Sunday, May 2, 2010

Clubs

Clubs are always short on cash, volunteers, and leaders. Leadership is the crucial shortage that can lead to the demise of a club.






The problem with leadership is it hearkens back to the essay I wrote a few years ago on lives. People who have lives usually have better social skills than people who don't have lives. If you don't want your club to be a total disaster, you should seek people who have reasonable social skills and can use the Internet (and probably have lives). Unfortunately time on one's hand, another essential requirement for officers in clubs, is inversely proportional to the social skills one possesses. The ideal leader is probably already involved with the church, her daughter's school, the softball league, has a full time job and is the house mother for an extended family ranging from wayfaring uncles to recent college dropouts.


Hence the dilemma of the overextended leader. I once was in a group where the only way you could guarantee that the leader would make the meeting was to have it in her house. I remember well sitting on her front porch waiting for our leader. Fifteen minutes after the meeting was supposed to begin she would roar into the driveway. Needless to say, the meetings ended late.

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