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I was teaching a class about communicating with golfers at the Carolinas GCSA conference a couple of weeks ago and an interesting question arose during the seminar.
Suppose you’re at a cocktail party and you meet a person for the first time. You exchange the usual chitchat about kids or football or whatever for a while. Then, the inevitable question comes up: “So, what do you do for a living?”
This is a fairly easy query for a lawyer, plumber or rocket scientist. But, as you may know, it’s not so easy for golf course superintendents.
“I, uh, am the superintendent, uh, at a golf course. I oversee the maintenance of the course and grounds.”
A golfer might sort of understand. A nongolfer will often look at you like you’re from another planet.
Like it or not, your titles – and the way you verbalize what you do – tend to define you in the minds of others. First impressions are immediate and, to no small extent, indelible. Your ability to state what you do quickly and confidently has a major influence on how you’ll be viewed by people you meet.
I posed this question to several superintendents I talked with in the days after the seminar, and I got an amazing range of answers. Here are the short versions of a few of those responses:
· “I manage the golf course environment.”
· “I’m in charge of a multimillion dollar property.”
· “I take care of the golf playing field.”
· “I oversee a staff of 20 people who take care of a golf course.”
· “I ensure the quality of a recreational asset surrounded by expensive homes.”
· “I get paid to play a lot of free golf.”
OK, I made up that last one, but the point is there’s no standardized definition of what you do. That’s one more hurdle that superintendents, as an industry, have to jump before you receive the recognition you deserve.
So, help me out with this. Click below and tell me how you would answer that cocktail party question: What do you do?
