Last week I told you about Coffee & Conversation. This is my favorite time of the year to get our parents’ feedback and hear their ideas for how we can improve our season in upcoming years. 

I know a few of you just cringed. I don’t look forward to this time every year at first. Sometimes we have parents who are challenging and have already somehow found themselves in the center of conflict. Some years I’m not crazy about walking in that room because I’m not really sure what direction the conversation will go.

In those seasons, I have learned it’s important to separate fact from feeling. The fact may be that I have 2-3 difficult parents. The feeling is that everyone is going to be awful and tell us how much they hated the season. The fact is that I’m going to get some really amazing feedback from the large majority who are wonderful and want to see both their child and our gym succeed. The feeling is that every small critique will feel like a brick being thrown through the window.

Don’t avoid feedback opportunities because of feeling. Take advantage of the facts. Last night I had three more Coffee & Conversation meetings (I probably need a new name for it since I’m the only one drinking coffee that late at night.) I’ve learned that the amazing seasons where everyone is happy tell me two things: 

  1. Those terrible years were growing years. The years I was given feedback at these meetings (both constructive and emotional), I took them and did something with them. Even if I wasn’t a fan of the feedback itself, I used it to make the experience better for our gym parents.
  2. I get the best feedback on those years that I’m dreading the conversation. Last night was a heartwarming experience. I have now sat through 5 of our 9 team meetings, and there were lots of laughs and smiles. I had a few moms tear up telling me they’ve made their own lifelong friends here. That was amazing. It really felt like so many of our goals were accomplished, and I saw that last night. After three hours of meetings I walked away with two ideas for improving upcoming seasons (usually I get a few ideas each meeting!) So while I was so grateful for the amazing conversations, I will have to do some more digging to find out how we can continue to better serve our clients each year.

This week I’ll tell you about a few of my takeaways so far this year and changes we’ll make next season based on this feedback. Don’t miss it. It might be your chance to get it right the first time and really impress your gym parents!

So, I told you that today I’d give you my Coffee & Conversation questions so you can have your own to ask this season. HERE are the ones I asked in previous years. They were more logistical in nature and helped us set several things for how we want to run things like tryouts, showcase and practices. I found that when parents gave way out-of-the-box ideas, they were either amazing and I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thought of that, or it showed me what areas we needed to better educate our parents. HERE are the questions I asked this year that were a bit more focused on how we can better train our coaches to teach the big picture areas of life rather than the skills only (because we’ve got some pretty amazing resources these days for learning the skills).

Good luck with your meetings this season!