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.