Helping Your Volunteers Know What Success Looks Like ~ RELEVANT CHILDREN’S MINISTRY

Do your volunteers know what success looks like for their serving role?  

Do they wonder if they are doing a good job?  

Do they get frustrated at times?

Do they want to get better at this serving thing, but don’t know where to begin?

If the answer is “yes,” then that’s on you. 

A critical piece of bringing someone on your team is to help them know what success looks like for their role.  

Let’s talk about this.  Here are some steps you can take to improve in this important aspect of serving.

Step One – Define success.

Sit down and define what success looks like for every role in your ministry.  It doesn’t have to be long…in fact, it shouldn’t be long.  Just create 3-4 simple bullet points for each role. Here are some examples.

Nursery:

Pray a Bible promise over each child.

Make sure diapers get changed.

Connect with each parent and encourage them. 

Elementary:

Make sure each child knows the “big truth” when they leave.

Each child is part of a small group and participates.

Each child is prayed for by name.

Welcome Team:

Greet each person who enters.

Walk guests to the guest check-in area.

After the service, thank each person for coming as they leave.

Step Two –  Put it in writing for them to see.  Sit down with new volunteers and go over what the points of success look like.  Go over it again during your volunteer orientation time.

Print out a copy of the success list and put it in every room so volunteers can see it.

Step Three –  Use the points of success to provide feedback, and coaching for your volunteers.  

Observe how volunteers are doing based on the points of success that you provide them with.  Invest in them and help them improve in these areas.  They will not know how they are doing if you don’t tell them.

Here is another example that shows the importance of defining success for your volunteers.  

Let’s say that we are on a football team together.  You are the quarterback.  I am a receiver.  You throw me a pass during the game that is at my feet. It will be very hard to catch that ball. 

The goal would be for you to pass the ball to me at my chest area.  Right between the numbers on my jersey.  It would be much easier for me to catch the ball and succeed if you throw it to me well.  

Make sure you are not “throwing a ball” to your volunteers that is hard to catch. By “hitting them between the numbers” you are setting them up for success.

Here are a few things to think about:

Do I have written down what success looks like for every role on the volunteer team?

Do I have the “success points” displayed in each room so volunteers can see it?

Am I providing coaching and feedback for volunteers based on the success list?

Remember in closing…you can’t hold someone accountable for success if you haven’t defined success for them. 

p.s.  Do you have a copy of my book “The Formula for Building Great Volunteer Teams?”  It has been called the best book ever written on the subject.  It’s the formula that I used to build a volunteer team of over 2,000 at a local church.  You can get your copy today at this link.