{"id":537,"date":"2015-04-28T01:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T05:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/?p=537"},"modified":"2026-04-01T16:21:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T16:21:17","slug":"tension-to-manage-or-problem-to-solve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/2015\/04\/28\/tension-to-manage-or-problem-to-solve\/","title":{"rendered":"Tension to Manage or Problem to Solve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was recently asked by a church planter &#8220;How do you prevent volunteers from being unfaithful &#8211; not showing up when they should, not doing what they said, etc?&#8221; I replied that <strong>this is a tension to manage, not a problem to solve.<\/strong>\u00a0While you can&#8217;t eliminate volunteers canceling (or canceling without notice) there are things you can do to minimize these occurrences:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Clearly communicate expectations on the front end. Have in writing what you expect (i.e. that they are faithful in their commitment and that they call if they can&#8217;t make it for whatever reason).<\/li>\n<li>When volunteers violate your clearly communicated expectations you need to follow up with them to understand what happened. This becomes an opportunity to reiterate your expectations. Remember: People do what you <em>inspect<\/em>, not what you <em>expect<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Things will never be perfect, but you can eliminate so many of the common volunteer problems by doing these two things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was recently asked by a church planter &#8220;How do you prevent volunteers from being unfaithful &#8211; not showing up when they should, not doing what they said, etc?&#8221; I replied that this is a tension to manage, not a problem to solve.\u00a0While you can&#8217;t eliminate volunteers canceling (or canceling without notice) there are things [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-volunteers","7":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Mike","author_link":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/author\/mike\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1197,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions\/1197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}