Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning Team Building & Leadership inc. an experiential based training and development consulting organization. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team.

Setting effective goals with camp staff can make or break your programs. I am constantly surprised and at the same time expecting, camp directors not to have goals for their staff. Plus to have no idea of what their goals are for tomorrow and into the next 3 to 5 years.

Are you setting goals for your staff?

Is your manager at camp setting goals for you?

If neither of these are yeses then how is your staff and you being developed to create a focus of success for the campers involved in your programs? Don’t say “we all just know what to do” if that is the case then you are doing a disservice to the campers and the camp.

It all returns to the view and fear of accountability we hold inside the service, non-profit and camp communities. We are not paid very well, for camp staff the benefits are minimal, and we want to keep the staff we have.

Although by not setting goals that add value to their work and developing the leaders of tomorrow, you are ensuring that the program will not survive; if it does it is not as good as it could be.

What do we do;
1. Set goals at the level appropriate to the person.

2. Take time to follow-up and review the goals set, within the time-frame of the persons abilities.

3. Work to coach, train, and provide real-time feedback in reference to the goals established.

4. Mentor new and younger camp staff. Through mentoring the new staff will have the proper induction to the culture, norms, vision of the camp. Additionally you will know who the leaders of tomorrow are and can be when they are needed.

5. Praise and celebrate the behaviors that are successful and you want.

6. Quickly, and properly deal with mal-adaptive behaviors that can cause camp staff to question the competence of leadership, and can distract staff from their primary focus.

How do we do it?

Setting Goals: A goal is a what by when; clarifying a time frame of completion. For a goal to be effective it MUST have the following four components;

• Quality: What are the expectations of how good completion and effort must be.

• Quantity: How much of the quality is to be supplied; What is the amount that is acceptable.

• Time Frame: This is a date a time that it must be completed by, with the Quality and Quantity Standards.

• Resources: What can be used, what cannot be used, how the staff member can access the resources, and who has to be informed that these resources are being used.

I hear you, Mike these are fine for manufacturing and accounting, BUT how do they apply to camp staff?

Here are some examples with front line staff – The people who are with the campers directly and daily…

Goal: All camp staff must have meaningful interactions with campers.

• Quality: What is a quality interaction? A quality interaction is time spent interacting with campers not in “formal” and “structured” camp time. A quality interaction is a discussion that is appropriate, talking to and coaching a camper on dealing with life issues, conflicts, dealing with bullies, learning specialized skills and traits, etc…

• Quantity: How many of interactions are expected? An average of 3, with different campers .

• Time Frame: When are we to have these interactions? An average of 3 per/day, at our nightly staff meetings each staff will be required to share their interactions. Additionally they will be charted and kept within your employee records for evaluation, and recommendations for next year.

• Resources: What is available to help us? Here are some possible resources – metaphor cards, books on conversation starters, materials on dealing with bullies, materials on coaching etc… Additionally the camp director and camp coordinators are here to coach and assist as needed…

Setting goals for staff is the only way to increase effectiveness of camper interactions, developing skills and abilities within your staff to make your camp programs awesome.