The intent of the leadership program is to guide non-leadership team staff into a leadership role through mentorship. 

Ideally, every Head Guard will be promoted after completing the leadership program. Head Guards will then be promoted to Managers. Mangers will be promoted to Aquatics Coordinator. 

Step 1: Mentor someone. 

Managers choose HG or LG/INS/CASH or Lesson Coordinator

Head Guards: Choose an LG/INS/CASH

Lesson Coordinators: Choose INS

Create a record in the “Leadership: Candidates” list. Add yourself. Add the candidates you’re mentoring. 

Step 2: Have your first meeting. 

Create a new entry in the Leadership: 1st Meeting list. 

At the first meeting, the mentor will describe what the purpose of the program is: to give on the job experience to staff so they can build a body of documented work in service to a goal they choose which improves the Aquatic department. We will use tasks and meetings in service of the goal. The park district gets their efforts and will use them in the future, while the candidate (leadership trainee) will be to produce a body of work they can use for future job interviews. 

What is a a goal?

A goal is a broad objective that the candidate wants to achieve. It should be broad enough in scope so that is is not easily achievable. It should be narrow enough that we can measure our success or failure reaching for it. 

Goal examples: 

  • Improve the legitimacy of SRC and school year aquatics (it is very real). 
  • Improve safety during swim lessons through staff training.
  • Increase retention of annual summer staff over 50% and retention of school year staff into summer by over 60%. 
  • Ensure all new hires receive supplemental training during all staff trainings. 

The Mentor and the candidate will discuss the candidates interests: 

  • Lifeguarding
  • Swim Instructing
  • Cashier / Concessions
  • Administration
  • Safety
  • Learning
  • etc

They should narrow down their interests into one broad category. 

Then, the candidate will brainstorm 4 potential goals. 

Mentor will give candidate homework: Refine the goals into concise thesis statements. Trim the words and make them as actionable, broad, and refined as possible. 

Mentor will document meeting notes in the “Meeting details,” and document the 4 brainstormed goals. 

Save the Leadership: 1st Meeting record.

Step 3: Choose a Goal

Choose 1 goal for the candidate to focus on. All tasks and further meetings will be serving this goal. 

Ensure that the candidate wants to work on the topic, and agrees with the refined language. Let them do the trimming and concise-izing. 

Once you’ve chosen a singular goal, put it in the “Leadership: Goals” list. Every meeting will be linked to this goal from now on (including the 2nd meeting). 

Step 4: Leadership: Meetings

Document and record every meeting using: Leadership: Meetings.

At your second meeting, you’ll establish your Goal, and update the “Leadership: Goal” list with the title (name) using concise, refined, language. 

Create the record at the meeting. You will use this goal in every subsequent meeting to link the candidate to their body of work. 

Record meetings using “Leadership: Meetings.” Create a new entry. It’ll look like this:

Document what you reviewed, talked about, and what the candidate has done. 

Once you have established and created a “goal” in “Leadership: Goals” then you can start creating Meetings attached to that goal. 

At your second or third meeting you’ll refine “tasks.” Tasks are actionable things that are done in service of the goal. 

Come up with 2 tasks. 

What is a task: 

A task is a thing the candidate does. The task should be in service to the goal. 

For example: 

Create a tutorial for new hires covering swim lesson safety etiquette; this is a task in service of a goal “improve swim lesson safety through instructor training.” 

There may be many steps to completing a task. That is normal. 

In our example the candidate would need to: 

  • Come up with a tutorial outline
  • Choose topics that are essential to new hires
  • Trim the excess language out of the planning process
  • Meet with the mentor to review and edit the tutorial document[s].
  • print and publich the tutorial
  • Roll it out to new hires and test its efficacy. 
  • Refine the tutorial 
  • Republish. 

Each of these items can be done in a separate meeting, or grouped together into one meeting. 

Tasks are the larger Actions the candidate does. If our tasks are successful, then the goals should be achieved. 

Leadership: Tasks List

Using the menu to the left, create a new “task” in the “Leadership: Task” list. 

Your meetings will be connected to a task, and a goal going forward. Each meeting should be discussing actionable items or guiding your candidate through the planning and implementing process. 

Document the task, then after it happens evaluate the success or failure of the task. 

Finished?

When your candidate has finished their tasks you need to evaluate the goal. Was it successful? What body of work did they produce? 

Where are any useful documents stored? 

Update the “Leadership: Goals” entry for your candidate and the “goal achieved?” item, and write a detailed “evaluation” of the goal. 

Include as much detail as possible. 

Email Jeff to print all related materials for the mentor and the candidate. This will serve as their body of work that they can take, reference, and use for future job interviews. 

For the Aquatics Department it will serve as proof they’ve initiated leadership skills and have begun training to behave outside a “do this, do that” employee and demonstrating initiative, broad scale thinking, and planning.