Sunday, December 21, 2008

Actually, you can help ... so help ...

Quiz: How many people do you know, who have never been association executives, who you believe understand what the profession is like? How many search committees and job descriptions adequately explain it?

Association management is a vast series of incredible contrasts – easy, hard, backward, innovative, fraught with peril, filled with opportunity, educational, elementary, rewarding, depressing, full of people, very lonely – and on and on. The group who can understand what it’s like are those who live it.

And because of that we can help each other from the unique understanding of the shared experience. For example, don’t ever pass up an opportunity to do something nice. If you can help another AE, then help them. If you can send a congratulatory or caring email, send it. If you’re doing a presentation and there’s an AE in the audience, tell everyone else there the kind of contribution that person makes. It’s going to make a difference to that other AE and could matter to their officers and members too. The ones who know can explain to those who can’t know.

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