Authenticity, Immediacy, And Delight
Concepts that illuminate more genuine interaction
By Stephen J. Valentine and Reshan Richards
Running a camp requires leaders to pay attention to more variables, details, and input than they can possibly manage. Children, staff members, bugs, sunscreen, pools, parents, email, homesickness, newsletters, websites, lice, and payments: the proverbial firehose from which camp leaders attempt to drink daily is endless.
Photos: © Can Stock Photo / fizkes
Something is needed beyond just a good gut instinct to reduce cognitive complexity and increase good decision-making. A camp experience is built decision by decision and conversation by conversation; therefore, the success of camp cannot be left to chance.
Using the concepts of authenticity, immediacy, and delight will AID you in your quest:
Authenticity
In an era where technology offers leaders the chance to automate transactions, build massive spreadsheets, and communicate with almost anyone from almost anywhere, a certain strain of authenticity has become increasingly important.
Authenticity is present in a relationship or transaction when human needs are served, regardless of how many layers of technology are involved. Even if a transaction is automated, participants should know and feel that a human being is overseeing it.
Leaders of camps have to decide what they will handle with machines and then think about how these decisions will affect perception, signal values, and most important, the support of the mission.
Two great places to begin considering a camp’s authenticity quotient are emails and forms.
When you are emailing families in the “off season,” are you personalizing the emails or simply sending them to a giant list? If you’re using a list, have you considered segmenting it so people feel that the messages are more pertinent?
Have you filled out your own application and medical forms? Are they easy to use or clunky? Have you checked in with families about the ease of use or the ways in which forms are, or are not, pre-populated? And what do you do with the data that come from the forms? Are you sharing that with key people in the organization who can then use the data to efficiently develop relationships with families and campers?
Photos: © Can Stock Photo / Zinkevych
Immediacy
Information and speed often create a type of fog around organizations. That’s why emails get lost or fall off people’s radars. That’s why people forget or fumble key details. It’s hard to know what’s important . . . and when.
Use immediacy to help cut through the fog. For leaders, it is ensuring that transactions occur at a time when both the actors and their audiences feel they have given or received information at the best time for their purposes. This does not always mean that information is conveyed instantly.
Getting immediacy right is crucial for campers and their families—especially in the realm of communication. Parents crave communication from both camp and campers, especially in the early stages of a program. They want to know that children are safe, having fun, and thriving. Campers, on the other hand, may not want to communicate with their parents in the early stages of camp. In fact, such communication might break the spell of camp and work against its ultimate effect.
Immediacy, in this situation, acknowledges the parental need to hear from their children and the children’s need to get lost in the experience of camp. To satisfy the parents’ desire, you might ask a staff member to set up a password-protected photo gallery that includes a photo of each camper. Or you might use a technological solution to allow campers to record a message that can then be sent on the spot. Another option is to explain upfront the precise ways and times when parents will hear from their children. It’s even better if this communication rhythm is aligned with the camp’s mission.
Delight
Most camp leaders are drawn to the concept of delight because it occurs as a result of joy, genuine curiosity, and intrinsically motivated persistence. It is the antidote, therefore, to fear, lack of relevance, routine, or mere novelty. When you help another person experience delight, you help him or her to derive meaning from an experience, develop true and lasting competency, and experience a positive transformation.
Camps that aspire to the condition of delight will often challenge young people in ways they have never been challenged. Like all things worth doing, there will be peaks and valleys, smooth and bumpy passageways, laughter and even some healthy boredom. And these will add value that is deep and lasting.
As you look ahead to leading your next camp season, focusing on delight may help center you and/or your team. You might use the following questions to structure a reflection, a retreat, or even a conference:
How are you nurturing a long conversation between your camp and your campers? (Or your camp and your camp families?)
How are you then folding these conversations into long stories, wherein campers become counselors and then parents who send their own children to your camp?
How are you ensuring that formative and healthy camp mythologies become muscle memory for campers?
How are you ensuring that campers will never quite feel at home again until they are at back at your camp?
Putting The Heuristic To Use
Whenever possible, approach leadership duties in ways that are authentic, immediate, and delightful. In other words, ensure that the camp shows up “in person” for the moments that matter, that your communication patterns are purposeful rather than routinized or robotic, and that you build camp experiences around long-term values rather than what is merely novel or entertaining.
Stephen J. Valentine (@sjvalentine) is the Assistant Head, Upper School, and Director of Academic Leadership at Montclair Kimberley Academy.
Dr. Reshan Richards (@reshanrichards) is Chief Learning Officer and Co-Founder of Explain Everything Inc. and teaches at Teachers College, Columbia University and the Columbia University School of Professional Studies.
Their book, Make Yourself Clear: How to Listen, Understand, Explain Everything, and Be Understood, is available wherever books are sold.