Wednesday, 27 February 2013

From Disaster to Triumph

This will sadly be my last blog post, which I have mixed feelings about. In one way, this blog has given me a medium in which I can fully describe, explain and understand what I have done in my role as Club Captain... going beneath the surface and thinking about how I have developed certain skills. On the other hand, I am also very busy as Club Captain and any time and the minutes I spend thinking, writing, re-writing and proofing these posts do add up! An idea I will take from this experience is perhaps to periodically write a contemplative blog post on my experience in the role and encourage my committee to do the same. However, I will use this final post to talk about how the club nearly didn't survive the year... but in managing so, is now in the strongest position it has ever been!
The Thinker by Auguste Rodin.
Disaster...
From the previous blog posts you know the problems the club faced at the start of the year. To sum them up:
  • Very few retained members (meaning we needed another 19 to hit the required 25 members).
  • The elected Club Captain was not returning to University. 
  • Very little handover training was given to the incoming committee. 
  • The previous committee became very uninterested and so the club lacked direction.
  • Kayaking requires a lot of equipment (pool/water, boats etc.) and therefore has a low capacity.
An amalgamation of those problems meant that we only had 18 members a week before the deadline. The penalty for hitting meeting 25 members was having the club's (newly acquired) grant funding suspended in the short term. This grant funding is in excess of £2000 and accounts for the majority of our funding - without it we cannot run any pool sessions or provide any transport, which prevents us from being able to put on sessions to attract new members. In the longer term, having below 25 members means the club ceases to be a club - as it is a requirement from the Sports Association of the University. I quickly got a plan together to try and prevent this disaster.

Because time was of the essence, I immediately arranged a meeting with the ARC and our club's development officer, as I previously did not know the ramifications of not getting 25 members. Here we discussed the penalties in the paragraph above, and agreed on a deadline a fortnight after the original that we needed to meet to remain a club: talk about pressure! I also arranged a meeting with my committee, giving them a heads up on the situation, to discuss and brainstorm options of gaining more publicity and attract more members. The communication here had to be lightning fast to match the magnitude of the situation - which I achieved by facebook message, email, phone/text and face to face communication.

I also decided to write an open letter to all of our current members, explaining the situation fully and honestly so they were all informed from the top and rumours/misinformation would not spread. Alongside explaining the problem, I also stated that I had faith in the club, and we were actually doing very well in pretty much every other way (social, most members were very active, the club had just bought a lot of new equipment, the level of paddling amongst members was very high and several even had coaching qualifications). I ended the letter urging everyone to spread the word of kayaking, and if possible bring a person along to the session in an attempt to bolster our numbers. I feel that this proactive, honest and transparent approach to communication with our members really helped to maintain a positive feeling between everybody. They were being spoken to as adults and equals, and in turn many of them helped us to achieve our objective.

The situation worsens when we passed the original deadline for 25 members, leaving us with very limited funding and only a fortnight left to recruit the final couple of members. It was here when the stress really piled up, but I knew how important it was to keep a clear head. Becoming anxious would just make me upset, inefficient and ultimately useless to help the club. Using this logic, I managed stay calm and persevere my search for members. Using our (very limited) fundraising account, we managed to keep pool sessions going to keep attracting new members. In the end, we managed a very successful mini-taster session with a couple new faces which bumped us up to the elusive 25 mark! 
Lots of potential members at our mini-taster session.

The Skills I Developed:
  • Organisational skills. In this case, the club seemed to be doing fine until the deadline 'snuck up on me' and I realised we have a lot to do in not very much time at all. This shows that my organisation skills need to (and consequently have) improved. This involves keeping a check on certain metrics (such as members) whilst always keeping the deadline date in mind. From then, I also split formal deadlines into mini-deadlines, so if you have two months to get 15 members, you should be looking to have 8-10 after one month (over half because it is easier to get the keen members at the start and harder to get the remainder). I also let everyone (especially committee) know the deadline dates for everything - as this means that someone will pick up on something even if I miss it. This allows me to keep on top of things and all in all provide a much better service to our members.
  • Transparency/honesty. I have learnt that it is very necessary to be honest and open with the club's members and the staff tasked with supervising the club. This harbours a positive feeling all round (no malicious rumours) and means that everyone can help out as best they can. Lying about the position of the club doesn't actually change what state the club is in, it just means that some people then will not provide help as they don't know their help is required!
  • Contingency planning. Since this event, I have looked to provide contingency plans for all the events that LUKS put on. Having thought through potential issues beforehand, it becomes very easy to resolve any issues that do appear without become anxious as you have already solved them. However, it is also important not to get too bogged down in every little eventuality as then you begin to spend too much time, time which is better spent on organising other events etc.
  • Working with anxiety/stress. I may have some experience of this from leaving academic essays too late but it is essential to deal with anxiety effectively. A little bit of stress is good as it gives you the motivation to actually get tasks done - but too much and you start to become ineffective. Here it is essential to work as team with you committee, encouraging everyone to communicate openly and let others know if they are busy and starting to become stressed. At this point you can either delegate tasks to even the workload or evaluate how important the tasks people are working on actually are, perhaps pushing back deadlines or even postponing them until the committee are less busy. 
  • Leadership. This is one skill I feel I have most developed as Club Captain. Taking on a leadership role in a new environment was always going to be a challenge - but not without its rewards. Through developing the skills mentioned in this and the previous posts, I feel that this has allowed me to become everything a leader should be. Organised, knowledegable, friendly, enthusiastic, honest, able to work with a team, able to delegate, good communication skills and above all, excellent people skills. In putting a lot of work, I have also become quite emotionally attached to the club. This means that I have developed a really good idea of the direction I want to take the club in the future and genuinely care how well the club does in the future - even after I have graduated and no longer am a part of it.  
 Triumph...
To finish, I thought it would be nice to just say about the current state of the club. We now have 29 members, with another two interested. The majority of these are extremely keen (one keen member is worth at least five inactive ones) which give the club a solid membership base for next year. This also allows us to expand the committee, both decreasing individual workload (which has been an issue for me at times) whilst increasing the level of service we can provide members. I have already started planning the handover training to make sure that the incoming committee know exactly what they are doing so they can perform well from the start. I have also looked into planning Fresh Fair so we are very prepared, allowing us to attract as many new members as possible.

As for the level of paddling of our members, we have just competed on behalf of the University of Leicester in LUKS' first BUCS event. We took four members who all did extremely well, with the best placing an amazing 13th out of 160 competitors. This puts the club in very good stead to take enter more competitors into more events next year, along with a solid training programme, in the hopes of earning some BUCS points for Leicester :)

Some amazing paddling by a LUKS member.

Socials and Soireés

I thought I'd just give you all an insight into one of the best bits about being in a sports team or society: the social side. Now this is not all about going out and drinking a skin full. You can really evaluate how good you are running a club by the attendance and atmosphere at social events. If everyone is friends, the conversation flows nicely and everyone is having a good time: you're probably doing alright! I'm going to use the next space as a bit of a photo montage of all the socials we've done this year - and you'll see smiling faces in them all! 

1st social of the year - everyone getting to know everyone and soon becoming friends! Learnt loads about how to organise a bar crawl, both in talking to the pubs to get deals and getting the word out to the party goers!

Next social - a rather small turnout despite better organisation than the first. Everyone had an amazing night though.

Our first themed bar crawl, in conjunction with the Diving Society. Extremely well organised, with two mixed teams going on two separate routes looking for treasure in each bar: possibly the best night out in my student career so far.

Christmas party. We took a different approach than many other clubs. Instead of going to a bar/restaurant and spending £15-20 on a meal, we decided to all go round someone's house, bringing a dish of food and some drinks each and putting on a buffet-esque meal. It was amazing fun, it was personal and everyone had a good time!

It's not just all about drinking though! Although drinking and clubbing is a big part of university culture, we also put on non-drinking socials to accommodate those who choose not to drink and to give everyone a break! We decided to put on a documentary about several kayakers going on a paddling expedition at one of our member's houses - which just so happened to have a projector screen!

Our last social was laserquest, which had a great turnout and we even managed to earn a little profit of it as well. This is great as it gives us more money as a society to buy kit and equipment, as well as subsidising trips, training sessions and hoodies.








Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Running the Taster Sessions

Hello again! Last time I wrote about how we got individuals interested in LUKS at Fresh Fair. The saga continues with our taster pool sessions, where we attempted to part those individuals with their hard-earned cash with the promise of lots of run as a fully fledged members of LUKS!

Taster Sessions
So now we had a long list of people excited to try kayaking and as committee we knew how important it was to keep people interested to get as many members as possible! We had told people we were going to have a free taster pool session at Fresh Fair, and discussed how best to go about it to fulfil our objective of getting as many full members of LUKS as possible.
 
One problem that we faced (and are still faced with) is the lack of capacity at pool sessions. We have a regular 90 minute slot at a local community college on a Tuesday evening. They have a good sized pool and several boats for us to use, which gives us a capacity of around 12 if we take 2-3 boats there as well. We are unable to get another weekly time slot for the pool due to high demand and even if we could get another slot, our young club lacks the funding to be able to run more sessions. This lack of capacity means that we had to run two taster sessions and to achieve 25 members, over 80% of attendees would have to sign up to be a full member. This is far more difficult than something like football, where dozens of people can meet on Victoria Park and play several games.
The college our pool sessions are held at.
Another problem we faced was a lack of handover training from the previous committee. At this time I was essentially half of the committee (Treasurer and Club Captain), and was forced to work out my role(s) from a couple of notes scrawled on a word document and very limited conversation with the previous (and very disinterested) Club Captain. From this I pieced together our contact at the pool and the information required to run sessions (rules/regulations/timings/costs). I also made my opinions on the lack of handover training clear to my committee - making a mental note to deliver comprehensive training to the next committee. 
Me (left) chatting to a potential member at our first taster session.
Our final issue was the distance. The pool is about 5 miles from the University so cars are a necessity. I organised hiring the Student Union's minibus from the ARC and luckily we have a member who is authorised to drive it. We also have a couple of keen members with cars which means the distance is not a problem with enough planning in place. 

After overcoming these issues, it was simply a case of putting it all together. We divided up the tasks and got to work. I booked the minibus and pool, Jo the secretary organised who would be attending and let them know timings / kit requirements and Tom the social sec supervised the session whilst taking photos for publicity. Proper communication between us kept everyone informed and allowed us to overcome any smaller problems - making for very effective team working. Although I also assumed a supervisory role to spot any problems or inefficiencies, so I could provide constructive criticism / advice if necessary. One such piece of advice was when Jo had confirmed a place for a potential member but neglected to follow this up with details of timing and the meeting place: causing them to miss the taster session and alienating them. Such unprofessional conduct gives LUKS a bad image and potentially lost us a member. In response, I very tactfully spoke to Jo saying this wasn't acceptable and to be more careful in future. We also discussed introducing a simple procedure to make sure that mistakes like this didn't occur again when communicating with potential members.
Ed giving a demo of some kayak gear.
After the session we decided to go to the pub (as is tradition) to talk to the potential members in a casual setting. This gave us the perfect opportunity to get to know everyone a little better and to fill out the paperwork to anyone wishing to become a full member. This really gave me a chance to work on my people skills, mainly getting over my introverted personality and having a good conversation with a couple new faces. I tried to listen actively as much as possible, as I can sometimes dominate a conversation when I get started about a topic I feel strongly about. We did face a slight snag when discovered the pub we went to had a quiz on a Tuesday night and was extremely busy - meaning we had to sit outside for half of the night! An example of how poor planning leads to very quickly to having a poor time. We still had a good night though, and now frequent less busy pubs after pool sessions. 

All in all, our taster sessions went well. We managed to get up to approximately 20 members signed up which is a very high percentage of members to get from taster sessions (approximately 60%) but quite low in absolute terms (we needed 25 members - but more on that next time).

The Skills I Developed from the Taster Sessions:
  • Leadership and working in a team. Working as a team, me and my committee completed the objective we had set out for ourselves. I felt I developed my leadership potential by overseeing the entire process and providing tactful advice when required.
  • Initiative. It was necessary to seek out information from various sources to make the pool session happen. I took the lead on this and gathered the information / made the necessary bookings to facilitate the session.
  • Planning and problem solving. There were quite a few different issues to overcome to best make use of our resources to get as many members signing up as possible. 
  • Communication and people skills. I feel I improved my ability to communicate in both a working, and casual environment with both people I knew and people I didn't know. I especially looked to develop my ability to actively listen to others, in an attempt to not take over conversations with rants. I wish to improve my ability to actively listening more so have recently researched different techniques online. I have also looked into becoming a volunteer for nightline, which is a confidential and anonymous telephone listening, support and information service run by the students. I feel this will not only develop me as a person, but will also allow me to better understand the thoughts, feelings and ideas of others which in turn will allow me to work better with others / communicate better etc.

Monday, 18 February 2013

From Treasurer to Club Captain and Fresh Fair

My Background
I wasn't meant to be the Club Captain for LUKS (Leicester University Kayaking Society). It just sort of...happened. As a very new club, we only had a handful of retained members from last year - so few that practically everyone got a committee position. I was previously the Treasurer, a role I was confident in. Dealing with money doesn't faze me in the slightest - I have always had head for business and my logical, methodical approach to work makes looking through financial accounts almost fun for me. (On a side note, yes I am that person who offers advice on ISAs to my family/friends/their pets etc.). However, what does faze me is being in charge. Fast forward a couple months, the person who was meant to be Club Captain didn't make it back into university and it is up to me to stand up to the plate and take on the role...eek!
The very few retained members from last year (Tom - social sec far left, Jo - secretary far right).

This may sound slightly weird from a person who has spent all of their teenage years  developing their leadership skills and confidence through the Army Cadet Force (from 13 - 19 as a cadet, 19 to 21 as an adult instructor): I should explain that I am a classic introvert. Before joining cadets I was extremely shy, very quiet and unlikely to raise my hand in class or talk to strangers. Generally I lacked confidence and so had very limited leadership ability. However, years of practice leading teams within cadets has given me a fairly solid base of leadership and team working ability - although I still prefer a supportive role rather than a leading one and still get a little anxious when talking to new people.
Me (left) giving a set of orders before a section attack.
To summarise:
  • Reluctantly assumed role of Club Captain
  • Above average leadership and team working potential
  • Logical mind - good problem solving but perhaps lacking creativity?
  • Slightly averse to interacting with strangers (which are just friends I haven't met yet!) 
 First Order of Business: Organising Fresh Fair
As LUKS is a fairly new club, with very few retained members, it was essential to try to attract as many new members as possible over the two days. Going from 5 to 25 members is no easy feat, and so it loads of forethought, preparation and communication was required to make it as successful as possible. Using my logical mind set, I broke the action of attracting a new member to join the club in the context of Fresh Fair. I also thought about the problems and issues that may occur, and what steps can be taken to overcome these:
  1. Our stand had to be interesting and eye catching - there are hundreds of stands at Fresh Fair, and all the freshers have 101 different things on their minds at once being in a new environment. This only gives us a couple of seconds to attract their interest, or we will most likely never see them again. Using what limited resources I had, I prepared a slideshow of promotional images for the club (trips, nights out, pool sessions) and worked out how best to display them on my laptop. I also managed to find a banner used in previous years, a fetching hoody and we even managed to get a boat there one day!
  2. Even after getting their attention, you only have a couple seconds to get them interested - again, the mix of hundreds of different clubs/companies and lots of new freshers means everyone is in a rush to see everything. In order to keep people interested in that 30 second window, I wrote out a quick speech for everyone to learn that quickly summarised what LUKS do, why it would be fun to join up and when our first event was. I also worked with Tom to get a small flyer designed that had these points, along with contact details and a facebook page in the hopes that people may follow us up after they got home.
  3. Following up interest swiftly - if you leave it too long before making second contact, people lose interest. We had to get a good balance of contacting those who were interested enough (and in a timely enough fashion) so they didn't lose interest, but not so much that it began to be dismissed as spam. This is especially difficult with the limited resources of LUKS (one pool session a week with a capacity of around a dozen means it is much harder to involve a lot of people compared to something like football or frisbee where they cater for literally a hundred people on Victoria Park).
Our amazing banner.
For an inexperienced committee, the fair went really well. I spoke to loads of potential members, some more interested in kayaking than others and managed to get in the region of 150-200 email addresses. We faced some problems, adapting where possible but ultimately knowing what we would change for next time:
  • Only having three members to run the stand meant long shifts of exhausting work - smiling, talking enthusiastically and more often than not being ignored is both tiring and emotionally draining. Although there was nothing we could do this year due to having few retained members, next year we will have a much bigger member base to draw from.
  • Having two people at the stand at all times - makes the job a lot easier but also allows you to more effectively speak to potential members. One person can sit behind the desk whilst the other stands in front to draw potential members in. It allows those running the stand to talk to one another to make the quiet times go a little quicker and allows one person to leave to go to the toilet / buy water etc. which makes the day much more comfortable. 
  • We collected some names and email addresses of interested people by pen and paper. We quickly learnt that not all handwriting is legible and may have lost a couple of potential members through errors in transcribing these email addresses. This is also a time consuming process which can be avoiding entirely by collecting email addresses on a tablet/laptop. 
The Skills I Developed from Fresh Fair
There are a number of skills that I had to use, develop and improve over the course of Fresh Fair. To state and expand upon but a few:
  •  Preparation skills (logic, planning, problem solving and communication). It was necessary to fully evaluate our objective (gaining as much interest for LUKS to gain as many new members as possible) in the context of the event. This required the use of logic and problem solving to think how best to achieve our desired outcome, and how to overcome any problems that might hinder our success. It was also necessary to set out solid chains of communication in order to let everyone know timings so the even ran smoothly - as well as communicate any last minute problems if necessary to be able to hopefully find a solution quickly. I believe it was the proper planning was the main reason why LUKS' Fresh Fair was so successful and so every event since then has been thought about and planned in detail to make sure it runs as smoothly and as successfully as possible. 
  • Evaluation skills (critical analysis, logic, problem solving, communication, adaptability). Both during and after Fresh Fair, I analysed whether we could do anything more successfully. This both my ability to adapt to changes during the event (shortening the speech to reduce loss of interest, standing in front of the desk to more easily speak to potential members with loud music in the background etc.) as well as improve future events using experience from this one. I asked the other committee members who had helped run the stand about what they thought had gone well, badly, what could be improved and how? This also developed my ability to communicate with others, and being able to combine ideas to make even better ones.
  • Leadership and working within a team. Fresh Fair allowed me to work closely with my new committee, both in planning and actually running the event. This developed my ability to work as part of a team, which is essential for any future project with LUKS. This also allowed me to develop my leadership ability in a new environment, as it usually fell down to me to make final decisions after discussing options with my team. 
  • Communication and people skills. One of the most notable skills that I developed and improved upon was my people skills - my ability to talk to complete strangers whilst being friendly and enthusiastic, to get them interested in something they may or may not care about. As I said, I am naturally an introvert and despite years of making friends and talking to people I still get a little anxious around strangers. After two days of almost solidly talking to people I didn't know, I feel much more developed as a person in my ability to strike up a conversation with anyone. This is extremely satisfying as I remember speaking to some of my (now) good friends as strangers at Fresh Fair, and knowing that it was because of my words at Fresh Fair that they became a member of LUKS and we became friends. I also feel this greatly helped me become a Leicester Ambassador when I applied later in the year, where a fair proportion of the job role is based on excellent people skills such as smiling and being friendly.