Giving Helpful Feedback and Doing Evaluation in College Ministry

I like feedback.  I like to give feedback and I like to receive it.  Now, please understand there is a difference between being chewed out and getting helpful feedback.  Do you have Interns, Assistants, Administrative Assistants, or Associates that work for you?  Do you give feedback or do any sort of annual or semi-annual review or evaluation?  A pastor friend once expressed frustration to me about some actions of one of his staffers.  I said, "What do you say about it in their annual review?".  He shrugged and went on to another topic.  I later learned that he did not do annual reviews of any sort. I wondered if the staffer even knew he was not functioning the way his supervisor needed him to.

Giving helpful feedback is part of our job, if we have people who work under our direction.  It is particularly important if we have young intern types working with us.  It helps them learn how to do their work better and will benefit them for years to come.

Here are some questions to ask or consider in giving helpful feedback and or evaluation:

1.  Do they work hard?
If someone is trying and working real hard, that goes a long way with me.  Two different friends who supervise staff have commented to me recently about staffers who do not work hard....or do not even put in what most would consider a normal forty hour week.

2.  Are they a team player?
It is possible for someone to have superstar ability, but they do their own thing and do not benefit or work for the value and ministry of the whole team.  Are they aware that is an expectation?

3.  Do they have a plan?
All good College Ministers have a plan for what they are trying to do.  Sometimes we need to teach people about developing a plan.

4.  Are they raising up and training leaders?
A college ministry will not be much stronger than its student leaders.  Also, our churches need us to be raising up leaders for the future.

5.  Do they work at reaching and connecting with a variety of students?
All of us have students we instantly like an connect to.....but a college campus is made up of a wide variety of students.  Does this person work at connecting to more than the obvious or easy?

6.  Is the key thing or things they are responsible for discussed in the feedback?
Assumptions are a tricky thing.  We must make clear what our most important and central expectations are.
Does this person or persons know what the make or break item on their job description is?

7.  Is their ministry balanced or is it all about one thing....likely the one thing they do best?
Some of us do evangelism better and others of us do discipleship best.  Are they working at having a healthy balance in what they do?

In working with College Ministry Assistants, I found it helpful to ask them each semester to give me one page that listed things they were going to do that semester such as weekly plans (like eat in the cafeteria twice a week or start three Bible study groups).  After they made their list, I would look at it and then sometimes add one or two things and then we would both agree to it.  This is particularly helpful with young Intern types who are just learning how to do their job.

Always, always start with something positive in giving feedback in any sort of formal review or discussion about job performance.  If there is nothing positive to say, it is time to have a different discussion.