This past week, we’ve met with every member that was new to the staff this year as well as with our editors, all to check up and see how things are going. For each person, we wrote some positive reinforcement as well as some things they could work on. We really used this time to address certain issues we’ve been seeing without having to draw attention to certain staff members.  Ultimately, we hope these meetings will help to fix the small things we’ve been having trouble with so our paper can be that much better.

Sarah speaking:

Sharing constructive criticism is one of the harder things for me to do as a leader. I don’t always like to criticize because I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, but on the other hand I am committed to staff improvement. How staff members take our feedback will really show Jill and I a lot about them. I hope that every staff member will do a few small things differently and that we will see our staff continually improve. Overall, most of the comments Jill and I had were positive ones. It has been a wonderful year so far and I can only see better things from here.

Jill speaking:

Meeting with staff members these past couple of weeks have really helped me to feel like Sarah and I are maintaining a little bit of control over being able to fix the small things on staff and really cover our bases. By meeting with each person individually, we are able to point out specific details that we may not have had the ability to address if we just met with the staff as a whole to talk about the things we want to work on.  I also enjoyed getting to tell each person what a great job they’re doing and personalize their feedback to make sure that they know that we do notice their efforts. I mean, there’s nothing like a compliment to make you want to keep doing thing the right way, as well as to continue to get better. I hope our staff realizes the great job they’ve been doing this year, and also realizes how much we are accomplishing. I think I can speak for Sarah and I both when we say we are proud of everybody’s efforts so far and really hope that the student body sees all of this hard work as paying off.

Lesson of the week:

1. Individual attention helps to personalize feedback and make everyone on staff know we are noticing their efforts.

Lesson 12 of being an editor-in-chief: Check.

Countdown to Minneapolis convention: 11 days.