{"id":443758,"date":"2024-03-08T14:18:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T19:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/growcurriculum.org\/go?p=443758"},"modified":"2025-06-06T15:12:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T19:12:31","slug":"how-to-have-strategic-one-on-one-conversations-with-your-ministry-volunteers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/growcurriculum.org\/go\/how-to-have-strategic-one-on-one-conversations-with-your-ministry-volunteers\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Have Strategic One-on-One Conversations with Your Ministry Volunteers"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s one of the best ways to show someone you care about them? You spend time with them<\/a>. When we choose to spend time with our volunteers, we’re showing them how much we care for them, value them, and how much we want to help them grow. It’s one of the reasons why we’re such big believers in meeting regularly with your volunteers one-on-one.<\/strong> It’s so important for you, your ministry, and for each of your volunteers because these meetings give you the chance to evaluate how well your volunteers are doing in their roles. They also give your volunteers a chance to hear how you and your ministry can better help and equip volunteers to do their jobs better. Each of these conversations can play a critical role in your volunteer strategy. (If you don’t have a strategy for your volunteers yet, feel free to steal ours<\/a>!)<\/p>\n

If we want to do a better job of equipping our volunteers and<\/em> if we care about helping our volunteers do their jobs, we’ll need to schedule time for one-on-one conversations throughout the year. While it’s great to just get together and hang out, you can be strategic in how you approach these conversations by asking questions that allow you to evaluate your volunteer, allow your volunteer to evaluate you<\/em>, or some combination of the two.<\/strong><\/p>\n

TYPES OF CONVERSATIONS<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

We’ve found most conversations with volunteers fall into one of four categories.<\/p>\n

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  • The Onboarding<\/strong> Conversation helps you learn about a new (or potential) volunteer as you integrate them more fully into your volunteer team.<\/li>\n
  • The Check-In <\/strong>Conversation helps you connect with any volunteer on your team for giving and receiving feedback. It’s probably the most common type of conversation you’ll have.<\/li>\n
  • The Troubleshooting<\/strong> Conversation happens when you have to navigate those difficult moments when a volunteer isn’t meeting your expectations or behaving in ways that concern you.<\/li>\n
  • The Offboarding <\/strong>Conversation is when you kindly and clearly remove a volunteer from your team when it’s no longer the right fit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    You can’t always anticipate when you’re onboarding, troubleshooting, or offboarding conversations will happen, but you can schedule your check-in conversations in advance. We recommend meeting with every volunteer at least once a year (but twice is best), so you’ll need to do some math to determine how many conversations you’ll need to have each month.<\/p>\n

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