Student ActivitiesCentralized Training

Session 1Getting the most out of your SA team

Joël Primeau, Québec City, Canada

Why do I even need a team?

• As you will see today, as the SA chair for your chapter, you CANNOT do it all alone. It’s impossible!

• You need a committee or rather a team.

• The word “committee” makes people think of meeting, meeting minutes, action lists, doughnuts and stale coffee. There’s a lot of sitting with committees! Heck! The person in charge of a committee is called a chair…

• A team gets stuff done. A team has a leader. A team has players, members or mates.

Team vs Committee

Who should be on your team?• Recruit doers• Avoid posers• Seek passionate people• Find young-ish people… if not young, at least a

little immature… especially for your K12 activities.

How to recruit team members• Be specific when recruiting team members: “I need a

fun-loving engineer, who is willing to visit 4 or 5 classrooms per year, do goofy/fun science experiments, to encourage grade 4-6 students to get interested in science, technology, engineering and math.”

• The worst thing you could do is to ask for a “volunteer to join your committee”

Getting the most of your team• I don’t believe in motivation… you don’t

actually motivate people. People motivate themselves.

• I believe in leadership… you can lead people.

Leading in 3 simple steps

•Purpose•Mastery•Autonomy

My sources…

PURPOSE

• First tell them WHY.• Give purpose to your team.

(it’s especially important with Millenials… way more so than with Baby Boomers…)

PURPOSE

Be a WHY leader, instead of a HOW leader.

WHY leader’s team keeps working after the leader is out of sight… they figure out WHAT to do and HOW to do it, as long as they know WHY they do it.

If you’re usually a HOW leader, you’re probably not very good at delegating, and you have to be there all the time or you need to check on your team frequently.

PURPOSE• Give S.M.A.R.T goals to your team members

MASTERY

• To excel or succeed, your team members will need to know HOW to do things.

• Most of the stuff we do in Student Activities isn’t rocket science… BUT, don’t give your team members the excuse of “I didn’t know how to do this”

• Teach BEFORE they have to do the task… teaching AS they do the task will undermine their confidence and reduce their willingness to get it done.

MASTERY• Not knowing how to do something is the NUMBER 1

reason why people procrastinate.

AUTONOMY• Once a team member knows why and how… get out

of the way, and give them the room they need to excel.

• If you act like you don’t trust your team to do something, they will likely prove you right and not do it properly or at all.

PURPOSE MASTERY AUTONOMY• It’s pretty simple:

1. why first and foremost2. how 3. get out of the way

• But countless managers, chairs, bosses, CEOs forget it every day…

PURPOSE is the hardest to get right• I’ll be back later today to talk about developing

simple overarching goals for your team…

Questions?