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Home » Church Leadership, Featured

Accept Help When Given

Submitted by James Higginbotham on February 3, 2009 – 5:15 amNo Comment

As a leader of volunteers, there is one rule that should never be broken(*): Always accept help from those willing to give it, even if they don’t do it the way you would. Here is why:

Someone I know was recently led to help a team migrate some old content to a new format. As part of the process, they needed to obtain content from a different person, which came in a different format than what is currently used. “No problem”, they said, “I’ll just take what exists, figure out how best to map it to the new format, and all will be done.” Of course, it is never that easy. In the end, they were able to map about 1/4 of the content, with the rest requiring others to help make it happen.

What comes next will amaze you: the team opted to throw away what this person did and redo it their own way! How do you think that made the volunteer feel? Do you think the volunteer will give their precious time in the future to help their team? Probably not.

This kind of wastefulness happens often in business. Managers, trying to get ahead, come up with crazy ideas and then find people to make them happen. If they win, then the people that helped get to see their hard work pay off. If they lose due to some political battle, then the work is thrown away. While it may be demoralizing for those that did the work, at least they still got a paycheck. Not your volunteers! They gave what they had – time, sweat, and (possibly) tears. And what do they get in return? Well, satisfaction if you let them contribute to the team by seeing their work through, frustration if you didn’t.

The next time someone offers to help, let them. It may not be the way you wanted it, but when was the last time you were able to get everything you wanted? In the process, you are getting help (for free) while having the opportunity to get to know them better and minister to them personally. Sounds like a winning opportunity to me!

(*) Of course, this rule must be broken if the help being given might harm themselves or someone else.

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