would be that we don’t have to do it all, because so many of us have been raised to just take care. We care until it hurts, but we still care and we keep caring. And in the volunteer world, a lot of us have got hooked into this we’ve got to do it all, because we love the group. The whole Lazy Leader idea is to bring people with you and allow them to play with you, so they get that value and you can take that mission even further and have a bigger impact.
N: Again, I’ve worked with women for over 25 years. When you use the term “martyr” I think of all the women who have the superwoman t-shirt on underneath. They not only have to do it all, they have to do it extremely well. 30-something women are so anxious today, because there’s so many things that they are expected to do. They are supposed to be great at work, at home and with their husbands, their family, their friends. And of course you’ve got to look good doing it. You’ve got to stay thin, beautiful and attractive doing it, no matter what it is. My goal is to help women find whatever they need to live fully and to live happily and to really have a great relationship with themselves.
N: Cynthia has created a community of partners who want the same thing, who end up getting the result, which is a win-win for everybody. Power and control in our society seems to be such an important thing not only in the workplace, but also in the world of volunteerism.
C: Well, and you know a lot of us haven’t been trained to work with power and control. Instead we return to our familial experience where we become mom to our volunteers. We haven’t learned how to manage ourselves as leaders so we can be more effective.
N: Absolutely. I was recently consulting with a woman who was educated and affluent, and she was talking about how she was going to “get them” to do certain things and get what she wanted from them. She talked about it in such a harsh, crusty way that I thought to myself, “You’re not going to get that done.” You’re going to intimidate people and alienate people and get fear from people. That was my first impression. I think people would say, “I’m not going to trust her. She’s not going to do it well, but I know I can.”
C: So often long-time volunteers think – At last, it’s my year. I’ve been working for this for years and now I have the tiara. I’ll make all the rules.
N: Yeah. I’ve worked hard for this position. I’m now the board president. This is my role. I’m going to clean this place up and I’m going to make it run like a fine tuned machine.
N: I know some women can be kind of bitchy, but I know the women I work with and volunteer my time with are delightful.
Training can help women avoid martyr syndrome
C: I think the problems stem from a lack of training. You know we are doing the best that we can do and a lot of us are doing it the way we were raised and we didn’t learn how to be a leader, how to get people…allow them to have different opinions than ours, how to create this greater good.
N: Many women who seem to be the really good leaders, whether in the workplace, their careers or even in the world of volunteerism have some background in team sports, and often they’ve gone to a women’s college. Somewhere in their backgrounds they learned relationship building, team building and an appreciation and respect for one another. And they are also great communicators.
C: Well, you know I would tell my folks that if I had it all to do all over again and I could go back to being a kid, I would be in a team sport for exactly the reason you’re saying. I’ve learned a lot of those skills, but it’s been a harder route, a lot of it in the volunteer world. Women need to be okay with being challenged by each other. In sports you might win, you might lose, but you don’t have to get bitchy. You can work through the bitchiness.
N: A loss is not personal. We learn from our mistakes, so instead of being upset and teed off, you look at the situation and try to figure out why instead of finding someone to blame and saying, “I told you so. I told you it wouldn’t work.” We need to learn another way of communicating and problem solving. And you talk about that in your book.
C: I’m in the Junior League here in Ann Arbor and the Speakers Bureau, and we did a project on, Relational Aggression in Girls and we spoke to the parents of middle-schoolers about how to deal with it, when the queen bee is picking on them. (N: In boys we call it bullying is what we’re talking about now.) We need to support our daughters and help them learn to solve their problems, instead of going back to our childhood and bringing our stuff up.
Join forces with others to improve group’s success
N: I have three daughters and seven granddaughters, so I’ve got to have a sense of humor, because I was a tomboy. I usually played with boys, because they were a lot more fun, they could compete honestly, and they weren’t bitchy. But working with women is really a great opportunity. When you truly find other women who understand the importance of gaining strength and joining forces with other kindred souls, the power is absolutely amazing.
C: That’s something I see men do more than women do. But when you do see that happen, it’s like magic.
N: Men also can be better at combining fun with business. Playing golf with customers, going to dinner, taking them out to a show or involving something fun. They’re developing relationships.
C: In the volunteer world, when I can get women leaders to embrace the lazy leaders skills and bring people with them, they’re not only building relationships with other members, but they’re getting the skill training that they can go use at work. They’re getting promotions and advancing because they’re using the non-profit arena as their laboratory for skill development.
N: You say people want to know why they should join your organization. Beyond “What is your mission?” and “What is your purpose?” you have to be able to answer, “What am I going to get out of this?” You need to be able to tell people: “You’ll probably get a lot more than you think you’re going to get, but here’s what we think you’re going to get.” When recruiting for Female Leaders in Philanthropy, we say: “You’re going to meet other smart amazing women just like you. You’re going to meet women who have passion and purpose and drive, just like you. They have time, talent and treasures, just like you. And that’s why we’re asking you to be a part of this.” That’s why we have some comradery and most of all we always have fun.
Be the party — make it fun
C: I’m a big advocate of fun as well. I was speaking at a conference and going through the whole Lazy Leader stuff and this guy came up to me at the end and said, “Cynthia, I like what you said and you are quite fun, but we’re a professional group and we don’t believe in having fun.” And I asked him, “Well, how’s that working for you?” And he said, “We’re down to five or six members who are holding it up.” Hello. It’s a sign that what you’re doing is not working.
N: I think the best part is to surprise people.
C: Totally. I have bright red hair, which you’ve seen in my photo. It’s cut asymmetrically, so it’s a rather non-establishment cut. And I went to this group the other day and the national president judged me by my look and she turns to this other person who hired me and she said, “I don’t know if we can bring her on. Look at how she looks.” So she makes the driest introduction I’ve ever had, ending with, “I’m sure she’ll at least say something fun.” And I got up there and did my program and I got a double standing ovation at the end. And she got up and hugged me even though she’d had this idea that because my hair is cut crooked, I wouldn’t know what I was talking about.
C: Experience is the game these days. It’s all about the party. We can create this really cool thing. Even though we’ve got these different opinions, we’re coming together to do something really big. Wow!
N: You know you put five smart amazing women in a room and first of all, they’re gonna plan it, they’re gonna put the budget together, and they’re gonna do it in one day. They don’t understand the word no. Not only can women multi-task, but they can put together details and they can really communicate. That’s the fun part. Everybody’s got a vision. Everybody’s had a dream at some point in their life. Volunteerism gives people a chance to do something for the true love of using your time, treasures and talent to make a difference in the world. That’s the exciting part of working in the role of a leader of volunteers.
C: We can embrace that and get over “it’s my year.” We can allow people not just to report on their committee, but to actually take part in strategic conversations. That’s how leaders, when they embrace the creativity and skills of others, can get the weight of the world off their shoulders by allowing other people to play.
N: I am currently leading the Female Leaders in Philanthropy, which is a women’s initiative of United Way, a fantastic group of women that come from all walks of life. It’s really exciting when people say, “These are my skills.” Well she has marketing skills and somebody else has banking skills…or whatever it is and the fun and excitement of bringing everyone together. And the learning that happens when we bring everyone together is invaluable.
Benefits of volunteering brighten career too
C: I’ve gotten more ideas that have helped my business by volunteering. Just instructing myself in different ways or serving on different committees, like what you’re talking about, or learning from each other. There’s a gold mine out there.
N: The networking is invaluable, and we’re very upfront about it. They have businesses and here is a great opportunity to let people know what you do outside of this committee or this project. And once you develop those relationships, you begin to have referrals. And we know that five people tell five more people how great you do what you do, not only in the world of volunteerism, because you’re a caring, giving individual, but in your business…that you have that same character…those same characteristics…those pieces to your character, so people say that’s the kind of person I want to spend time with. I can trust them. I can believe in them and I feel a great comfort in their presence.
C: You raise a great point, because a lot of times what I see is a disassociation between what they do professionally or in their business and what they do in the volunteer world. And that’s a big wake-up call, because people do look at you and what you do in the volunteer world and it can reflect on you positively or not so positively. You know, your business, your career, your place in your profession. And when you know that, you can just shine.
N: I call it social profit. I think the term not-for-profit is very negative. So any time I talk about 501C3, I talk about the social profit and how everyone can benefit and not only that, but everyone is responsible. But it is an opportunity, because I can watch you in a volunteer role and see how you work with others. I can watch you with your communication skills and problem solving skills and when I’m looking for someone in my workplace or I know of someone who is looking, you’re going to come up in my mind. Or you can come to me and say, “You know, Nancy, I’m looking for this. Do you know of anything?” So it really becomes a wonderful referral resource, not just because of the social networking, but the opportunity to really grow as a person and become part of a much larger community.
C: Absolutely. And I like when people take charge of their lives. And rather than let life happen to them, they really step into it and they go with thought and with conviction and with commitment and with goals when they go into this stuff and they make things happen, because they know where they’re going and why they’re going and the neat places they can achieve.
N: Well, you know you’re right on target. It doesn’t have to be painful. It doesn’t have to hurt. It doesn’t have to exhaust you.
C: And it shouldn’t have to exhaust you if you’re doin’ it.
N: Or nail yourself to the cross and show everybody the marks on your hands and feet and say, “This is what I did for this organization.” You see those people burn out. And you don’t want to burn out your volunteers, because they’re too valuable.
C: Absolutely. And you don’t want to burn out yourself either.
N: I felt better after reading the book, because I am a laisez faire leader. When I tell people who I am, I usually tell about other people. And you can tell the people that are very good about working with others, because when their name is mentioned, they mention four or five other people that it’s about. Or they’re talking about what this is all for. We know in this women’s initiative that we’re helping the women and children in our community. So the credit goes to what we’re actually able to accomplish with our fundraising and our membership and everything we’re doing to create a message to our community to make it a better place to live.
Doesn’t matter who gets the credit
C: Well I had an interesting conversation with a woman who I mentor. She was worried that if she didn’t claim it, nobody would know she did it. And I kept explaining to her that when you promote the mission, when you promote the people who are working with you, you become an even bigger leader than you hoped you could be.
N: Absolutely. Well people are going to get on board with the mission. It’s not about you, because…you know, we laugh, we’ve been with it since the beginning. And we say, “One day we’ll disappear and no one will know we’re gone.” You know that’s what it’s really about. Whether you’re there or not there, the mission goes on growing and there’s more lifeblood going into that organization. Too many people think, “If I leave, who knows what will happen.” Well, if you leave and something happens to the organization, then it was wrong in the first place.
C: I had my wake-up call 10 years ago when I was real involved with a lot of different groups locally. We had a fire and my husband and I almost died that night — I lost everything except my husband. When the fire detective told me that I should have died twice that night, I thought, “Oh my gosh, I had been sucked into the martyr mode in these groups. And if I had died that night, it was all in MY head and I would have hurt these groups that I loved so much. It was a wake-up call for me personally to re-commit to the lazy leader approach and teach other people how to do it. We have to consciously think, “Who can I bring with me? How can I share this? How can I invite others?
N: We recently had a pretty large event and it was wonderful to watch the people that came up through the ranks. A lot of these women were younger and the energy just flows with these people and it just grows and grows and grows. So what If you had a small piece of it, not all the pieces belong to you, nor will they ever belong to you.
Well, your book is great. Tell us about your organization, The Power of People, and your website. How do people learn about you, your organization, your books and your speaking?
C: A great resource is the Chapter Leaders Playground. And that’s an online community that we created for leaders from across organizations and we really want people to learn the skills they need to learn to help them create a surplus of volunteers for their organizations. So that’s at www.chapterleadersplayground.org. And the cool thing is it’s free to join and once you join, we do 30 webinars a year—skill-based webinars and they’re all free for members. So that’s a really great resource, tons of articles there. Your listeners can also pick up my book there. It’s the Lazy Leader’s Guide to Outrageous Results. I have seven books, but that’s the one that we’ve been talking about today. And because I really admire what you’re doing, Dr. Nancy and all of the good that you’re giving, we set up a special discount code for all your listeners today. If they put in the discount code: Nancy, they get a 25% discount through the end of September.
N: Thank you. As I said, our goal is to link and make sure people can go in there and find the playground and the resources. It’s a pleasure to talk to someone who truly does get it. Women Connect 4 Good Foundation is about connecting with women like you throughout our country and the world. I hope we can continue that relationship as well. I’m really looking forward to it.
Recorded 8/30/11