Collaborating with Staff: Sharing a common philosophy, working to achieve common goals

Camping Magazine, Sept, 1999 by Jeff Salzman

Staff play an important role in your camp operation. After all, it is your staff who are in day-to-day contact with campers, facilitating the positive experiences of camp. Therefore, your staff must share your camp's philosophy and be aware of the values that make your program unique. Collaborating effectively with your summer staff is a critical element in achieving your organization's goals and objectives.

The Philosophy Behind the Mission

Most organizations today have developed a formal mission statement that describes the core values or purpose of their organization and the objectives that define achievement and success. Some camps, such as Sunny Skies Day Camp, have a camp philosophy in lieu of a formal mission statement:

"Camp is more than just a fun way for kids to spend their summer; camp is a place where we can make a positive difference in young people's lives. All of the activities at camp are tools that provide opportunities for children to participate, build new skills, and form friendships. If our staff is successful, campers will gain self-esteem and self-confidence through their experiences and adventures at camp."

Staff Play a Critical Role

Staff play a critical role in making camp more than just a fun way for kids to spend their summer. The work staff members do (or don't do) determines the organization's success or failure. For the program to be successful, camp directors depend on the staff members to implement the camp philosophy. How can you select and train your staff to accomplish this task? You must become skilled at marketing to your staff!

Interview with your mission in mind

Marketing to staff begins during the hiring process. Staff interviewing and selection should be based on your program's philosophy in an effort to screen and hire those candidates who want (and are able) to fulfill the goals and objectives that you have set forth. In order to accomplish this, interview questions must be designed with your camp's mission in mind; an applicant's response to well-created interview questions should allow you to compare the goals and objectives of the prospective staff person with that of your program.

One question that you should ask in order to get a sense of a candidates' perspective on the value of camp is "If you ran a summer camp, what would be some of your goals and objectives?" Another important question to ask is "What do you think children can gain from a summer camp experience?" While fun is certainly a good start to answering both of these questions (and you should be concerned if fun is not included in the answer), what else does the candidate think is important? Look for answers that include: "learning skills," "making new friends," "being part of a positive group experience," "gaining independence," and "becoming more self-confident." The candidate's answers to these types of questions will begin to indicate whether this prospective staff person envisions the camp experience congruously with the objectives of your camp vision.

Later in the interview, you can begin to share your camp's philosophy with an applicant by asking "Do you think children can gain self-confidence or self-esteem from a summer camp experience?" (Granted, this is a loaded question!) After they inevitably answer "yes," follow up with much more challenging and revealing questions:

* How can a child gain self-esteem from summer camp?

* Does the staff play a role in allowing that to occur?

* How would you as a counselor try to build a child's self-confidence?

* Do you think there is a recipe for helping to build children's self-esteem?

During interviews, ask questions in an attempt to determine if there is the possibility of a successful match between your organizational goals and the goals of the prospective staff member. As an employer, the first step is to be sure that your interview questions are geared toward your program's particular philosophy.

Teach staff your camp's vision

After you have selected those individuals who you feel will embody your organization's core values, the next step is to educate and train your staff in detail about the program's mission and what role they will play in achieving it. At this point, marketing your mission to your staff should be a relatively easy sell in that one benefit of an effective hiring process is that your staff should already share the values and goals that define your mission - if you have done your job in hiring staff, then your organizational mission should be, at least in part, their personal mission!

Staff training is a time to provide your staff with a recipe for how to incorporate the mission into each and every camp activity. For example, when some camps train their staff to facilitate a canoeing program, the program leaders are careful to talk about and role play exactly how this program fits into the camp's philosophy (in addition to teaching the procedural elements of canoeing and safety).

It's no coincidence that their canoes seat four campers and that sometimes only two paddles are in each canoe. While canoeing may be about rowing a boat in a body of water, for this program canoeing is really all about working in groups, communicating with friends, sharing paddles when mysteriously there are not enough to go around, feeling good about oneself from the experience . . . and, of course, it's also a lot of fun!