You’ve likely seen the ad. You might even own one. I have two of them, one for each vehicle. Put one on, keep the key in your pocket, and no stranger can drive your vehicle. Yes, there is a point to this. Please read on.

I want to thank the many supportive comments in response to my last post about how to screw up your radio club. I’ve not been back to that club and do not intend to, but the incident actually provoked my thinking about group dynamics.

I spent thirty years as a trainer and consultant in the non-profit sector addressing the inter-relationships of non-profit volunteer associations. I observed four phases in a group’s life.

    First is the beginning, the initial days when enthusiasm and energy boils over everywhere and newcomers are chased after, sought out, and welcomed. The group’s outer edges remain flexible, open, and inviting.

    Second, is the solidification stage when processes and procedures harden, systems and ways of doing things are explored, debated, and settled upon. The outer edges, the entry point for new people begin to solidify along with the rest of the group’s systems.

    Third, is the ripening stage when the group has money in the bank, long-standing members who now curiously begin to resent new people and view them with suspicion. What had been an adventure has slipped into a comfort zone. New people disrupt the routine. They need attention, bring new enthusiasm when nearly everyone else is winding down (certainly settling down), and those new people have new ideas, want to know stuff, and want to push ahead. Ripe groups want to maintain, not expand.

The Club, pictured at the top of this entry, typifies the attitude. A few people hold the keys. Those people have put a lock on the club so no one can drive it except those proven and approved by the key holders. They mean well, but almost always fail to see the consequences of their attitude and behavior.

    After ripening comes what? You guessed it. Rot? Decay is inevitable with only one exception. Like people, if a group is not growing it is shrinking. Life itself means and personifies modification and change. The final phase is death by decay.

Now the group can die along the way – internal conflict that causes division and destruction, social factors that cause too many of the group to move away from the area, moral/ethical/financial impropriety in key leaders that causes members to drop out, and other factors can kill a group. But most do not die this way.

Like people, they die a slow lingering death. What had once been vital, vibrant, vivacious, and victorious devolves into stagnation, retreat, ambivalence, and defeat. And it is not just radio clubs that experience this. I have had only two encounters with radio clubs (one really good, and the last one - really bad), but hundreds of encounters with civic groups, churches, car clubs, Chambers of Commerce, and more.

Any group, particularly those comprised of volunteers is susceptible and most likely will follow the five phases I listed above. This is why it is so difficult to break into an established group.

But it is not inevitable IF certain steps and attitudes are taken and promoted.

1. All office-holders must regularly be challenged with these above-mentioned dynamics. The leader must regularly and continually remind those who serve with them that a soft, living, growing outer edge can and should be cultivated.

2. Procedures and steps must be written into the clubs way of doing things so that new people, new ideas, new energy finds a hospitable welcome and ready channels for expression. There is tremendous enthusiasm and energy in new people. Do not be stupid and let that energy go to waste. Put new people to work.

3. No one wants to hear your struggling pioneer stories. New people have little interest in how hard you worked and how much you sacrificed to get the group to where it is today. The only martyr in history anyone cares about is Jesus and He has groups already.

4. Learn when to step aside and let new blood flow through the arteries of your group. The group can remain vital and dynamic for generations if you make it happen.

So, the local radio club here is probably doomed. Many of you wrote to relate similar experiences and all had the same valid prescription – detach yourself and move on. Speaking of Jesus, He had some good advice – having tried to find some life and energy in a particular place, and finding none, He suggested one should leave and shake the dust of the place off one’s feet. This was not an act of defiance. It was a statement of departure. Simply leave the residue of that experience behind and move on.

I have already connected with a dynamic and vibrant writer’s group here, one which is hospitable and enthusiastic despite having been founded in 1995. And I have made connection with the radio people in my own gated community plus there is a friend from the islands who moved to this area as well. We’re having dinner this week.

Life on the move is good and appealing. Life in hospice should be experienced only once. Life’s span is much too short to sit in hospice care month after month after month, slowly but certainly dying.

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