Celebrate and evaluate for success!
Par Family Councils Ontario
So far in ‘Making it Work’ month, we’ve discussed common Family Council organizing elements and how to make meetings positive and productive. This week, let’s turn our attention to what to do once the work is done: celebrating and evaluating!
Family Council success hinges on bringing your members together and sharing the work to be done. A Council that shares the work to be done and provides opportunities for members to take ownership of the work creates an atmosphere where people want to be involved and are more likely to be positively engaged. An essential aspect of building this is to celebrate the work and accomplishments of the Council. After all, if you never felt appreciated for the work that you do, how likely are you to want to continue?
Here are a few simple ideas for celebrating your Council’s work and accomplishments:
- Start small: thank members for attending your meetings! Show appreciation for people taking time out of their busy schedules to attend your meetings. If you do so, they’re more likely to come back to another meeting!
- Celebrate each step along the way of a project or initiative: making time to mark the small successes is important in maintaining the momentum and excitement for a long-time piece of work. Don’t wait until the end to celebrate!
- Consider a regular thank you event or activity: this can be as simple as including time in each month’s agenda to thank members for their work, or as extravagant as a yearly Family Council celebratory dinner. However your Council chooses to celebrate, commit to doing to regularly. Cake and party hats are optional but lots of fun!
- Don’t forget to thank the Home’s staff for the work they do in caring for the residents and supporting your Council. Show appreciation to your Administrator and Staff Assistant for supporting your Council. Saying ‘thank you’ goes a long way towards building a strong, supportive team!
Another essential aspect of making the work of your work is to make sure that you’re accomplishing what you set out to do. To do this, make sure to evaluate regularly. Here are tips on how to evaluate your Council’s work:
- Evaluate on a regular basis or whenever the need to evaluate is expressed
- Evaluate with the goals to:
- Ensure you are on track meeting your mission statement and goals and that they meet members’ needs
- Reassess your organization including Terms of Reference
- Learn what will help make your Council more effective based on past experience
- Celebrate and recognize the strengths/resources within the Council
- Ask about:
- Council organization
- Member participation
- Administration and staff participation
- Constructive Council involvement
- A specific project, activity, or initiative
- Ask for comments at the end of a meeting to see how people feel about how it went
- Complete a Family Council Self-Evaluation Questionnaire
- Use a Kleenex box, or other container, for anonymous suggestions that are read out on a regular basis
- Pair up and discuss the past few months’ work or a specific project/initiative, then report to the whole Council
- Use a flipchart to record feedback during a group discussion
- Review previous evaluations when the next evaluation is done to see how the feedback has been incorporated the feedback
Celebrating and evaluating are essential to making the most of your Council’s work. For more tips and suggestions, join us tomorrow for our ‘Making it Work!’ webinar. More details and registration here: http://bit.ly/MakingItWorkWebinar