Three Tips to Turn Club Members into Club Organizers

Yes, it's possible to run your campus club alone. But a club runs much more smoothly if you have several members helping out. With a small effort on your part, you can get other members involved in organizing meetings and make your experience of running a club much easier and more satisfying.

Here are three tips for how to get other members to help you run the club:

1) Pick the right people to help you

You don't need someone who knows all about Objectivism. You don't need someone with lots of ideas for what the club can do. You don't need someone who volunteers without your asking. Those are all nice, but they are not the key.

What you need is someone who shows up.

Look for helpers among people who already attend meetings regularly. They've already made a commitment to the club and have demonstrated that they will carve out time in their schedules for the club. So do groom the quiet person at the back of the room who never misses a meeting. And don't give crucial assignments to the Boy Wonder who breezes in every sixth meeting full of ideas. (You can offer him non-crucial assignments, which are great if he does them and no disaster if he doesn't.)

2) Make your requests for help to a specific person, and for a specific task

Vague requests don't get results.

When you ask for help from a group, the request is impersonal. No one feels he has to answer you. They leave it to others in the group. When you ask a specific person (in person or by email), they will usually reply. 

Furthermore, vague tasks may sound hard or deceptive. If you ask for something vague like "help with the meeting," a person may be leery about how much that involves. If you define the task exactly, (e.g., bring a CD player to the meeting, or arrive 15 minutes early to set up the room), you make the task sound easy. Plus, the person you're asking can immediately judge whether or not he can commit to that task.

3) Treat Help as Cooperation, not Donation or Duty

Objectivism advocates selfishness. What properly motivates you and everyone else is a selfish desire to have the club exist. There is a selfish benefit to meeting regularly with other people interested in Objectivism, discussing Objectivist ideas, and listening to Objectivist lectures. That's the reason to put in effort to keep the club going.

No one, including you, has a duty to work for the club. Doing work for the club is not a personal favor to you. So, whenever you ask for help, broach it as a means of achieving a shared goal.

Instead of saying, "I need someone to come early to set up, would you?" say something like:

"It's important that a regular member gets to the meeting 15 minutes early, so that early visitors know they're in the right place and stay for the meeting. Otherwise they leave, and we miss an opportunity. Would you cover that role for Wednesday's meeting?" 

By following these three tips, you can turn regular members into people who help you run the club. You will find that you can put in the same amount of effort, and yet the club is more organized, more active, and a bigger value to you and all its members.

Jean Moroney is President of Thinking Directions (http://www.thinkingdirections.com). She teaches thinking tactics to managers and other professionals grappling with the pace and complexity of business. As a graduate student, she ran the campus club at Carnegie Mellon. She has many years of post-graduate experience running a local Toastmasters club, which poses similar challenges.