United Way and the Clean Audit Report
Posted September 19th, 2008 by adminPosted by Neva Geisler, Director, Volunteer Engagement
A few weeks ago, our staff participated in a Persogenics Workshop, led and sponsored by Carl Arriola, CEO of Tates Rents. Carl is on our Board and is the Chair of our Community Impact Council. Carl is a very smart guy, and an outstanding leader, so when he suggested the training we jumped at the opportunity.
If you’re not familiar with Persogenics, it’s much like a Myers-Briggs type of exercise, only this one is specific to your style of communication. There are four basic patterns: Dominant, Expressive, Amiable and Analytical. The names are fairly descriptive of the types. Most people have a primary pattern and a secondary pattern.
It goes without saying that knowing yourself is very helpful in matters of work. You know your strengths, weaknesses, and you get better at what you work at. But knowing your communication style as well as those of your co-workers is tremendously useful. In fact, it was so helpful to us, that we all put our Persogenics style on a name tag outside our door: Neva Geisler, Express/Dominant.
About half of our office are Expressives, which makes sense, as Expressives are very people oriented. They are constantly ’selling’, selling their ideas, their passions, themselves. Being out in the community, working with others to improve the quality of life for all people in the Treasure Valley, is a natural fit for an Expressive. In fact, it’s a kick in the pants.
The other half of our office fit in other styles, but most commonly they are Analytical. Here is the description of the Analytical Pattern, as provided by Persogenics:
“Analytical Patterns are task-oriented. they are careful to be certain that the job gets done right the first time. Analyticals focus on facts and details…are thorough in their work…and might seem more concerned with information than with people.”
No surprise–our Expressives work on the campaign/community engagement/communication side of UW, and our Analyticals work on the finance/data management/administration.
I’m an Expressive. According to the Persogenics people I ‘prefer to deal with the big picture rather than supporting details’ and ‘have an aversion to activities and tasks of a routine, meticulous nature.’ This shouldn’t excuse my lack of ability with numbers, or my disinterest for the little details of a big project, but it did provide a complete AH-HAH! moment for me at UW.
When UW pledges come through our front door, here’s what happens:
Connie, Resource Development Coordinator (Analytical) puts it in an envelope and seals it and records where it came from and the amount. That envelope then goes to Anita, Finance Associate (Analytical) or Susan, Office Manager (Analytical) who open the envelope and verify the contents. Then the envelope goes to Joyce, Administrative Associate (Analytical) and it is entered into our database.
From my Expressive Big-Picture Lovin’ perspective, this process always seemed a little on the inefficient side. I mean, why should we bog down this process by having three people do what one person could do in half the time? All I could see in this was that it seemed to slow down what I thought we should be racing to do, which is to recognize and thank the donor for the gift.
But then I sat in this year’s audit report meeting (UW is audited every year) and heard the auditor’s glowing report of our clean audit, specifically that our separation of duties assures high standards of internal control procedures, and thought, heyyyy, wait a minute…then I began to understand. What seemed a weird process to me was the very thing that makes UW a trusted place to donate money to–the donor’s money is meticulously sheparded to ensure the utmost stewardship. In short, the donor’s money is the donor’s money. The donor says where it’s going to go, and the process it goes through to get there is protected, checked and double checked.
So at the Board meeting when our Board Treasurer, Kevin Andersen of Eide Bailly LLP gave us accolades for our finances, I finally got it. I was going to try and blog about what he said exactly, only I can’t remember because there were too many details, but here’s the basic idea, as told from the Expressive perspective:
“GOOD JOB ON THE FINANCIAL STUFF!”
Read the UW audit (if you’re into that kind of thing).
