How to get comfortable recruiting volunteers and asking for help.
Does the idea of asking for help set your teeth on edge? Here’s a way to fix that.
As I’ve mentioned before; asking for help, recruiting volunteers, and empowering them is essential to success for getting your bus-only lane, pedestrian plaza, bike parking expansion or any other change you’re looking to make in your community. Fundamentally, recruiting volunteers is all about asking for help– and that can be hard to do. But the fact is that successfully asking for help is a learnable skill; as is overcoming an aversion to asking for help. Before we jump into how to successfully ask for help, let’s take a look at why someone (but of course not you!) might have a hard time asking for help.
For many people, asking for help can be scary. It might feel vulnerable, or like an admission of weakness, or like you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Rather than confronting those unpleasant feelings, it can be tempting to go it alone but that only gets you so far. If you want big success you need to recruit volunteers and get comfortable asking for help.
To be clear– asking for help is a sign of vulnerability and need. So what? Climate change is wreaking havoc on the globe, tens of thousands of Americans are killed on our dangerous roads each year, and some of the best solutions for both of those– making biking & transit more accessible to more people– are woefully underfunded and disrespected as solutions. That HAS to change and that will take work and you cannot win those changes for your community by yourself.
It would be delusionally egotistical for you to think you can do all that by yourself. Maybe it’s hard to confront the reality of what it takes to win the change you want. So rather than getting help and scaling up your work to meet the size of the problem, it feels safer to hide from the truth. But the truth is if you want to make a change, you need help. That is a perfectly fine, rational thing to need. It’s ok to need help, and pretending otherwise is silly.
The other major block one might face in asking for help is the fear of disappointment. Asking for help is admitting you have hope; and hope can be painful. Having hope means that a part of you understands that what’s happening now is wrong, but it can and should be made right. It might be tempting to numb out and it’s easy to do it through embracing magical thinking (“someone will save us”), seeking distraction, or embracing cynicism. It’s ok to hope. Some things can be fixed or made better and you can actually win more changes than you might think.
But I’m not going to lie to you– people will say no to you and you will be disappointed. I’ve had a lot of people say no to me that I was so sure they’d say yes (that one unicyclist who doesn’t like protected bike lanes will stick out in my mind for a long time). A lot of other people out there will tell you to shake off the rejection, remind you that it’s a numbers game and you have to just ask more people– and they have a point. It does help to get a bit of a thicker skin and if you ask a ton of people to help, someone will say yes. However, I believe embracing those as the only balms to rejection is the path to bitterness, burnout, and at the very least emotional callousness.
But if you learn to get good at asking for help; if you learn how to make helping you easy, joyous, and meaningful; and if you learn to see how (and make use of) the fact that people are constantly looking to help you in their own way– then it becomes easier to ask for help. Then it potentially even becomes fun to ask for help. And if the situation is right and you do it well, people might even feel like you are doing them a favor by asking for their help.
Interested in learning more about how to successfully recruit & empower volunteers? I can help. Email me at Carter@carterlavin.com and let’s schedule something.
How I’m walking the talk these days:
A friend asked me and a few others to help them move a giant pile of soil today for a gardening project. I gleefully helped out! It was nice to get some outdoor time in (that wasn’t flyering), nice to help get a garden started, nice to get a little exercise, and nice to help a friend.
Upcoming Free Training-- “A beginner's guide to getting a protected bike lane in your community.” Tuesday March 28th @ 5:30pm PT on Zoom. Register here.
Action/activist of note:
Happy Purim! In honor of the holiday, let’s here it for Esther who, among other many other things, successfully lobbied the King of Persia to not commit genocide. Chag Purim everyone.
Meet your fellow transportation advocates at the March Open Discussion Zoom Happy Hour! This month’s topic: "What's going on with Slow Streets in your community, what's next and how do we build on their success?" Come share your thoughts, hear from allies, and make some friends. Join the conversation on March 22nd
Free personalized training sessions are available for:
An activist working on making their New England community a better place for remote work– 3 sessions have been comped thanks to sponsor Alisa L.
An activist working on changes that would make it easier to go car-free in the Tri-State area (NJ, NY, CT) – 1 session has been comped thanks to sponsors Lisa. G & Doug L.
If you or someone you know are working on this issue and are interested in the training sessions, let me know!
Interested in sponsoring the training of an activist working on an issue you’re passionate about? Let’s chat.
Thanks for reading, thanks for forwarding this along, and most importantly– thanks for working to make the world better!
Sincerely,
Carter Lavin
