Staffing Wisdom for Church Leaders (Part 3)
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This is part often makes a leader’s stomach drop.
We’ve laid the groundwork, and we’ve taught you the wisest order for processing restructure decisions. But now, we’re going to dive into wisdom that has more to do with how you make decisions about specific people.
GETTING LEADERS IN THE RIGHT ROLES
In the third episode of our series on “Staffing Wisdom for Church Leaders,” Amy and I focus on people who really are the right people for the team, but they are not in the right roles—and we share how to approach things when you can’t ignore the issue any longer.
- Core tensions with putting leaders in the right roles
- How to assess where your leaders belong
- How to get your leaders in the right roles
More Episodes in the “Staffing Wisdom for Church Leaders” Series:
Structure to the Strategy – Episode 351
Stack the Leadership Pipeline – Episode 352
Handling Misfits – Episode 354
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. Staffing decisions always feel high stakes in the church because well, we’re in the people business, and when we do ministry together, often our team begins to feel more like family. On this week’s podcast, Tony and Amy continue our series on staffing wisdom for church leaders with a conversation on how to navigate moving people into the right roles. Before that though, if you’re brand new to the podcast, head to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast and subscribe to get our episode show notes. Each week, you’ll get resources to support that week’s episode, including our leader conversation guide, bonus resources, and access to our podcast resource archive. Again, that’s theunstuckgroup.com/podcast to subscribe.
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, welcome back to all of our listeners, and Tony, good to see you today. We’re gonna be moving on to the second half of our series on staffing wisdom for church leaders. But, before we dive in, where have you been lately?
Tony:
Well, it kind of doesn’t matter where I’ve been. Amy, you’ve been traveling the world, it sounds like.
Amy:
Yeah, I was over in Ireland and Scotland for the last couple of weeks. It was great. I’m a little under the weather after traveling, but I’ll tell you what, I saw some really old buildings and old churches out there, some that aren’t churches anymore. But no, it was a very welcome break. Went with a couple of friends and just had a great time seeing a completely different part of the world.
Tony:
Well, I’m glad you’re back. It’s always good to have my friends and teammates back and reengage to the mission, but I’m also glad that you got to take some time off. And you’re right, we’re in the first two conversations we talked about the best way to determine the structure you need to do ministry the way God has called the church to do it. And we talked about how to really stack your leadership team, but now we’re going to dive into wisdom that has more to do with how you make decisions about specific people.
Amy:
Yeah. And you know, this is probably the topic that makes a lot of pastors stomach drop. You know, this, I do a lot of staffing structures and I’m in the room with a lot of lead pastors who kind of knew before I came, some of the changes that need to be made. But through the process got just a lot of clarity that there are definitely some changes that need to be made. So, in the work I do, helping churches with staffing and structure, I can just see it on their faces, hear it in their voices when we get about specific people, because we’re people, right? And church can feel like family.
Tony:
That’s right.
Amy:
And they don’t wanna hurt feelings. But there are ways to move through this because we’re, if you’re feeling that right now, anyone listening, you know, there’s a person or two where something’s off, there are good solvable ways to lean into this. I can’t say it’s easy, but I can say that it’s not a win to stay where you’re at. It’s a win for everybody to be in a position where they can thrive and do well.
Tony:
Well, I know these are high stakes decisions that we have to make about people, and it’s because it’s about people. And so I totally get that. Maybe just to forewarn you, in next week’s episode, we’re going to be talking about how to handle the misfits, that is people who have demonstrated that they’re really not a fit for the team at all. So just if you wanna avoid that conversation, don’t join us next week, but I know many of you need to actually hear the wisdom that we can share related to those decisions as well. But in this episode, we’re really gonna be focusing more on people who really are the right people. They’re just not in the right roles, and you’ve come to the place where you’ve recognized we just can’t ignore that any longer. So Amy, let’s go ahead and clearly define what the kind of the core tension is that church leaders feel around moving the right people into the right roles. Why is that such a tension?
Amy:
Yeah. If the right people are in the wrong roles, there’s a reason that they’re not fitting in that role. And you need to kind of get to the bottom of what that reason is before you start making decisions. Because it could be that you’ve got good people doing what you’ve asked them to do, but you’ve actually asked them to do the wrong things. You’ve rewarded the wrong things. And I wanna go back to, you know, there’s always a need for a structural fix before you can start defining what the role should actually look like.
Tony:
Yeah. And on those lines, Amy, I’ve heard you talk recently about a scenario where you were with the church and there was a lot of celebration around an event that happened in recent days, but the reality was the win for that role wasn’t the event. Can you share a little bit more about that scenario?
Amy:
Yeah. I don’t know if I’m remembering this specific one, Tony, but it is actually a funny conversation I have regularly with churches. It could be like they just had this great women’s event, or this great men’s event, and everyone’s excited about all the people that attended. They’re excited about the speaker, but then I’ll actually ask, what was the purpose of the event? And did you actually accomplish that purpose? And more times than not, they kinda look in the mirror and they’re like, yeah, we just gathered a lot of people together, didn’t we? But it really didn’t help move us forward on this. You know what my job is, right? If you’re the groups pastor and you have a women’s event, the goal should be to get people connected in groups, not just have a large event. Again, sometimes we just celebrate the wrong things. There’s nothing wrong with having a great crowd. But if you’re a ministry leader on staff, you need a scorecard. You need to have clarity around what success for the role looks like, so that we actually celebrate the right things and the right next steps.
Tony:
And along those lines, another tension, Amy, that I see is, we have good people, but they’re trying to do something that’s really outside of their strengths. And we talk a lot about how when we’re helping churches define the right structure for their team that we want, when we start to place people in different roles, we wanna make sure the roles actually match the strengths of the positions that we’re trying to fill. And I saw one example like this firsthand. There was a good friend of mine, and actually a great teammate at one of the churches that I previously served at. And it was an interesting journey for him. Again, such a good guy and very talented, but it’s like the first role that he was in just wasn’t a fit for his strengths. And so he shifted to a second role. And even in the second role though, it was closer just not quite the perfect fit. And then he shifted to a third role on the team, and it was in the third role that all the stars aligned. It was just, and he was created for that position, but it took a couple of attempts to get to the place where we could find that perfect fit for him. And when he, when it worked, it really worked.
Amy:
Yeah. And that’s the challenge when we promote people beyond their gifting, specifically in leadership roles, when you get promoted beyond what level of leadership God has put into you, it is no fun for you. It is no fun for the organization. And the other things that I start to see happen when we have people who are promoted above their leadership level, their peers actually have to pick up more of the work because this leader has proven I can’t do this.
Tony:
That’s right.
Amy:
But we all love them and we can’t imagine them not around the table because he or she’s been here so long, but all of a sudden, all the teammates have more work and more responsibility dumped on them, and we start combining roles and combining things, and we end up with a structure that is just ineffective. So a big part we have to do is to step back and actually be somewhat analytical about people’s true giftings and their leadership capacity.
Tony:
Okay. So with that in mind, let’s talk about the solution side of this, Amy. How do we help move people who are the right fit for the team, but they’re in the wrong roles, make sure we get them in the right roles.
Amy:
Yeah. I don’t wanna jump right to just the competency issue where they don’t have the right fit, because I think we need to talk about it a little bit more globally. And so you said we have the right people. I think first we have to confirm are they really the right people? Because it’s not just about a fit with our culture, but it’s also this personal wisdom of understanding your character, chemistry and competence. And so I think the first step you have to take overall, if you’ve got someone on the radar that you’re wondering, is this the right role for them? Is to confirm that they are the right people.
So when we talk about assessing performance, I often talk about character chemistry, competence. But I like the language from the ideal team member. That’s a book that Patrick Lencioni wrote. Boy, I bet it’s almost 10 years ago now, but there’s five kind of next steps that come out of a good evaluation. So I like to start with the chemistry side of things. The fact is, we all have blind spots, you know? We’re never across the table from ourselves, but we have to assess chemistry. And when you’re assessing chemistry, the core action here is we need to coach and develop our people, you know, as a manager on any team, but especially in the church, you’ve been given the responsibility to develop this person to help them become all that they can be. And one of the biggest ones is to bring blind spots into that known and open space so that people can close the gap on it. Right?
Tony:
That’s right.
Amy:
Good leaders lovingly help people understand their blind spots. So one could just be a blind spot is someone talks too much, right? They’re in a meeting, they’re dominating the conversation, they don’t ask any questions. What other blind spots have you seen, Tony?
Tony:
I’ve seen the reverse of that. Where people are just quiet and they don’t chime in and you need them to bring more energy into the conversation. I’ve seen instances where people are sharing great thoughts and there’s good conversation happening, and then someone just interrupts. And the interruption is usually about something related to who they are rather than where the team is going in the conversation. And generally I would say, you know, it’s a chemistry misfit when it’s someone who just drains you when you’re around them. And I especially share this when we’re talking with senior pastors about getting the right people in your senior leadership team. I mean, there are certain capacity that you want in a leader that’s gonna be at that level of leadership. But then at the end of the day, it really comes down to does this person energize you when you’re engaging conversation and thinking strategically about where you’re going forward in your mission? Or is this someone that drains you? And even if they’re the greatest leader in the world and they’re fully committed to your mission, they love Jesus, they’re doing a good job in the role, but they drain you, then you have to pay attention to that chemistry.
Amy:
You do. I often call this Tony the knock on the door test. So, you know, when someone knocks on your door and says, Hey, do you have five minutes? How you physically feel about that? If it’s a drain, it’s most likely a chemistry gap in their portfolio. They have some blind spots that are causing that. And so anyways, that’s the first area you need to assess.
Tony:
Well, and Amy, you passed the test because when I saw that you were gonna be gone for two weeks, I thought, well, this is a good thing for Amy, but my sad face was on, because I was thinking two weeks without Amy. Oh my goodness. But I’m glad you got away.
Amy:
I bet you had very quick precise meetings in my absence.
Tony:
Okay. Yes. Maybe so.
Amy:
Alright. So the second area we have to assess is the person’s character. So when I say character, this isn’t just about morals, it includes behaviors as well. And when character issues are off, the action here that you need to take as a leader is intervention. Again, we can, we can fill the gap with trust. Like people don’t know they have blind spots, they don’t realize these behaviors are coming out as character issues, but as a leader, you need to have an intervention conversation to disrupt the behavior you’re seeing. Some examples of character issues are someone who just doesn’t do what they say they’ll do. They break promises. This isn’t deliberate for most people. They’re just very careless with their yes. And so they say yes to everything, but then they don’t deliver. And now people don’t trust them. That’s a character issue. Another one is someone who is just chronically late to everything. I consider that a character issue because you’re kind of holding everyone else hostage until you get there. What other behaviors fall into it for you, Tony?
Tony:
It’s interesting as you’re going through this one because I think when we hear character, our minds typically jump to the big sins.
Amy:
Yes, yes.
Tony:
And as long as people aren’t doing the big sins, whatever those are on your list, then they’re a person of moral character. The reality is, what I have found through the years is the character issues that actually can become the most damaging to a team are more just around basic integrity. You’ve alluded to some of them. And you’ve alluded to some of them. You know, chronically being like not delivering on something you’ve promised, but really it’s just do you follow through with what you’re gonna say you’re going to do? To me, that’s more of an integrity issue than necessarily a competence issue or a chemistry issue. And so it gets to, we’re looking at the whole person here and it’s just like, is who they are really who they are. And that, you will know most times, not by what they say, but how they actually act.
Amy:
Yeah. When I hear pastors reflect on one of their employees and they indicate there’s a passive aggressiveness in them, that’s another one that I would say is really more of a character issue. So all of those behaviors play into a person’s character. And so when you’re going to, we have the right people, again, we wanna give everyone the chance to close the gap, but those are the type of things you need to lean in on. And I like the word intervention because it’s not a comfortable conversation, but it’s great coaching for people on like the passive aggressive one, coaching them to say their yes means yes, their no means no, so that you can trust them when they’re outside your sphere.
So now to get to what you actually asked about is when we feel like we have the right people. Let’s assume a great culture fit, strong chemistry, strong character, but we’ve got a competence issue here. The core action here is that you need to provide some training for this person when there’s a competence gap. And then you need to evaluate again if they can close that gap.
The first thing I think we need to do when there’s a competency issue is I think as leaders we need to look in the mirror first. You know, often managers look out the window first and put the whole burden of a competence gap on that staff member. I coach leaders to look in the mirror first and ask themselves, have I brought clarity to this person’s role? Have I brought clarity to what success looks like in the role? Have I been rewarding the wrong things and avoiding the tough conversations?
Often when I’m at a church, I see staff, they’re ushering or they’re in greeter positions and there’s nothing bad about that. But honestly, that’s not the win for their role. Their win is to engage the body in filling those roles. If you’re a staff leader, you should have no specific station on a weekend, rather you should be free to roam and meet new people. But if we’ve been rewarding that, we haven’t set the right expectation for that groups pastor or that serving pastor. And then you have to actually bring clarity to what the win looks like for their role. Those specific goals and metrics.
So I like to start with the chemistry side of things. The core action here is we need to coach and develop our people. One of the biggest ones is to bring blind spots into that known and open space so that people can close the gap on it. Going back to that big event we talked about earlier, attendance is not the only thing that says this is good. In fact, it could give you false information, but if I’m the group’s pastor, I should have an understanding how many groups leaders do I need to have any place? How many coaches do I need? How many people should be engaging in group life? And so that’s some of that mere stuff. Have I, have I provided that clarity’s, right? If I have, then I can start to look at the competency gaps and provide training to that person. So, you know, the gaps could be a lot of different things, but I think when you’re providing training and you’re evaluating competency gaps need a little bit longer runway, if I can say it that way. Usually six months or so for people to really learn a new skill that they need, you know, and then actually develop that muscle and begin to use it really well. So those, those are the three key areas by the way, as we went through there, if you’re like, man, we don’t have any headline issues, there’s no character chemistry or competence, you know, your next step for them is, man, empower those people, give them stretch assignments. And I’d also say as I went through those, if you’re like, oh yeah, there’s some chemistry with her, there’s some character with her, and certainly there’s some competence. That’s why we’re listening to this podcast. Sometimes you have to let those people go when all of those issues are in play. You might not have someone who has developed enough to carry the leadership role that you’ve, you know, put them into.
Tony:
Alright. So you’ve, kind of, you’ve helped us confirm, yes, indeed this is the right person to be on the team. That then leads to, this was the original question I asked you. I think
Amy:
I know. Sorry, I just had to take a step back.
Tony:
How do we then, how do we get them in the right role?
Amy:
Yeah. So again, character and chemistry transcend every role. Every member of your team needs to be high in those areas. But when there is a competency gap, you have to consider if you just have a person in the wrong role. Let me give you an example. So there’s a multi-site church I know, and they had a location that was not growing. Their weekend numbers weren’t growing, their groups and serving numbers weren’t on target. There were very few decisions to follow Jesus and the campus loved that campus pastor, but that location was quickly becoming an insider focused location of the church. That campus pastor was not the right fit for that role. And in this example, I mean, it’s possible that there isn’t a role for this person going forward. I have to say that there are times that we’ve been carrying someone who really doesn’t have the leadership ability to transition to another role, but it’s also possible they have the skills for another role.
So the key is, if we go back to episode 351, you can’t start with the question, what’s the right role for this person? That’s the easy way out. That’s what stuck churches do. They just move people around and around. And the example that you gave, luckily that guy found the right fit three turns in. But that’s not always the case. And by the way, the whole staff watches this, oh, if you don’t do your job, you get to do something else and then get to do something else. And, instead you need to start with the question again, what’s the right structure for us and what are the right roles that we need? And then ask, where does this person fit? And hopefully there is another role, especially if they check off all those other boxes. But we wanna start with that question so that we don’t just move people around and create a church, create a role for them. Healthy churches confirm those roles first. Then they determine if there’s a role where this person strengths fit.
Tony:
Yeah. And the reality is, we might actually get to a place where we recognize this person is a great fit for the team, but there’s not a fit for them within the structure based on their strengths and their giftedness. And again, we’ll talk a little bit more about that next week, but, we’re trying, we’re trying to find what’s best for the, for the mission that we’re trying to accomplish. And we’re trying to keep in mind what’s best for that individual. And sometimes what’s best for the individual is helping them see their strengths and recognizing there’s not going to be a place on your team for them to really lean into those strengths. And when we do that, of course, when we help someone step into an area that where their role is a great fit for their strengths, they feel like they’re really contributing and it really helps them to see the purpose that they have. And that’s where we find fulfillment.
Amy:
Yeah. Where I often see, I often see this working well, when we have someone who is someone we want on the team and we want them on a different seat when we do that due diligence to make sure we have the right positions, especially for larger churches, because there’s a lot of different areas you can go and how you can work. I’ve seen people move into database manager roles. I’ve seen them move into, well, of course we see a lot of people move into care roles, which again, we, we only have so many care roles for that. I’ve seen them move, you know, into like a group, like a campus pastor, instead of being the campus pastor, they’re actually the small groups pastor at a location, and all of a sudden they start to thrive. So I think you have to assess, did we just promote beyond leadership ability and we need to downsize that role a little bit, or could they actually work in a different department, maybe on the operation side. Again, don’t create the role for them, but don’t keep them in the lane that they’ve been in and just explore there.
Tony:
And here’s the other thing, Amy, it could be the reverse situation where you have a very gifted, very talented person, but because, and, the size of the church makes a difference here. But, there, there just may not be opportunities to continue to step up and to move forward in your ministry leadership capacity in your current church. And I, you know, all the we’re, when we hire people, we think, well, we’re hiring them for life and we need to make sure that we can continue to adjust our structure to allow them to continue to increase the leadership opportunity or the ministry opportunity. But that may not always be the case in your circumstances. So, just being sensitive, it could be the right person, but either because the, the strengths don’t match your roles, the needs that you have in your structure, or because they’ve kind of outgrown that and they actually need an opportunity that’s to take the next step. And in either instance, you may have the right people, but it may not be the right fit for the team.
Amy:
And Tony, I would just add one thing. When you sense something’s off with a person, you know, our friend Lance Whit always challenge pastors commit to praying for that person for 14 days every day. I see it all the time how God’s already at work in these scenarios where it’s not gonna work out. God’s already creating some restlessness in that person as well as, you know, the, the staff leader. So just, we, we have another advocate on our behalf to help navigate these things in a godly way. And the power of prayer becomes very powerful in these situations.
Tony:
Very good. Yes. I couldn’t agree more on that and I’ve, I’ve witnessed that firsthand many times through my ministry life, so good word there, Amy. Okay. Let’s talk about next steps. How do we help churches navigate this very sensitive and tricky part of restructuring their team?
Amy:
Just like in planning, when we’re doing staffing and structure, we’re seeking truth. We have to be honest about the abilities of our team members. The mission’s too important to not do that. And if someone is in the wrong seat or if they have those chemistry or character issues, just know it is known by everyone. Only they don’t have any power or decision rights to make the change. And that’s the leader’s job to step in on that. And I mentioned the mirror window analogy earlier. If you have a performance issue, you need to look in the mirror first and assess if you’ve done your part to bring clarity to that role, to the wins and the performance gaps. And then after that, honestly, Tony, it’s really up to that employee to close the gap and to, you know, with wisdom, find the way to up their performance, change a behavior, get more, in touch with their blind spots. But we can’t do that work for them, but it’s our job to make sure we bring clarity to what the gaps are. Well, Tony, I’ve done a lot of talking. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Tony:
Yeah, I just wanna encourage you with this, you, you don’t have to tackle this alone. We understand the nuances of what makes leading the, the restructure of a staff team uniquely challenging. I mean, we, we do this all the time, and Amy has recently expanded our staffing and structure consulting process to be the most comprehensive and supportive offering that we’ve ever had. When it comes to dealing with these specific challenges, you’ll get a clear destination with phase steps. So you can wisely lead through the changes with love and care in an appropriate timeframe. And you can learn more about that staffing and structure process at theunstuckgroup.com.
Amy:
And Tony, you’re right, people problems are uniquely challenging on a ministry team and leading the staff through them. It’s hard. But as we wrap up today, let’s just remind you about the How to Restructure Wisely webinar. It’s tomorrow June 20th at one o’clock Eastern Time. And we’re gonna go deeper on the topics from this podcast series. We’re gonna share some visuals and I’ll be answering questions live during the q and a. And there is still time to register at theunstuckgroup.com/webinar, and we hope to see you there.
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.
