What Is Comfortable?

How to operationalize your leadership

By Chris Thurber
Photos: Courtesy Of Jessica Lippe

When my wife and I had saved enough money to buy a house, we didn’t have much left over to buy furniture. Fortunately, our parents chipped in to help us buy a three-piece set that included a couch, a loveseat, and a chair. We placed them around the perimeter of our favorite room—the sunroom—which has big windows on three of its four sides. Twenty years, two kids, lots of sun, countless movie nights, and one dog later, the couch, loveseat, and chair are just as comfortable as they were when we bought them. The fading, threadbare spots and patched holed are a testament to how much we use them and how comfortable they have remained. When I come home from work, plopping down on one of those favorite pieces of furniture will reliably melt away the day’s stress.

Photo: © Can Stock Photo - chris77ho

So, what is comfortable? Is how I define comfortable the same as how you define it? Would either of us know comfortable if we saw it? Or is comfort something a person can only feel? Questions like these might seem inconsequential for a youth leader, but they help us operationalize a concept such as comfort or a construct such as comfortable. And the ability to operationalize constructs is an essential skill for all leaders. In this installment for Staff Advancement, I’ll explain what it means to operationalize something and why it’s important you know how to do it.

Three Words

First, let’s define a few terms. The previous paragraph might sound like I copied and pasted it from a boring stats textbook, but once you understand the lingo, the ideas are fascinating as well as practical. Here we go:

· Concept: a characteristic of an object. For example, a swimming pool is an object, and it has certain characteristics. You might describe it as cold or deep. You might say that temperature and depth are both concepts. In this case, these are two concrete concepts. They can be measured, so they are not abstract. You can measure depth with a ruler and temperature with a thermometer.

Because depth and temperature are measurable, three different people may get very much the same results, even if they use three different rulers and three different thermometers (as long as the rulers and thermometers are in working order). For example, people might measure the pool to be somewhere between 35 and 37 inches deep in the shallow end, between 83 and 86 inches deep in the deep end, and between 74 F and 76 F two feet below the surface. There may be some variation, but you can be reasonably certain about what you are stepping into. Literally.

Other concepts, such as refreshing, are abstract. You can’t really measure how refreshing something is. Although individual people may call the pool refreshing, there is no such thing as a “refreshometer” to give an objective index. You just know it when you feel it, or don’t. Because refreshing is an abstract concept, you can take the three people who measured temperature and depth before, toss them in the pool, and obtain very different reports. One might say it’s refreshing; another might say it’s balmy; and a third might say it’s frigid. Who’s right? It’s hard to know. But just because it’s hard to measure doesn’t mean that refreshing doesn’t exist. Which brings us to the next definition.

· Construct: an abstract concept (like refreshing) that is chosen to explain a certain phenomenon. For example, you can choose the concept “refreshing” to explain why camps dig big holes in flat parts of their property, line them with concrete, and fill them with water. The resulting pool is something that many people find refreshing to immerse themselves, play in, and slide into. If a camp director is asked why a pool was built on the property, he or she might say, “Because it gets hot here and the pool is refreshing.” The director might also be asked, “How do you measure refreshing?” You will probably get an odd stare, but it’s a legitimate question.

What good is the construct of refreshing if it’s so subjective and so unreliable when you try to measure it? (Or when you get odd stares?) You can ask the same question about constructs like leadership and compassion and the various attributes of being an excellent staff member. You might say you want staff members who exhibit leadership and compassion, but unless there is a reliable way to identify and measure these constructs when see you them, you won’t don’t have much of a basis for hiring, training, evaluating, or promoting staff. That’s a problem. Which brings us to the third definition.

·  Operationalize: to clearly state the specific, measurable indicators of a construct. If you say leadership is a construct that partly explains why some camps boast excellent safety records and high camper-return rates, then you have a plausible explanation. But you would need to operationalize leadership—to say what the indicators of leadership are—if you want to distinguish staff members who show leadership from those who do not.

In this instance, you might feel that the construct of leadership is so broad that you first have to break it down into manageable sub-constructs. You might say leadership is best represented by a collection of other constructs, such as initiative, judgment, charisma, consistency, and creativity (to name a few). These constructs are also abstract, but less so, and more specific.

Once you have specific constructs in mind, it’s time to operationalize them. You don’t need a computer or tape measure, but you do need to ask, “What are some observable, measurable examples of these constructs?” Take the construct initiative. You might say observable examples of staff members taking initiative around camp include some of the following behaviors:

• Starting fun activities with campers during unstructured free time

• Picking up equipment or trash around camp without being asked

• Restocking paper products and soap in washrooms when supplies are low

• Designing an inclusive rainy-day activity when the weather turns foul.

If these indicators are measurable behaviors that can be reliably observed and tallied on a clipboard, then you’ve done a good job operationalizing one of the narrow constructs that are part of the broad construct called leadership. If you create examples that are unobservable or vague, such as “sensing what needs to be done next,” then you’re not quite there. You really can’t tally the number of times someone senses something. Operationalizing a construct sometimes takes several rounds of writing out possibilities until all of the indicators pass the Tally Test. If you can’t put a checkmark next to it, then you don’t yet have a great indicator of the construct you want to measure. Keep revising.

Why You Must Operationalize

If you’ve read this far, you clearly care more about staff advancement than the average camp director. Bravo! And you should be asking, “Why does operationalizing constructs matter?” The answer is: When you operationalize key camp constructs, such as leadership, four wonderful things happen.

• You can design a staff-training curriculum that builds skills in the most important, observable behaviors that make up the constructs you care most about, such as leadership, risk-management, and creativity. It’s fine to discuss abstract concepts in training, but always ground your work in specific, measurable behaviors you want staff members to exhibit.

• You can state clear expectations for sterling staff behavior, both on the job and during off-time, so staff members have clear rules to adhere to and concrete goals to strive for. You can’t state every single expectation you have for staff, lest contracts be hundreds of pages. However, a clear set of core expectations gives every staff member a solid goal to strive for, and leaves little room for a member to say, “You never told me I was supposed to do (or not do) that.”

• You and your senior-staff team can reliably evaluate any staff member’s performance and progress in a way that is relatively unbiased, easily repeatable, and simple to measure. To be an effective director, you want to reference concrete points when in providing praise and criticism. And if you ever need to terminate someone’s employment, you want to be able to provide specific reasons.

• You and your senior-staff team can make data-driven decisions at the end of the season about who will receive a contract next season and which of those returners most deserve a promotion. With hard data in your hands, human-resources pitfalls, such as favoritism, nepotism, sexism, ageism, and other “isms” are far less likely.

Now you can fully appreciate the importance of operationalizing. When you take the time to list the specific, observable, measurable behaviors that are part of “doing a good job,” staff training improves, expectations are clear, the method of evaluating staff members gets better, and decisions about rehiring and promotion are defensible.

Here’s how I would summarize this article, high-falutin’ science terms aside: If you want to know whether someone has the chops for the job, you had better make darn sure you know what you’re talking about first.

A valuable mid-season task might be to list the seven constructs you value most in staff at any level. Next, list seven indicators for each construct—seven specific, observable, measurable behaviors that anyone would understand to be evidence of that construct. When you’re done, you’ll have 49 essential indicators of staff excellence that you and your senior-staff team can reference as you walk around camp.

So, what about my old couch? Why is it my favorite piece of furniture? I could use the construct of comfort to explain why it relieves my stress. And I could operationalize comfort so I know what to look for when I need to buy a new couch. On the other hand, I don’t have to train my couch, give it feedback, or make difficult decisions about hanging on to it. So, I guess that’s the other important thing to know about operationalizing: You don’t have to do it for everything. Unless someone’s child or career is in question, it’s fine just to appreciate a good thing when you feel it. And with that, I’m plopping down on my comfy couch for a catnap.

Christopher Thurber, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and faculty member at Phillips Exeter Academy. He created Prep4Camp.com, the only evidence-based, homesickness-prevention program, and co-authored the best-selling Summer Camp Handbook with Dr. Jon Malinowski. His forthcoming book, The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure hits bookstores in July. Learn more about the work that Chris does with schools and camps on DrChrisThurber.com.