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by David Emanuel Elcock | Laidlaw Scholar (2025) at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland for Localise Youth Volunteering at Claremont Avenue, Glasnevin, Dublin, D11 YNR2
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On top of the existing methods such as KOBL learning cycle, Brookfield Lens and others, this section introduces useful tools and concepts that help managing projects and give practices that could be adopted for reflection on work and skill experience gained through volunteering.
One component of leadership is management. If we fail to manage our project we are more likely to fail in delivering its end result. Hence on this page we’ll discuss methods and ideas that allow a leader to manage their project more effectively.
Like a game of chess, it is good practice to plan ahead of your tasks. This is a skill that will grow over time, but it puts into perspective the total duration and components needed for your project. Think of say building a skyscraper, what type of things would be needed?
Of course this isn’t a comprehensive list, but only a superficial one. For example, unless you are an expert on contract law or are an architect, you will need to consult with experts. This will require setting up meetings and delegating tasks. Furthermore, you might experience obstacles that induce delays. It might be useful to translate delays onto future plans and be able to communicate that reliably with your team. This oversight can be achieved using a single chart called a Gannt chart. Templates can be found on Excel or even Notion.
This chart lists the various tasks and allocates them into a time slot. You can thus generate an entire overview of the project, where it is, the effects of delays, etc. In terms of teamwork it allows you to overview the various tasks different members work on. Think of the making of a game. For game development you have the animation team, audio team, scripting, and many more divisions which can all be placed in a single chart. Hence if one team manages to work faster than another, you can easily navigate the chart to see where you can transfer people to optimise efficiency. Finally, it also allows you to estimate the duration of projects.
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Putting the ad aside, SMART goals are useful when trying to fill in your Gannt chart which is only as strong as the weakest SMART goal you have set. Hence when allocating a goal/task to your Gannt chart, consider if it is
Depending on the project and even individual team members you might have to deploy different styles when it comes to management. This is separate to the different forms of communication you might need regarding leadership, see Leadership & Character.
In deciding what style you adopt, consider what your goals are and what type of team you will be working with. Can you guarantee that all team members have aligning interests? Are they motivated and interested in expanding their skill set? How diverse is the set of skills? A style for one team member might also work better than other team members.
Imagine you are managing an army, you have strategised a plan to take out the enemy’s fortress and have commenced its implementation. But, all of a sudden they deploy a new weapon that was only rumoured to exist! Depending on how you manage projects, one of two things will happen:
In general it is advisable to make back-up plans, even if you consider the alternative to be unlikely. If you think about the Covid-19 pandemic, not many people considered it would happen but it did. Hence as a government, had they invested more into the development of backup plans the pandemic response might have been more efficient.
A further motivation an be found in the Principle of Ten Men which effectively insists that in a team if multiple members reach the same conclusion, at least one must question their conclusion and disagree, regardless of how improbable it might seem. It is an example of being the Devil’s advocate during project management and when applied appropriately can be the technique that helps project thrive. The skill to develop when implementing backup planning is determining the amount of resources you should spend on potential scenarios.
I won’t reflect here on the common methods of reflection such as Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, Schön’s Reflection Theory, Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle, and the Assess-Plan-Do-Review (APDR) model that are already used by Localise Youth Volunteering. Instead I will try to add practices that allow people to reflect on their work.
Suppose you work on a project, you have a bad day where everything feels like it is going wrong. You are stressed, worried, and annoyed, perhaps your self-confidence takes a hit. I would advise to write down a short description of what happened and how you feel. Then, months later you review it. Reading retrospectively how you felt can be eye-opening in how you process information. Were you too harsh on yourself? Were you to reckless? By sharing the juxtaposition with others in a group you can learn a lot on your and other’s growth!
One way to determine if you are progressing is the ability to present your material. Whilst this is also affected by your presentation skill, that too can be developed by rehearsal. The idea here is that you record yourself giving a presentation on a topic. You review it and note all criticisms you have of yourself. Than as you progress you deliver a presentation either on the same or another topic and compare both the presentations and feedbacks. How do you feel about the previous feedback and what have you been able to improve on? Seeing your own progress becomes easy when you can look back at previous work. Like with the journal it is also a task you can repeat successively and implement very easily, alone or in groups.
A good leader has an aptitude for pre-science, the ability to use logic and deduction to infer what might come next. One way to develop this is to make predictions, record them and see how they pan out. Try to work in areas you are quite knowledgeable at and see where your blind spots are located. This reflection over time helps to tune your character over time.
Here I propose the making of a list that gives an overview on juxtaposing topics to reflect on:
Focusing on the last one, it is often the case that people can easily list a lot of things they dislike about themselves but struggle to list things they actually like about themselves. And when this is pointed out to them for the first time, any are surprised. Similarly there are more contrasting concepts that could be taken as reflection tools.
Before you cook a meal or go on a trip it can be useful to go over the plan in your head e.g. the order in the sequence. The same can be done on a daily basis with reflections. The idea is simple: in the morning before you commit to a task, you briefly review the steps and details in your head. At the end of the day you run a similar review on progress made, what went will or didn’t and things left to do. These micro-reflections don’t have to be recorded, but can serve as an anchor to what is realistic. E.g. if you though you would do x and you did more than x or less, you can use that to tune your time expectations. At the end of the week these micro-reflections could even become part of your reflective journal!
Another tool used by professionals is the Virtuosity app for character reflection, c.f. Leadership & Character. The only downside of this app is that it isn’t free, but there might be other apps that offer similar services at little to no cost!
This toolkit along with future volunteering projects will integrate with the upcoming myVP platform. This is expected to act as a digital wallet that converts volunteering into a digital currency that young people can use to support their applications into tertiary education and jobs. As part of this tool young people can use the above mentioned tools to reflect on their experiences critically. This will involve questioning the impact their volunteering had on their future, what they learned and achieved, what skills they need to improve on, etc.