Volunteers usually work in not-for-profit organizations and they do this out of the kindness of their heart or for some need to remain busy/productive in some aspect of their life. If an organization gets too political and the volunteer is not a political animal, you can lose that volunteer. And, keep in mind that politics for some can be fun but for many, it’s not. There are many dysfunctional organizations, for profit and not-for-profit, that suffer as a result of their pathological political environment—and keep in mind, I’m not talking about who you voted for during an election year! Office politics, when kept to a minimum, is not bad and this must be monitored by senior level executives in order for it to not get out of hand.
For example, a person I know who is serving on a homeowner’s association board just resigned. She held an elected position. There are 5 elected members of the board, 4 who have jobs such as secretary, treasurer, architectural committee, president and one who is the vice president (jobless) that has no prescribed duties.
The vice president displayed street fighting behavior to other members of the board and particularly towards my friend. What is really problematic is that she works as a counselor in a school district. As a board member she used verbal jabs and sleazing to attack the other female board member. From my understanding, the vice president has no job to do each month and so was assigned special tasks each month and came to each board meeting with an excuse for not doing them. When the other female board member stepped up to take over an assignment that the vice president had “sat” on for 3 months, the vice president began her jabs and sleazing.
The president of the board, a weak leader and a friend of the vice president, said nothing and allowed the behavior to continue until the other board member had had enough and began to defend her position. When this proved too much of a battle, she resigned because she didn’t have to put up with that abuse in a volunteer position.
If you are a not-for-profit with volunteers, are you allowing this pathological politics to undermine your volunteers? Here are some signs that volunteers will leave due to too much politics:
1. Obvious divisiveness of one member of your team. In this case, the vice president would compliment the president and abuse the other female board member at the meeting.
2. The other three board members said nothing to “rock the boat.” When the other female confronted one of the board members, his comment was: “I will not discuss the vice president’s personal problems with you.” This board member who wished to remain neutral was adverse to office politics.
3. The other female board member told me she considered “poisoning the well” but decided against it because as a volunteer, she did not need this headache in her life and resigned.
4. Ineffective leadership can allow dysfunctional people to continue because they want to be friends with everyone and make everyone happy. Life rarely works that way, especially for leaders.
5. Street fighters know to use deflection to keep the focus off of their ineptitude by taking up wrong causes and creating drama around that so no one sees they are playing the political game but contributing nothing to the organization.
Once you notice these signs of politics in your organization, you need to create a plan to minimize it if you plan to keep your volunteers. Unless you have an extremely dysfunctional organization with all street fighters, you could lose your volunteer base unless you take action to level the playing field.
Linda Talley
Business and Body Language Coach
