[Organizers] Hard decisions when a caller lacks excellence

[Erik Barry Erhardt via Organizers]

Thank you all for your feedback on this thread.

I think my recommendation to our board will be to start recording some of
the dances (with their knowledge, of course).  This will help us, both for
feedback for those callers who want this feedback to improve their calling,
and for helping us with having evidence for those callers that aren't
meeting the needs of our dances.  Then we can provide specific areas for
improvement, and if improvement isn't made, then we can have a procedure in
place for taking them "off the rotation".  This will require a little more
work for a reviewer, but probably only in circumstances that require
intervention.

Thanks to everyone.  Specific feedback is below:

Walker, I agree that "banning" is too absolute.

Mac, yes, my situation is for local callers who are part of our community
and whom I don't want to exclude in other ways.  We've also developed
several new talented callers through our New Mexico Callers Collective
(NMCC), so there is less pressure to rely on callers who don't meet our
needs.

Laur, yes, I agree that the challenge is honoring the relationships and
getting consensus.  Also, the opinions of a community shift slowly, so
implementing change takes time.

Jeff, I agree that we shouldn't hire this sort of caller.

David, I like your idea for collecting evidence (through video or audio
recording) that make it clear what is working and what isn't, and that this
can simply apply for everyone.

Lindsay, I agree that feedback strategies are really helpful.  I like the
recordings, they are objective.

Peter, the NMCC has been developing training materials and caller skills
for callers, with evaluation by our local org's board (FolkMADS).  When
we've asked for feedback via online forms, all we get are the most vocal
being brutal, so we've stopped that practice.  If the comments were
representative, it would be different.

Martha, I love Joseph in a Box!

So glad you're all here to help!

Erik

-- 
Prof. Erik B. Erhardt, UNM Statistics, (505)750-4424  stat.unm.edu/~erike

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 9:39 AM, Martha Edwards via Organizers <
organizers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

> ​I definitely agree with David's suggestion about taking videos. We had
> Joseph Pimentel here for a Callers Workshop, and he talked about How to
> Give Feedback, which was to be perfectly ​objective - simply describe what
> happened, without being judgmental or injecting personal opinions.
>
> That, of course, is hard to do - we found we were pretty much incapable of
> giving feedback without injecting our own opinions. We had, however,
> already bought a cute little video camera to record our dances, and found
> out pretty quickly just how perfectly objective it was, and renamed the
> camera "Joseph in a Box."
>
> No matter what your calling level, you will learn an amazing amount in a
> short time if you have a Joseph in a Box. Boy, is it truthful!
>
> (Ouch)
>
> M
> E
>
>
>
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