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by Randall Grayson, Ph.D.
We all want to train staff so that they have the ability to be instrumental
in the lives of campers — so that they can enact the mission and help
realize the vision. We want to have an exceptional staff training that
meets or exceeds current “best practice.”
The truth is all camps have elements of training best practices. “Best”
is always a moving target, but for present purposes, “best practice” simply
means that it is a consensus held by numerous experts in diverse fields
verified by rigorous evaluative efforts. The goal of this article is to
provide a description of a few best practices, which you can use as a
checklist against what you already do.
One for All and All for One
Knowledge. Attitude. Behavior. These are the three keys to best-practice
training. Knowledge is the information that makes it into the student's
head in a way that he or she can really use it. It's the book learning.
It's being able to pass an excellent paper and pencil test. Attitude means
that your heart and will — the firm desire to do something — are in place.
Behavior refers to the student's actual ability to do the skill. It is
practicing something to the point where you own it. For example, a surgeon
has the knowledge gained from years of study in medical school and, hopefully,
the attitude to practice and do her best, but without sufficient practice
(behavior-residency), I wouldn't want to go under her knife.
Orientation and ongoing training need to proportionately focus on the
knowledge, attitude, and behavioral components of any given skill, because
when any component is lacking, it is unlikely that the skill will be performed,
or performed well. When that happens, it means you aren't achieving your
goals for the campers. One of the key components of staff training is
attitude.
What is it?
When ideas are internalized, there is a constant striving towards a goal
through specific behaviors. People care and it shows. However, attitude
isn't a “you have it or you don't” kind of thing — attitude strength varies.
For example, people have different degrees of attitude strength regarding
appropriate TV use, organic foods, and abortion. For an attitude to translate
into behavior (especially consistently), it must be very strong!
It's important, but is it that important?
Having sufficient attitude strength is as important as it is difficult
to obtain. For example, America is the most overweight, workaholic, industrialized
country in the world, despite knowing what a healthy lifestyle is. Other
examples include speeding, recycling, and high-risk HIV candidates who
know how the disease is transmitted, yet still contract it. Religious
people can understand the Ten Commandments and frequently fail to live
up to them. Parents who love their children can receive parenting education
and fail to use that knowledge. Most children (and adults) know they should
use television and media in moderation, and yet the national average for
children is forty hours per week! Seat belt use is around 68 percent in
the country.
Closer to home, in the 2001 American Camping Association (ACA) elections,
only 27 percent of the members voted. For President of the United States,
the average is around 50 percent. The membership of the ACA, people who
espouse community values and civic duty to their campers and staff, should
be even more likely to vote. They aren't. Knowing something isn't enough.
There must be sufficient attitude behind that knowledge for it to transfer
into behavior.
Clearly, what should pass for sufficient attitude for change or action
often falls short of the mark. Attitude comes at a price more precious
than gold or saffron. Following is a brief checklist you can use to try
and boost the likelihood that what your staff knows will result in behavior.
Enhancing Attitude
Preach to the choir
Of course, the best strategy is to hire staff who already have their hearts,
souls, values, and goals invested in giving kids a world of good — staff
who truly want to change lives and enrich the world. If you're not preaching
to the choir, or the uncommitted (those without any strong belief/attitude
on the topic), shaping or changing attitudes is a Herculean task not likely
to be accomplished during orientation. You could have the best, most effective
orientation of any camp in the country, but if it falls on staff who don't
really, truly care, it's unlikely they will remember or use the information/knowledge
well. By using good interviewing skills and questions, the attitudes of
potential counselors can often be successfully tapped. Finding truly committed
staff is a challenge, but the advice and help are there in current and
past articles of this magazine and in scores of books. Also, Bob Ditter
(see his regular column in Camping Magazine for contact information) has
been doing excellent work in this area.
Attitude subversion
It is possible for attitude to subvert knowledge. Because staff often
have to learn how to interact with children in a different way from their
default style learned through experience, it is helpful to try and hire
staff who are open and flexible enough to change. Beware of counselors
who claim they already know everything because they have been babysitting
for years, are a sophomore in the education program, a senior in the psychology
program, or were at camp last year.
Opening the minds of staff can be done in many ways, which are detailed
in books, such as Training Terrific Staff by Michael Brandwein and the
full version of this chapter (see footnote). One powerful method is to
have staff learn material in small groups who need to be taught to everyone,
and then have them teach that knowledge to everyone. In this manner, each
small group knows something different and must teach it to everyone. This
cooperative education method works on several levels:
- we truly know something when we have to teach it to others,
- staff are more likely to listen when it comes from peers,
- the small groups usually come up with very entertaining ways to get
the knowledge across, and
- returning staff is involved.
This works especially well when people, who will eventually make up a
cabin group, are placed in different learning groups. Also, make sure
you have a member of the administration as part of every group.
Using the power of story
People are almost never fundamentally changed for the long-term through
passive lectures and large group activities, no matter how inspirational
and powerful. Large group discussions and sales pitches (heartfelt, enthusiastic,
or both) are rarely successful. If these approaches worked, church services,
television evangelism, large self-help seminars, and some movies would
have more of an impact. When they work, they tend to influence those who
were already “there” (or largely there) attitudinally. They are useful
for fostering and building momentum for those already moving in something
close to the right direction.
Recognizing the limitations in changing attitudes, it is still important
to build attitude strength. Try using the power of stories. Read the staff
letters you have from parents who told you how meaningful the experience
was for their child. Better yet, have a parent come in and tell the staff
in person. Tell them stories about how you've seen children changed by
the camp experience. Have past staff get up and tell their peers about
their experiences (or read past letters to that effect). If you have staff
who were campers, have them talk about their experiences. And, very importantly,
make sure the director explains why she/he is willing to work twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week for three months and endure all the hardships!
Sprinkle stories generously throughout the summer, and not just during
orientation.
Remove structural barriers
Make it easy to practice what one believes by removing structural barriers.
When people are under any significant stress (long hours, sleep deprivation,
personal needs not met, time crunch, bad mood, crisis or overwhelming
situations, situation overload and loss of perspective, etc.), they tend
to resort to experience as opposed to knowledge. They lose their perspective,
abilities, and become flustered. Technically, it's called Cognitive Resource
Theory, and the military and large organizations are very familiar with
it. When the pressure is on, people are more likely to resort to their
gut reactions. Usually, the gut reaction isn't one's learned knowledge,
unless it has been practiced so many times in real situations that it
becomes one's second nature. That's why the military has learned to train
people in as real a situation as is possible, as much as possible.
Another structural issue is staff motivation (perks, fun, praise, paid
enough, etc.). When morale and motivation slump, it's that much harder
to muster the effort to care. All of these structural barriers are easy
to say and hard to do, but removing them to the greatest extent possible
is perhaps the most powerful means camps have to improve the relationship
between what one knows and what one does.
Cog in the machine
Fortune 500 companies often hire people to play board games with their
employees. Why? Because the object of these board games and the goal for
the trainer is to help people understand how their actions influence the
outcomes the organization cares about.
Counselors (and even the administration) often don't have a full, concrete
idea of what the outcomes (goals, benefits) of the camp experience are.
Furthermore, a clear, conscious understanding of how those outcomes are
achieved is exceedingly rare. You don't have to take my word for it though,
ask your staff. At the end of orientation, ask them to take out a blank
piece of paper and write down a list of all the outcomes that they think
the children receive. Which ones were missing? Were there some that seemed
unlikely or ill suited to your camp? Even more interesting and useful,
ask your staff to describe how each of those outcomes is achieved. Much
will likely be missing.
Once upon a time (really), a cabin was walking down to the bathhouse
to clean it. Every cabin had a community job to do in the morning. The
campers were complaining, because this was their least favorite job to
do. One vocal camper was complaining bitterly, “Oh man! This sucks! This
camp is so bootleg; we paid a lot of money! They should just hire someone
to do this! How come they don't?” The counselor's response was “I don't
know. Look, this is just how it is. We have to do it. Everyone has to
do it eventually, and today it's our turn. If you complain, it's going
to take that much longer. Let's just get it over with so we can get on
to the fun stuff.”
The counselor didn't get it. Counselors are often not aware of all the
outcomes of a camp experience and their role in achieving each one of
them. Process models can be very effective here, especially if they are
hung in the staff lounge so that they can serve as a reminder on a continual
basis.
The above counselor's response isn't what you would have hoped for. Instead,
ideally, the counselor should have replied, “We all live in a community
here at camp, and we all need to contribute. This is our job today and
everyone has one. By doing this, we make the camp a nicer place to live.
The camp could pay someone to do it, but that would make the camp more
expensive for everyone to attend.” If your counselor were really awesome,
she or he might relate it to the broader community: “When people do their
part to recycle or vote, they are all working together to accomplish more
than anyone could do by himself or herself.” Better still would be for
the counselor to ask pointed questions so that the camper could answer
his own question.
Termites
Termites are those lovely little insects that weaken the framework. They
do so in such a way as to not be conspicuous until it is probably too
late. A building (camp) may look okay from the outside, but a closer inspection
will reveal the problems. Camps and large organizations alike have the
same problem — they all have termites.
A person termite is someone who doesn't really quite buy in to the program.
Termites are people who are not “sold” and quietly go around denigrating
and subverting the knowledge — usually in an effort to get people to agree
with them even a little. These are the people who whisper walking down
the wood paths or in the cabins late at night. “That's what they say,
but here's what you can really get away with.” or “Let me tell you the
real story behind (her, this, the place).” or “This place sucks so bad,
man, can you believe the crap they keep pulling?” When the termites are
returning counselors, they are especially deadly, because they often set
norms and culture more than you do.
Despite doing everything possible to engender a positive attitude that
will translate to behavior, a few termites will eat small holes in your
work and may even weaken the attitudes of many. Just like the real thing,
if you've got termites, catch them quickly! Put “Termites” on your supervisors'
agendas as a permanent item.
Majority rules
Usually, but not always, the psychological majority rules in small communities.
You can use this principle on two levels. On the small group level, let's
say you have cabins with three counselors. Place two strong counselors
with one weak one. If a marginal counselor is in a group with two strong,
committed counselors, attitude can rub off, or at least make it difficult
to violate positive peer pressure.
On a whole camp level, a camp norm around caring for the children is
extremely powerful. This is most easily achieved through critical mass
(the majority of the staff are already sold heart and soul) and historical
precedent. Call it what you will, critical mass, the one hundredth monkey,
or synergy, an established organizational culture can have an enormous
impact.
Who Needs an Attitude Adjustment?
My experience working at over a dozen different camps for full summers
is that the attitude of at least some staff could use some help. As I
described in the beginning, attitude strength has to be really high, and
quite often, what we think should suffice for sufficient attitude isn't
enough. With these seven attitude-boosting methods in place, you'll find
that what your staff knows will actually happen in practice much more
frequently.
Originally published in the 2001 November/December
issue of Camping Magazine. |
