by Bob Ditter
Dear Bob,
Every year my colleagues and I head off to a camp conference
or two and, if we're lucky, come back with one or two great ideas
that we have every intention of implementing at camp. My fellow camp
directors and I agree that we get pumped up at a conference, only to
be distracted by the everyday details of actually running a camp. We
never seem to get around to putting these great ideas into practice.
Do you have any words of encouragement that might help break this long-standing
trend?
Rob Hammond
Camp Laney
Mentone, Alabama
Dear Rob,
Your sentiments
about taking ideas back to camp are similar to those I've heard
from many camp professionals around the country. To shed light on this
dilemma, let me discuss the difference between what it means to be a
leader and what means to be a manager.
When you and your colleagues attend
a camp conference, you go as a leader. By that I mean someone who looks
outwardly at the big picture of camp. As a leader you want to know what
your competition is, what new options there are for camp, and what new
programs or equipment or practices there are. As a leader, it is your
job to survey the field and provide a vision, or picture, of what you
want your camp to look like when it is running at peak performance.
Being
a leader and providing this vision is critical, but it has little to
do with actually executing a plan. In fact, execution — putting
something into practice — is what a manager does. In contrast to
a leader, a manager looks inward — at the talent in your leadership
team and the different personalities, with an eye to knowing how to get
the best performance out of each individual on any given day.
Leaders
go to camp conferences, get "pumped up," as you say, and
then discuss with their most talented manager how to implement the one
or two great ideas you as the leader have chosen to bring into practice.
It is the manager who will figure out who, how, and through what process
these ideas will become reality. Most people are either a good leader
or a good manager, but hardly anyone is both! Your job as a leader is
to have someone on your team who can build the relationships necessary,
create the trust, develop the credibility, and bring out the enthusiasm
of your best players. Such is the process of getting great ideas from
a conference — or any other source — into practice! To make
this process work at its best, I recommend that you sit down with your
team at the end of the conference, before everyone heads home, and create
an action plan to implement the ideas you have decided are ones you want
to see at camp the following season.
In their book First, Break All the
Rules — What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently,
(1999, The Gallup Corporation, Simon and Schuster, New York), Marcus
Buckingham and Curt Coffman note that "Managers do things right.
Leaders do the right thing." Having a talented manager to complement
a brilliant visionary is crucial to running a vital, exciting, top-notch
camp. For more about what great managers do, about "talent," and
the keys for getting the most out of people, read their book!
Dear Bob,
We had a fourteen-year-old camper at our all girls' camp last summer
who was a worrywart. A talented athlete, she would become very anxious
before an event (gymnastics) and would fret about everything that could
go wrong. Our attempts to reassure her or support her seemed to have
little, if any, effect on calming her. Performing well at one competition
didn't seem to have any carryover to her anxiety about the next
event. Do you have any suggestions about how to calm or reassure a girl
like this that might cut through her anxiety? Worried Wart
Dear Worried,
It's not clear to me that the best way to calm your young camper
is to talk her into giving up her anxiety. There are some children who
actually perform better when they worry. It is almost like their strategic
approach is to imagine every possible thing that might go wrong and then
problem solve or "rehearse" in their heads what to do if
their worst case scenario becomes reality. People who do this are what
Julie Norem, Ph.D., and chair of the Department of Psychology at Wellesley
College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, calls a "defensive pessimist." That
is, their "pessimism" serves a purpose — it helps them
prepare.
Let me give you an example. If you have ever had a test or speech
or presentation to give and the night before you just couldn't sleep
because you were tossing and turning — thinking about your upcoming
performance — you would be doing what I call "rehearsing." That
is, going over in your mind all the things you want to remember, all the
ways you want to be seen. It makes for a terrible night's sleep,
but often gets us focused. This is a little taste of what defensive pessimists
do.
According to Dr. Norem, the best way to help such a person is to give
him or her informational support, i.e., to provide the facts about the
upcoming performance (for example, "you've practiced for sixteen
hours, you've nailed that vault perfectly three times, the other
team is less experienced than ours," and so on). In fact, Norem says
that research shows that optimists who worry do better with emotional
support, while defensive pessimists do better with informational support.
Knowing which category your camper falls into is crucial in terms of
knowing what the best way is to support her.
Dr. Norem also says there
are "defensive optimists" whose optimism is unrealistic and whose strategy
is to be self-promoting. Essentially, these are kids who brag as a way
of fending off feelings of inferiority. It doesn't sound like the girl
you describe fits this category.
There are kids who worry but don't get
this strategic benefit because they haven't learned how to harness it
and make it work for them. In other words, they worry but aren't disciplined
enough to think things through (with the help of some timely coaching
in the form of that informational support I referred to earlier). If
the worry isn't something you can help them eliminate, then the least
you can do as a camp professional is help them learn to use it to their
advantage. In fact, isn't camp like a "living laboratory" where — in
the context of an emotionally and physically safe environment — campers
learn better coping skills on their way to being more self-sufficient?
Originally published in the 2008 March/April
issue of Camping Magazine. |
