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.
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