jaco how do you lead a team of volunteers how to punish or discipline them can’t threaten to fire them because they’re all i have i know a leader does so much more than threaten and punish but i need some guidance try to motiv try to motivate but feel the need to do more thanks trying to answer this one quickly uh once because this is kind of a question i’ve answered before in a different form um do they understand why they’re doing what they’re doing and do they understand why it’s important do they understand how what they are doing will benefit them do they also see you working hard to try and make things happen so those are those are just the basic questions let’s just get those out there every time every time someone’s not doing what you want them to do do they understand why they’re doing what they’re doing do they understand why it’s important to the mission and do they understand how being successful in the mission will benefit them so so let’s just get those out of the way next what can we do here have you gamified the situation at all how you like that gamified right have you gamified the situation because i realize that’s a term that’s getting thrown around now but we would gamify stupid things all the time in the seal teams to make them fun yeah right how much brass can you pick up let’s see i’ll pick up more than you my squad will pick up more brass and you’ll pick up all of a sudden we’re running around the range trying to pick up brass one of the most miserable things that you have to do in the seal teams is pick up brass off the hot range in the summertime and you do it for for like two days because once you get done with all your work you got to go pick up millions of rounds of brass spread out all over the desert in in august in the imperial valley it’s hot it sucks but guess what we’re going to do have a contest so what are you going to do to gamify it uh like what kind of cool competition around some short-term goal can you set up that’s going to be that’s going to make it fun for them some kind of cool reward what about some kind of friendly bets around achieving something like i bet if i raise this much money you know i will go to work with a pair of underwear on my head or you have to you know what i mean whatever these stupid bets you know what we used to do in the teams is we’d bet one dollar one of my old running mates we we had something like critical i bet you one dollar yeah that was like the biggest bet you could make yeah because it’s just it’s pure pride yeah so you know and then we’d always have fun if you were collecting or if you’re giving the dollar collecting the dollar was just totally glorious yeah giving the dollar was shame yeah yeah like you could add like okay when you give me this dollar a it has to be in front of everybody b you have to i don’t know you have to do it while like walking on your knees or something something real kind of demeaning like yeah you know yeah but we didn’t even have to do all that yeah me and my running mate if we won or lost the bet it was like you know and and you wouldn’t even ask for the money you just look at him and this buddy of mine he had one of the most classic looks when he’d give you the look when i lose a bet to him and he gave me the look i i i wanted to cry yeah yeah yeah he lost somebody yeah more than that yeah so maybe you make a bet for a dollar and if that’s not working okay now that’s not work if you can’t gamify if you can’t have fun with it maybe ask them while they’re why they are there and then figure out what their motivation is for being there and how you can tie that into something concrete and then also like you might have some people that hurt aren’t really into this and then lower your expectations of this particular group of people go on recruits and people that want to get after it makes sense yeah have some fun fun goes a long way yeah fun goes a long way having fun doing things goes a long way and and that praise thing too you know when you said like add like a reward or something for because a lot of times especially volunteers where so you know and we all feel this like even at work you can have like a super fun job but you’ll get you’ll people generally speaking tend to get complacent in one way or another you know when things are routine or things are you know not as exciting or whatever um and you know when you’re volunteering and that happens it’s kind of like you’re not tied there by a paycheck really you know which is just it’s just a powerful tie you know that people have to work it’s like yeah i don’t like my job but it’s pays bills and paying the bills is a big deal kind of thing so if you add that element of excitement or fun or you know little personal payoff in one way or another i think that helps a lot of the time indeed and that tends to happen too if the if the lead i’m not saying this person is doing this or not doing this but like if they become kind of complacent in not recognizing how much they they they appreciate the volunteers you know like if they’re just like oh yeah this is just business as usual you know thanks for coming in that’s kind of it kind of thing and there you know then it just gets kind of kind of blah you know like this isn’t not the payoff that they used to have you know but if you can kind of keep that point keep them in the game
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