Bobbi Nance (LinkedIn and Twitter) is a former engineering student who decided to make the switch to recreation after leading a music and concert promotion organization in college (one of those, “You mean you can do this for a job?” kind of moments…). Fast forward 12 years, and she’s now found a way to combine the best of both worlds and is now using her strategic and technical skills towards advancing the use of data and continuous improvement at The Park District at Oak Park.
The following article first appeared on her website – Better Questions, Better Ideas, Better Results.
Park & Recreation’s Perception Problem
“These people are members of the community that care about where they live. So what I hear when I’m being yelled at is people caring loudly at me.” – Leslie Knope, Parks & Recreation
The data and research that’s been done in the name of better understanding and promoting parks & recreation as a public necessity is actually incredibly interesting and valuable. And in Illinois, the fact that hundreds of communities across the state have voted to form separate park & recreation districts goes to show that the public does value these services on some level. But when push comes to shove, as an industry, we still seem to feel a bit inferior to other government services like police, fire, health, education, sanitation, etc. So despite our best efforts, it continues to be a hot topic and even ended up as part of the conversation at the keynote of the 2014 National Park & Recreation Association conference. In fact, the question (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Why can’t we seem to influence the public on the value of parks and recreation?” was posed.
- Executing: People with talents in this area are those who you turn to to implement a solution. They work tirelessly to get something done with speed and precision.
- Influencing: People with talents in this area are innately good at influencing are always selling big ideas inside and outside of the organization. When you need someone to take charge, speak up, and make sure your group is heard, look to someone with strengths in this area.
- Relationship-Building: People with talents in this area have an innate ability to take the human component into the equation. They look at how individuals fit into the big picture, make strong connections, and are the glue that holds groups together.
- Strategic: People with talents in this area are constantly thinking about the future and help keep people focused on what “could be.” They absorb and analyze information to help make better decisions.
After compiling the results of professionals across the country, including park & recreation staff, special recreation staff, and board members, a pretty significant trend has surfaced. Although not scientific in any stretch of the imagination, no matter where I go or who I work with, the overall results are the same – the talents of park & recreation professionals fall pretty consistently in the folowing order:
- Relationship-Building: 35% of our talents are in this area
- Executing: 31% of our talents are in this area
- Strategic: 21% of our talents are in this area
- Influencing: only 13% of our talents fall in this area
If we were perfectly balanced overall, our talents would all fall squarely at 25% in each area. However, it’s pretty clear that people who have chosen parks & recreation as their career are not as balanced as you might assume they’d be. If you think about it, it actually makes total sense. I think we’d all agree that to be drawn to work in parks & recreation, most professionals probably are concerned with relationships and care about the connections to their community and to the environment and nature. And I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t say park & recreation professionals aren’t hard workers. Our entire field literally revolves around working while everyone else in playing. So does that mean when it comes to influencing the public about our value that we’re completely hopeless? Is the only way to accomplish this goal to completely change the make-up of those working in our field?
- Ironically, Gallup, the group that conducted the research that led to StrengthsFinder, also found that people who live in close proximity to parks have fewer headaches, lower obesity rates and even as many as 25 percent fewer heart attacks in their Well-Being Index. Just like the graphic above and other research that’s been conducted, it’s all incredibly valuable information. So why isn’t the message getting through?
The StrengthsFinder results show that being influencers in a more traditional way isn’t natural to the majority of our professionals. But, if we know that our professionals care deeply about personal connections and building relationships, maybe it’s time to change the message to our members about promoting parks & recreation. Instead of encouraging professionals to do it because we need to fight for funding and increased stature among other social services, we need to appeal to our professionals in the area that matters most to them. The message to our professionals should revolve around how it will help us build better connections in our community and serve more people. We need to convince our professionals that spreading this message is priority number one and then challenge them to use their “executing” skills to making it happen on a local level, across the country. It might seem like an impossible sell, but it’s exactly the route that I’ve had to take at my own agency to reinforce why focusing on data and numbers is one of the best ways to help our customers.
It may only seem like a slight change in semantics, but having coached others on using their own strengths for years and seeing the impact that these small tweeks can have, I think that it’s an important distinction to think about. And of course, the cliche is that “it’s easier said than done.” But remember, according to my StrengthsFinder results, we’re really good at the “getting things done” part.
What do you think? Have you or your agency taken the StrengthsFinder assessment? What were your results? Would you agree that a change in strategy is needed?