Club Management - May/June 2008 - (Page 26)

Human & Professional Resources The Art of Success Through Guided Empowerment By Carl E. Swanback tone and create the social architecture for success. What follows is the framework for improving your club’s position and your success as both a manager and leader: The Leader Social Responsibility: Strong companies invest in their communities and employees. Your main goal as general manager of a club is to ensure ﬁnancial well-being and member satisfaction. If the company is ﬁ nancially sound, employees feel free to give back time and energy to the community (you need to make room for this and guide initiatives). The community prospers with a greater tax base. Membership ﬂourishes and everyone beneﬁts. Integrity: Integrity is not hard to establish, but it is tough to maintain. Words associated with integrity are: principled, honest, faithful, consistent, open, whole, truthful and trustworthy. To have integrity, one needs to have an established code of conduct to follow and consistently maintain it. Sounds simple, right? In golf, we have rules to guide our integrity. Some players play “gimmies” when the rules clearly call for the ball to be played until it comes to rest in the bottom of the cup. As you can see, the lines of integrity are often blurred. We have work integrity, personal integrity and integrity within relationships – all of which may differ and have little or no impact on the other until those worlds come into contact with one another. How you react in these situations determines your integrity. People will not always agree with your decisions, and you may not always be right. However, if you establish your code of conduct and stick by it – shooting straight, not playing two hands or having hidden agendas – you will ﬁnd that you can always keep your integrity intact, and people, right or wrong, will think of you as honorable. As a word of caution, sticking to your guns when you are clearly not doing the right thing is not integrity but stubbornness compounded by a narrow viewpoint. Special treatment for one member does not bode well for one’s integrity. Like the president of a country or the CEO of a multi-national ﬁ rm, your actions will always be under the microscope of the members, public and staff. If your actions differ from your code of conduct for a good reason, sharing W hat makes a good manager? What makes for a successful team? Managing for success in today’s global, high-speed, “know all, do all” environment is not luck. Some have called it the point where preparation meets opportunity. We all have different deﬁnitions of what makes both a good manager and a great team. Neither micro-management nor laissez-faire management styles are conducive to effective team building or the type of success that can be deﬁ ned as healthy. Being a club manager is more than good times, camaraderie, exquisite meals and wine. It is long days, late nights and lots of meetings involving tough decisions. There is no right or wrong way to be a CEO/manager, and every situation dictates a different set of governing rules. The club gets its tone from the top, and while the board helps set governing policy, it is the manager who must walk the walk throughout the organization, day in and day out. Regardless of your management style, this can only be accomplished by reaching as many of the staff as possible. You need to know your employees as well as you know the members. Be involved with their daily tasks, know what is happening in their personal lives, and be a mentor and friend. A successful team starts at the top and lives in an environment that fosters collaborative thinking and a free ﬂow of ideas. It is up to the general manager to set that 26 • CLUB MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Club Management - May/June 2008

Club Management - May/June 2008 Contents President’s Message Accounting & Financial Management Board Governance Wine Society Quenches Thirst for Knowledge, Camaraderie Building & Facilities Management Tennis Pro Education Increases Your Bottom Line Cover Story: BMI Golf Management Golf/Sports & Recreation Management Human & Professional Resources Relationship Building in the Internet Era The Ultimate Cellar Raid Products and Services Marketplace External & Government Influences HFTP Insight: HITEC 2008 Features Latest in Club Technology New Directions Global Outreach Advertiser Index/Advertisers.com Club Wrap

Club Management - May/June 2008

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