Creating Esprit de Corps for the Cause

By Deb Boelkes

If you’ve ever been a volunteer, or led a group of volunteers, you know first-hand that everyone has multiple priorities vying for their time, energy, and enthusiasm. Inspiring anyone to prioritize your volunteer group’s efforts in the overall scheme of their lives can be challenging.

Like herding cats, recruiting and optimizing volunteer endeavors can be the ultimate test of a leader’s ability. So, how can you keep a team of volunteers motivated, engaged, focused, and dedicated to working in synergistic unity when you can’t pay them to do so?   

Let’s get right to the bottom line: Heartfelt leadership is what the most effective leaders rely upon to succeed, regardless of whether they can offer monetary incentives or not. Heartfelt leaders know that what binds teams together is passion for the cause, assignments that play to each individual team member’s strengths and involve tasks they love to perform and find energizing, and having a leader who genuinely cares about helping everyone succeed in support of the mission.   

In my August post, we talked about the keys to employee engagement. These same things apply equally well to volunteer engagement.  Britt Berrett, now the former president of the award-winning “Best Place to Work,” Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, shared his belief

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What Do You Want for Your Children?

By Deb Boelkes

How many special people are you grateful to for helping you become the person you are today?

Whether you are now a parent, teacher, coach, aunt or uncle, or simply a good neighbor to a child, what would you like your legacy to be in terms of making a difference in their life?

While my own childhood was idyllic early on, things turned chaotic when my mother became an alcoholic. That experience taught me that it isn’t always easy for children to navigate through life. Fortunately for me, some very special people seemed to magically come along to guide and encourage me at just the right moments in time. Thanks to my guardian angels, I grew up to be a responsible, self-reliant, and eternally grateful adult (discover more about this in my book Heartfelt Leadership).   

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How Do You Inspire Extraordinary Experiences?

By Deb Boelkes

Do you know what it’s like to be a customer / client / guest / patient / passenger / end user of your organization’s products and services? Have you ever put yourself in their shoes and navigated the entire end-to-end pre-sale through post-sales support process, like an undercover agent, to imagine what a truly WOW experience could look like for them if you waved your magic wand?  

The reality is, WOW experiences don’t magically happen unless every employee—at every step of the process—is highly engaged, loving what they do, in a role that aligns with your organization’s mission, vision, and values.

In my first book, The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a Best Place to Work Culture, I asked heartfelt leader Britt Berrett, then-president of the award-winning “Best Place to Work” Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, what he believed was the key to employee engagement. Britt answered without hesitation, ...

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Are You Really Loving Your Job?

By Deb Boelkes

Have you ever found yourself at work, thinking “What am I doing here?”

Most people have probably asked themselves that question at some point in their career. For most of my career I’ve enjoyed the people I’ve worked with and have loved what I did for a living. But there were a couple times I asked myself that very question, especially early on before I figured out my strong suits and learned how important it is to play to one’s strengths.

Probably the worst job I ever had was serving as a part-time fabric store clerk while attending fashion design school. The job was so boring that I found myself looking at my watch every five minutes. I didn’t stay in that position more than a couple weeks, but that was longer than I should have stayed. I’m sure my attitude about it didn’t do me or anyone else any favors. Yet, thankfully, because of that experience, I came to realize that there are certain aspects of work life that individuals shouldn’t compromise on.

While those aspects may vary from one person to the next, for me to be at my best it’s important for me to:

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What are you doing to achieve your American Dream?

By Deb Boelkes

What’s your vision of the American Dream? Have you achieved it yet or are you still working on it? As the world has changed, has your vision of the American Dream changed?  Would your ancestors be proud of your ethics and your accomplishments?

There may be as many versions of “The American Dream” as there are people living in America. Brittanica.com defines The American Dream as:

The ideal that the United States is a land of opportunity that allows the possibility of upward mobility, freedom, and equality for people of all classes who work hard and have the will to succeed.

That’s certainly what I learned as a child, and as a natural born U.S. citizen, that’s what I’ve strived to achieve—for myself and for others—my entire life. How about you?

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How Would You Like to Be Remembered?

By Deb Boelkes

Since you are reading this post, it’s likely that you either consider yourself to be a heartfelt leader or you are striving to become one. Either way, this is a great place to gain more insights and inspiration on being the best heartfelt leader you can be.

When you think about the heartfelt leaders you have known in your life, what words come to mind when describing them? What characteristics did those leaders who most inspired you exemplify?  

Now, consider the characteristics that you would like to be known for as a heartfelt leader? Are you there yet?

For as long as I can remember, I was encouraged by my elders and upline managers to start with the end in mind—whether planning my career or defining the desired outcome of whatever goal I was striving to achieve at the time. It’s vital to envision what success looks like to chart the best course to get there.

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Should Leaders Always be Fair?

By Deb Boelkes

As a child, did you ever say to your mom or dad, “But that’s not fair!”?

I know I did. I specifically recall a time when I was 7 or 8 years old, after my dad had come home from work. I asked my mother if I could go outside to ride my bike. Being close to dinner time, she said, “No.”

“But that’s not fair!” I exclaimed.

“Life’s not fair,” she replied.

My dad stepped in and suggested, “Being summertime, perhaps if you give Mom some help with dinner preparations there will still be few more hours of daylight after we eat. Then you can go ride your bike.”   

“OK,” I replied begrudgingly. As I set the table, I grumbled, “When I grow up, I’m going to let my children do whatever they want!”  

It sounded like a good idea to me at the time. Of course, now I know better.

Fast forward thirty years...

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Do You Know Any Humble Leaders?

By Deb Boelkes

When we think of great leaders, we often envision well-known military, political, or corporate warriors who lead from the front with an abundance of self-confidence—the kind of people who aren’t afraid to accept seemingly impossible challenges, take the biggest risks, and make the toughest decisions.

When you think of the greatest leaders you’ve known in your life, who comes to mind? Would you describe them as humble or self-aggrandizing? Did they boast about their stellar accomplishments or downplay their personal efforts in favor of sharing the spotlight with or giving credit to others for their success?

As I’ve interviewed dozens upon dozens of leaders over the years, the ones I’ve admired most were those I would label as virtuous Heartfelt Leaders. They inspire rather than intimidate; they coach rather than coerce; and they are discerning rather than judgmental. While they may have oodles of self-confidence, they are unafraid to ask forgiveness when they’re wrong, they are humble rather than arrogant, and they take pride in setting others up for success.  

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