Management Is Not a Dirty Word (Part 4)
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Many of us in ministry are responsible for leading other people.
It’s hard to lead others well without good management skills. Management is something, just like any other specialty, that needs to be trained and developed. But historically, churches haven’t been good developers of managers within their teams.
Effective manager training is crucial to building a culture of both health and high performance on a church staff. Without great managers, we won’t accomplish great things.
In this episode, Sean and I discuss common mistakes churches can make when training managers, specific disciplines church leaders should implement in manager training, and how to create sustainable systems for ongoing manager development.
Great managers set clear expectations and help their people accomplish it. [episode 419] #unstuckchurch Share on X Outstanding managers understand the differences on their team and adapt their style to it. [episode 419] #unstuckchurch Share on X To bring out the best in the people God has placed in your care, we must improve the art of being a good manager. [episode 419] #unstuckchurch Share on X People stay, grow and give their very best because of great managers. [episode 419] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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More Episodes In This Series
Management vs Leadership – Episode 416
Developing a Feedback Culture – Episode 417
Numbers Are Not the Enemy – Episode 418
Hiring & Managing Gen Z Leaders (with Russ Ewell) – Episode 420
Transcript
Sean:
I will bet there’s no shortage of things happening in your church. Kids ministry, students, groups, outreaches, special events—the list probably goes on. Keeping communication clear across it all can be exhausting. With ChurchCopy.ai, you can turn a simple event description into a complete communication package: emails, posts, text and more, all working together to create awareness, build anticipation and provide follow-up. And it’s all organized in one place in your church’s voice. You can get started for free at churchcopy.ai/unstuck. That’s churchcopy.ai/unstuck.
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church podcast. I’m Sean, your host, and I’m joined as always by Amy Anderson. Amy, not that anyone listening to the podcast can know this today, but we are wearing matching blue shirts. We are color coordinated today.
Amy:
We are! It looks pretty good.
Sean:
It looks like we planned this, but maybe it’s just the synergy in this podcast series. This is actually the final episode in our four-part series called Management Is Not a Dirty Word. And before we get into the content today, Amy, I know you’ve been traveling recently. I wonder if you just have any fun, encouraging stories from the road and working with churches.
Amy:
Yes, I have. I got to spend this week with a church in Wooster, Ohio and Grace Church. Great church, love that team. But what’s fun about it is I was there, I can’t believe it, 10 years ago. 10 years ago, I came in and they went through a process with us and I did the staffing and structure component, and just how fun to go back and see that team in action. You know, they have grown health has increased, just so many things up and into the right. They’re at the pinnacle of the church life cycle. They’re up in sustained health.
Sean:
That’s awesome.
Amy:
Their Unstuck Teams Assessment was awesome. And they’re a multi-site church now. So they’re just trying to, what we’ve been talking about, how do we now get structured and prepared for the run that God has for us next? So it was great to see Pastor Nick there. He is has been a friend for years.
Sean:
That’s great. I love to hear that. Love to, it’s so fun to engage with churches that, I mean, decade later. We get to get back and work with them and see the progress that they have made and God has made there. So that’s really fun. Well, today we’re wrapping up by discussing how to effectively train and develop managers on your team. I think this is gonna be a really fun conversation, Amy, why is this such an important topic for churches to end our series with?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, as we talked about, I think it was in the very first episode of this series, many of us in ministry are responsible for leading other people, right? A lot of us who are leading other people probably got into that role because we were a high performer with high character. In other words, we were doing good at our doing role and we were recognized and then given this bigger leadership role, but being promoted to leading other people doesn’t mean you actually have the skills of being a good manager. And management is something just like any other specialty, it needs to be trained and developed. And the good news is there are just so many resources out there on this topic.
But Sean, historically, churches just have not been good developer of managers within their teams. They haven’t leaned into the resources and the trainings and maybe it’s because management, again, like metrics can sound too corporate or too impersonal. But I really feel like it’s time to change that. Without great managers, we will not accomplish great things. And I want our listeners and their churches to accomplish great things. So that’s why I wanna talk about this today.
Sean:
I love that. Alright, well, let’s get to it. Let’s start with the common mistakes you see churches making when it comes to training their managers. What have you seen there?
Amy:
Yeah, I think Sean, they honestly just don’t think about it. I think they assume people know how to lead their teams. Like it’s a given. Like if Joe’s a great employee, again, strong character, strong chemistry with others, he’s winning in his role, and then he is promoted to lead people. I just don’t think they think about that new responsibility he needs to be trained in.
Sean:
Sure.
Amy:
In fact, Sean, it kind of reminds me, did you ever read The E-Myth Revisited?
Sean:
I did. That’s a great book.
Amy:
Yeah. It’s a great book. And if you have, if you’re not familiar with the book, to our listeners, there’s a story in there about a gal named Sarah who loves to make pies and in a sense, everyone told her, your pies are the best. You should open your own pie store. And she resisted it for a while, but then she did. And at first she was super excited. She spent her days, you know, baking pies, serving customers, running the shop, but over time she got overwhelmed. And here’s why. She was trained to be a specialist. She was what they call a technician. She was the one who loves the actual work of baking pies. Right? Or in church world, I love preaching sermons; I love designing graphics; I love teaching kids; I like making hospital visits. Those are the specialists, the technicians.
Then the book talks about the next level of the manager. These are the people who develop people and processes and bring order and clarity to everything. And that’s something Sarah just was never trained to do. She dove in and did her best, but she didn’t have the training. And then they talk about that entrepreneur, the leader, visionary kind of who Lance Witt talked about in the first week of this series. Those are the people, typically the senior pastor, who have more capacity to dream, innovate, answer, where are we going? How can we do all this?
So now could someone like Sarah thrive as a manager? Maybe, but the skills and training that got her to be a great specialist in baking pies has an entirely different skillset that takes to manage, you know, in her case a business. Those are new skills. So similarly, promoting a specialist into a manager role at our churches requires a new set of skills, which I just most of us, I don’t think we have. So my first answer there was all under the umbrella. I don’t think we think about it.
Sean:
That makes sense. Yeah.
Amy:
Does it make sense? Yeah. And because we don’t think about it, churches typically don’t provide any training. It’s just kind of sink or swim. We throw ’em into the deep end and as, and honestly assume they’ll figure it out. Not like anything bad or evil, we’re just, we literally assume they’re gonna figure this thing out. And if they have an entrepreneurial leader in the seat, that that leader might actually think, well, that’s how they’ll learn. Just give them the job and they’ll figure it out, you know, that’s what I did.
So, and then now there are probably some churches, well, I hope there are, that do have things like new manager training programs, and that’s a really good thing. My only maybe pushback on that is do you have intentional systems for ongoing manager development? You know, developing this skillset of leading, managing people, you know, it’s continuous learning. You’re building those muscles over time.
I think back Sean, to my first management role, which was in corporate America, but I remember having a lot of clarity on what type of manager I did not want to be when they moved me into this role. Like, I’m not gonna be mean. I’m not gonna act like I’m better than everybody else. I’m not gonna hide in my office, basically. This expectation of the things that I will never do that some other bad manager did when I was on another team. And I think, you know, without training, that’s how people like me, you know, we can form our management style, which by the way is very limiting, right? Without intention, new managers often just default to what they don’t wanna be, rather than be taught what they do want to be.
Sean:
Yeah. Yeah. And Amy, most of us are wired up with a natural bent towards focusing more on tasks or focusing more on relationships. Right? And you see this all the time in the assessment work we do with church teams. And without training, we typically end up managing people according to those natural tendencies and our natural wiring. So could you talk about why good manager training is so crucial to building a culture of both health and high performance on a church staff?
Amy:
Well, yeah. What you’re saying is that some of us are people who tip towards wanting to get things done. And as a manager, without training, I might focus too much on getting stuff done and not paying attention to the relational side of the people on our team. And likewise for those of us that tip towards people, we might focus way too much on happiness, peaceful relationships.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
Fun, and take our eye off the ball when it comes to actually getting work done and moving the ball forward. So here’s what every manager needs to remember. You have to do both. You have to lead a high-performing team and you have to do it in the context of relationships. So if you are like me, and if you’re wired more relationally, you have to get over this fear of pushing for results and bringing clarity to goals. You know, somehow, sometimes we feel that’s too corporate or in spiritual.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
But great managers set expectations and then they help their people accomplish it. And, you know, this was my story. I had to learn to get comfortable with the headier side of management. It wasn’t natural for me to think in the form of goals and accountability. And when there was conflict or issues that I needed to move in on, I was much more apt to avoid those conversations early on. And just wanted to avoid it and make sure everyone was still happy. So I kind of thought my job was to keep people happy, which obviously is wrong.
And then Sean, you know, if you have the wiring to get stuff done and get results, you know, you’re gonna have to learn the art of relating to people. Valuing, hearing their stories and experiences. And if you’re leading a people person, you’re gonna need to slow down and make room for the relational side. And Sean, I’m just curious ’cause this is your wiring.
Sean:
It is.
Amy:
What ways have you had to adapt over the years? Have you’ve led people as you sat in that manager seat?
Sean:
Yeah. Yeah. It absolutely is my wiring and you know, there’s a few things that come to mind. First of all, I got what, what I would call just an image coach. So I actually had someone on our team who had permission to tell me what I looked like, and I had resting pastor face, you know what I mean?
Amy:
You did. I do!
Sean:
I needed to raise my eyebrows. I needed to look a little more happy and engaged because I could just look so serious and so focused on the task at hand that I didn’t look like I was having any fun at the end of the day. And I was. But accomplishing the task is fun for me. So I needed an image coach who’s someone who could just tell me, “Hey, you need to kind of brighten up your appearance and what you’re communicating physically.” That was a big help.
The other thing I’d say is I had to learn to lead with questions with my team. Sometimes if you’re task focused, you can do a lot of telling. I needed to get better at asking questions. So questions like, how can I help? What do you need from me? What can I do to support you? Those were important questions for me to have, and ask my teammates because it positioned me as a support for them. And really I was, but at the end of the day, I could tilt more towards that task focus. So asking questions was important.
I knew that I had to create time for our team to not be focused on the task. Also, so I’m not the bringer of fun, like you are Amy, but I could have some people on our team help bring the fun who were good at that. And I could give us space for having fun for, we would do things like, let’s go bowling, let’s go catch a movie, let’s grab some coffee. Just those little things helped us galvanize as a team. And then I’d say the last thing I had to do is I had to get good at recognizing great work.
Amy:
Say more about that.
Sean:
I’m wired up as a discerner. So if you think about working genius, I’m an ID work, invention discerner, and you know, whether I’m right or not, I’ve usually already discerned whether I did the task well or not. I don’t need anyone to tell me that I did a good job. I’ve either determined I did it well or I didn’t. And sometimes I can actually project that onto others. Not everyone is wired up that way. And so I had to get good at just recognizing you did a great job that was phenomenal. You hit a home run and saying that to others, even though that wasn’t necessarily something I expected to hear at the end of the day.
Amy:
Thanks for sharing that, Sean. You know, I think the less effective manager expects everybody on their team to adapt to their style, where the outstanding manager is the one who understands the differences on their team and adapts their style so they can bring out the very best in them. That’s what you’re kind of giving an example of, and there are tools you threw out working genius, right? There’s the DISC assessment, working genius, strength finders, Enneagram, there’s so many. Pick one. I think these types of assessments, they always give people visibility to the differences and the diversity of skill sets and wirings on the team. Managers need to be trained to understand these differences if they’re really gonna bring out the best, you know, both from a health and a performance side with these guys.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, at the end of the day, yes, management is about bringing clarity to expectations, but it’s also about developing systems. But we cannot forget that it’s about developing your team. As the leader of the team, a big part of your job is to bring out the very best in the people God is interested into your care. So to do that well, we need to improve the art of being a good manager.
Sean:
Absolutely. And I can tell you that everyone running an organization wants more people who are skilled at bringing out the best in others, right? Amy, what specific disciplines or maybe practices should church leaders implement to better train the managers on their team?
Amy:
Yeah. First I would say get time scheduled on your calendar for it. This is work that you have to plan. You need to make it a priority and put it on your calendar. And that can look different for different teams and probably depends on how much training you provided up to this point. You know, if this is an entirely new muscle, you might wanna kick off the training with like a one day offsite for all the lead staff leaders you have that are managing other people. If you already have some training and you just need to nurture it, many churches do like quarterly trainings for their managers. Like the fifth Sunday of, sorry, the fifth Monday of every month or Wednesday. Fill in the blank. Four times a year, we get a fifth one in there. So that would be the first, if it’s entirely new.
Also I would say you wanna put someone in charge of creating this development roadmap, so get it scheduled, and then name a leader who’s gonna be thinking holistically about what we need to do to develop our managers. While the senior leadership team can give input, they might even have decision rights in it. Someone has to own the responsibility of getting the training plan developed. There needs to be a captain. Everybody can’t own this. And then that leader, they need to think through the what and the how, like what are the most important topics or tools that our team needs related to manager training, and then how should we deliver that training?
So I would just say from my purview, here’s some common what needs to be trained. What are some of the top management training needs? I’d say the first one is how to give feedback. And we did an entire podcast on this topic. It’s that important. Managers need to understand how to praise people, how to have hard conversations. The second would be most church managers need training on how to develop people. Managers need to be trained on how to assess people’s performance and then learn how to coach them up. And the third I would say is just how to lead a team. Things like how to have an effective one-on-one, how to have effective meetings, how to lead through conflict. So once you determine what the what’s are for your organization, I would make a long list, prioritize them. And then if you do a one day offite, you should be able to cover a lot of good training over that day.
And then of course, that you’re not done then. Now it’s the senior leaders, you know, who need to nurture and develop their managers to ensure the principles that you covered on this one day are being implemented throughout the organization. So that would be a bit of a roadmap if this is a new muscle for a church.
Now here’s some ideas around like how you can train your managers. And by the way, feel free to jump in Sean, but I would start by having some required reading. We have so many amazing authors who have already written all this stuff up. This is not new. In fact, it keeps getting more refined, have some required reading, and then have someone facilitate the content, the content so people know how to filter the concept through your church’s filter.
So couple of examples of books. The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard, it was written forever ago, but it’s brilliant at helping managers understand how to do one minute praisings, one minute reprimands, one minute goals. Or The Ideal Team Player if you need to learn how to better kind of coach and develop your teams, I would look at the ideal team member or team player. I always say that wrong.
Sean:
That’s okay.
Amy:
By Patrick Lencioni.
Sean:
It’s close.
Amy:
That helps with assessing performance. John Maxwell, The 5 Levels of Leadership, that’s helping your managers understand how to increase or influence, or of course, High-Impact Teams by Lance Witt. Again, these are all books that you can read some chapters together and then talk about it with your managers. And that’s where maybe it’s a monthly brown bag lunch where you’re reading together and processing things, figure out the what, and then figure out the best how.
Another way to do this, another how is to bring an expert in to do the training. You know, in the Twin Cities here, when I was in management, there were flyers all the time. You know, different things you could either bring an expert in to get training on this or you can go to an expert to get the training. And then, you know, you can also leverage your senior leadership team or key staff leaders to train in an area they’re great at. So Sean, you know, if you were on our executive team, you might put together some content for managers to understand goal setting, budgets, all of that. I might do it on how to adapt your style, you know, to increase your influence. But you can, this is what we did at our church. We just took about four or five of us who put together a six-session kind of cohort and rotated our managers through all of those cohorts over the course of the year.
Sean:
I like that.
Amy:
And by the end of the year, we’re all talking the same language. We’re all learning from one another. So anything you would add to that?
Sean:
I love that. Yeah. I was thinking back to my story and some of my best learnings came from just watching good managers. You know, and I’d encourage you to bring your team alongside of your best managers. Who are the people who seem to have the best balance of health and performance on their teams? What does their meeting rhythm look like and what do their personal conversations look like and sound like? Put some of those developing managers in the room with them while they lead their teams. Sometimes management is better caught than taught like that. And I just, I learned a lot about healthy conversations, healthy team leadership and management from watching others who did it well.
Amy:
That’s great.
Sean:
Amy, what are some maybe markers or evidences that you’ve seen on a team that can tell you your managers have been trained well and are developing?
Amy:
Yeah. You know, I think with these types of teams, these good managers, you just sense a culture of high team morale. Right? Team members feel safe to speak up. They share ideas, they admit mistakes. They demonstrate real care to one another beyond just the job and the work roles. You know, you get a sense of a higher level of enjoyment accomplishing the work together.
I think another indicator is that your teams are actually getting their important work done. This is because everyone knows the priorities and how their work aligns to the bigger picture. You know, good communication is happening through effective meetings and effective one-on-ones and goals are clear. Teams are celebrating the known wins now. Right. And they’re collaborating on new ideas when goals aren’t met.
And lastly, because tied to that a lot, I think you see, especially in ministry teams, right? That’s what we’re talking about. Ministry leaders, I think you see an increase in the spiritual vibrancy on the team. I think good management provides more visibility to the work. And out of that, I think there’s more natural prayer as teams discuss what God is doing through them and through their team. And, you know, I will say this, as I’m sharing this, this doesn’t need to all be subjective, right? If you’re trying to figure out do we have good management? I would actually encourage you to use a tool to help you get the real pulse of how your organization is doing.
You know, at the Unstuck Group, we use a teams assessment we created to help you evaluate and see how your organization is doing related to the personal health of the team, the team health, the personal performance, the team performance, and then their perspectives on organizational systems and culture. I know that there’s a much, much more robust, Best Christian Workplace if you wanna go deeper and broader on all of that stuff. But whatever you choose, I say take it once a year, especially if you’re at the very top of the food chain at your church. If you’re the lead pastor or executive, you might be missing the real view of how your team is feeling and doing. So it’ll just give you feedback on how your management practices are working.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s good. Oh, how can church leaders create more sustainable systems for ongoing management development, things that they can sustain throughout the year?
Amy:
This is why I go back to, you have to have your a leader or a champion, because we can splash in something big every once in a while, but you’re right. We want this to be ongoing and sustainable, so someone’s gotta figure out what’s the right rhythm for your church with their training. So you’ve gotta build regular training into your calendar. Again, you don’t just try to drift and hope it happens. Get it on the calendar. And I think, again, quarterly if you’ve already got some stuff established, but I’d do it more frequently if this is a new muscle. Like those brown big lunches are an offsite. The second thing I think to create sustainable systems is just to create a clear expectations, like in a framework for what good management looks like here. Clear expectations around how we do one-on-ones.
If we’re managing performance, how do we lead through a performance management process? You know, like those things I’ve seen churches include, man, we pray for anyone that we’re putting on performance plans, you know, every day for two weeks. How to manage conflict. Here’s how we handle conflict or, you know, manage the triangulation that can happen. So somehow, you know, you don’t need a policy book. You just need some guidelines in creating a picture of the kind of management culture you want at your church. And the last thing I would say for it to be sustainable is just you have to invest resources in this area. Like we have to remember, personnel is typically the biggest budget item for our church, and people are our most important asset. So use some planned resources dollars to invest into the managers of your organization.
Sean:
Yep. Now that’s how you’ll know it’s really important to you. If there’s budget behind it, then it’ll have a high level of importance. That’s good. Well, okay, so let’s say a church leader, just they’re listening to us today, they realize we need to improve in this area. What are some practical maybe first steps that they can start to take?
Amy:
All right. So first steps. So Unstuck, Sean, but I think you should do some assessment, right?
Sean:
It’s the right place to start.
Amy:
If this is new, I would start by taking an assessment, like I just mentioned a few minutes ago. You can take the Unstuck Teams assessment or again, pick another one. But I just think this will give you a chance to hear from your organization, not just the leaders of your teams. Right? We wanna get a full perspective. In fact, Sean, I’m thinking about it. Last week, on our episode on Metrics, we gave our listeners a coupon code for free access to the Unstuck Resource Hub for one month. So they could take the Vital Signs assessment. Get to know their numbers. Well, if they have free access for a month to the Resource Hub, they also have access to the Unstuck Teams assessment.
Sean:
That’s awesome.
Amy:
So listeners, that’s a win-win. No excuse for not taking an assessment.
Sean:
That’s what we call a two for none, right there. That’s right. Two for none.
Amy:
Assessment’s always the first step. And then again, the assessment results will give you some clear ideas on where you need to be in training for your managers. It will reveal if they feel goals are clear, if they feel their development gaps going on, if your meetings are effective or not. We ask 73 questions. And as you see the results of each question, you will definitely see the themes that come up that you’ll wanna train on first. And then the second part of that, after you assess, is just put some time to put a plan together. You know, put together a plan to train your managers, which is what I talked about earlier. Those would be the first steps.
Sean:
Perfect. I love that. Well, Amy, when I was leading in a local church, this series would’ve been invaluable for me. It’s been a really good one. So any final thoughts before we wrap up the series?
Amy:
Yeah, thanks for hanging with us. I love this topic. I hope there’s been a nugget or two in there for you. But out in like the corporate world, there’s a common phrase that “People don’t quit companies; they quit managers.” And I actually agree with that, but let me flip it. For our ministry leaders, I would also say that people stay, grow and give their very best because of great managers. A great manager, creates clarity, builds trust, brings out the best in people, and they don’t just manage tasks, they shape the culture and cultures. What drives results in our ministry?
So as we talked about earlier, most ministry leaders were promoted because of their great doer specialist role, not because they automatically knew how to lead. That’s like asking your best player to coach the team, right? Without giving ’em playbook or training them. Training managers, and again, it’s not an expense; it’s an investment. It reduces turnover, it boosts performance for the ministry. It prevents burnout, and it honestly turns average teams into high-performing teams. When you train a manager, you don’t just impact one person, you impact every person on the team. And that ripple effect can transform your team. So if you wanna lead a healthy and high-performing team, start by training your managers. Because when managers get better, everybody gets better.
Sean:
Love it. I love it. Alright, well thanks for tuning in everyone. Like Amy just mentioned and we talked about last week, we’re offering our listeners one free month of access to the Unstuck Resource Hub, where you can take the Vital Signs Assessment and the Unstuck Teams Assessment and dig into some of the metrics and some of the measurements on the team side. So just go to theunstuckgroup.com/learninghub to sign up and use the coupon code VITALSIGNS at checkout. So coupon code, VITALSIGNS, you can catch any of the episodes that you missed at theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. And visit theunstuckgroup.com to learn more about how we help pastors lead unstuck churches. We’ll see you next week.
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