Staffing Wisdom for Church Leaders (Part 4)
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Leaders know it’s true: Not having the right people on the team hinders the impact of your church.
So what do you do when it’s clear you need to remove someone from the team—when it’s clear they are not a fit?
WHAT TO DO WITH MISFITS ON YOUR TEAM
In the last episode of our series on “Staffing Wisdom for Church Leaders,” Amy and I discuss the very real reasons why letting someone go is so hard for ministry leaders, the ways you need to be effectively evaluating performance as an organization (and specifically, managing people who are underperforming), and how you can approach it all with wisdom and grace
- Why it’s hard to let someone go
- Solutions to having a misfit on your team
- How to engage tough conversations
More Episodes in the “Staffing Wisdom for Church Leaders” Series:
Structure to the Strategy – Episode 351
Stack the Leadership Pipeline – Episode 352
Right People, Right Roles – Episode 353
This Episode is Sponsored The Church Lawyers:
The Church Lawyers’ Client Member program was created for organizations just like yours. Their team of Christian legal professionals are personally called to empower and protect churches, ministries, and their leaders to fulfill their mission by providing biblically informed and ministry-focused legal solutions. Whether governance, employment, litigation, or other matters, let The Church Lawyers walk alongside you as you navigate legal issues facing your ministry.
Sign up for the The Church Lawyers’ Client Member program today at thechurchlawyers.com
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Transcript
Sean:
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast, where each week we are exploring what it means to be an unstuck church. When someone doesn’t quite fit on our team, it can be hard as church leaders to clearly articulate the why. It can be even more difficult to remove someone from the team that we care for and often feel like family to us. On this week’s podcast, Tony and Amy wrap up our series on staffing wisdom for church leaders with a conversation on how to address staffing misfits. If you’re a new listener to the Unstuck Church Podcast, you won’t wanna miss out on downloading the weekly episode show notes. Each week we share important information that supports that week’s episode from time to time, offer bonus resources, and give you access to the full archive of resources when you listen to past episodes. To learn more, just go to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. Now, before we dive in, here’s Tony with this week’s podcast sponsor.
Tony:
The Church Lawyers’ Client Member Program was created for organizations just like yours. Their team of Christian legal professionals are personally called to empower and protect churches, ministries, and their leaders to fulfill their mission by providing biblically informed and ministry focused legal solutions. Whether governance, employment, litigation, or other matters, let the Church Lawyers walk alongside you as you navigate legal issues facing your ministry. Sign up for the Church Lawyers’ Client Member Program today at thechurchlawyers.com.
Amy:
Well, Tony, today we’ve made it to the last part of our series on staffing wisdom for church leaders, and we’re finally getting to some wisdom for when you actually need to remove someone from your team.
Tony:
Yeah, Amy, and this one’s last for a reason. As church leaders, it’s just, it’s very difficult to let someone go, and we’ve covered a lot of things that you need to do before you ever get to the point of letting people go in earlier episodes. But today we’re gonna talk about that tough conversation and that tough next step. And I think pastors recognize this is an important mission that we’re on, and not having the right people on the team hinders the impact of the church and what we’re trying to accomplish, and how we’re trying to engage in people’s lives and really help the church to thrive in its mission. So today we’re going to talk about when someone really doesn’t fit the team and how we handle that with wisdom and grace.
Amy:
Yeah. And yesterday, Tony, when we met with our advisory team, which is just such a great group of pastors, we actually were on this subject because we had had a phone call with another church about someone that they had to let go. And Michael Moore, who used to be in our team, do you remember what he said? He said, you don’t go as far as your dreams, you go as far as your teams. And, you know, it’s a little kitschy phrase, but you mentioned this is all about us accomplishing our mission, and that that really has to be the lead motivation, you know, when you’re managing your team, building your team, and sometimes when you have to let someone go really for the sake of what you’re trying to accomplish. And yes, you said, you know, this is hard and we’re not gonna sugarcoat it, but I think if you like letting people go, there’s probably something off in your heart, right? It should be hard. People things should be hard.
Tony:
That’s right. And that’s a good thing if you’re feeling the tension on that. But Amy, to kick things off today, what’s really the core issue that we’re dealing with? Why is why is this so hard to let someone go when they, when we know they need to go?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, I, a couple things come to mind, Tony. One, I think a lot of ministry teams, it feels like family. It feels like family. It’s, this is not just a job. We are on mission together, and a lot of us have worked together for a long time. Funny thing, it might actually be your family, but that, that, we’ll talk about that in another podcast sometimes. But when we have a lot of family on staff teams, this tension is even greater. But we’re in ministry, you know, a lot of lead pastors especially are on the people side. They’re influencers, they’re relational, and people, people, we don’t really like to have tough conversations. It takes a lot of work for us to get the courage up and get the wording right. I like what Lance Whit used to say all the time, you know, as pastors, we need to be both clear and kind.
And I’ve said it before, but us people-people don’t struggle being kind, but sometimes we struggle being clear. And the other tension that’s here, Tony, I think, is that sometimes we have a gut feeling that someone needs to go, but that’s not the right way to let people go. It needs to be a little bit more diagnostic than that. There needs to be, you know, time has had to elapse where you’ve had these conversations. So gut feelings shouldn’t be reasons for letting people go, but we need to get organized. And that’s another thing churches kind of struggle with, is how do we have regular performance conversations and then we just seem to have ’em when something’s off. And so those are some of the tensions. I see.
Tony:
That’s right. So, I mean, the just going, just letting someone go based on your gut is not right. But you need to listen to your gut because it’s probably telling you something that needs to be addressed. And there’s a process and conversations that you need to engage. And I really would encourage you as hard as they are to engage those conversations. And the reason why is there’s a mix of people on your ministry team and some of those folks, when you think about them, you think these are, these are people. They’re, they love Jesus. They love our mission, and they’re so good at what they do. They do. They add so much to the team in so many different ways, and they’re helping us accomplish something significant. And then there’s these people that come to mind that, you know, there’s a challenge, there’s a gap there.
Something’s not firing either. They’re not a connection with the culture that you’re trying to create, the chemistry that you’re trying to create on the team. There’s something in their character that’s just not right. They’re not performing up to the capacity and expectations that you have. And, you know, you need to deal with that. And here’s the challenge, Amy, is everybody on the team is, even those great folks that are a part of your team are watching you as a leader to see how you’re going to handle that situation. And it kind of reminds me of a good friend of mine. This was years ago. He was serving on a larger team, and he was a few levels down in the organization. So he had no decision rights when it came to staffing decisions. But if you were to ask anybody else on the team, my friend was one of those all stars that you wanted on the team, very sharp, very smart, high capacity, driver. I mean, all the attributes of somebody that you want on your team. But he also noticed somebody else on the team that just, they were not carrying their weight. And this went from days to weeks to months. And the leadership just was doing nothing about it. And so eventually my friend, he was bold enough to talk with his supervisors and say, Hey, look, there, obviously there’s a gap in performance. Some this person is not doing what they need to be doing to contribute to the mission. And he had that conversation and then waited to see what they would do and nothing was done. And so my friend decided, that’s it. If they’re not gonna deal with this underperformance I’m leaving. And he left to pursue another job.
And we probably, this, there’s a phrase around this these days, quiet quitting. My suspicion is that, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, the people on our teams are that those are the things that they’re processing. They wanna be a part of a winning team and they know their contribution to the mission, but they’re waiting to see how are we gonna handle those tough conversations, the need for shifts. So the reality is you get to choose who you keep on your team, the people you like working with, or the ones that you don’t. And if you’re going to be on mission with people, Amy, it should be fun. We should love the people that we get to serve with. And part of that is not only serving with people that we know are of great character and they’re high performers, but this chemistry culture fit. It’s a big deal. And the challenge is, if you don’t get this right, you run the risk of losing some good people.
Amy:
That’s right. Alright, Tony, well, let’s move on to some of the solutions when you need to deal with a misfit on your team. And I don’t remember if I said this in the past episodes, but I think the first step, for any leader, when you’ve got a misfit on your team, is to actually look in the mirror first and ensure you’ve actually done the job of what a leader manager should do, which is provide clear objectives and priorities. Make sure that that’s been made clear to the person, ’cause it’s completely unfair to hold people accountable for fuzzy objectives or ambiguity, you know, around expectations. So if you haven’t, if you look in the mirror and you’re like, you know what? I really have not really been clear with what’s expected in this role, then you need to do that work first.
It’s not time to deal with the misfit and have the tough conversation. It’s time to be clear and let that person understand what success looks like in their role. And if it’s a competency, one, it’s clarity around what they need to accomplish. If it’s a chemistry issue, you need to help them understand what their blind spot in and, and how we actually behave around here. If it’s a character one, you know, that’s more of an intervention conversation. It’s different from, you know, the competency one, but you have to diagnose it, you need to be clear, and then you need to have ongoing performance conversations. Now, this is not an annual conversation. This is a biweekly where you’re checking in on priorities or you’re coaching. Again, if you’re being diagnostic, then you can name that issue and you can be very proactive about how you’re observing and leading this person.
But if you do have under performance, if you have looked in the mirror and it’s all clear what I just said a few minutes ago, you need to work to be both clear and kind in this, and you also need to document your conversation. No one should be terminated like it’s a surprise. This, the termination should be a result of several conversations. So when you have that first one, you need to document it. You need to think it through. If you’re like me, work on being clear, I was gonna say, if you’re like, Tony, work on being kind, but that doesn’t fit with you, you’re a kind man, but if you have a little bit more this is
Tony:
True too.
Amy:
Yeah. It’s gonna be a hard conversation. I’ve said it before. I always map out my conversations when I had to have these ones. Sometimes I even left them with that sheet of paper just to make sure that I was clear about it. One thing too, Tony, that you mentioned at the top of this, I also encourage pastors when they’re in this situation to commit to praying to this person for this person, excuse me. And this situation for a solid two weeks, you know, James one, five, if you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking, but when there’s a misfit situation in the churches I’ve worked with, you know, after everything’s been done, it’s amazing how God was already at work in their life and bathing this in prayer. Prepares you and it prepares the other person by inviting the Holy Spirit to be a part of it. I don’t know, Tony, anything you’d add to any of that?
Tony:
Yeah. Well, let me just double down. I mean, we are our people that are all about redemption. So it feels like we should be modeling that and how we handle some of these tough situations that we’re facing, managing people on our team and giving the people giving people on our team the opportunity to receive coaching and to respond to that coaching.
Amy:
That’s right.
Tony:
But what I want you to think about is how they respond to coaching. In fact, gosh, Amy, it’s probably 10, 12 years ago I heard Dr. Henry Cloud do a fantastic talk at the Leadership Summit about his book that had come out called Necessary Endings. And I know we’ve talked about that book in previous podcast episodes, but pastors, if you’ve never read that book, you need to read that book.
And one of the keys that he shared in the talk that he did at the Leadership Summit was just about how we coach people, but paying attention to how they respond to the coaching. And I won’t go into everything, you should try to Google it and just watch the talk for yourself. But basically he brings it back to a biblical framework and talking about how when people receive coaching, you can clearly identify, is this a wise person, a foolish person or an evil person.
Amy:
That’s right.
Tony:
Now the evil person is the easy one because when you start to talk with them about some challenging situations or try to coach them and try to try to seek redemption, they respond by trying to harm you. So that’s an easy one because, you know, you can put, you can kind of kick into gear into protect yourself, protect your ministry.
So that’s the easy and obvious one. It’s the difference between the wise and the foolish when we provide coaching that we really have to pay attention to, because when we coach the wise person, it’s fascinating. You can almost see it in their face. It’s like they want to receive that coaching, they want to learn how they can improve, and they want to walk out of a conversation like that with a plan for next steps. And then afterwards you’ll watch them get very intentional about taking steps so that they can improve whatever it might be, their character, their performance, just their fit on the team. That is an indication that you’re dealing with a wise person. When you give coaching to a foolish person, though, it’s so fascinating to watch their response, they’re not going to try to harm you. That’s the evil person.
How the foolish person responds though, is you can almost see them close up immediately and that almost that look on of tension or stress on their face. And it’s almost as if they’re starting to shut down. And many times when you provide coaching to that person, they will try to blame somebody else for why they dropped the ball. They’ll try to blame you for not providing good coaching and good direction. They’ll, in other words, they will try to deflect. And that’s an indication that you’re dealing with a foolish person. And in essence, when you get to that place, it becomes less about the specifics that led to the tough conversation. And really it becomes more about their ability to receive critique criticism and to actually improve on themselves. And are they willing to do that or not?
But again, I would strongly encourage you to read that book necessary endings. Go watch that talk if you can find it online. But it will give you some clarity about not only how to approach coaching in these tough conversations, but to be mindful of how the person that you’re talking with is responding to that. Now, additionally, and I referred to this earlier, and Amy, you acknowledged, I mean, the re in fact, I was just having a conversation with a pastor several weeks ago, and he was just talking about, I need to have this tough conversation with one of the leaders on our team. And in a joking way, he said, these conversations would be so much easier if it was a character flaw, you know.
Amy: Completely, completely.
Tony:
If they would’ve been completely been doing something very obviously wrong, or they were very much underperforming in some areas, or drop the ball, the conversations would be so much easier.
But he said, that’s not what the situation is. This person’s just not leading well and they’re not leading their team well, and I need to have that conversation with this person. And it was really more about their culture, chemistry fit on the team. And I’ll just say this, what I’ve noticed through the years in my personal leadership, but also as I’ve engaged with other pastors and church leaders through the years, the reality is for whatever reason, for those of us that pastor people and lead people, it’s a lot easier for us to hold people accountable for character challenges. It’s a lot easier for us to hold people accountable for performance if that needs to improve. But when, for some reason when it comes to culture and chemistry, we assume if they’re not breaking the 10 Commandments and they’re getting the job done, that we kind of get lax on their fit with the team. The reality is they’re fit with the team as it relates to culture and chemistry that has, what I’ve noticed, if you don’t address that, that can be the biggest cancer that you have on your team. And so just because someone is of good character that they’re getting the job done, that doesn’t give them a pass on tough conversations, those people probably more than anybody else, as far as misfits on our team. Those are the folks that we need to be having the tough conversations with. And
Amy:
Tony, I’ve probably said this before, but Pat Lencioni’s book, the ideal team member when it comes to those chemistry issues, those people issues people who have big blind spots there, he actually calls them the accidental mess makers. And this is again, why as a manager leader, you need to help people understand those blind spots and give them the opportunity, like you said, to close that gap. Now if it’s a true culture thing, if they don’t behave like our culture behaves, that’s a different issue. But just general chemistry, a lot of people don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know what it’s like to be on the other side of them. And whether it’s chemistry Whether it’s competency, there should always just be an appropriate opportunity for that redemption. People deserve to hear where they’re missing the mark and they need to have a chance to respond to that. And I often tell churches, if it’s a competency issue, you should give it at least six months with regular coaching about what those objectives are, maybe where they’re not hitting them what things they need to do differently. But if it’s an attitude, one, like you said, the evil person or the, what was the other one? Not the wise, the foolish
Tony:
The wise person and the foolish person. Yeah.
Amy:
When there are attitude based issues, I shorten that time by at least half. I mean, we still have to give a little time to close that gap, but it’s a smaller window. And again, Lance Whit, when he would coach some of the churches we worked with, he often talked about how important it is to have that shot across the bow conversation, which I think is a wartime phrase where before you actually sink the ship, give them a shot across the bottle, let ’em know you’re serious about it. That’s part of the how you’re landing this. If they are not closing the gap, you need to tell ’em it’s not working. And you need to set some type of timeframe to say, you know, if we don’t see improvement in the next however many weeks, months, then we’re gonna have to have a conversation about transitioning you off the team. That person won’t be surprised when their time comes to an end if you bring that clarity to those conversations.
Tony:
Amy, as you were talking through that, gimme your reaction to this. I wonder that shot across the bow, I wonder sometimes, okay, I’m admit this is a counseling session right here. When I see and am challenged by how somebody is responding to situations and teammates and things like that and I sometimes I’ll think, gosh, that was so unfair the way you just treated that person, or the way you approach that situation. And there’s something in me emotionally that my natural tendency is to try to squelch that. But I wonder sometimes if I would be doing better for the team and for the person that needs that shot across the bow to just express a little bit some of that emotion that God puts those emotions in us. I wonder if sometimes as leaders we need to be a little bit freer to share that emotion so that people can see kind of what we’re feeling and probably how the rest of the team is feeling too about some of those challenges. Do, what do you think is that, should I be paying more attention to that?
Amy:
Can you actually just give a more specific example of when you found yourself in that situation?
Tony:
Yeah. So I think where I felt it most is when I have, since somebody has mistreated somebody else on the team. And I just, there’s something, I love my team so much That I just, I want, I think I kind of go into protector mode.
Amy:
Yeah.
Tony:
But at the same time, I just, there’s I don’t know, maybe in an unhealthy way, the healthy or the righteous anger. I try to suppress that and maybe sometimes I need to be a little bit more freer in actually expressing that. So somebody can really feel the weight of the words that they just shared or the way they approach that situation.
Amy:
Well, all of this is about bringing what is something somewhat invisible to the person. You’re making it visible. And that’s I mean, that’s the how we’re talking about performance conversations. I think it’s okay to do that privately. Probably not publicly, unless it was really egregious. But yes. I think the other coaching I’d say in those situations is any conversation that starts harshly will end harshly. So you just have to manage your anger in those situations to be able to start it well so that the conversation can end well, even though there’s you’re gonna be strong words in there. Absolutely.
Tony:
Alright, that was a diversion. But Amy, let’s get on onto next steps as it relates to how we’re engaging these conversations. I wanna actually go back and just reinforce again, and you said it earlier, but I’ve noticed this through the years. I just need to pray for the person that is causing the tension that we’re experiencing on the team, or that we’ve identified maybe a misfit for whatever reason. I just need to begin praying for that person, but I can’t just pray. That’s right. I need to have the tough conversation. So it’s both prayer and in taking the step of engaging the conversation. And what I’ve learned through the years is more time never makes the situation better. You just people will not just drift to health over time here.
There needs to be some coaching. There may need to be an intervention there, there may need to be a redirection, but you need to have the conversation if that situation’s gonna move towards a redeemable staff member who actually becomes a healthy, thriving contributor to the team. Also, let me just suggest before you have these tough conversations, especially if you get to the place where you’re having to let somebody go from the team, you do need to consider legally what do the steps need to look like?
Amy:
Yes. Yes.
Tony:
And I say that because in every state, things are a little bit different. And in your church bylaws, you may have some things that are established that kind of guide the steps you need to take if you’re going to remove some, someone from the team. So yeah, just makings, make sure you do your due diligence ahead of time in addition to scripting out, like Amy suggested, this is what the conversation flow is going to look like. So that you’re very clear about what you’re communicating. Make sure you do the due due diligence ahead of time to know whether or not you’re following whatever state or bylaws state laws or bylaws you have in place that need to guide those conversations.
Amy:
Yeah. A couple things. I would just say, again, if you’ve, if you’re listening today and you’re, you have a misfit on your team, someone is not working out. My first, my first counsel for you would be, figure out where you are in the process. Do you need to look in the mirror first? Have you been clear about things? Or is this a person that you’ve kind of been talking to for a long time? You know, time is not necessarily your friend if it’s if you have, if this has been going on for a long time, they understand they’re not, you just haven’t had the conversation. You’re at a different place in the process. So identify where you are, write their name down, commit to that two weeks of praying about it, and do some journaling and get your words pulled together. You know, as you gave that example earlier, Tony, sometimes we are too quick with our words and we haven’t truly thought them through.
Now sometimes we’re too slow. We think about it all the time, but we never pull the trigger. But the art of a good conversation, you can read Crucial Conversations, Necessary Endings, but there’s a good way to start those conversations that bring the clarity and the kindness to it. And there’s also, you’ve gotta work through how are you gonna land that plane? How are you gonna end that conversation? So give yourself some time to, as you’re praying through it, journal some, get the right words so you can have the right conversation, that you can provide the right feedback. And then if you do have to terminate that you’ve worked through the right language to land that well, and again, different scenarios, different misfit, misfit reasons, you know, we will warrant different words. But don’t just take a flyer. Don’t just spontaneously decide to pop into someone’s office. Don’t react and you know, instead be very planful around the conversation and then give yourself a deadline to actually do it. Any final thoughts you would have Tony on this before we wrap it up?
Tony:
Maybe I just need to let you know, I really don’t have external anger issues, but sometimes I wrestle with some to internal anger issues, so I just wanted to recognize that’s where I went in that conversation. Amy, I hope you, I hope you agree with that.
Amy:
I totally agree with it. I actually see you’re just, I think you used the word protector. You are, you’re a protector of your team. Yep. Yep.
Tony:
Alright, so as we wrap up today, I recognize that people problems are uniquely challenging on a ministry team and leading your staff through them. I know it’s hard, but you don’t have to tackle a restructure like we’ve been talking about over these last several weeks. You don’t have to do that alone. We’ve helped hundreds of churches build a staffing and structure strategy that really works. And through our process, we help teams solve complicated staffing challenges with both wisdom and grace. We know the stakes feel high. It’s more than a job, and your team is more than a staff. We can help you take the pressure off and we can guide you through a proven process to restructure your staff and gain alignment. You can learn more about our staffing and structure process and how it works at theunstuckgroup.com/restructure.
Sean:
Well, thanks for joining us on this week’s podcast. At The Unstuck Group, our goal is to help pastors grow healthy churches by guiding them to align vision, strategy, team, and action. In everything we do, our priority is to help churches help people meet and follow Jesus. If there’s any way we can serve you and your church today, reach out to us at theunstuckgroup.com. Next week we’re back with a brand-new episode. So until then, have a great week.
