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.