Summary: Your volunteers should feel seen, have measurable goals, and know their work matters in the kingdom of God.

One of the best books I have ever read was entitled “Three Signs of a Miserable Job” by Patrick Lencioni. Patrick Lencioni is a wonderful leadership author and this book changed everything for me. The concept is quite simple. There are three signs of a miserable job; anonymity, immeasurement, and irrelevance.

Anonymity. This is being unknown or invisible in a roll or a job. Everybody wants to be known by someone. Do you realize that your volunteers might feel lost, alone, and not known by their leader? They may not feel known by you. This is a sign of a miserable volunteer.

Immeasurement. This is a term that Patrick Lencioni personally made up. It is the inability to measure. Immeasurement is not knowing how to measure if you got a home run, a single, or you struck out. People need to know whether or not they won. They need to know, as they volunteer in your area, whether or not they were successful. As leaders, we need to provide volunteers with a clear metric for what it looks like to win in this role. Not knowing if you were successful or not is a sign of a miserable volunteer.

Irrelevance. A miserable job is doing work that really doesn’t matter at all. Our work in ministry is really important. It really does matter. But it is your job as the leader to help connect the dots for people to see why their work matters. Not being able to see that your work matters to the kingdom of God is a sign of a miserable volunteer.

I want to help you make sure that your volunteers don’t have a miserable job.

One way that I’ve done that is by creating LEADVOLUNTEERS.com. We help you have processes and systems so volunteers don’t feel anonymous. We provide a step-by-step process to ensure that volunteers know exactly what their job is and whether or not they’ve won at that job.  In addition, we help you provide strong sense of purpose so that your volunteers don’t feel like their job is irrelevant. We are here to help. Join LEADVOLUNTEERS.com today