Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Finding the off-field skills of your players

A complaint commonly heard among uni club folk is how they can't get anyone to help them out in running the club. I found myself having this problem in the early years of BUUF, but quickly learned how to encourage people to get involved (out of necessity, more than anything).


Start small
What sounds less daunting...
  • "Hey, at training tonight can you grab everyone's email address off them?"
  • "Hey, can you be club secretary?"
Pass off the little, mundane tasks that you otherwise could never be arsed doing - writing a letter to your sports union, making a phone call, registering a team on the AFDA website. This gets rid of that old "I don't have time to help out" excuse - you're asking them to do something that takes 5 minutes!


Find out where they work
See if where they work can get you something useful.
  • At a bar/cafe/restaurant? Organise a social event.
  • At a supermarket? Purchase food for tournaments on the cheap.
  • At McDonalds? Borrow those big water containers for training.
  • In IT support? They can answer emails and write blogs...

What course do they do?
Business or commerce? Keeping the books should be a breeze for them. Human movement/PE? They should be able to get fieldwork credit for doing things for the club. Arts/graphic design? Design posters for social events. IT? Make a website. Nursing? First aid!


Get them used to the idea of responsibility
One thing we've always done at BUUF (I can't claim responsibility for this idea, it was the work of Woodley and Sizz) is on road trips, particularly Uni Games, everyone on the team is given a responsibility. Some of the roles we dish out include...
  • Morning wake ups
  • Knowing the draw (fields, times, opponents)
  • Accreditations (looking after everyones' for the day and taking them to Disc Central before each game)
  • Lunch (shopping for and preparing - usually three or four people doing this)
  • Social planner (scouting for good pubs and clubs)
  • Driving (if you have cars or a bus there)
This takes the bulk of the workload off the captain and team manager, and gives people a greater sense of contributing to the team.


Learn to let go!
Things sometimes do happen if you're not in control of them. Seriously. They do.
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1 comment:

Jangles said...

I found having a team captain and a team manager last year at uni games much easier than the previous year where i did both.

As manager i got the team oraganised and told them when and where to be and when then let them do it themselves. acreditation became easier as i made sure i had all the lanyards in my bag after we were stamped. This only works if you have a very organised person.

as for asking people to do stuff they are good at it is very rare that you get people following through on offers. I found that if you are able to throw something together then showing people your lack of talents in that area that you get results. It also means that you at least get something done instead of running round in circles.

April 16, 2008 at 2:41 PM

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