Ask. Listen. (Check to see if mouth is closed.) Repeat.

By Jodie Willobee
Promotion, Arts and Culture Specialist
Michigan Main Street Center
Michigan State Housing Development Authority

I was in a meeting recently where a person was desperately looking for feedback, almost to the point of demanding it, but never took a breath long enough to let anyone respond. The room quickly filled with the dreaded silence that was heard by everyone except the one talking. When you know someone isn’t really going to listen, why bother trying to be heard? From Communications 101, we all know this is when the danger occurs.

As it goes with most folks, generally they just want to be heard. Take a festival for example, how do you really know that people are enjoying themselves? And how do you know they are going to come back next year? Seems like people fall into a couple camps here – the small, loud camp that will tell you each and everything on their mind in brazen detail and the larger, quieter camp that will keep their comments to themselves, tell 15 people about the negative part of their experience, and not return next year.

That silence I described at the meeting I was at, it is everywhere. What if you actively went in search of it? Think of what you might learn by tapping into it?

Survey Says!
At your next festival, why not put a couple charismatic volunteers in the crowd – one in the heart of the action and the other on the outskirts – with a super quick survey that asks:

- How many times have you attended this festival?

- What would we need to do to get you to come back?

Simple. No more, no less. Imagine the information this could provide. Do you have a healthy mix of newcomers and seasoned festival attendees? What kinds of things are people looking for that you don’t have? And the giant bonus in this is that all who are asked will go away with a bit better feeling because you showed their thoughts mattered and you weren’t afraid to hear what they had to say. I believe they call this a, win-win.

Maybe the backside of every meeting agenda should have a survey similar to this ready and waiting, just in case another person tempts the fate of listening with their mouth open.