Tobi Johnson, expert in volunteer management, discusses the importance of value-packed volunteer Q&A sessions. She emphasizes making volunteers feel heard, offering relevant information, and gathering insights. Practical tips include leaving ego at the door, showing empathy, and telling stories. The episode aims to enhance volunteer engagement and overall experience.
High-impact volunteer Q&A requires empathy, storytelling, and setting aside ego for effective communication.
Deep dives
Importance of Volunteer Q&A Sessions
Running value-packed volunteer Q&A sessions is a powerful tactic for building relationships with volunteers and enhancing the volunteer experience. Such sessions help volunteers feel heard by allowing them to voice questions and concerns, offer relevant and timely information in response to queries, build confidence in volunteers by providing clear answers, and point volunteers to available resources to address their challenges.
Enhancing Engagement and Gathering Insights
Volunteer Q&A sessions serve as avenues for deepening engagement and gathering valuable insights. By conducting Q&A sessions, organizations can encourage volunteers to share their questions, which aids in identifying recurring themes and understanding volunteer needs. Additionally, these sessions can reveal hidden complaints or issues among volunteers and enable the enlistment of collective support to solve problems.
Best Practices for Effective Q&A Sessions
To ensure high-impact volunteer Q&A sessions, it is essential to leave ego aside, allocate sufficient time for questions, exhibit empathy towards volunteers, check for clarity by repeating questions, and acknowledge when answers are unavailable. Storytelling can enhance understanding, and noting key takeaways post-session aids in addressing actionable feedback. Emphasizing the goals of Q&A and maintaining a compassionate approach towards self and volunteers enhances the overall effectiveness of the Q&A process.
In this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast, Tobi Johnson delves into the undervalued yet powerful tactic of running effective volunteer Q&A sessions. Tobi discusses the goals of a good Q&A, including making volunteers feel heard, offering relevant information, and gathering valuable insights.
She provides practical tips for conducting high-impact Q&A sessions, such as leaving your ego at the door, setting aside ample time, showing empathy, and telling stories. She also highlights when to build Q&A sessions into your volunteer programs and various formats they can take. This episode aims to help organizations engage deeply with their volunteers and enhance their overall experience!
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe, rate, and review so we can reach more people like you who want to improve the impact of their good cause.
For more tips and notes from the show, check us out at TobiJohnson.com. For any comments or questions, email us at WeCare@VolPro.net.
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