Promoting a Culture of Constructive Feedback
Jake was a junior leader at a local church’s school holiday Kids Club. As I arrived at morning tea time—partly to observe and give feedback to the Children’s Minister on how the Kids Club was going, partly just to experience and participate in the day’s events and celebrate with joy the ministry that this partner church was engaged in—Jake’s energy and enthusiasm was immediately evident.
Jake obviously loved being amongst the children. At one moment he was kicking a soccer ball around the grass with a large group, the next moment he was chatting with another child who stood by themselves, drinking cordial but too shy to engage in any of the activities.
When the time came to bring all the children together for the next activity, Jake was the one up the front, calling the children to attention and tag teaming with a female leader on how to play the upcoming game. It was in this explanation of the game that things became unstuck. This was a game I knew well, but even I was confused by Jake’s energetic, but confuddled, communication of the activity. Rules were half explained, he kept having to go back to mention steps that he’d missed, and when he gave the instruction to get into their groups, children had very little understanding of what was expected of them.
I love leaders like Jake! Young leaders who love Jesus and love children and want to serve their younger brothers and sisters through formal children’s ministry make my heart sing. And as Jake continues in—God-willing—a lifelong commitment to ministry in the local church, he is going to need ongoing constructive feedback to mature as a leader.
How can we create a culture of giving and receiving feedback, so that as a leadership team, we are all growing together in our ministry?
What would I have said to Jake, had he been a leader in my ministry?
Build trust through humility
“Gracious words are like honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” Proverbs 16:24.
All our interactions as a team and our joint ministry together functions best when there is a deep and abiding trust amongst the members of the team. This is especially important when it comes to giving feedback. While we can listen to and learn from feedback given by those who don’t know us, as the author of Proverbs writes, “Faithful are the wounds[1] of a friend” (Pr. 27:6).
One of the many ways that ministry leaders can build friendship, and thereby trust, in their leadership team is to model humility in the receiving of feedback. Actively pursue feedback from your team, including your junior leaders. Invite them to notice the areas where you can improve, allowing them to influence and shape your ongoing ministry.
Also seek feedback from those who are more experienced than yourself, your supervising minister, elders in the church, or external partners from other churches or at Youthworks Ministry Support. Let your team know that you receive feedback too and be vulnerable in your sharing of what you have learnt and how you are maturing as a leader. As you model the receiving of feedback, your humility in leadership will help cultivate this attitude across your whole team.
Heap on precise praise
“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad” Proverbs 12:25.
Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, reporting on their own and other’s studies on feedback ratios, write that in order to effectively improve your team’s performance, you need to over-emphasise the positive aspects of feedback[2] at something close to a 5:1 ratio. According to these studies “only positive feedback can motivate people to continue doing what they’re doing well, and do it with more vigour, determination, and creativity.”
It is important however, that the praise we dish out to our team is genuine. The writer of Proverbs states that “a lying tongue hates its victim, and a flattering mouth works ruin” (Proverbs 26:28). The purpose here is not to make the person feel good about themselves, and therefore say whatever it is that will achieve that aim. The purpose is to clearly and truthfully identify what the leader is doing well and let them know why those are the attributes or characteristics that make their ministry effective.
If I was Jake’s leader, I would say exactly what I have written above. I would identify his engagement with the children, specifically his heart to not only be in the action with the big group but identify and speak to the quiet child on the sideline. And I would commend the way he presents upfront, his energetic presence which breeds enthusiasm with a large group.
Provide just one, very specific, area of improvement
“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” Proverbs 25:11.
Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall wrote a fascinating article called The Feedback Fallacy which explores the idea that giving critical feedback fails to help team members improve.
“Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinders learning.”[3]
Part of Buckingham and Goodall’s article is the framing of “excellence” as subjective and therefore not being able to hold a leader’s performance “against a prefabricated model of excellence”. There are many ways to exercise children’s ministry leadership (e.g., there are wonderful leaders who lead with quietness and introversion, as there are those who lead with dynamism and extroversion), which is reflective of the one body and many members that God is making us into.
However, contrary to this article, I would argue that there are specific skills to children’s ministry leadership that do need to be learned in order to be effective and it is right to coach our team with these skills in mind. The key is to give one, very specific area of improvement.
For Jake, after having affirmed all that is good and effective in his ministry, and exhorted him to continue well in these things, I would then identify the way in which his instructions for the game were unclear. The skill he needs to develop is being able to explain an activity clearly and simply.
My encouragement for Jake would be to prepare his game explanations, write out the steps involved in the game beforehand and practice reading them through. Perhaps, read out the steps to one of his family members and see if they understood how to play. Then, when he comes to present that game next time, he is able to use his enthusiasm and energy—partnered with a well thought out explanation script—to engage all the children in the activity.
“Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser, teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning” Proverbs 9:9.
We all have “Jakes” in our ministry teams. More correctly, we are all Jakes in our ministry teams. All of us have areas of growth and maturity in our leadership. And many of us are responsible for the nurture and growth of others in our teams as well.
In our ministry teams, as we build trust through humility, where praise is both generous and also precise, and where areas of improvement are noticed and coached through with specificity and positivity, we will be able to build culture of constructive feedback in which we all develop in our leadership, not for the sake of maturity, but for the sake of effective children’s ministry to the youngest in our church.
[1] “Wounding” here is of course metaphoric and hyperbolic. The point is not to give license for harsh words, but to locate feedback in the context of a caring and loving friendship.
[2] https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism. Accessed 25th Nov, 2021.
[3] https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy. Accessed 25th Nov, 2021. Emphasis original.
