How to Create a Healthy Feedback Culture in Your Church Staff

Feedback is a vital tool for growth in church environments, yet it often evokes fear and defensiveness. We explore strategies for creating a culture of positive, ongoing feedback among church staff, emphasizing encouragement, clarity, and reciprocal communication. 

• Exploring the intimidation behind feedback 
• The importance of starting with encouragement 
• Making feedback an ongoing conversation 
• Strategies for clear but kind feedback 
• Personal story highlighting feedback challenges 
• Actionable challenges for offering and seeking feedback

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:07

Hey , I got a question for you . When somebody comes up to you and says , hey , can I give you some feedback , what's your first reaction ? Is it panic or do you get all defensive ? Do you have a sudden urge to just go away and disappear ? You're not alone . Feedback is supposed to help us grow , but in many church staff teams it feels more like a necessary evil than a gift . But what if feedback wasn't quite so terrifying ? That's what we're going to talk about today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast . I'm your host , todd Rhodes , one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom , and today we're talking about how to build a culture of feedback in your church , particularly your church staff team , that actually helps your staff to thrive . Okay , so why does feedback feel so I don't know intimidating , if you're like me and I sometimes have a hard time taking feedback . Okay , we I equate feedback with criticism and too often we only give feedback when something's wrong , and that's a problem . If feedback only shows up when there's an issue or something's wrong , people learn to fear it . Sometimes we're afraid of hurting people's feelings and because ministry is so relational and we don't want to damage those relationships , we tend to hold back . Or if we're on the receiving end , we tend to want to run away . Truth is , though , avoiding feedback doesn't help people . It just keeps them from growing . Now we've all had a bad experience . I've had a bad experience . Maybe someone gave you feedback that felt more like an attack , or maybe you've tried to give feedback before . You wanted to be really positive . You tried your best to get the wording just right , and it totally backfired . How do we make feedback healthy and normal and even encouraging an encouraging part of our team culture ? I want to give you three different thoughts and ideas today about how you can make feedback more positive and actually have this be a part of your culture , on your team . And the first step is really important . You need to start with encouragement . If the only time you give feedback is when something's wrong , your team is going to just naturally brace themselves whenever you say , hey , can I give you some feedback on that ? So make it a habit to share positive feedback regularly , and don't make it so you say , hey , can I give you some feedback on that ? So make it a habit to share positive feedback regularly , and don't make it so formal that , hey , can we go grab some coffee ? I have some feedback for you . No , you don't do that . You just give some positive . Hey , that message you gave this morning , that was awesome . Or you hit it out of the park yesterday when you did this . That's feedback . But you're not saying , hey , can I give you some feedback ? Okay . So make it a habit to share some positive things , some positive feedback , okay .

Speaker 1 3:16

Regularly Celebrate wins , recognize effort , highlight the growth in somebody . When encouragement is the norm in your church and on your staff team , people won't automatically assume that feedback is just going to mean I've got some more bad news for you , okay . So that's idea number one is make your workplace , make your staff . This works with volunteers and teams as well . Make sure that you start with encouragement , and for some people maybe we've all met people that are just absolutely natural at encouragement . Matter of fact , they almost go overboard with encouragement . And then we've met people too maybe there's somebody on your team that just they don't give compliments . Everybody's different , but to the best of your ability and you can lead with this on your team is to be encouraging , because when you're encouraging other people , even those that that don't naturally tend to go that way will feel more prone to share encouragement . So that's the first thing .

Speaker 1 4:23

Second idea is , instead of hey , I've got feedback , do you want my feedback on that or can you give me feedback on that ? Instead of isolating that conversation to a , we're going to have feedback now , moment in time , make feedback more of an ongoing conversation . It shouldn't be a once a year thing . It shouldn't be a quarterly thing at a staff meeting . It shouldn't be a hey , we just did our service and we need to have our feedback meeting . Okay , there's times where it can be built into a meeting like that , but here's what you don't want it to be . You don't want it to be an awkward performance review .

Speaker 1 5:08

The best teams create a culture where feedback is natural and it's ongoing and it all comes out of community and relationships . So , instead of waiting for kind of a big moment because big moments turn bad really quickly sometimes simply ask questions regularly hey , what's something that you're working on improving ? How can I support you more Model openness by asking for feedback for yourself and this is difficult to ask just as an ongoing conversation , and not to call a meeting for it , but to ask as an ongoing conversation hey , I'd love to hear how I can lead better . What's something that I could improve when feedback goes both ways , what you can find is it creates trust . Ask for feedback . What you can find is it creates trust . Ask for feedback , maybe starting off twice as much as what you give feedback . That will help build some trust . So that's idea number two . And then the third thing is when you do give feedback and we all need to give feedback we all need to hear feedback . Be clear , but hear me here , be clear , but don't be cruel , okay , honest feedback doesn't have to be harsh . The goal should be not to tear down but to build up . So focus on specific behaviors and not personal attacks .

Speaker 1 6:37

Have you ever been in a meeting where somebody gives you feedback and you feel like they don't like you more than they don't like how you did something ? Okay , so here's an example You're just a bad communicator . No one would ever say that . Oh yeah , they would , yeah , they would . And people say things in churches that I'm convinced they would never say outside the four walls of a church . So a bad would be something like you're just not a good communicator or you were really off yesterday . Something better you could say is hey , I noticed in the last meeting , some people seem confused . Could we clarify some key points . Next time , pair that feedback with a path forward . Whenever you can , instead of just saying what's wrong , try and offer feedback that can help the person you're talking to improve . Something like hey , I think your sermon was great , but I think it could connect even better with the younger folks if maybe we added a little bit more of a story or a narrative at the beginning . So this can backfire as well .

Speaker 1 7:39

I once was told by a senior pastor to give some feedback to a volunteer . I was the worship pastor or the minister of music and I had somebody and I'd worked with this gal . She wanted to sing so badly , she wanted to sing talent-wise . It was a little iffy , but I told her . She said I really want to sing . We did special music . I really want to sing a special music number sometime . Can you work with me on that ? And I worked with her for two months . We met every week , we picked a song that I thought she could actually do a good job on , and I worked with her every week for two weeks and finally got to the point where she knew the song really well . For her ability level , her talent level , she was as good as it was going to be and she made some huge improvements . So we scheduled her and she sang on Sunday . And on Monday pastor called me in and he said I don't want that ever to happen again . Okay , she cannot sing . It was horrible and you know he wasn't the worship guy , he wasn't musically gifted necessarily and I thought , okay , I get it . But he didn't know the rest of the story and I'm making a long story even longer here .

Speaker 1 8:58

But anyway , I was tasked with going and giving feedback to this person who just had a heart of gold , really wanted to serve , but I needed to go and give her some feedback and I tried and it totally backfired because she knew exactly what I was saying , even though I wasn't saying it the way . I chose to do it in my younger self and I don't know how I do it differently now . But I tried to be positive . I tried to take my own advice here and be positive rather than just saying you really suck as a singer , which I didn't believe either . But I said you are very talented , I admire your passion for Jesus , but I think maybe there are just some other areas in church ministry that maybe you could excel at better than singing . And she immediately heard . What did she immediately hear ? She immediately heard you suck as a singer , and that was really the feedback that I was giving . I said something , but she heard something else .

Speaker 1 9:58

Even with your best intentions , sometimes that feedback can explode and a lot of it has to do with the relationship that you share with the person . But here's your challenge for today , because this is tough stuff and part of the reason that backfired so badly is because I called a meeting to give that feedback . Okay , so this person automatically came into the meeting expecting some major feedback and that person got major feedback and it didn't go well . It didn't go well . Here's your challenge for today when it comes to feedback , and don't shy away from feedback because of that story I just gave you . I'm just trying to give you advice on how to give better feedback .

Speaker 1 10:47

One team member okay . Pick one team member and start . Let's start here . Give them some genuine positive feedback today , not in a meeting . Maybe you meet them in the hallway and say , hey , I saw what you did there and that was awesome . That's it .

Speaker 1 11:05

Your task is done for the day , but I've got a second task here for you . Actually , the second is ask one trusted person , a trusted person , okay for feedback about your leadership . Maybe it's somebody on your staff , maybe it's a team member , maybe it's a volunteer . Just ask a simple question . Hey , you know me , you've watched my work . What's something you think I could do better ? Give me an idea for how I could be better this week than what I was last week . Give me some practical tips on how I could make my message better or how I could do this better . If you do this regularly and make feedback this normal and welcome part of your team culture , it is going to make a difference .

Speaker 1 11:44

I would love to hear you can leave a comment wherever you're listening to this podcast , or you can send me an email podcast at chemistrystaffingcom . I would love to hear how you've dealt with feedback and how you've determined to take that feedback that you receive well , and how you've determined to give feedback and how you've determined to accept feedback . I would love to hear your story , and maybe you've got a story like I shared . That story happened probably 30 years ago , but it still reminded me of how things can go haywire in this area of feedback . Maybe it's funny now , but it wasn't funny at the time . A story you'd like to share , hit me up podcast at chemistrystaffingcom or leave a comment . All right , thanks so much for joining me today . We will be here back tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast . Thanks so watching .