Pagan Leadership: Community Building, Facilitation, and Personal Growth

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Facilitating an Effective Feedback Session: Part 3

 

This is part of a longer series on feedback. The links to the previous posts are at the bottom.

Hearing Feedback

There can sometimes be an emotional difference between getting feedback from an event participant directly, or via email, and getting feedback sitting in a group of your peers and mentors. Whether you're getting feedback on an event, on ritual facilitation, on your volunteering work or on teaching a class, hearing feedback can sometimes be difficult. I try to be very sensitive when offering feedback, particularly to new volunteers and ritualists. By far, the most common feedback I offer to facilitators is, "I had a hard time hearing you." That's a good, concrete feedback that they can work with, and I can help them to learn to project.

I'm not going to give a new facilitator deeply nuanced or nitpicky feedback about their engagement of the group, their body language, or their word choices in facilitating a trance journey. Of course a new facilitator will have nervous body language, of course they will stumble over some words, of course they'll have a harder time making eye contact, and a dozen other rookie mistakes. I'm going to bring those up slowly over time as the facilitator gains the confidence to know that they can do this. Some of those mistakes will shake out naturally as the facilitator learns and gains confidence.

There are times when I may have to offer specific feedback on something like chanting, drumming, or trancing. Sometimes someone will be so eager to step in as a ritual drummer, and then it becomes clear during the ritual that they have no sense of pacing their drumming to the energy of the group--they are used to setting the pace. Some people want to lead the chant, and they have difficulty keeping the chant's rhythm, or they forget the words, or they are singing off key. Or someone steps into leading trancework and they are so quiet, so tentative, that they aren't audible at all. Or they're talking too fast, or their voice isn't pitched low and rhythmic for trancework, which makes it hard for the group to get into a trance state.

In those instances, I may need to bring up specific feedback with individuals. In those situations, if at all possible, I try to do that directly with the person rather than doing it first in front of a group of people. Even if we have all committed to coming together and sharing this work, and trusting each other for genuine feedback, hearing that we did something that didn't work in a ritual or at an event can be difficult. We may still need to address it in the feedback session, or at least, allude to the fact that it's been addressed, but it's a little easier on the person getting the feedback if it's not coming out of the blue.

Now--I say this as I'm often the one the group's looking to for training in ritual and facilitation skills, so that's within my realm of responsibility to offer such feedback directly whether or not we discuss it first in a feedback session.

Again, I value hearing I-referenced feedback from a group of people so that I know that 8 out of 10 of us had a hard time hearing Bob, and it wasn't just me. However, I've also been leading (and teaching) ritual arts for long enough that I can make the call, as it were, that the group couldn't hear Bob. Or, the drumming was off-kilter. Or the chant was off key. 

If you have someone in your group with specific expertise, it's useful to acknowledge that up front when you're doing a feedback session. A bunch of inexperienced chant leaders may not hear the nuances that I hear, for instance. They understand when I point something out in feedback, but they might not have noticed that the chant was in 3/4 time and the drummers were trying to do it in 4/4 time.

Agreements for Feedback

Feedback in a group will offer you more than just one person's perspective, and it helps people get more understanding of the impact of the various facets of the event or the ritual. You can certainly do feedback sessions on the group itself, though it really helps to be doing feedback on a concrete thing like a ritual, an event, a festival, a class or series of classes, or something similar. The more concrete you can get, the easier feedback is, because you want to as much as possible base feedback on the physical thing that happened.

Nevertheless, a broader approach to feedback beyond event-specific feedback is just simply having an agreement for feedback. What I mean by this is, I like to have a transparent agreement with people I'm working with in ritual that I can offer them feedback, and that I'm open to their feedback. If I'm running an event with a team, or running a group, I want us to have an agreement for feedback. 

In my previous two posts on feedback I mentioned how I don't ever want to be the leader who is totally closed off to any feedback and always thinks that I'm right. On the other hand, sometimes the feedback I get just doesn't sit right and I'm not sure that it's really accurate. 

This is where your agreement for feedback comes in handy because you can talk to others on your team and ask for their opinions. For instance, when I'm in a group organizing an event, I tend to have really strong opinions on how an event should be run. For newer or less confident event planners, this can come across as arrogance or bossiness, particularly if it's in an online-only planning environment. Knowing that I do that, I can try to temper my approach. But, I often forget, particularly when planning things online. I also forget that some people are completely unused to dealing with an assertive woman, though I tend to run into that one more in professional/consulting groups rather than Pagan ones.

Ultimately, the more you have true confidence in yourself, the easier it will be to hear feedback and sort out what is true for you, and what doesn't resonate. It's easier to separate out skillful feedback from trolls and haters. But confidence can take a while to get to, and it's not something our culture encourages.

Capturing Feedback

Two things are important for capturing useful feedback. One is, immediately after a ritual or event, try to capture some of your thoughts, especially if your group will not be meeting for a week or more for the feedback session. Try to write a few things down to make sure you remember.

The other is that during your feedback session, it's often going to be the case that not everyone will be able to be present. In that case, try to get people to email the facilitator of the session with their feedback. Have them do an email with all three rounds; What Worked, What Didn't Work, Solution.

After the session, be sure to have someone write up notes on what was discussed and especially focus on the solution round, and email that (or create a Google document or some other method) for all the group members to read over. Make sure if there are any action items, like "Venue team will find a new venue," or "Ritual team will arrange ritual facilitation training," that those are clear and people know what the next steps are so that there's accountability. 

Generally, the smaller your group, the easier it is to be informal about such things, but documenting also helps the visual folks to integrate the work, and in some cases, the kinesthetic folks.

Feedback, Love, and Compassion

Whatever kind of feedback work you're doing whether it's in a group meeting after an event, or one on one, center first into your own confidence, into your love and compassion. You're not there to tear anyone down, and nobody there is trying to tear you down. You are there in the shared love of your spirituality. You are there trying to run a group, plan events, or offer rituals that serve your community. You may have differing opinions on how to do things--and that's where a lot of event planning conflicts tend to come in--but focus if you can on why you're all there. You're there in service.

Even if you're ticked off at someone in your group for a mistake they made, try to offer them feedback from a place of true love and compassion. And help your group members, particularly the ones with poor self esteem, to understand that feedback offered is a sign of respect and trust.

I trust you to hear this feedback. I trust you to hear that I offer it out of love and a genuine desire that we can all do better work together. I trust you to not be angry at me for bringing this up.

Giving and Receiving Effective Feedback Part 1
Giving and Receiving Effective Feedback Part 2

 

Facilitating an Effective Feedback Session Part 1
Facilitating an Effective Feedback Session Part 2

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An artist, author, ritualist, presenter, and spiritual seeker, Shauna travels nationally offering intensive education in the transformative arts of ritual, community leadership, and personal growth. She is the author of The Leader Within, Ritual Facilitation, and Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path. She’s a columnist on ritual techniques for Circle Magazine, and her writing also appears in several anthologies. She’s also the author of several fantasy and paranormal romance novels. Her mythic artwork and designs are used for magazine covers, book covers, and illustrations, as well as decorating many walls, shrines, and other spaces. Shauna is passionate about creating rituals, experiences, spaces, stories, and artwork to awaken mythic imagination.  

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