Creating a leadership team is like making a cake

Camping Magazine, May-June, 2004 by Greg Cronin

One of the biggest challenges camp professionals face is hiring, orienting, and training staff. It seems like an impossible task given the limitations of time, starting dates, school requirements, and logistics. Complicating this process is the daunting task of communicating--in a matter of days--the vast amount of information needed to ensure a quality camp experience for both staff and campers. While the philosophy of each camp is different, all orientations should include written goals that reflect a desire to assemble a staff whose collective ability will ensure a safe, happy, and rewarding summer for all campers.

Creating a Culture

In addition to these duties, directors also have the responsibility to create a culture that is conducive to maintaining a committed, motivated, and dedicated staff. After all, these special people are ultimately the ones who are going to make your mission a practical reality for campers. This is a difficult problem given the complexity of today's camp programs. With all the duties required to run a successful program, the time leading up to and including orientation is often overlooked for staff development. It is this concept that begins to separate the camps with a high rate of returning staff from those who struggle for a high percent of staff retention.

In speaking to directors from all over the Mid-Atlantic region about orientation and its purpose, it is clear that some camps are using it just to transfer basic information. Interestingly, some of these same programs expressed concern that they had too much staff turnover from one year to the next. While its hard to point to one reason for this trend, it is critical for directors to begin to think of orientation as a step in the staff maturation process and not just a necessary part of getting the summer started.

When I reviewed my own staff retention statistics, I found a consistent retention percentage somewhere in the high 60s. Given the time and effort that goes into staff hiring, this rate needed to be improved. After a careful examination of procedure followed by changing how staff are hired and trained, our retention over the past couple of years has been in the high 80s and low 90s. While each camp has its own system of hiring, one thing is clear--camps who have big staff turnovers need to redefine how their leadership teams are created.

Make Your Favorite Cake

So what does this have to do with cakes? To make your favorite cake, you first must start with a recipe that outlines the process and lists the ingredients that will ultimately lead to a tangible, final product you know to be good. If someone else has never tried this cake, then the degree of their eagerness to sample it is generally based on somebody's recommendation. This outcome-based objective is very similar to the process of recruiting and training camp staff. Because camp professionals are the ones with the best conceptual model depicting the type of experience being created, they must decipher what techniques are relevant to get that message across. Each camp, and their respective culture, is as different as types of cakes and everyone has their favorite kind.

Since each owner/director has a very specific type of experience in mind for his or her campers, it is important that staff are considered or retained on the basis of character and purpose as well as suitability and certifications. While you can often arrange for staff to attend various trainings, which are critical necessities to the camp program, you can't as easily generate predictable results from staff who have not had time to become a part of camp culture.

Read the Recipe

Getting prospective staff to understand how the mission is to be carried out is difficult because each applicant does not yet understand the vision. While it is not always possible to spend time with each staff member prior to orientation, it is possible to give them avenues to understand the part of your program not described in your brochure. On the top of the ingredient list should be finding a way to help staff establish contact with each other prior to orientation. Pay careful attention and group those with similar personality characteristics, same types of jobs, or who are about the same age. Holding conference calls, inviting groups to get together, or having pre-orientation days will help them to build a base of confidence.

Remember, as camp approaches and the "things-to-do list" seems never ending, so does the list for many of your staff. Most staff are really working hard to meet the demands of getting to camp and often feel unprepared for what they are about to do. Taking time to help them through this transition helps establish a working relationship that will consistently pay personal dividends all summer.

Allowing for this pre-orientation communication to transpire shows them they are the camp's number one resource. What a tremendous impression it leaves on a newly hired staff when camp leaders take time out to personally speak to them about their camp questions. By doing this, directors are demonstrating that their thoughts and feelings are important and their input is valued.