How God Uses “Ordinary People” to Change the World Sýnishorn

A Pack Mentality

In such a distracted and disjointed society, it can be difficult to motivate volunteers to own their part in your organization. Because of this difficulty, we tend to lower the bar of expectation in order to at least get a small semblance of a win so we can feel good about ourselves as volunteers step or stumble over the low bar we have set for them.

The idea of rallying people to climb a seemingly impossible peak together fraught with obstacles, risk, and a high chance of failure is something that runs counter to our natural inclination to eliminate as much risk as possible as we plan, prepare, and control everything to achieve a predictable outcome.

But avoiding any high challenge whatsoever is a direct cause of our frustration with unmotivated or disinterested volunteers. We attempt to coddle or guilt them into being involved in easily achievable tasks. Now don’t get me wrong—these smaller tasks are vital and important for any organization to maintain ongoing operations. But when this becomes the overwhelming majority of what you are asking of your volunteers, they will descend to that norm or look elsewhere to meet their deep need to be part of something epic. In the high challenge, the heart of the volunteer is moved, resulting in passionate ownership and incredible impact. Volunteers are waiting on someone or some organization to trust what they have to bring to the cause.

Just like all great stories, the hero needs a high challenge to achieve and a villain doing everything possible to defeat them. No one talks about the hero who achieved a small, predictable goal with little to nothing on the line. Tapping into a volunteer who owns their part is similar to splitting the atom. You are working with something small and unseen, but within it resides great power that can change everything around it when the conditions exist to release it into the world. 

If vision is the heart of a movement, ownership is the blood that pulses through its veins. 

Having the correct mentality is crucial to create ownership with volunteers and employees. Most organizations operate with a mentality that’s obsessed with identifying the most talented leaders and training them at a high level to increase their capacity to lead. A plan and a desire to raise up leaders are essential to any successful organization, but it needs to be done with a simultaneous commitment and value of the ordinary. 

This is accomplished with a pack mentality that seeks to create the conditions that unleash the influence of ownership. When your volunteers or employees understand and aggressively own their part in your organization, a pack will form that will hunt and bring down any lions the big dogs can’t conquer on their own.

Do your volunteers own their part to the point of standing their ground with their teammates in the face of adversity, or are they simply waiting for the big dogs to take on the lions your organization is facing? The answer could be the difference between constantly engaging lions and actually bringing them down. 

We hope this plan encouraged you. Learn more at empoweryourvolunteers.com