How do you measure the influence of your leadership on volunteering?

1 Leadership styles

As a volunteer manager, you can adopt different types of leadership styles, depending on your personality, preferences, and context. Autocratic style involves making decisions without consulting volunteers and expecting them to follow instructions. Democratic style involves involving volunteers in the decision-making process and valuing their opinions and feedback. Laissez-faire style involves giving volunteers a lot of freedom and autonomy to choose their tasks and methods. Transformational style involves inspiring volunteers with a clear vision and purpose and encouraging them to grow and innovate. Each style has its advantages and disadvantages, so it's important to adjust your approach depending on the situation and the needs of your volunteers. However, some styles may be more conducive to creating a positive and productive volunteer culture than others.

2 Leadership outcomes

To measure the influence of your leadership on volunteering, you can look at outcomes such as volunteer satisfaction, retention, performance, and impact. You can collect data on these outcomes using surveys, interviews, focus groups, feedback forms, reports, or metrics. Furthermore, you can compare the outcomes with your expectations or objectives to evaluate your leadership effectiveness.

3 Leadership behaviors

To measure the influence of your leadership on volunteering, you can look at the behaviors or actions that your leadership influences. These behaviors include volunteer motivation, empowerment, collaboration, and learning. You can use various tools and methods to observe and measure these behaviors, such as self-assessments, peer assessments, observation checklists, or feedback forms. Additionally, you can compare your behaviors with your values, standards, or best practices in order to improve your leadership skills.

4 Leadership feedback

Gathering feedback from volunteers and other stakeholders is an effective way to measure the influence of your leadership on volunteering. Feedback can provide insights into your strengths and weaknesses as a leader, build trust with volunteers, and help align your leadership style with your organization's culture and values. You can use surveys, interviews, focus groups, feedback forms, or online platforms to collect feedback. Additionally, you can use feedback to set goals, action plans, or follow-up strategies to improve your leadership impact.

5 Leadership reflection

Reflection is a powerful process that can help you measure the influence of your leadership on volunteering and learn from your successes and failures. It can help you gain self-awareness and self-regulation, develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and foster a growth mindset. Reflection can also enable you to explore different perspectives and alternatives for your leadership challenges and opportunities, as well as seek feedback, support, or resources to improve your leadership competence. You can use various tools and methods to facilitate and document your reflection, such as journals, logs, diaries, or portfolios. Moreover, you can use reflection to review your goals, outcomes, behaviors, or feedback and make adjustments or changes to your leadership approach.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?