Surveys are an effective way to close the communication loop by creating a channel for members to explain their perspective.  One of the frequent messages that came out of the survey exercise was ‘I don’t know’.  This response is symbolic of the challenges our organization faces to keep all of its members well-informed; not only on a national basis, but on a unit-level as well.  Word-of-mouth is not sufficient.  The average person captures only 30% of what is heard, and less than 10% remains after a week’s time.  Information needs to be released to members in multiple forms and repeated to ensure proper comprehension.

A CAP membership is about training.  Each member starts training at the beginning of membership and needs to continue the learning process throughout the CAP career.  There is no time during the membership when a member is not engaged in new-learning or re-training.  This continual growth is necessary for achieving our goals of excellence and is a primary benefit of membership by challenging the members to improve performance and keep the brain’s neurons firing to sustain mental plasticity.

The other significant response from the survey was ‘more effective mentoring would help’.  The majority of members believe mentoring is a proper solution, yet only a minority actively employs mentoring as a strategy for improvement.  Mentoring can be vital to getting new members involved and becoming active in squadron affairs.  Mentoring is equally important to sustain progress of skill-development.

A suggestion was made to add an accounting step to the existing mentoring program to ensure effectiveness.  The commander of the Marco Island Composite squadron agreed to run a pilot-program to see if the suggestion had any merit.  Existing regulations require a mentor be assigned to every new member to help him/her get their arms around the things that make CAP run.  There is no formal measurement to gauge how effective the unit’s mentoring efforts are.  The accounting step requires the appointment of a mentor tracker (or whatever you choose to call him or her) who regularly reports during squadron meetings to review progress. 

When a new member joins, the tracker makes a data sheet (see link below) and gives a copy to the mentor.  The mentor uses it as a checklist of items they might discuss and uses the extra space for write-in items.  The mentor reports progress to the tracker before each meeting.  If everything is progressing it is reported in the meeting as “continuing”.  If there is a problem, it can be resolved or a new mentor may be appointed.  In any case, the mentor has a responsibility to report progress and has a support network to draw upon in challenging circumstances.

The Marco Island squadron has continuing success with a mentoring program for several years. Mentor assignment records date back to 2007.  Before that, it was all verbal with no way to know if the new member was actually mentored or trained or it just expired.  The data sheets reveal that five new members quit and all but five of the remaining new-members had been adequately integrated into the squadron and considered the initial phase of mentoring closed.  Those new members who were successfully mentored were better equipped to become mentors themselves.