Skilling up new Action Team members and leaders
“There will always be a reason why you meet people. Either you need them to change your life or you’re the one that will change theirs.”
—Madeline Sheehan
In the Getting Ready chapter we looked at ways of Keeping the Momentum for Change and also indicated that the Action Team will change, too.
Both sections suggested that the Action Team would have a turnover in membership due to the confusion and demands of a Community Led Impact Partnership plus the challenges of operating in a volunteer team of different personalities.
If your Action Team membership needs renewal, or indeed new members to replace old ones, then it is useful to revisit the Force Field Analysis stage of the CLIP Process. An update of this analysis should provide a list of potential new team members to contact. Once you have identified new recruits, it will be useful to have them complete the New Member Skills Survey that the Action Team completed at the start of this CLIP project. This will identify skills training that they might need.
The new recruits will benefit by being exposed to the CLIP Process, especially the CLIP One Page Plan that has been followed so far. This will help them to understand the way things are done in this Action Team. In addition, the feedback on the Project to date will be important for them to see what has been achieved and the challenges still facing the project.
If further skills training were decided for the Action Team following the Team Effectiveness Survey then the new recruits to the team might benefit by being involved too.
Note: In any community led change project it is realistic that causes and movements will come and go. So if your Action Team has achieved what it set out to do then stop, celebrate and move on! Don’t be one of those groups which exist to go looking for causes – planned obsolescence is a good thing. But so is persevering if the job isn’t finished!