In this informal talk, the speaker warns that unresolved conflict among volunteers can halt an organization’s mission and deter future participation. He highlights that conflicts are observed by a third‑party audience, whose disengagement can cost the group valuable talent. The speaker categorizes volunteers into two archetypes: the self‑less "servant leader" who works without seeking recognition, and the "ladder climber" who volunteers to boost a résumé or LinkedIn profile. While ladder climbers can be productive, their goal‑driven focus may lead them to steamroll others, ignore input, and create tension. To mitigate these issues, the speaker offers concrete tactics: slow down, actively listen, write down ideas, maintain eye contact, give private, honest feedback, and extend grace and empathy (even spiritual encouragement) toward difficult volunteers. He stresses that applying these practices can transform adversarial relationships into friendships and keep the organization focused on its core purpose of serving the community. The talk concludes with an invitation for viewers to ask further questions.
Chapters
How do you keep your personal feelings out of volunteer positions? Well, let's start with one angle. The first one is that if you don't deal with it, the work of the organization can be shut down and stopped, and that's not a great end. Most of us volunteer because we want to see our organizations do great things and impact great lives and be generally helpful to the community on the whole. So when volunteer conflicts come in, it can interrupt an agenda, it can interrupt a great project, it can even put a damper on a volunteer hands-on day which makes other people say, "Oh, I don't want to be a part of that." We should always remember too, whenever we're dealing with conflicts, I'm going to totally rabbit hole here, ride with me. When you're having a conflict with somebody else, there's a third party over here watching. Think about what we were told as kids. Remember, little pitchers have big ears. In fact, you young people that watch my videos have never heard that phrase, but ask your grandma, she remembers little pitchers have big ears. And in fact, you saw it in that one movie with Vince Vaughn where he put earmuffs on his kids because he didn't want them to hear things. Well, it's because when two volunteers are at conflict, there's a third party watching and they might take sides and they might just say, "No, I don't have time or energy for this kind of drama." And they just walk away. And some of y'all might say, "Fine, they can walk away." But slow your roll a little bit because what if the person who walked away because of the drama in the organization is the very one who had the creative mindset to fix what ails everybody. But we lost them because of our own conflicts. So that's one thing to consider. Now, the second thing to consider is that in every organization, whether it's for-profit, nonprofit, real estate association life, or Habitat for Humanity, wherever you're spending your hours, you're going to have different kinds of people involved. And that's good, right? We love being around people who disagree with us because that's where the ideas start to really germinate. If everybody's singing out of the same page, that can be helpful sometimes, but for heaven's sakes, you're never going to address your issues. And so when you have an organization that's built on differing kinds of people with different viewpoints, and that's just going to inherently create conflict, well, how do you deal with that? The first thing you have to understand is in volunteer life, there's two different kinds of volunteers. There's the volunteer whose heart is on display. They wear it on their sleeve. They're a servant leader. You need somebody to go sit at the registration table, buy grannies, they raise their hand, they will do anything you ask. They never ask for recognition. In fact, if you give them recognition, they spend all their time deflecting it to somebody else and they just serve serve, serve, and when somebody comes at them, they deflect it and keep going because they just aren't open to having that drama. They can see the 30,000-foot view. Don't you wish all volunteers were like that? Yes, I know, right? It sounds amazing. However, that's not all volunteers. The other kind of volunteer is what I lovingly call the ladder climbers. These are the people who do volunteer work to add lines to their resume or add things on LinkedIn. And what cracks me up in real estate, not going to lie, is we got all these people building a resume and they're entrepreneurs that are self-employed. Who you going to send that resume to? But okay, different discussion. And so the people who are ladder climbing are over here checking boxes. They want to go forward in the organization. They have some imaginary goal and they'll do whatever they have to do to get there. So let's ask ourselves about those ladder climbers. Are they necessarily bad? No, not necessarily, because people that have a goal in mind are often going to do great things along the way of achieving that goal. Hey, high five to them. That was a high 10. That is not a bad thing in and of itself. Where I get concerned about our ladder climbers is that often they will steamroll to get to the place they want to get to. Now, what does steamrolling look like? It means you stop listening to the people around you. You stop noticing the people around you, and you don't really want them in your space because you've got somewhere to go. Now, I think we've all fallen prey to that in our lives, and we all know that if you're on the interstate going 80 miles an hour, you don't notice the billboards or the humans or anything. You're just going. But when you're on that two-lane side road where you have stoplights and dogs and cows and farmers and one crazy driver here and there and somebody flipping the fingers up on the steering wheel, not the bad finger, but the, hey, how y'all doing fingers, that when you slow down just a little bit to notice things, your whole demeanor changes. Now, our ladder climbers are going to tend to be the foot to the gas people, and the ones who are over here, volunteer leading by heart, tend to be the little bit slower thinkers. We need both in the room though, because frankly, if everybody's going slowly, sometimes you won't get anything done and you got to make decisions. But the people who make decisions often forget to look around and get all the information because that's just not their goal. Now, I'm going to give you a little mom observation. A mom-servation? That's my new word for the day. Somebody make a hashtag out of that. The mom-servation here, which is that some of our ladder climbers that have as their goal getting just to the endpoint, some of them are trying to fill a hole somewhere inside. Maybe their personal relationship is not as strong as it was. Maybe they're not really in a great place with their kids. Maybe they don't have any hobbies anymore. Maybe their business has changed, they're bored. Lots of reasons happen for people to try to fill a hole. And I've seen it, y'all. I've seen it in the real estate side, people who want to fill the hole in their life with volunteer leadership. And that can be good until you realize that at some point the train comes to the end of the tracks and now you're at a station. Well, what you going to do? You going to get on the train and ride backwards? Some people do, but then they realize they're possibly interrupting somebody else's path. Or are they going to stay at that station? Well, if you're somebody who's a leader by nature, you don't like to stand still. And so that's where those conflicts tend to come in, my friend. And when you are trying to figure out how to deal with it, my first suggestion is, number 1, slow down. Figure out what is driving you crazy about that other volunteer. Is it their tone of voice? Well, sometimes we hear somebody and we think they sound ugly, but that was just the mood we were in. And then I want you to ask yourself, well, maybe their ideas are all wrong. Well, their ideas might be wrong, but write them down anyway, because I have found that writing things down helps me process, so that in whatever craziness they're spouting off, there might be that one little really good idea, just like if you're taking a 4-hour continuing education class, there is absolutely going to be at least one something that's going to help you in there, So process and hunt for that one thing. Maybe they drive you crazy because they don't listen to you. Now, I can't fix what they do and you can't fix what they do, but more eye contact I have found goes a long way. The more I look at people, the more they look at me, and whether they want to or not, they're going to have to acknowledge me at some point. If you spend your life with your face on this device, it's going to be very easy for other people to overlook you. So this allows you in a non-combative way to demand a little bit more attention. Now, there's also a place when you're dealing with that volunteer who drives you crazy for a little honesty. Maybe they show up late for every meeting. I don't know that you really want to call them out in front of the whole room, although I've done it myself. I know I'm a little bit rude sometimes. It is what it is. I'm trying to get better. But maybe in the hallway when it's time for the coffee break, you could say to them, "Hey friend, really do hope you'll be on time next time because we needed your input." So that you try to be that person who guides them back towards a place of contribution. Because sometimes if we see somebody else that we don't even like, but they're contributing. If we can pull back just enough to let the irritation to the side, we can realize that what they're contributing might be helpful to us too. So I don't have perfect answers because we're in a world full of imperfect people, but I do know this. Some of the volunteer leaders that I've met in my life who drove me crazy at first have wound up being really good friends when I slowed down. And I don't know what their approach was. I didn't ask them because I have to make the assumption that when there's a conflict going on that I'm only perceiving that on my side. They might think I'm the bee's knees and they just haven't told me that yet. Probably not the case, but I can believe that too. And so I also want you to lean into that last little point here before you leave me. Somehow, someway, find out how you can pour a little bit of grace onto the people around you. The ones that irritate you the most probably need a little more grace than you even realize because something in their life is missing. And if you can bring a smile to them and make some eye contact so they feel noticed, in fact, if you want to throw a little bit of Jesus on them, that probably won't hurt either. But a little bit of love, a little bit of joy, and a little bit of grace is going to take all of us a long way. And then we can watch our organizations get back to their main goal, which is doing really good things. I hope that helps. And if not, go pick your pillow up and scream into it, because that helps me sometimes too. Or I pull weeds. I've pulled weeds in my yard with people's names on them. I admit it, I've done that, and it made me feel a little bit better. But it doesn't make me feel as much goodness as just throwing a little bit of the grace out that I hope comes back to me one day. Now, if you have something you want me to answer for you, or you need a little bit of something something, drop it in the comments, send me a message. And most importantly, thanks for tuning in. I'll see you next time.
