When the alert comes, none of the people arriving are on shift. Nobody is being paid. Everyone has left something unfinished — dinner, the sauna, sleep — and still, car after car turns in at the assembly point. I still marvel at this, though I have seen it dozens of times. And that marvel has become my most important lesson in leadership.

A volunteer cannot be ordered. I can make a request, but every person present has decided to come — and can just as freely decide not to come next time. That changes the nature of leadership fundamentally: authority doesn’t come from position but from the work being meaningful, well organised and fair.

Volunteers are not led by orders but by meaning.

Motivation isn’t created — it already exists

The biggest mistake a leader of volunteers can make is trying to “motivate” people. The motivation already exists — that’s why they joined. The leader’s job is to avoid destroying it: to make sure every task feels necessary, that nobody’s time is wasted, that skills get used and that thanks are said out loud. Motivation is built on what people already have — not from nothing.

In practice this means participation. When an exercise is planned, volunteers are among the planners. When the operation is developed, the ideas come from the field and are visibly acted upon. People commit to what they have helped build — and vote with their feet against what was built over their heads.

The same law holds in paid work

Here is where the volunteer field teaches working life. A salary brings a person to the workplace, but it does not bring their best performance — that comes from the same meaningfulness that volunteer work runs on entirely. A manager who leads like they lead volunteers — explaining, involving, thanking — gets a team that shows up for more than the contractual obligation.

I write regularly about volunteer work and what it teaches. In two weeks: the crowd that arrives without a course or a vest — spontaneous helpers.