Bringing in people who are not convinced

Your group grew fast for a couple of months and then stopped, and nothing went wrong. You finished your address book. Nobody has to authorise what comes next: not a committee, not a launch, not a budget. It is one person asking another person, and you can start this week.

Why your group stopped growing at about three months

Nearly every new group grows fast and then stops. The first weeks bring in the people already close to you: friends, family, the two who had been saying for years that somebody ought to do something. By around the third month, in our experience though we have not measured it, everybody in your own circle who was going to say yes has said yes. Then the numbers go flat, and it feels like the effort has run out.

What worked in month one was not recruitment. It was your address book, and you have finished it. Doing the same thing harder produces nothing, because there is nobody left in it.

Rule one: almost all recruitment failure is failure to ask

People do not join because they saw a poster, a post, a leaflet or a well-argued thread. Material tells somebody you exist. It has almost never made anybody turn up.

People turn up because a specific person asked them to do a specific thing. When a group says it cannot recruit, ask how many people it asked out loud, by name, in the last month. The answer is usually close to zero.

Asking has a price. A few people will be cooler with you afterwards, and one or two will avoid the subject. That is real and worth saying out loud, and it is smaller than it looks from where you are standing. Flynn and Lake, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2008, found people underestimate by as much as 50 per cent how likely others are to agree to a direct request for help. The asker is weighing the cost of a yes. The person asked is weighing the cost of a no.

Ask for one thing, on one date

Weak: “You should get involved, we’d love to have you.”

Strong: “We’re doing a stall outside the library on Saturday the 14th, ten until twelve. Could you do the first hour with me?”

An ask that names a date, a place, a length and a person recruits. An open invitation to be involved asks somebody to invent their own job, and most people decline politely rather than admit they cannot picture it.

Finite matters as much as small. Say when the thing ends, and mean it.

Open with what they already care about

The most common mistake is opening with the reason you got involved. Your reason moved you because of who you are. Here is the same ask, put to three different people.

Someone who cares about their children’s school:

“There was something at the school gate last term that upset a few parents. Some of us are meeting on the 12th to work out what to ask the head for. You know that school far better than I do. Would you come?”

Someone who cares about their profession:

“You understand how this works inside the profession and I don’t. We’re writing to the association on the 20th and I’d rather it came from people in the field. Could you read the draft and tell me where it’s wrong?”

Someone who has never been political:

“I’m not asking you to join anything or hold a placard. There’s a stall on the 14th and I need one person to stand with me for an hour and hand leaflets out. Would you do that with me?”

The rule underneath all three: open with their reason, not yours. Yours can come later, and by then they will usually ask for it.

Use only a frame you honestly hold. If you lead with the school because it is a lever rather than because it matters to you, people hear that, and you have spent a relationship on one Saturday.

Where the people worth asking actually are

Not strangers. One step outside your circle, and there are four reliable places.

The friend of a member. At the end of a meeting, take ten minutes and have everybody write down two people they would be willing to ask themselves. Names against names, on paper.

The person who came once and never again. They crossed the hardest line already, which is walking into a room of strangers. Nobody rang them afterwards.

The person who liked or shared something and did nothing else. They have declared themselves in public and have never once been asked to do a thing.

The person who said “let me know next time”. Take that literally. Most people mean it, and then never hear from anybody again.

Rule two: the person who half agrees is the recruit

Somebody who fully agrees is already with you, and asking them is comfortable and moves nothing. An evening spent on somebody who fully disagrees is an evening not spent recruiting. The person who half agrees is uneasy, has questions, and has not settled what they think, and they are the only group where an ask changes an outcome.

So do not make agreement the entry condition. You can say:

“You don’t have to agree with everything we think. Nobody in that room does. Come and see what it’s actually like.”

Rule three: seven days

Give a new person something to do within a week of their yes. The gap between saying yes and doing something is where recruitment dies, and it dies quietly. Nothing has gone wrong. The feeling cooled, and nobody rang.

The task can be small. Bring the folding table. Ring four people on the list. Read the draft and say what is missing. What it cannot be is nothing.

Three things that put people off, and you will do all of them by accident

Handing over a position rather than a task. “Would you be our social media person” sounds like promotion and lands as a life sentence. A task is finite. A position is a hole with no bottom, and a new person can see that.

Asking somebody to be more certain than they are. People who are still working out what they think will not stand next to a form of words they cannot fully defend. Ask them for their labour, not for their certainty.

A room where everybody already knows each other. Twenty minutes of in-jokes and shared history reads, from a chair by the door, as a closed thing. Give one person the job of talking to anybody new for the first ten minutes, every time.

“I agree with you, but I can’t be seen doing this”

Many people who agree with you will not come, because of what it could cost them at work, in a profession, in a family or among friends.

Do not talk them out of that. Do not tell them it will be fine, because you cannot know their workplace, and if it goes badly you were the person who promised. Say something closer to this:

“I’m not going to tell you there’s no risk in it, because I don’t know your situation. Can I tell you what people do that isn’t public?”

Then have a real list ready. Money. Lifts. Food. Printing. Ringing round. Keeping the contact list. Drafting and checking letters. Hosting a meeting at home. Coming to something in a town where nobody knows them. Doing the research somebody else reads out.

Somebody who does the unglamorous half of the work for two years is worth more than a name on a public letter.

Exposure is not fixed. People who start privately often become public later, on their own timing, and that version lasts.

When they say no

Most people say no, and a maybe counts as a no for your planning. It never counts as a no for the relationship.

“That’s completely fine. Can I tell you when the next one is, and you decide then?”

Then actually tell them. Ask again in about three months, about something different, because a no to a Saturday stall is not a no to reading a draft. Never make anybody pay socially for a no, in the room or afterwards. People watch how the last refuser was treated, and they are deciding whether refusing you is safe.

Three names, this Tuesday

Fill in the blanks183 words

Two questions first, answered from memory. What does an ask have to name before it counts as an ask, and how long have you got to give a new person a job? And why does a maybe count as a no for your planning and never for the relationship?

Then pick three names from one step outside your circle: a member’s friend, someone who came once, someone who liked something and did nothing.

If it is Tuesday evening and the washing-up is done, then I will write those three names down with the one dated thing I will ask each of them to do.

If I have not heard back within four days, then I will ring them once rather than send a second message.

If somebody says yes, then I will give them a named task with a date on it before that week ends.

And the obstacle. If the first two say no and I feel foolish, then I will ask the third that same evening, because two nos in three is the ordinary rate and not a verdict on me.