Six Supervision Tips to Turn Relational Vision into Action
Last year, we spoke dozens of times with executives at Bay Area Jewish organizations. These leaders spoke passionately about fostering belonging, and their staff excelled at building meaningful relationships. Yet, relational work was often the first to be sidelined by program demands and attendance goals. They weren’t lacking vision or skills—something else was missing. Despite buy-in from leadership and skilled frontline staff, organizations struggled to systematically sustain relational engagement.
At Gather, we call this the “missing middle”—the operational infrastructure that connects leadership’s vision with staff’s day-to-day efforts, ensuring relationship-building is a sustained, measurable practice. Without supporting systems, even the most relationally skilled teams struggle to maintain and grow a culture of connection.
One of the clearest gaps we’ve identified is in engagement supervision—how staff are supported, guided, and evaluated in relational work. To support genuine relational impact, we offer six suggestions for supervisors of engagement professionals.
Suggestion 1: Set clear expectations and goals for your supervisee’s relational engagement work
Relational engagement work is broad in scope. We’ve observed that new engagers can often feel confused by the seemingly abstract and wide-ranging nature of the work.
Our suggestion is to be clear with your team member about the day-to-day activities they will be doing, like going on one-on-one coffees with community members, introducing community members, and maintaining data in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Set realistic, sustainable goals based on these tasks.
To see the expectations and goals GatherDC sets for its new, entry-level engagement staff, check out our GatherDC Community Coordinator Job Description.
Suggestion 2: Hold weekly one-on-ones and monthly “People Strategy Meetings”
We recommend two types of recurring meetings to provide accountability for and help deepen your team members’ relational engagement work
Weekly One-on-Ones: These meetings should focus on relationship-building between supervisor and supervisee while also providing strategic support. Use this time to guide your supervisee through reflections on their work. Ask open-ended questions like: "Who have you connected with recently?" and "What have you learned about the people you've met?" These questions help shift the focus to qualitative insights rather than just numbers or tasks.
People Strategy Meetings: These monthly team meetings are a space for discussing broader trends in the community and identifying any gaps in engagement efforts. Unlike meetings focused on attendance or project management, People Strategy Meetings emphasize qualitative insights. Have team members share what they’ve learned from recent one-on-ones, any community-wide trends they’ve observed, or areas where there may be unmet needs.
Suggestion 3: Use data systems and make engagement plans
Effective and sustainable relationship-based engagement is systematic. To support this, ensure your team member has the tools to stay organized and track their progress.
Data Systems: Use a shared system such as a CRM like Salesforce or a simple spreadsheet to record who your supervisee meets and what they learn. This helps track relationships over time. Regularly review this data during one-on-ones and People Strategy Meetings to guide future engagement strategies.
Engagement Plans: Engagement plans help ensure that follow-ups happen consistently between your staff and community members. These are reminder systems that automatically prompt regular check-ins after an initial conversation at set intervals (e.g., 1-month, 3-month, 6-month). Work with your team member to determine a sustainable follow-up cadence.
Tools like Trello, Asana, or Google Reminders can help keep these plans organized. Engaging with these systems ensures relational work stays structured, organized, and effective.
Suggestion 4: Model relational leadership
Build trust by practicing the same principles you’re asking your team member to embody.
Start with connection: Use your one-one-ones to model relationship-building. Begin meetings with a personal check-in. Follow up on things your supervisee may have shared last week: How are you doing? What’s giving you energy right now? You shared you were thinking about moving last week - how’s that going?
Show vulnerability: Share your own successes and struggles with relational work. Let them see that this work is iterative and human.
Celebrate their wins: Uplift your engager’s accomplishments. Did they navigate a tricky one-on-one? Make a spot-on connection between two community members? Acknowledge and celebrate them for it. These small acts of care create a culture where relationships come first – both internally and externally.
Suggestion 5: Act as a bridge
Engagement work is often treated as separate from an organization’s core strategy, leading senior leaders to overlook valuable insights about community needs.
Supervisors play a key role in bridging this gap by communicating the impact of relational engagement across the organization. Share qualitative stories and quantitative data that connect your engager’s work to organizational goals like belonging or membership growth.
Advocate for the time, tools, and training your team members need. This might include protecting time for engagement follow-ups or advocating for leadership to rebalance priorities if relational work is being crowded out.
Suggestion 6: Build resilience to prevent burnout
Engagement roles can get weighed down by competing demands. As a supervisor, you can help your team member focus on what matters most: building relationships and weaving relational community.
Make space: Relationship-based work is deeply rewarding but can also be emotionally taxing and, absent the right support, lead to burnout. Are there non-essential tasks or projects that don’t align with their relational goals? Protect their time for connection-building.
For example, a team member might need to focus on hosting small gatherings that foster deeper connections, even if that means hosting one fewer large program. Encourage them to prioritize quality over quantity.
Help them build out their own support system: Encourage engagers to develop their own support network—whether through mentorship, peer relationships with engagers at other organizations, or a broader community of practice.
Conclusion:
Relationship-based engagement isn’t just about conversations—it’s about creating a culture where those conversations lead to lasting community connections. This work thrives when supervisors provide clear expectations, ongoing guidance, and the right systems to support relational practices.
By setting goals, holding meaningful one-on-ones, using data, and modeling relational leadership, supervisors help bridge the “missing middle,” connecting leadership vision with everyday engagement. This helps ensure your supervisee thrives and that relational work is an integrated, sustainable part of how your organization builds and sustains community.
Blair Lineham (he/him) is the Networks Manager at Gather, Inc., where he supports Jewish organizational leaders in adopting relationship-driven approaches to community engagement. In this role, he weaves together networks of relationally-driven leaders through facilitated learning opportunities and communities of practice.
