Leaders, Seek Volunteers More Gifted than You

Kay >> Hi, I’m Kay Daigle with Beyond Ordinary Women, and I am delighted to welcome you to a series of videos that I’m doing with Kat Armstrong, who is the founder of Polished Ministry, a nonprofit. And Kat is sharing lessons in leadership that she has learned through leading in Polished. And we have some others that we’re discussing as well. But this particular session we’re going to talk about seeking leaders that are more gifted than you.

And so, Kat, there are probably people out there wondering why in the world you would want to seek leaders more gifted than you, because don’t you want to sort of be the one who knows all the answers and, you know, you’re sort of at the top of the food chain. Why not?

Kat >> Well, yes, I used to think that way. I read this book by John Maxwell, probably 15 years ago called Developing the Leaders Around You. And that book changed my mind about this. And he said, “Think about your leadership on a scale with zero being not such a great leader, got to work on some things, and ten being really high capacity person.

He said, “Let’s say that we’re seven maybe six-and-a-half. If you start recruiting eight, nines and tens in your organization, they’re going to bring you up. They’re only going to encourage you in leadership and make you a better leader. And I think Stephanie and I, when we co-founded this organization, really took that to heart.

But I started to see quickly that if we were going to reach our peers with the gospel—young, professional women (I only had experience in sales and marketing), we needed women who were great in accounting and logistics and administration and technology. Things that I’m not going to be able to learn really quickly or efficiently. But they know how to do it.

And so we just decided let’s recruit the smartest, fastest, most efficient women we can think of. And it is a little intimidating. I walk into a leadership team meeting, and I think everyone in here is better educated and could do a lot of things better than I can. But it just makes our team really strong.

Kay >> Absolutely. I totally agree with you about that. Do you have an example to share of someone or a group that really was just an amazing recruit?

Kat >> Sure. If we look at our staff right now, I wish I could talk about all of them. We don’t have time to do that. But I think if you just go to our website, look at the headquarters staff, they’re incredible.

Felicia Benton really stands out in my mind is someone I watched behind a microphone and I thought, wow, she is better at interviewing than I have gotten in a decade. And I’ve really been practicing. We’ve done over 200 events. I bet I’ve interviewed a slew of people and it was like magic to watch her behind a microphone.

And then I watched her emcee an event, and I thought of all the things I’ve read in the training I’ve been to that is just raw, natural talent right there. It’s and now she’s joined our staff as the regional director, and she helps all of our directors and see and speak.

And so she’s training people on how to do that. But I think she probably stands out as a great example for that.

Kay >> Well, what kind of mindset do you have as a leader as you start looking for volunteers? What do you first notice about somebody? How does that move forward?

Kat >> So I think really the key is when someone is I wouldn’t say complaining, but ives you constructive criticism on how you could improve something. Something goes on in my brain. It doesn’t feel personal. It doesn’t feel like it’s toward Polished. Instead, I think I bet you they would be great at improving that because if you have the forethought to come to someone and say, “You know, I noticed on your website things don’t flow very well on step number two. It was hard for me to make my payment.”

Well, I never would have noticed that. Right? But they did. And so then I usually approach that person and say, “Do you have a background in technology or do you know anything about Squarespace? Have you ever thought about volunteering with Polished? Because we would love for you to improve that step number two across the whole board.”

And so as crazy as it sounds, when we get constructive criticism from women who attend our events, we kind of flag them as our future leaders because they usually have a passion to improve that area of our organization.

Kay >> And they usually are women who know something about it, too. That’s why they noticed it in the first place.

Kat >> Yes, exactly.

Kay >> Yeah, I totally agree.

I can’t tell you what I would do if I did not have like these women behind the cameras that our audience cannot see because they do all this technical stuff with videos and podcasts and things like that. I would never have any idea what to do. And I depend on many many women for various other little things, just someone with expertise that I can call and say, now, I was thinking about this, what do you think?

It’s just really important. I totally agree with you on this whole thing.

Thank you Kat for joining us. This has been really, really helpful. And I’d like to invite all of you to go to our website BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org and look over all of our resources. Those resources include two other sessions with Kat on Lessons in Leadership, another one on volunteering. And then the other one, the third one is Love the Lord Your God with all Your Mind is a lesson that she has learned. So I think you’ll be really interested in that as well as all of the various leadership resources that we offer.

If you have a suggestion for something you would like help with, just contact me on the website and I would be glad to get back to you. And who knows, we may make a video or podcast about that particular topic as well.

Kat does have a book and I know that you can get it on Amazon, No More Holding Back. And you can also find it on her website, KatArmstrong.com, or on Polished Online, I assume. But you can find out more about Kat and her ministry at PolishedOnline.org.

So thank you, Kat. This was really very helpful.

Kat >> Thank you, Kay.