Is your new team pulling together?

March is always an exciting month, as it’s when all of the new Leadership Teams are trained. And more often than not you can tell whether a chapter will be successful during their term of office, or not, just by how many of the new team attend the training.

The full attendance by a team (of a chapter) at the training pretty much always guarantees a successful future for that chapter. And knowing this it always amazes me the number of reasons that members give for not taking part.  From the just can’t be bothered, to ‘I’m too busy’, and of course the ‘I did it last time’.

I’m not going to comment on the ‘can’t be bothered’ attitude as I don’t think I need to. But what about ‘I’m too busy’? Well my question here is very simple. If the person is too busy – will they have the time needed to devote to the chapter? If not, in truth, they won’t really be able to help the chapter fully. Something else, more important, will often come up.

Then we have the ‘done it before’ argument. The reasoning is that they have been trained before so know what to do. Not only is this very arrogant but also completely misses the point.

Several years ago I had a member who was adamant that they didn’t need to be trained (again!). So in the end I made him an offer (he was to be a Visitor Host). My offer was that if he ran a perfect session at his next meeting he didn’t have to attend the training. On the spot he elected to attend the training. But the bigger thing is that these people forget that they are part of a team.

Can you imagine Sir Steve Redgrave saying to the other three members of the boat that he would just turn up at the Olympics because he had been before? Of course not. And I know that he worked just as hard, if not harder, than the other crew members. Another thing, he used his experience of having done it before, to the benefit of the newer crew members. So, if you have been trained before, that is exactly what you should be doing.

Thinking about rowing is in fact the perfect example of team work. Just think about an ‘Eight’ – Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Just imagine what a disaster it would be if all the rowers pulled at a different rate, didn’t train, or in fact if one of the crew didn’t turn up. They certainly wouldn’t win much.

There is a great book ‘Will It Make The Boat Go Faster’ by Ben Hunt-Davis. He was part of the eight that won gold at the 2000 Olympic Games, and I really recommend you get a copy. The premise of everything they did was ‘will it make the boat go faster?’ If the answer was ‘yes’ they did it, if the answer was ‘no’ they didn’t.

So a question for you if you might be thinking of missing Leadership Team Training. ‘Will It Make The Boat (your chapter) Go Faster?’ I hope that you will agree that the answer is a big ‘No’ and go!