A Day with the Kids

A Smile Says More Than A Thousand Words: Part 2

So…How did it go?

            I can honestly say that my experience was one of the most rewarding I have had as an undergraduate at Wake Forest (except perhaps getting an A on my Quant 2 midterm!) In all seriousness though, being able to interact with and bring a smile to the children through the sport of tennis was a moment that will take a long time to erase from my memory. I know that I speak for my entire team also when I say that without a doubt we wish we had been doing this much longer and there was already some form of relationships in place with establishments similar to this in the local community.

            In terms of rating the success of the project, I couldn’t personally rate it any higher than 10 out of 10. Although teaching the kids the fundamentals of tennis was certainly a part of the objective, it wasn’t the entirety of it. Most of my motivation to do the project was to promote our team’s awareness of the local community and give back to it. Spending our free time with children such as those we met on the day demonstrates our understanding of community involvement and I believe made a difference in the lives of the children we spent time with. I will refer back to and analyze the specific measurable goals outlined above later in this reflection.

Evaluation Time

            Throughout the afternoon I was constantly being monitored and analyzed, firstly by the supervisors of the children who had to ensure the activities we were doing weren’t too dangerous and that the kids were being well behaved. Secondly, my coaches were overseeing the drills and aiding me in correcting faulty technique. All of this analysis and observation was certainly encouraged as I mentioned earlier that I would use this feedback to evaluate the success of my leadership and teaching. Overall I believe I performed extremely well given the task at hand and having never organized or led an event such as this before. From talking to the volunteer leaders in the several days following the experience they were all extremely surprised and impressed by my patience and understanding with the children as well as my willingness to try and get to know each of them personally. The volunteers made comments such as; “you even remembered all of the kid’s names. That kind of thing isn’t very common for us” and “when can you come back?” To me this kind of positive feedback thoroughly reinforces the confidence in my ability to lead in unique and challenging situations in which I have little experience.

            On the flip side, my coaches did offer me some constructive criticism to take on board and improve on during my next venture into this field; “some of the kids required more explanation of why they were holding the racket in a specific manner, rather than just showing them how to hold it.” I think this is an extremely valid point and not just related to tennis but leadership in general. If you can demonstrate why a certain technique for solving a problem is the best or desired way, then I think your followers are more likely to understand and learn from it as opposed to just blindly doing it but not understanding it. This feedback truly has helped me as a leader and in the weeks following this experience I have tried to implement this more into my leadership skill set.

            In evaluating potential changes for the next time this session happens, I would reduce the number of team players that went with me and break it up into maybe two different sessions. Having all 9 of my teammates there at the same time led to a little too much free time for them and sometimes they would take advantage of this by talking to one another and letting me or another teammate interact with the children (free rider effect). By reducing the team size next time and making two separate sessions I think this problem could easily be resolved. Overall however, I think I did a good job and this was certainly reflected throughout my feedback sessions with coaches, players and volunteer leaders. In analyzing my attainment of the measurable goals set before the clinic; all 9 of my teammates were prepared and excited about continuing this kind of program and implementing it as an event at least once per semester. Secondly the volunteer leaders gave me a unanimous 10 out of 10 rating, although I think they were perhaps just being nice by saying this, they definitely enjoyed the afternoon and were extremely grateful for our time, energy and effort.

Implementing Theory

            As touched on above, servant leadership is the model upon which I developed my experience. What this theory states is that effective leaders grow up through a system where they give priority and attention to those that they serve. Throughout my leadership journey and education this has been one of the theories I have gravitated to the most and feel I will implement more often in my life moving forwards. The reason for this is that I think it is a very selfless leadership theory and I believe this reflects me and my personality in leading more than other potential leadership styles.

Using this lens to critique my performance as leader of the tennis clinic, I would say I utilized this style effectively. Throughout my life I have been a student of the game of tennis and it is through this constant striving to better myself and my abilities that I have achieved a high playing level. What the clinic enabled me to do was design and implement a vision of helping those in need around me through the sport of tennis. For some of the children they found happiness in being able to go from missing the ball to making contact, for others it was hitting 5 balls back to me in a row and for a few it was just being able to interact with an elder who they admire. Yet all of these outcomes circle back to my learning of tennis as an understudy, then wanting to give back my knowledge and expertise to others less fortunate than myself. I truly believe that a main cause of the great success of the afternoon was to do with my leadership style and being able to instill in the young children a new found confidence through this servant leadership technique.

The Future…

            As discussed above, the sustainability of this project is truly where the tarmac hits the road and will be the ultimate deciding factor in the success of my leadership and volunteering effort. With our senior banquet scheduled to be held in less than a week I am getting ready to hand the responsibility of the role to our new captain. We have already spoken several times about this added feature of captaincy and he is excited to continue this ‘giving back’ initiative. He has spoken with the volunteer director of the Children’s Home at least once already, thanks to my introductions, and they are currently outlining potential dates for a clinic in early February.

            I am also in the final stages of drafting a contract for all players to sign before the end of the year, pledging their allegiance to this cause and commitment to the dates their new captain finalizes. I believe I have gone to quite extensive lengths to ensure that this program will be carried forward for the foreseeable future and I hope one day to return as an alumnus and see players still offering their time in the community.

Finally I would like to thank both the Children’s Home for their support as well as my professor for instigating this project and making me think about issues I have the power and desire to change, yet hadn’t furthered myself to act on…until now.

It's official...

The date has been set - Monday March 21st will be the first, hopefully of many, tennis clinics provided by the Wake Forest Men's Tennis Team to local charities and orphanages. There has been a lot of progress made since my last post so here are some of the highlights;

• Time, Date and Location confirmed
• Collaboration with coaches and local sports clubs to provide enough equipment for the children
• Definitive outline of the clinic and drills we will run has been created
• Wake Forest University Athletic Department has picked up on the idea and wants to become involved in promotion of the event and provide support for continuity

With only a few fine details to iron out before Monday afternoon I look forward to meeting both the orphanages coordinators, who have been extremely helpful and generous with their time, as well as the kids themselves. 

Here's to hoping all runs smoothly and above all else, that we can provide a smile and fun filled afternoon for the kids.

Until next time bloggers....

Organizing the Journey: Part 1

 The Issue

            My father (a very wise man) once told me, “You will only get out of life what you put into it.” I would like to think that I have learned an awful lot from my father throughout my years, but undoubtedly this is the most pertinent lesson he preached. It is by analyzing my life through this lens that I became aware of the issue of virtually no community involvement/service performed by the varsity tennis team – a team I am proud to captain.  Therefore I am on a journey to change and upend this limited commitment to the community that supports us so dearly. In order to lay the foundations of community involvement with my team and demonstrate the pleasure it can bring for both you and the people you are serving, I am organizing a volunteer tennis clinic that I will run, with help from my teammates, at the local children’s orphanage.

           

What It Will Take

            There are numerous obstacles and challenges that lie ahead in order to complete this task and most importantly, ensure that this philosophy of helping those in need around you is retained by my team and that they will continue to participate more frequently in programs such as this. A leader of a volunteering program requires expertise in characteristics that I believe I possess in abundance. For example; a couple of the most critical characteristics of a successful volunteer leader are motivation and commitment to the cause. The reason these are crucial is because people are often reluctant to commit to something that they don’t see any immediate or personal gains from, therefore a leader of this type of program must be able to motivate the people around them in order to accomplish a goal that may at first seem obscure to some. Secondly, the leader must have a lot of commitment to wanting to help the selected people, a leadership style known as ‘Servant Leadership’. In my case, I was introduced to the director of the orphanage and his passion and love for these children inspired and instilled in me a desire to want to help these children, who are of a similar age to me, yet have unfortunately had a less privileged upbringing. One of the leadership skills I hope to develop and improve throughout this experience is my ability to empower my colleagues. Although I feel completely confident in my tennis ability and teaching the fundamental skills of the game, it is the aspect of ensuring my teammates know how to implement the experience and memory I want these children to leave with, that I want to practice. I want to help enable my teammates to feel a sense of confidence and self-belief that will hopefully inspire them to do similar service missions in the future.

Recruitment Phase

            Luckily for my endeavor I already have a set number of teammates (9) I can turn to and rely on for their commitment to this cause; therefore the recruitment cycle for this particular experience is relatively limited. However, there are some challenges in terms of getting the team to ‘buy into’ the concept of giving up an afternoon of their free time to play tennis with under-privileged children. The majority of my teammates were raised in good neighborhoods with well-rounded families who provided for them almost everything they could ever want or need. It is for this reason that these guys haven’t been exposed to the hardships some of their peers live through on a day to day basis. Therefore I think it may be challenging to overcome their natural instinct to not want to participate in this event as they don’t fully understand the benefit just a simple afternoon of their time can have on the happiness of some of these troubled teenagers. In order to get around this fact I will try and explain the pleasure they can bring by merely displaying their talents and being selfless.

            Another challenge I have envisioned when thinking through this experience is ensuring that my team stays engaged and focused on delivering a professional clinic when undoubtedly there will be some children at the clinic who will try to cause trouble and basically just act like kids. In order to ensure this doesn’t become an issue I have pre-arranged that there be extra mentors for the kids at the clinic, provided by the orphanage, whose job it will be to ensure the children are being well behaved and not causing any problems.

            Overall, I think once my team gets to the courts and starts the clinic they will thrive on the experience and will find ways to overcome any challenge thrown their way. It is therefore down to me to lead my team up until the time of our clinic and motivate them to luck forward to the opportunity I am presenting them with.

Measurements of Success

            Measuring the success of a volunteering project is less straight forward than that of a business venture where objective data can be collected regarding profit and loss etc. Many volunteering efforts are judged based on their longevity and ability to keep inspiring both volunteers and those in need to come back for more. Therefore, my success measurements will be based on a two part feedback system, both positive and negative, from the children that attend the clinic, their instructors that will be present and finally my teammates. I hope to spend time one or days after the event sitting down, or on the phone with the orphanage’s volunteer leaders in order to see where we could have performed better or did a good job and hopefully get a count of children who would want to do more work with us. I will use this feedback as part one to gauge our success from the children’s point of view.

Part two of my feedback system will revolve around my team and coaches. I plan on organizing a meeting to discuss the volunteering experience and judge the feedback this way. I want to get exact figures in terms of the number of guys who want to participate in this kind of program again, and hopefully more frequently, as well as suggestions of other places we could perform a clinic. I think by utilizing a combination approach to measuring success from both the children’s perspective and our own perspective, I will be able to rate my success as a leader as well as our overall volunteering effort. To clarify, my specific measurable goals are for 7 out of my 9 teammates to openly commit to doing another program such as this and secondly for the instructors that attend to rate our performance on average of an 8 out of 10.

Project Sustainability

            As explained above, a volunteering effort is almost exclusively based on the sustainability of the project, therefore it is imperative that I ensure our volunteers (my teammates) are committed to helping the local community and will continue volunteering once I have graduated. This is not the easiest of tasks, given their already high time commitment to both academics and tennis, yet I truly believe spending a couple of hours every other week or so is not too much to ask of these athletes and will help fully round them as individuals once they are ready to enter society post-graduation. I want to make this point very clear to my team and will therefore sit them down both before and after the event to discuss how we can keep this sort of local community involvement program going. I think the most critical time for this project will be directly after our service mission, as this is the time that the players will really still be feeling the high that volunteering provides and will be most receptive to continuing in this vain. Therefore I plan to propose a loose contract agreement with my teammates for an undecided amount of community service or volunteering to be completed each semester. Having negotiated with coaches and staff over the legality of this kind of arrangement I have been able to succeed in this proposition. Therefore, as has been tradition on the tennis team for years, captaincy of the team is passed down during our senior banquet. It is here that I will pass on the responsibilities of performing this community service and place it upon the new captain’s shoulders to make himself and his teammates accountable for their involvement in similar programs. I am positive that this will provide an added sense of prestige to the position of captain and they will utilize the momentum we have already created. Finally, next year’s captain happens to be an extremely active member of the community already, which again fills me with confidence that he will be able to build on what we have started this year.

Where am I Today?

            Currently I’m sitting in the library surrounded by countless other students bashing away at their laptops, furiously trying to get their work done so they can get a few precious hours sleep (did I mention it’s 3am?!) On a more serious note my leadership journey is progressing smoothly, I have been in contact with both the executive director as well as the volunteering director at the orphanage and we are currently in talks over what afternoon works best for both my team and the children. With our ACC tennis season about to kick-off it is becoming more challenging finding a date that works for both of us, yet I think we will have this arranged within the next week. I know the staff at the orphanage is delighted we are offering our time and that I have taken the initiative for this to happen and I am certainly thrilled to have the opportunity to lead such a rewarding experience.

            So, with all that being said, why not end as we began, with another quote from my father; “let’s get this show on the road!”