Leader Seminar: Inspire & Ignite: Stoke Your Team’s Fire and Avoid Burnout ▶️

Updated on December 7, 2023

Thanks to everyone who joined us for Rent Responsibly’s Leader Seminar, Inspire & Ignite: Stoke Your Team’s Fire and Avoid Burnout. Panelists Debi Hertert, founder of Host2Host, and Stephanie Short, vice president of partnerships at America Succeeds, discussed ways to grow your leadership skills strategies to recharge and reinvigorate you and your team. If you missed the event, check out some of the big takeaways here.

Highlights & Takeaways

• Once you’ve created an alliance and defined your mission statement, goals, and action steps, focus on and clearly communicate the central “why” of your mission to fuel energy and get buy-in.
• Start small. Come up with three to four ways that you can accomplish each action step to get closer to your goal. Out of your three or four options for accomplishing an action step, it’s likely that your team will accomplish only one or two.
• Be self-aware of your tendency to overestimate your time and the possibility of others overestimating their time. 
• As you delegate tasks, think about the strengths each of your members have to offer and how those strengths can build early momentum to reach your goal.
• Find out as much about your volunteers as possible. Ask them about themselves. Eventually, ask or suggest how their skills and experiences could fit a particular project.
• Encourage volunteers to think about what they can contribute across the “Five Ts”:

1. Treasure (monetary contributions)
2. Time
3. Talent or skills
4. Ties (the people they know who can make your work a little easier)
5. Testimony (telling the stories of the hosts and the regular people who show up)

• Make a list of bite size tasks and ask for help from 100 members. Chances are they might see one that they can complete quickly.
• Make a list of multi-depth tasks that range from easy to hard and let volunteers choose their level of commitment.
•  If you aren’t landing volunteers from general calls to action, try making targeted phone calls to individuals.

“The Facebook ads and newsletter notices don’t bring in volunteers in, but a phone call and a conversation frequently will.”

Debi Hertert, founder of Host2Host

•  As a leader, you don’t need to have the answers to all of the problems you’re trying to solve. Lean on the diverse expertise of your membership for solutions and direction. Doing so will not only make them feel that they are part of the mission, it will expand everyone’s bandwidth.

 “It’s critical that you engage everyone in the bulk of the decision-making, so that you are addressing the community needs.”

Debi Hertert, founder of Host2Host

• After asking a volunteer to work on a particular project, listen and respect what they say and work around their limitations. For instance, if a volunteer agrees to work on a particular project but can’t commit to the number of hours you requested, assign a co-lead to work with that person to fill in the gaps, provide more bandwidth, and avoid burnout.
• Once you have assigned top action items, either let go of lower priorities or recruit additional members to do the rest of the tasks on your list.
• Purposefully build redundancy across your alliance to ensure projects and tasks get accomplished. Building redundancy could mean having multiple options for accomplishing an action step, or it could mean putting more than one person on each task.

“You want to make sure that that ball dropping isn’t going to sideline the rest of your campaign.”

Stephanie Short, vice president of partnerships at America Succeeds

• When encountering setbacks, problems with implementation of a plan, or doubt in the progress the alliance has made, keep a positive attitude. Take a break, meditate, or connect with friends, and then return to the challenge.

“Consciously choose to be positive about the possibility of the future and positive that we can make an impact.”

Stephanie Short, vice president of partnerships at America Succeeds

• Switch up your approach regularly to make the problem feel more approachable. For instance, if the first time on your advocacy campaign, you made headway with the media, the second time make it a point to find key council members or key decision-makers and set up meetings with them. Take a research and data approach, or find another organization to partner with. As a bonus, you will grow your advocacy toolkit and skillset.
•  Recruit and build relationships when you aren’t in a regulatory battle.
• Host a social event like inviting hosts to meet with small business owners. The hosts let the business owners know they send their short-term rental guests to their business. Then, the hosts personally invite the business owners to join the alliance. Business owners are often part of other associations where they can share and can spread the word on behalf of your local alliance.
• Invite a member of the City Council or a local Homeowners Association to coffee and pick their brain. Offer the “Five Ts” to help them solve their problems, so that they’ll remember that when you come to them for help.
• Ask members of your Facebook group to share their personal stories and identify potential volunteer roles for them based on the passion they show and the experiences they have had.

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