bjarvis | Volunteer Management

My employer is starting a cycle of employee performance evaluations and it leads me to wonder about a similar process for square dance callers.

We do such evaluations at fly-ins & festivals but I can't recall ever seeing it done for our regular weekly club night performances, even on an annual basis. I get regular feedback & advice from caller friends/support group, but dancers frequently see things differently. I'm considering conducting a systematic survey of the dancers to whom I call regularly to see what they think I'm doing well --or not.

Has anyone done such a survey? I'd love to see any real-world surveys I could use as a template before I begin hacking one of our fly-in caller evaluation forms.

A friend & caller noted kindly that knowing how my mind work, this is of course the approach I would take to investigating work quality. He rightly points out too that volunteer boards are already loaded down with various projects and adding contractor evaluations to the lot is no small task, especially if remedial actions are required.

I'm interested in doing something like this so I can be more aware of what my dancers like about my work and what they hate. Should I spend more time on memorizing a bazillion more get-outs, or spend more money on different music? Should I stop offering the occasional joke or add a few more? Longer breaks between tips or shorter? I can ask casually on-mic if the floor would like faster/slower or louder/quieter, but larger structural topics --if any-- need a more careful approach.

Currently, the clubs I'm working with seem to default to the voting-with-one's-feet method of gauging the quality of what we do: people stop coming to club nights and we're left to speculate why. Even if we go get a root cause, it's difficult to demonstrate we've remedied an issue if they've already written us off and aren't regularly attending. I'd rather find out about problems before people silently give up in frustration and disappear forever.

Board members are evaluated regularly with elections: they can be voted out of office. Getting a caller to change their way of doing things is challenging, especially if they've been with the club many years, either as a staffer, volunteer, or member. It isn't easy to tell a friend they need to change the way they work, especially for volunteer board members.

It's a classic problem in every volunteer group in which I've been a member: how do volunteer managers tell their volunteer (or cheaply paid) staffers that some aspect of their work needs to be upgraded without causing offense or the complaint being dismissed as uninformed/irrelevant/whatever? Most people would prefer a friendly private discussion with a board rep, either on or off the record, to analyze the issue and develop a resolution plan. Sadly, how many board volunteers have that kind of HR/personnel management skill? How many of us callers or volunteers have the emotional self-awareness to understand this isn't about evaluating us as people, it's about evaluating the work we do?

Yup, I'm a bureaucrat and I think in systems. I like evidence-based discussions with an admittedly formal structure to filter as much of the personal & emotional aspects, keeping it as strictly a business-to-contractor discussion as possible. The human emotional component is unavoidable but the formal structure can give cover to each the board and the caller that this is business, just business, that all contractors goes through this evaluation for renewal, and that one isn't being singled out.

Is there a better way? Is there some means by which volunteers unskilled in this sort of human resources work can still do what is necessary to save their organization? How does one bring about change without turning away the key personnel needed for its success?

Any thoughts or feedback is helpful!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In some jurisdictions, you actually can't do an employee evaluation on a contractor, because that makes them an employee and eligible for employee benefits. But I doubt that's an issue here.

However, if you want to find out for yourself, I don't see any reason why you can't collect the information. If you want to keep it to behavioural stuff, I might suggest you do a start/stop/continue kind of exercise. This would best be done live (while you are not present), but could also conceivably be done by anonymous survey. This is where you ask what things people would like to see you stop doing, what things they'd like to see you start doing, and what things they like that should continue. This gets away from personality issues and more to addressable outcomes.

Done as a group exercise, people can write their STOP/START/CONTINUE items on a board, and others can vote 'agree' or 'disagree' with each item. Done privately, you just get a stack of papers and have to analyze the data for themes.

Because you are looking at your own performance, you might add something like "Brian could improve at..." and "Brian is great at..."

-jkins

I like the idea of a start/stop/continue methodology... it really gets to the heart of what I'm trying to determine.

It just occurred to me that I might be able to use some online survey site to help collect info from the widest range of dancers without impacting their dance/social time at club nights. Having the results readily compiled for me is another pleasant feature.

I also need to include some open-ended questions as my greatest hope & fear is that dancers will have something to say which will be a total surprise to me, some aspect which I had never previously considered.

Thanks!

I like the idea of an online survey. I was going to suggest an old-fashioned suggestion box. People could be anonymous, if they wished, or not. An on-line survey would be much better.

Actually, you're correct - if they do anything that smacks of an employee evaluation it'll raise red flags with the IRS, and they'll start demanding tax withholding and such. We ran into that with the Lesbian & Gay Chorus of Washington.

However, the board can poll the dancers and present the results without any sort of slant, and they can always use that at contract renewal time to "change their expectations" or tell the contractor how they failed to meet the preexisting expectations. Which is not to be confused with "recommendations for improvement" (although they're really the same, just technically different enough to work around the issue), which would be an employee thing. All they can do with contractors is tell them whether or not they met expectations, and why or why not.

Damned IRS - it's all their fault. And thanks for pointing it out, John - I'd totally forgotten the contractor v. employee issue.

You and I already had a bit of a discussion on this, but it put me in mind of a poll we did a few months ago to reformat the dance program for the Wilde Bunch on Tuesday nights, which also affected the Monday night program.

The questions were very clear in intent. Nearly all the dancers affected took the poll. The majority results didn't appear to be what the board expected, so there was a bit of grumping. But it all came out okay in the end as far as I can tell, with the changes that were instituted. At least until it changes again.

Looking forward to your 'results' posting!

Reminds me of my first day volunteering for a local group. It just so happpened to coincide with a major run-in between the volunteer managers and the volunteers.

The volunteers were being chastised for being too picky about which tasks they would undertake. The particular subset of volunteers who were being chastised was a core group of people who had a significant attachment to the organization and had been volunteering for years - some of them over a decade - doing hard, phyiscal labor, once a month, year in and year out. There are two kinds of volunteers at these events, the regulars and the folks who show up once as part of a corporate thing. It was the regulars who were getting yelled at. Yelled at.

I was stunned. I almost nearly didn't come back as it seemed to indicate a disturbing level of dysfunction. Fortunately, it never happened again.

Hoo boy. Why not just drive nails into your eyes and be done with it? I'm only half kidding.

There are many levels of information that are up for discussion:

Facility. Is the room too hot or too cold? Too small or too large? Are the bathrooms nearby? Are they clean? Is parking easy? Is it safe? It goes on.

Meetings. Are the club nights convenient? Is there adequate floor time? Does one level predominate and is it the right level? Should there be more dancing or less?

Caller. Is the caller a good teacher for class? Does he or she have decent music or is it too repetitive? Is the sound system decent? Is the caller too strict? too easy? a moron?

Dancers. Do the right dancers show up? Do you need more angels? Do some dancers need coaching? Does anyone mess up far too often? Are there dancers who dance as if they've never seen a square before? (“Please name names.”) Does anyone show up after a few drinks? Do women feel comfortable dancing with the men? Is there anti-woman sentiment that keeps you away?

Other. There are others.

I'm not a fan of anonymous polling or commentary. If everyone were strong dancers, consistent volunteers, and rational thinkers, then perhaps anonymity is fine. But should a dancer who shows up once a quarter have the same voice as one who's there every week?

I like the idea that a board member could reach out and have private discussions about sensitive topics but that's time-intensive and I agree that few people have those skills. Perhaps you could designate a board member as a caller contact and all feedback could funnel through that one person.

A better way to give feedback to the caller is to give that caller consistent and ongoing feedback. Finding out at contract renewal time that nobody likes your figures is probably the wrong scenario. The caller has to be aware up front that he or she will get feedback, some positive and some aimed at improvement.

I think you have to do surveys, ask questions, and always engage with folks about different questions and then talk with the board (and others) about what you and others have heard and seen.

I agree with excessor in that there are MANY levels going on here including meeting space, environment, what dancers show up and what their various ability levels are. I'm not saying that there isn't a need for ALL callers to be evaluated and discussed, but there are other factors at play other than the caller's ability. Personally, as I've already stated, I feel the club needs to evaluate itself on many levels or else....... "people will vote with their feet."
That being said, I like the idea of an anonymous survey, and I like what you've done so far and it should be made available to all club members for all callers, the regulars and the guests so that those choosing the callers can get a good idea of who to book.

A biggie is the Clique Factor. All the seasoned dancers have made friends with each other over time and it's hard to let outsiders (new dancers) in.

This past Monday, I had to subtly beg the angels to actually bring the new dancers on the floor with them. They were all sitting in a group at the back of the hall and hadn't paid much attention to the new dancers on their first night. Sigh.

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