Since taking the Recreational Leadership Course our club has been working to implement as many of the techniques found in it as possible. All I can say is, "WOW!" This thing works great.
We were already on tracking with spreading the workload but we ratcheted it up quite a bit since the course. We have completely modified the way we arrange club runs now. It went from one person doing all of the work to several people sharing different jobs. Each job was made smaller so that people could learn it more easily. Some are harder than others but each job is a small step up from the last so that the skills learned during performance of the former job as leveraged in the next one.
At the beginning of 04 our Board was in the throws of deciding whether or not we should cap membership. There were just too many people showing up for club runs and we found ourselves floundering under the weight. Now that the techniques we learned from your course have been implements virtually all talk of capping membership has subsided. We are at the point now where our club can change the number of different trails runs we do on a given day, ON THE FLY. That means that if we get 24 trucks for a given trail we can roll in a second set of leaders for that group, give them a separate start time and let them go on their way. If we get 36 we just roll in a third set, and so on.
But now we are seeing an unexpected benefit to this. We have made it so that this group of leaders is able to talk privately on our BBS about trail related club issues. Without intending it we have built this committee of people that seems to be very results oriented and progressive. Another very nice thing that has happened is that, in their "committee" roles they are making decisions about trail related issues from a club oriented point of view verses the more self centered point of view that we see so often in leisure sports.
I wanted to take the time to thank you for the training that you provided. I feel more confident now, more-so than I ever have before, about our club having quality people to lead it into the future. It is interesting, really, because I have less control over the club than ever but because people know what the ideals and goals of the club are I really have more control than ever.,,, and a lot more is getting done.
Thanks.
Best,
Dan Stra
