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Christopher A. Thurber, Ph.D.
Rebuild or Reload?
Highly effective camps establish more than a healthy culture. They incorporate
habits that keep the camping fundamentals solid and that afford them the
luxury of fine-tuning the delivery of their stated mission. Such camps
can elevate a simple kickball game into a classroom for teamwork and sportsmanship
— without the campers ever knowing. They can nurture the strengths that
individual campers and cabin leaders possess, thus increasing the likelihood
they will return the following season. And, because highly effective camps
are not overwhelmed with struggling to meet their basic needs, they can
fine-tune their responses to feedback from campers, staff, and parents,
thus setting themselves on a course of perpetual self-improvement. In
summary, these camps do not rebuild each season — they reload.
Seven Habits and Their Benefits
Good camps have an explicit and thoughtful mission statement. Great camps
succeed at actually delivering that mission. In my experience, such highly
effective camps share seven habits that are essential elements of success.
- Internal leadership development
- Explicit expectations for staff
- Ample camper preparation
- Personal relationships
- Supervisors-in-residence
- Bi-directional communication flow
- Commitment to self-improvement
Incorporating these habits has three key outcomes for directors, staff,
front-line cabin leaders, and campers:
- deep satisfaction;
- enriched learning; and
- increased tenure.
If asked, “Will you come back?” on closing day, children and employees
at highly effective camps relate simple and beautiful words that go something
like this — “I love this place; I learned a lot; and I’ll be back next
year.” All three key outcomes are there — satisfaction, learning, and
tenure.
Practicing these seven habits is a prodigious task that requires energy,
vigilance, and patience. “No rest for the weary” is the rule of thumb
at highly effective camps. But to those who have seen the benefits of
their labor, no work could be more gratifying. The sections that follow
describe the seven habits seen at highly effective camps, the benefits
of their practice, and an action plan for adopting each one. (See chart
for a summary.)
Internal leadership development
Internal leadership development (ILD) is a process of promoting and training
your own campers to become junior leaders, leaders-in-training, and eventually
full-fledged cabin leaders and senior staff. (See Camping Magazine, Vol.
74, November/December 2001, pp. 24-29 for detailed guidelines on designing
an ILD system that works for your camp.) Having an ILD system at your
camp means first having a clear idea of the qualities you seek in cabin
leaders — such as enthusiasm, unselfishness, initiative, integrity, and
a love of camp. You must then have a process of selecting, from among
the ranks of your oldest campers, those who demonstrate trainable leadership
qualities. Over the next two or three seasons of experiential learning,
these young men and women will become your next generation of cabin leaders.
ILD systems work best under the direction of experienced senior staff
who can mentor and evaluate up-and-coming leaders. Some camps even have
a designated leadership director, whose primary job is to coordinate the
ILD system. New ILD systems take about five years to bear fruit and about
ten years to perfect.
The benefits of ILD are manifold, but the best part is that your cabin
leaders — those who deal most directly with your campers — have not a
week of training, but two summers’ worth. There is truly no comparison
between a first-time hire with no previous camp experience and someone
who has grown up in your camp and then been mentored for two summers.
Both will participate in staff training week, but your new hires will
know roughly 10 percent of what they need to do their job well. By contrast,
your homegrown leaders already understand and live the camp’s culture,
know your policies and schedule logistics like the back of their hands,
and have infinitely more experience working with your camper population.
What does that mean for you, the director? It means that during staff
training week, you can fine-tune. You can focus on advanced leadership
techniques, review the mistakes made in the previous season, and solidify
bonds of friendship. Little of this precious time will be spent teaching
camp songs, explaining the daily schedule, or praying that all those new
hires will obey the rules and not quit before mid-season. Although painstaking
to establish, ILD saves you time in the long run, provides multi-year
training, and gives you peace of mind.
Explicit expectations
All of your employees, from the freshest junior leader to the most seasoned
senior staff, will be better prepared to do their jobs when you’ve taken
time to make your expectations explicit. This means spelling out, in great
detail, each person’s job description. Don’t assume they know what you
want, and don’t assume they will read lengthy written material. Clearly
tell them, in face-to-face meetings, what you expect from them, what specifically
is forbidden, and what the consequences are of breaking major rules.
If most of your staff are former campers, stating explicit expectations
is a straightforward task. For external hires, you must be especially
careful — in both interviews and on-site training — to make your expectations
explicit. If you’ll be asking your archery program head to help lifeguard,
be sure she knows that ahead of time. If you allot your staff one weeknight
off per week, make that clear, so they’re not disappointed on Saturday
night. Also be sure you accurately describe your camp to prospective hires
in all interviews you conduct. Describe your camp’s culture, traditions,
daily schedule, spiritual and religious customs, work ethic, time-off
policies, pay scale, and grounds for termination.
The central benefit of stating expectations explicitly is that you’ll
never hear complaints that begin with “No one ever told me I had to .
. . .” Most disgruntled staff would have been happy to do what their directors
requested if they knew about it when they were hired. Disgruntled staff,
of course, foment discontent among all but the most resilient and devoted
staff. In so doing, they destroy morale.
Camper preparation
Campers, especially first-year campers, need coaching on how to get the
most out of your camp. For starters, they need to know what to bring (and
what not to bring!); how to prevent severe homesickness; which behaviors
are encouraged and which are unacceptable; and what is included in the
daily schedule. Campers’ parents also need lots of coaching on what to
do with their own anxiety. Each summer, thousands of campers struggle
with severe homesickness because their parents have made “pick-up deals”
with them. Parents promise, “If you feel homesick, I’ll come and get you.”
Such well-intentioned but ignorant remarks sabotage a child’s confidence
and dramatically increase the likelihood that such a child will become
severely homesick.
The benefits of proper camper preparation include both reduced homesickness
and better camper behavior overall. Moreover, families with adequate preparation
— those who have “bought in” to your camp’s rules, regulations, and behavioral
standards — are far less likely to bring contraband to camp, argue with
your discipline system, or complain about your policies. Providing ample
camper preparation is the cornerstone of partnering with parents.
Personal relationships
Management experts and camp consultants alike emphasize the importance
of directors establishing an authoritative leadership relationship with
their staff. Cabin leaders are also urged to establish this type of relationship
with their campers. Unfortunately, what sometimes occurs out of a misguided
attempt to keep “professional distance” is that directors and senior staff
fail to develop personal relationships with their front-line cabin leaders.
Or, cabin leaders fail to develop a personal relationship with their campers.
The solution? Directors and senior staff must learn each cabin leader’s
name, know something about each one, and touch base with each one during
the course of the summer to convey what is being done well and what needs
improvement. For their part, cabin leaders must learn their campers’ names,
know what they like and dislike, empathize with their emotional experiences,
and guide them.
Some personal attention must also be paid to camper families, especially
in pre-season. If you have a couple hundred camper families, you can actually
get to know something about each one. If you have more, then your personal
touch might come in the form of a signed holiday letter, photos posted
on your camp’s Web site, or a camp news bulletin sent to each family.
Loyalty is the key benefit of establishing personal relationships with
staff, campers, and camper families. Establishing personal relationships
pays dividends simply because people enjoy recognition. They want you
to know their name, something about their personal history, and something
about what they do at camp. Only then will they be willing to respond
to feedback. Staff and campers also want genuine, specific praise. Delivering
this will make staff want to work twice as hard for you and will boost
camper return rates.
Supervisors-in-residence
When cabin leaders feel that their direct supervisors are out of touch
with camper demographics, cabin dynamics, and specific camper issues,
they become frustrated. Who wants to take orders or advice from supervisors
who don’t live what they teach? Of course, every camp has some out-of-cabin
senior staff positions — such as your program director. That’s a good
thing, given the responsibilities and schedules of these folks. But what
highly effective camps also have are some unit leaders or division heads
who live in cabins with campers. In the camp’s management structure, these
are essential players because they see, first-hand, what goes on. They
are therefore in the best position to mentor younger cabin leaders and
update the director about emerging problems.
There are several obvious benefits to having key leaders living in cabins.
They know what’s really going on in your camp, which makes them seem approachable
to your cabin leaders. Cabin leaders are also more willing to listen to
feedback from someone who walks the walk. Best of all, having key leaders
live in cabins helps nip most leadership and camper behavior problems
in the bud before they become large enough to demand your precious time.
Bi-directional communication flow
Communication happens at all camps, including camps that struggle to deliver
their mission. What makes a highly effective camp stand out is bi-directional
communication flow — messages and feedback travel smoothly up and down
the management tree. At all camps, employees at the bottom of the hierarchy
receive messages from above. At highly effective camps, messages are also
sent in the other direction, so that directors and senior staff receive
frequent reports from the front lines.
This is not to say that the upper management of camp needs to be informed
every time a camper burps, but they should know about such things as severe
homesickness, enuresis, and aggression. The benefits of bi-directional
communication flow are similar to those of having supervisors-in-residence,
with two added benefits. First, armed with accurate information about
noteworthy campers, directors are in a better position to handle phone
calls from anxious parents. Second, directors can be assured that the
information they share with division heads and unit leaders gets disseminated.
Few things make cabin leaders feel less important than finding out details
of important camp events at the last minute…or worse yet, finding out
from their campers. At highly effective camps, every employee feels both
responsible (they are entrusted with information) and responsive (they
entrust others with information).
Commitment to self-improvement
A genuine commitment to perpetual self-improvement dovetails with the
preceding six habits and is the lifeblood of highly effective camps. Establishing
or enhancing your internal leadership development, explicit expectations,
camper preparation, personal relationships, supervisors-in-residence,
and bi-directional communication flow will require careful self-examination.
Living each of these habits demands that you and your staff decide what
your camp is meant to do. If you are a force for change in the universe,
what do you seek to change and how? If you represent certain values, what
vehicles do you use to communicate those values and how do you measure
their effects?
No source of information is more valuable than empirical data. Gut feelings
and anecdotes have tremendous value, but are less reliable than information
derived from the scheduled administration of well-designed questionnaires
or from structured feedback sessions. You need not conduct major research
at your camp each season, but it is worthwhile to gather data regularly
from campers, parents, and staff in a way that tells you whether you are
actually delivering your stated mission. Humility is only half of the
self-improvement equation. You must also gather hard data to see where
you may be falling short of your stated goals. Many camp consultants offer
research services and can provide objective feedback on your camp’s strengths,
as well as ideas for remedying weaknesses.
Besides professional consultation, other essential sources of data include:
regularly scheduled full-staff meetings, ACA standards visitors, state
inspectors, and structured reports from all levels of your leadership.
Finally, to disseminate what you learn from all these data, it’s imperative
to learn and teach how to give and receive feedback. Many camps falter
not at the data-gathering phase of self-improvement, but at the implementation
phase.
Mission-driven or Market-driven?
These seven habits of highly effective camps are certainly practical
— in the sense of being useful and realistic — but only to a mission-driven
camp. Are you mission-driven or market-driven?
For mission-driven camps, the ends justify the means. For example, if
part of such a camp’s mission is to instill a sense of personal responsibility
in its campers, the cabin leaders and campers might clean the cabin each
morning and complete camp duties each day. If parents and campers complain
“we didn’t pay good money to clean like slaves each day,” a mission-driven
camp will politely suggest the names of other camps, but will not succumb
to such complaints. If such a camp sticks to its principles, all the bunks
will eventually be filled with children whose parents respect the notion
that a sense of personal responsibility is earned through hard work and
accountability. Ultimately, a mission-driven camp’s integrity pays dividends.
Bunks are full and children are absorbing the camp’s mission.
By contrast, a market-driven camp will adjust the means, even if it entails
compromising the ends. For example, a market-driven camp might respond
to parent and camper complaints of “slave labor” by making the cabin leaders
clean the cabins alone or by hiring a custodial staff to perform camp
duties. Market-driven camps seek to please their customers without educating
them. They are more concerned with giving campers what they want than
giving them what they need to absorb the camp’s mission.
As you strive to make your camp even more effective, examine the ways
in which you are mission-driven and market-driven. The more mission-driven
you are, the more easily you will adopt these seven habits. And the more
you adopt these seven habits, the more campers will take home your mission.
Originally published in the 2002 November/December
issue of Camping Magazine. |
