Seems obvious, right? By identifying the individual passions and interests of your Steering Committee you are able to understand what motivates them.

To want to be a part of your coalition or community group. By understanding each individual’s motivation you have access to information that you can use as you design your agendas. Making sure that each person’s interests are considered will make sure that information presented or covered during meeting is relevant. This will result in increased engagement and action from your team. Coalitions and community groups need to use the interests and passions of their leadership by creating agendas and activities. It will resonate with key players so they will stay engaged. By considering each individual talents along with their individual passions leaders will be able to create encouraging steering committee experiences. They don’t result in negative, passive participation and half-hearted engagement.

Interests and passions:

Great way to gain better understanding of your steering committee’s interests is to set up time to talk with them. About why they are involved and what they hope to accomplish through their involvement. Another idea is do quick interest inventory either paper-based or electronically so that you gain clear insight into their interests. Did you know that people are motivated by the opportunity to contribute their individual time and talents? By dedicating, usually 25%, of each gathering, for purpose of brainstorming and idea generation you can tap into individual talents. You can get great ideas for next steps and feedback about what’s working and where there are areas of improvement. You can also use this information to further understand what makes each member interested and encouraged. Reduce the struggle of finding areas of interest and focus for you and your community.

Use of steering committee:

Use steering committee brainstorming to identify talents new ideas and approaches for motivating and inspiring both leadership team and community. Leaders are encourage to keep log of steering committee ideas as they are generate and use them to inspire. One idea may not use today but it can be use at a later time. Keeping track of those ideas is efficient compare to another brainstorming session or looking back through meeting minutes or notes. It’s easy to get loss in overwhelm of your coalition or community group’s action plan or logic model. By celebrating your accomplishments you can keep focus on positive and help each member understand “what’s next,” for community group. When people understand what is next, they are commit to supporting the activities that help to achieve that goal. Another great way to celebrate accomplishments is to publish article release outlining work and accomplishments of community group.

Do you have a steering committee member who likes to write or has a talent for press releases? Use their skill, or the skill of a coalition member, to share your successes. Not only do you benefit from building the morale of your leadership team. You can also use these communications to build interest and participation from key community members.