Ever wondered what it takes to cultivate a thriving team culture? How about transitioning leadership roles with grace? Well, you're in for a treat with our guest, the accomplished leader Tim Stevens, who shares his experiences from Willow Creek and insights into the Lead Culture Framework. Be prepared to be inspired and motivated as we explore how simple, thoughtful actions can foster trust, reinforce values, and shape culture, while highlighting the importance of intentionality and empathy.
Navigating transitions in leadership positions can be a sensitive and challenging process. But our conversation with Tim Stevens, an experienced executive pastor, sheds light on this delicate subject. He generously imparts his wisdom on managing these transitions positively and gracefully, leaving a powerful impact on the organization. We also dive into the complex topic of mental health in the workplace and the challenges leaders face in ensuring their staff's well-being. It's a rich and insightful conversation that is sure to leave you pondering and reflecting on your leadership journey.
In our final segment, we're opening up about the challenges of maintaining mental health in a workplace setting, and the responsibilities of leaders in providing support amidst these challenges. We discuss the importance of community and having a support system outside of work, offering practical advice and insights. Also, don't forget to join the upcoming XP gatherings where you can engage in meaningful discussions, learn from your peers, and enrich your leadership experience.
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XP Orlando Gathering
XP California Gathering
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We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
Ever wondered what it takes to cultivate a thriving team culture? How about transitioning leadership roles with grace? Well, you're in for a treat with our guest, the accomplished leader Tim Stevens, who shares his experiences from Willow Creek and insights into the Lead Culture Framework. Be prepared to be inspired and motivated as we explore how simple, thoughtful actions can foster trust, reinforce values, and shape culture, while highlighting the importance of intentionality and empathy.
Navigating transitions in leadership positions can be a sensitive and challenging process. But our conversation with Tim Stevens, an experienced executive pastor, sheds light on this delicate subject. He generously imparts his wisdom on managing these transitions positively and gracefully, leaving a powerful impact on the organization. We also dive into the complex topic of mental health in the workplace and the challenges leaders face in ensuring their staff's well-being. It's a rich and insightful conversation that is sure to leave you pondering and reflecting on your leadership journey.
In our final segment, we're opening up about the challenges of maintaining mental health in a workplace setting, and the responsibilities of leaders in providing support amidst these challenges. We discuss the importance of community and having a support system outside of work, offering practical advice and insights. Also, don't forget to join the upcoming XP gatherings where you can engage in meaningful discussions, learn from your peers, and enrich your leadership experience.
Leading Smart Website
XP Orlando Gathering
XP California Gathering
Discout Code: 4sightxp
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
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Speaker 2:Hey leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture podcast, part of the Art of Leadership Network. I'm your host,J enni Catron. Each week, I'll be your guide as we explore powerful insights and practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity and confidence and build a thriving team. My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self-leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well, so you can lead others better. Each week, we'll take a deep dive on a leadership or a culture topic. You'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well. So let's get started on this leadership journey together. So, friends, today I have a couple of things I want to bring to your attention before we get into this week's episode. So I'm curious if you are signed up for Cary Nieuwhof's On the Rise newsletter.
Speaker 2:On the Rise is one of today's most read newsletters about faith, culture, the future church and just other curious and fun content. It's written by my friend, Carey Nieuwhof and delivered directly to your inbox each Friday. Now you guys, Carey is a dear friend. I've known him for a number of years. He's a champion and supporter of the work we do here at 4Sight. We have the privilege of being a part of his podcast network, the Art of Leadership Network, and I want to encourage you to check this out. The On the Rise newsletter is such a great resource. The content is exclusive to newsletter subscribers. It's not published anywhere else on the internet, so it is exclusive to you. If you are subscribed Again, that's ontherisenewsletter. com Go there, subscribe for free, and when you do, you'll get a sample newsletter delivered right away so you can get instant taste of what it's like. So be sure to go check that out and let me know what you think. I love it. Every week I get the On the Rise newsletter and I love just skimming it to see what Carey has kind of found and what he's pointing out. What he gets you thinking that's the thing I love about this newsletter is that Carey's going to get you thinking, and thinking differently. So go to ontherisenewsletter. com to check that out.
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Speaker 2:All right, friends, today I have a returning guest to the podcast. My good friend Tim Stevens is joining me. Now here's a little backstory on Tim. Tim spent 20 years at Granger Community Church. That's where I first connected with him, helping a church in a cornfield in Indiana grow from 300 to more than 6,000 attendees. The next six years, he consulted with church leaders as vice president at Vanderbloemen, and in early 2020, Tim joined the team at Willow Creek to help rebuild the team and envision what it would look like to see Willow once again thrive as a multi-site local church in Chicago. Now Tim helps churches all across the country solve problems, improve culture, navigate crises and lead through change.
Speaker 2:Tim is a longtime friend I mentioned. I met him way back when he was at Granger and I was at Crosspoint in Nashville. We have just stayed connected through the years. He is one of our lead culture certified consultants and so he has a deep passion around healthy culture. We had the privilege of working together when he was at Willow and I came in and we worked through the lead culture framework, and so he returns to the podcast today to give us an update on how Willow Creek is doing the incredible progress they made in building a healthy team culture over the past couple of years. He tells some stories and antidotes, gives you some ideas and insights, maybe to help you and your organizational culture, and then we learn more about how he is serving leaders in this season.
Speaker 2:So here's my conversation with Tim Stevens. I know you're going to love it. Well, tim, fun to have you back with us on Lead Culture. This is a topic you and I love digging into. I think we have spent a lot of time over the last few years talking all things culture. You also are certified in the Lead Culture Framework and use that with your clients, and so this is. I was looking forward to this conversation because it's just having a lot of fun, and I think it's a great opportunity to talk about the lead culture framework and the conversation, because it's just having a great conversation with an old friend about a topic we both really appreciate. So thanks for joining me again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's kind of part two. I don't know, was it two years ago? We had a conversation about where we were and kind of the culture work at Willow, maybe more than two years.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I need to go back, but it's been a couple of years now, amazingly enough. Yeah, so, yeah. So it might be good to catch everybody up, because the last time you were on, you just spent a year leading Willow through the culture process, like you know, doing all of that. You guys had defined new values, you were beginning the implementation of the culture plan. So I think it'd be great for you to kind of catch everybody up on what's happened since then, and you know just how Willow is doing on the culture work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been amazing. I was telling someone the other day that it felt like for the first two years after I started at Willow Dave is the Dave Dumas, the new senior pastor. He started at the same time. I did it in April of 2020. And then we kind of built a team from there and so since that time, it felt like about the first two years, we just kept doing like the next right thing, like just over and over and over, and for two years it didn't seem like it was working, but we knew we were doing the right thing, right, right. And then somewhere around, you know, early to middle of 2022, it's like I think it's working. Like the things that we're doing and this is both church-wide and with our staff, with culture stuff we just started seeing some things that just kind of started working here and then it's working there and it's like I think it's working all over the place and so it's really cool. I'll just give like a quick snapshot, because you don't hear lots of stories about like the turnaround or the restoration of a place, but it's really cool.
Speaker 1:What God's doing at Willow right now, seen a ton of growth. We're growing about 20% a year in attendance and what's cool about the growth is who's coming. So for the first time in over a decade, our congregation is trending younger. Our average age is moving down 61% of our new people are Gen Z or millennials, which is amazing. 60% of our new people that have come in the last couple of years are diverse. They're multi-ethnic and our congregations are representing and they're mirroring their communities, which has not always been true, which is really cool. 39% of our new folks are unchurched, so it's not there, it's not hopping from someplace else. They're coming without church background, so it's really been cool to see what God's doing. The slide in finances has stopped. That's a win.
Speaker 2:The number of families is going up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a huge win and so it's been a really cool thing. But within the staff as well, some of the stuff we've done with culture. The thing I think I probably said two years ago is that it was still a bit aspirational. Some of our values and you're starting to see them become actually realized, where some of those values are becoming part of the air we breathe, and that's been really cool to see as staff has just done a ton of great work to hold each other accountable those things, to call things out, to celebrate some of those values. So we've had a really been more fun the last couple of years than it was probably the year before we talked last time.
Speaker 2:Well, and I love what you shared just as you were starting to talk about all that is that the first year or so you just kind of stayed faithful to okay, here's the things we need to do, these are the right things we need to do, and it took some time before you felt like you started to see that, and that's one of the things I tell people all the time is, culture is an outcome.
Speaker 2:Right, like you know, what we're looking for in culture is an outcome, and so those inputs of what are the things you know, what have we defined, what's the plan that we built, what are the rhythms we've created, like that takes the patience and persistence that you know, and we see the fruit of that down the road, and that's the hard part, I think, for a lot of leaders when we talk about culture work.
Speaker 2:I think the data tells us that for most organizations that need a significant shift in culture, it is for sure a two to three year process at minimum, and I think for a lot of leaders, that's really discouraging because they're like, okay, if our culture is broken, let's do a couple of fun staff event things and boom, it'll be magically better. And that's never the case, and so I really appreciate you know you've got enough time spent in the work that you guys have done at Willow to start seeing that fruit and start seeing the impact, and so I just appreciated you started with that, because I think a lot of leaders need that reassurance, that being just patient and persistent and faithful with hey, here's what we've defined, here's what we're aiming for from a culture standpoint. And now we've got to stay the course because eventually you start seeing that become true, become, you know, realized in the culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it as you say. It takes someone who is waking up every day thinking about it.
Speaker 1:That's been it doesn't have to be the only thing they do. Those churches can't, can afford a Cultures are on staff, you know, but it just takes someone who is like every day, is waking up, thinking about what are we doing with culture, because I'm convinced it's. There's no like neutral ground. Exactly, cultures either going up or it's going down. Yep, and some of that's out of your control and things will happen that will cause it to go down, but you have to like, keep your hand on the plow to and the intentionality to see it improve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, you guys, you know, as with every organization, there were still been a lot of ups and downs for you, and you named some of that. I mean, the great thing is you're starting to see just the fruit of the ministry as a whole. You know some of those growth metrics and things that you talked about, but you guys still had quite a bit of up and down, hard decisions to make and so forth. How did you prioritize culture through all of that? Because I bet it would have been easy to kind of abandon some of the culture things because you weren't seeing immediate impact and you were dealing with so many other, you know, just from budget cuts to staffing decisions, et cetera. You know you were still having to right size the ministry in so many ways. And so how did? How did you keep culture kind of top, front and center, even though you were dealing with a lot of other moving pieces?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's probably some of what I just said in that, having someone thinking about it all the time and thinking about it in context of what you're going through. So in middle of 2022, we had to go through some staff cuts again. We hadn't quite right-sized the budget and we were still kind of getting our feel for COVID of what size of church we are, where our momentum was. So it was interesting, like going into Easter 2022, there was a sense of like among our staff, of, like man, things are humming, it's finally starting to work. We loved it, people loving each other and all that. And then, like I knew and somewhere leadership team knew, like we're getting ready to actually cut some staff here next month and so what are we going to do in the context of that? To continue on the other side of it, to continue with the momentum and the health, and I mean there were some things we did. We had to cut it. We had to laugh about a third of our staff.
Speaker 1:So it was difficult, obviously for the people that left, but it was difficult for the people who stayed, who just their friends were no longer on their team, and so we did some things like immediately after that just to try to infuse some culture. One is we just brought in Chick-fil-A for everyone, you know, at a random kind of time and just kind of like had lunch together. Later that month we did a serve day together. So we got on buses and we went all the way down into Chicago and just served some inner city schools together. We did a pickleball staff tournament that summer. We kicked it off right after the layoffs. So there were some things we just like got intentional ahead of time just to help us kind of get back to a place of health, because we knew we'd take a hit when you go through layoffs. But it was just like. I think it's. The intentionality is a big piece of it.
Speaker 1:And I think someone probably on the lead team probably not the senior person because they've got a lot of things to focus on, but someone that's like in a second chair to that senior leader, who has the who's empowered to be able to actually put things on the calendar and put things in the budget, will help you get things across the line.
Speaker 2:Well, and I love what you, you know you just rattled off a handful of things, but it was the, you know, the Chick-fil-A alone, the pickleball tournament, none of those individually is going to be the fix. But the staff begin to recognize, oh gosh, they made some hard decisions, like, in this particular situation, having to do another set of cuts. You know that's just painful and people have doubts, questions, that it is a ding to culture. No, you know, no matter how well it's done, yeah, so, but they felt I'm assuming they felt the intentionality of, okay, but they still see us, those of us who are here, that intentionality to do these, a number of different things that just communicate that you're not ignoring the it's, it's that sensitivity, it's the empathy of recognizing, trying to anticipate what are the staff feeling, what are they experiencing, and how do we just try to keep moments of connection, reinforcing the elements of our culture, that we want to be true about who we are, and so I love that.
Speaker 2:You know it wasn't one episodic thing, it was very much, you know, deliberate. What's a constant drip of attention we can give to saying, hey, this is who we are, this is how we work together, this is what matters to us and finding different ways to do that. And I love what you said about a champion who is not necessarily the senior leader, because they've got plenty to fool with, but somebody who has enough authority to really influence those rhythms and systems that affect the staff. So helpful, so helpful.
Speaker 1:And I think it was key for it was symbolic. But we changed my title somewhere in about a year before that, we changed my title to executive pastor of culture and campuses instead of just campuses, and I think that was it was symbolic. There was no you know, nothing else came with it except just words on a card, but it would communicate to our staff that this really matters to us, like we're actually putting you know one of our highest level staff on this, because this matters to us. Yeah, one other thing, Jenni, that we did in that season was like created a way to honor our legacy staff.
Speaker 1:And by legacy. It was the folks that were, you know, with this kind of pre-transition, pre-pastoral transition and pre kind of all the junk we've gone through in 2018, because we had, you know, this big trust gap and if you imagine, if you've been on staff at a church or any organization for 10 or 15, in some cases, 30 or 40 years, we had some staff and then a bunch of like U Haas come in and you know you get people from the outside that are now in these key positions that you just have to rebuild that trust. And so one thing we did we just really wanted to honor the staff that had like put in the hours and the blood and the sweat and the tears, and so we started in I think it was November of last year of 22, we could just call it mile marker celebrations, and so this was the first time we did it. We had some makeup work to do, because we had a hundred and I think it was 108 people who'd been with us five years or longer, and so we wanted to celebrate them really well. So we had some things, some minor things for one year, three years, but at five years, we really wanted to like put a stake in the ground and really value those people really well.
Speaker 1:We just had these like highways, like if you look on the side of the highway. I should have brought one here. But you get these highway signs that says mile marker 13 or 18 or 22 or whatever. So our mile markers are by the five. So at five, 10, 15, 20, so on. You get a new mile marker says Willow at the bottom, but otherwise it's symbolic, right.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's not, it doesn't cost the church a lot of money, but you'll see them hanging all over our offices where people, we get someone up there on the stage, we celebrate them, we say some nice things about them, we give them their mile marker, we give them a little bit of cash as well, just to say thanks. And then we do that every five years.
Speaker 2:we bring those people up.
Speaker 1:And then on the 10 year 10, 20, 30, and we actually had some at 40, they get an extra three weeks of vacation. So we just kind of say, hey, we want you to take on top of the vacation you already have. Take an extra three weeks this year because we just honor you. That was a difficult thing to do because, again, because we were making it up this year in 2023, we had 62 different staff taking an extra three weeks of vacation. So you think of the cost for just moving things forward, but for us, our lead team said it's worth the cost. Like we have to do this for what we're building in the long term. We're not. It's not just about this year. We're building this for the long haul.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that story so much. And you had people who acknowledge, like you know, had not really been terribly recognized for their longevity, isn't that right? Like the, the, the, just the recognition and the awareness of their contribution was really meaningful to several folks, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:I think it happened to some degree on teams, but churchwide that hadn't been a focus as I understand it in our history. So I think it was a really special thing because of that, especially for those that have been around for a really long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was gonna say especially for those. I mean it's crazy that you had people there 20, 30, 40 years and how much they had weathered through all of those seasons. You know, I mean that longevity on any organization is a big deal, but when you've also gone through some, you know some significant transitions, that's a big deal to to stay through that and to feel honored and that is really big. Talk about some of the other rhythms that you guys created to reinforce culture. I know, like from the values talking about those regularly. So what are some of the other things that you guys kind of put in place to keep some of the core cultural elements front and center?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we just knew it would take and you said two to three years. We felt like, because of what we had come through, is probably three to five for us. That before, like the, the culture would be at a level where we could say it's healthy, it's really healthy, and before the values would be part of the air we breathe. But but because of that we just wanted to like have some rhythms, some cadences that would build into that.
Speaker 1:So a few things that we do. A value of the month. So it's not just they don't just hang on a wall or, you know, sit on their employee handbook, but every month there's a value focus and with that value focus we'll take like, let's say, the value of the month is I've got them in front of me commit the candor. We would take that month. We would take one staff meeting, one staff chapel and we would spend 15 or 20 minutes on that value and we'd have someone teach it or just kind of talk through it from like a life perspective. And I don't think we've yet used anyone like from the leadership team.
Speaker 1:So we're just picking, like people that just are on staff that like really embody that value and ask them would you come up and talk about that value? One of our guys you know he's like he was on our facility team. He's like I've never held a microphone before, like it was such a cool moment for him to be able to talk about that value but he embodied it so we wanted him to be the one to talk about it. We'll take that same value and in our newsletter comes out every two weeks staff newsletter and we'll have someone record just a two or three minute iPhone video and we'll put that at the top of the newsletter that they're just talking about what that value needs to them and how they plays out in their life. We use a leadership development software called leader and in there we'll build in questions.
Speaker 1:So and this wasn't quite in the water yet, we were still working on it, but we had every month we would have four questions around that value. So if commit to candor the value, were focused on that month, one of the questions might be you know how's our team doing with commit to candor, or what's one thing our team could do better to commit to candor? And we just ask our leaders. Just take one meeting that month with your team and pick a question or pick a couple of questions, take five minutes, maybe 10 minutes, out of a meeting and just talk through it, because it just drives it deeper and it gets it past. You know what's Willow doing and it's like what am I doing as a manager, what's my team doing, what's my personal responsibility?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love that, and it's the when I often encourage organizations and leaders that look for the rhythms you already have and then just add this in. You know, so you were talking about, like staff chapels, talking about a value, every staff chapel and I love having different team members share that and share their personal application and story of it, cause so it doesn't have to be overly complicated and it doesn't have to be led by executive leaders, and in fact, it's actually better when the team are talking about these things using the newsletter, like these are these are rhythms you already have, but just purposely inserting those values, which I always say. You know, values aren't the only thing. That's culture, but they are the anchors of culture, right? They give language and framework, for this is who we are and how we work together as a team. And so looking for where can I just infuse those into rhythms that already occur, and then what you're seeing is they're they can't not bump into it.
Speaker 2:That's what you're looking for, right? Like, how do we, how are we constantly reinforcing those values in a different way? That just helps, helps our team just become more and more familiar with it. So I love that. I love that so much so good. Changing gears a little bit, Tim, as you guys worked through some of just a lot of the right sizing of the organization, making some of the necessary changes. One of the things that most recently you did was led to a bit of a transition for yourself, so will you talk a little bit about that? Here you are, xp culture champion and helping lead through all of this, and then now you're embarking on a little bit of a transition. So give everybody the update there and then maybe how you even got to that place, as you're making decisions on behalf of the organization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll be glad to, because when I tell this, people say you did what? Because they think I'm a little bit crazy, which might be true. So we came to us describing a lot about 2022 and we had to go through some pretty significant layoffs in May of 2022. And then just our building culture again Really just saw lots of great things happening with our staff, with our teams, with our campuses through the rest of that year and early this year. And then we got to about May of this year and as a lead team, we realized we were like this short, we hadn't quite right sized our budget, and so we knew we. But we also knew like we've done about everything we can, like we've tightened the belt as much as we possibly can, we don't want to lay off staff, we don't want to go through staff layoffs. But we also knew like we've got it right sized, we've got to get our budget balanced, and so I just began kind of thinking about that. I'm an internal processor, I'm an Enneagram 5 researcher, so just began really processing that on my own leading up to this meeting we were going to have with our lead team to come up with ideas, and I just felt a strong leading, to just offer up my position to say you know what? We've got three executive pastors. We needed three executive pastors in this season that we've been, you know, basically kind of reinventing everything. But I think for this next season we could simplify at the top and and thus find some savings, and not just my salary, but we could probably simplify it and not need to fill other positions that were open and things like that. And so I went to the day I'm at our senior pastor is a good friend and I just said hey, I think I hope you say no because I don't want to leave, but I think you should say yes, I think you should eliminate my position.
Speaker 1:This was late May of this year and he did what I thought he would do. He said no. He said let's don't don't. He said do you ever call anyone? You haven't told anyone else. Have you said no, no, no, this is just you and I. And he said well, don't, don't tell anyone yet, let's just think about that. We got together two days later and he'd been thinking about this is OK, this is probably worth a conversation. I'm still not a fan of it, but it's probably worth the conversation. So we pulled some others into that conversation and, long story short over the next month, decided that was the right decision. And then it was just a matter of transition plan.
Speaker 1:But and I had people related to culture. I people in that press staff found out that I was leaving there, like so are we not? Just will not care about culture anymore? It's like like guys, that is that it was not. I was running point on it, but that was not. I was not the only one passionate about this. So I just had to say over and over and over and over no, absolutely this. This lead team, this team, still cares deeply about culture and this is still my church. I told the staff I'm not leaving. This is my church. I'm moving from a staff seat over to a hopefully really faithful volunteer seat and and still have an opportunity to spend time with with the lead team, in fact, Dave Dumas, it's the senior pastor and he and I play pickleball just about every Friday. So it's fun to just have fun with him and just talk about life and ministry.
Speaker 2:That's so good. That's so good. I love that. The team was like what about culture? Because you know I mean so again you had identified the value of this, you had put it in your job title, you were championing this and that was, you know, that was their concern, that was their question. You know, as I mean, I'm sure, among other things because you know you were such an influential leader in that, in that such a key season, and so what are some of the things that you did to help ensure, you know, the rest of the lead team is on board? They were, you know, committed to the culture work as well. Did you make any adjustments in who was taking leadership or responsibility for the culture work? Has that, has that sorted itself out yet?
Speaker 1:Well, little known secret is that Emily Southfield, who you've met, and Emily is 10 times better than me in a lot of things, and so she was making me look really good on the culture stuff. So she's still there and she's still engaged and helping the lead in the culture stuff and it's growing up to one of the executive pastors who is still there and who also cares deeply and it's passionate. He's been at Willow for a long time and cares a ton about culture.
Speaker 2:So I feel like they probably aren't missing a beat because we I think we've been through a lot, but Emily was, she was your right hand and all of that, so she really was helping champion that as well.
Speaker 1:Or I was her right hand. I mean you look at it.
Speaker 2:You look at it, that's great.
Speaker 1:We laid a lot of groundwork with just like philosophy, with rhythms, with cases, with kind of what we did. Yeah, they'll be building on and, I think, being a really good place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so good. Well, and they've all embraced it right. That was the power of we assembled that culture team, which we talked about in the last episode that you were on. But you built that culture team. You had so many internal champions. It wasn't just you from an executive pastor seat trying to drive it. We got that buy-in from team members from throughout the organization who became those culture carriers as well.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, that's continuing to just expand out to the team and so having a point leader who is the one waking up, thinking about okay, are we staying consistent with those rhythms we've defined? Are we keeping it front and center? It's kind of just testing where are we and how are we doing is really key. But I love that you just set that up. You set that up for the future, which is huge. I think there's probably some leaders listening who have been through a transition or who are anticipating a transition, and I think it would be. This is not necessarily directly related to culture, but I think it would be great to hear from you. What did you do to prepare for a transition and what advice would you give to other leaders that need to transition, because I think how you, transition does have an impact on culture, but it significantly impact on the organization. So I think, just coaching on how do we leave well, how do we transition well, I think it's very valuable to hear.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a couple of thoughts on that. One is Once it's out that you're leaving, you can tend to be a magnet for people who are also thinking about leaving.
Speaker 1:And their reason probably isn't your reason, but they think it's their reason. So you can be a this did not happen much, but just a little bit. But you can tend to be a dumping ground for people who are unhappy and think that you're unhappy too. And I just had to keep saying I'm not leaving because I'm unhappy. I'm leaving, hopefully, to all the resources so this place can continue to thrive. But I think you have to. If I've been in ministry for 38 years, I've left four organizations, three organizations coming before. So I think you have to. Once you've made that decision and you're leaving, you have to turn into the greatest cheerleader for the organization. And I want to give you caveat If it's an integrity thing or the power abuse thing or whatever, set that aside.
Speaker 2:Different story.
Speaker 1:If the place is healthy and there hasn't been those things, and I think you just become the greatest cheerleader and anything. And every person in any organization has things they would love to change and things they don't like. Any of those things they go in the backfiling cabinet in your brain and you never talk about it, you never bring up, because what's important is helping the people come behind you, succeed, helping the place thrive. It's not about a self-focused thing on. This is who I am and I'm better than the place I'm leaving, or this is what I tried to do and they just wouldn't listen. It's none of that and that's really important because people do remember more about how you leave than they do about the time you serve them there, and we've all been in places where someone leaves and just puts a sour taste in their mouth and it makes it hard for us to move forward because of that noise that's happening on a blog or in conversations or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's so helpful. I had a mentor tell me your leaving is don't make it about you, make it about them Meaning what do you want them to remember? How do you want to invest in the rest of the staff team as you step out? And that was such a helpful framing because one of the organizations that I was leaving, I deeply loved everybody and it was just truly I was moving on to something different. And so, just being thoughtful and intentional with what do I want them to remember about our time together? How do I want to invest in them?
Speaker 2:And one of the coaching suggestions I got was write a note to every team member.
Speaker 2:Now, that might have been a little harder with the size of Willow, but the size of team that I was a part of it was still it's like 70 team members.
Speaker 2:So it was not a small task, but it actually made me. What was fascinating about it is it caused me to pause and reflect on each person that I'd had such a privilege to work with for almost a decade in that particular organization, and it made me so grateful for the season I was there. So it was so helpful to me from just being grateful, valuing the individuals, telling them what I valued about them, what I saw in them, what I believed about them, and it was like a therapeutic for me. I hope it was helpful to them, but it was. I just loved that coaching from this friend who was like make it about them, not about you, and that was so incredibly helpful. So I appreciate your thoughts there as well, because I think how we leave just matters so much, and I think we're saying a lot and we're communicating a lot, we're leading a lot in, even in how we leave an organization, so that's super, super powerful.
Speaker 1:So this won't work for everyone, but I mean for me. It was an audible response when I said I'm actually not leaving. This is my church, I'm staying, I'm just leaving staff. There was a like, and I think it's just because you know, there's a lot of former Willow folks that have left differently and some for really good reasons, and so I think it was just a sense of like, oh like, he still likes us.
Speaker 2:He's not leaving because he's unhappy. It's not a rejection, or yeah, yeah, yeah, that's big.
Speaker 1:No, not everyone can do that. Sometimes you're leaving because you're moving or whatever, so but that made a big difference here.
Speaker 2:Yeah that, that. That makes sense. That's good. So tell us what you're doing now. Give everybody a picture of what your world looks like now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so about 20 years ago I kind of started as a side hustle even though back then we didn't call them side hustles, but on the side I was coaching executive pastors and I started blogging. It was in 2004 and I don't even remember why I chose the name Leading Smart, but that became the name of my blog. So fast forward to now I'm kind of ramping. I'm ramping Leading Smart up to be a company that's all about helping church leaders and helping churches thrive. So that looks a lot, a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1:What I'm engaged with right now is coming alongside senior leaders and senior teams, kind of as a strategic advisor, and just helping them, you know, kind of see what they can't see because they're in the in the daily grind. And sometimes that looks like succession helping them with either succession plan or helping them actually transition if they've already got the person, the successor there. Sometimes it's with culture stuff. So working with your stuff, Jenni, the lead culture framework and helping organizations just unlock what they need to do with culture and then raise up about how you can figure how to embed those in the organization. I'm working with some churches on board dysfunction or just helping them become healthier, have healthier boards which, for whatever reason I get drawn to, board dysfunction and I like to help disentangle it. People think I'm crazy about that too.
Speaker 2:But that's such a big piece of healthy church structure so I love that you do that.
Speaker 1:And then continue to pour into executive pastors. I feel a heart and passion for executive pastors so I do a monthly cohort that's virtual. And then I've got two gatherings coming up, one in Orlando and one in Anaheim, southern California, both in February, which I'm excited about. We've got 40 spots for each, and Orlando is a little more than a half full and I'm getting close to half full.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's awesome. Okay, I want to come back to the gatherings because I want you to tell everybody about those, but before I do, my last question for you you are, you do so much work with senior leadership teams, xps, exec leaders. What are some of the biggest challenges that you're seeing people facing right now? What are I mean? I feel like we're still, you know, we keep hoping that the dust will settle and like we'll find some level of normalcy, and I think we still just are feeling different challenges and I guess that's leadership. But what are you seeing, you know, just as biggest challenges? And then, what do you think leaders should be paying attention to for it? You know, as we move towards 2024 here, in a short, bit short time, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what they're facing which is, I think, relatively new the last four or five years COVID definitely exacerbated it is just the complexity of leading people, and some of that's just employment law. You're taking someone on your staff through a performance improvement plan and they think it's power abuse and then you have to. It just gets all muddy and then it's like we don't want them to sue us and have a how to move forward. It's all the stuff that little, medium sized, big churches are having to deal with. That's incredibly complex I think we're dealing with.
Speaker 1:Another big thing I hear is like how to care well for our staff mental health. There's a lot of people that have actually been through trauma. There's also a lot more people who say they've been, they say they're being traumatized, and so how do you differentiate those as a leader so you can offer proper help, and what's our responsibility as an employer, as a pastor of the staff? That's really complex. There's a lot of just nuances. We spent two decades trying to figure out how to lead millennials. Now we're trying to figure out how to lead Gen Z. Right, that's right, and it's just a different beast and a lot of. I was with the church this weekend where they have a pretty good pipeline with a like internships and so forth. So they're hiring a lot of people like right out of their internship that it's their very first job ever, and so that's challenging when you're actually having to help them with life skills and they're feeling like what I have to show up for this meeting. You know it's just like you're just trying to help them, like navigate basic skills.
Speaker 1:And that's really complex. I would think. So the your second question. I think, like more than ever, community is really important, so you can get that in your church. It's hard when you're a pastor at your church or staff person at your church. I think you should be. If your church, if part of your spiritual development is small groups, I think you should be in small groups, kind of engage in that. But sometimes you need someone that's not in the weeds with you, really good friends, that can just kind of help you, kind of lift you up to get out of the weeds a bit, and so I would I think that's becoming more important than ever. I've had that throughout my time of people like in other states and other places where, if I need to whine a little bit.
Speaker 1:I can whine and they can bring me back to, yeah, context and but I think that's huge, because mental health issues it isn't. It is real, and even our own, you know. We all learn that I think. I think we all became aware of that during COVID. When it's like you may have felt like that wasn't a thing for you. When it's like, oh wow, like I'm going crazy, like you know, I'm really lonely or I feel very isolated or I can't win, and that kind of became top of mind for a lot of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's big. That's big and just your perspective on that and I think you know probably most leaders listening are like, yep, that resonates. I can, I can, I can resonate with some of those, both the challenges and then what we need to be focused on and paying attention to, so so helpful. Okay, Tim, before I let you go, we need to hear about more about the XP gatherings coming up in 2024 and February, so tell us more about those, how we can find out details and get registered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's. They're called XP gatherings, which is a lame name, but I couldn't figure out what to call them because it's not a conference and because I'm kind of I'm not anti conference, I, but like conferences don't, don't do it for me, like that's not where I have my best experience or my best learning opportunity. So it's more like getting just like people that are sitting in the same seat I am and let's just talk like what is it you're dealing with? What's your challenge? What am I dealing with? So that's that's what I've created. I'm one of them and I'm capping them at 40 people each for that reason, because I feel like you get much more than that and you're probably not going to be able to be able to. It's gonna feel more like a conference. You're not going to break shoulders as much with people, but so I don't have any speakers. So who are the experts? The experts are the people that sign up. So what I do is like, three or four weeks before we actually get there is I pull those people and say what's top of mind for you, like what are your challenges? What are you hoping to engage on? What are those topics are?
Speaker 1:And we just create discussion around it. So we'll spend time at like, either in a U shape or roundtables, and just like talking as a group about the topics that are most important to that group. And then we have a lot of hang time. So intentional long breaks, long meals, some experiences we're doing together in both locations. We've got a Disney experience plan, so just some fun kind of things, because I feel like the people when they walk away that they're probably going to be talking more about a conversation they had with someone else than they are about anything they heard from the front, because they're not going to hear much in the front. I'm just going to facilitate some really good conversations and discussions. We're going to eat really good, we're going to stay at a really nice place Perfect and some people are to because they're both kind of in Disney locations in February. Some people are tagging on or adding on time with either their spouse or their kids or whatever, which is really encourage.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I am such a fan of that kind of learning environment. I think my best learning as a leader has always come from those smaller gathering events where you really are learning from your peers and less from speakers from the front. So love that. Where do we go to get details?
Speaker 1:Yeah, go to leadingsmart. com, perfect, and you'll see a tab at the top that says gatherings. I think there's also a graphic there on the front page, and I've got a discount code for your constituents and we'll put this in the notes too, but it's 4sightxp, so the number 4sightsp, and that'll give them $50 off to either location.
Speaker 2:Yay, awesome, thank you for that. And leaders, if you are in an executive pastor seat and Tim, you don't have to have an executive pastor title, right, it's just if you're in like that second chair type of role, this is the right environment for you.
Speaker 1:Yes, so executive directors, operations, pastors I'll stand up with, like entire lead teams. I have a church that just signed up last night. They're bringing their entire executive team, so anyone who's like in a second what I would call a second chair position will gain a ton from this. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, this is going to be fun. Thank you for that. Thanks for sharing today, catching us up on all the work that you did with Willow, hearing about what you're doing now and the ways you're serving churches. So I would encourage everybody make sure you go to leadingsmartcom one of the best ways to find you. Tim, how else can we connect with you Any?
Speaker 1:other good ways. There is a easy link on that homepage that says let's talk, and so you click that and you'll pop up on my calendar and I'll have a smile on my face because I get to meet someone new and just talk about your challenges and see how we can maybe help you. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, tim. Thank you so much. I appreciate your friendship, your leadership and just getting to continue to do really fun and good work together. So thanks for encouraging leaders today.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Jenny.
Speaker 2:Okay, friends, so many good ideas, thoughts and insights from Tim on this week's episode. It was great to hear just some of the follow up and it's a journey, right Like there's no perfect team, there's no perfect culture, and it takes patient and persistent work to lead through culture change. And I'm just so grateful for the work that Tim and the rest of the staff have done at Willow Creek to keep moving in the right direction. So I hope you enjoyed some of those stories, got some great ideas from that conversation. Now, I shared a lot of stuff with you today, especially at the top of the episode. So I want to remind you, go check out the On the Rise newsletter OntheRiseNewslettercom. Go there to get signed up for Cary Newhoff's newsletter all about faith, culture, the future, truth and the future Culture, the future church and other fun, curious content. You want to go check that out.
Speaker 2:Ladies, if you are ready to dive into one of our Women in Leadership groups, go to getforsight. com/ women in leadership. The group is filling up now. Early bird registrations ends December 8th, so you've got just a short time to get yourself signed up and committed to growth next year. And then, if you are an XP Tim talked about his XP gathering coming up in the new year. So go to leadingsmart. com and use code 4sightxp to get $50 off your registration. We'll have all those links in the show notes.
Speaker 2:I hope again that this got you thinking. It gave you some different hooks, some different ideas, some different ways to think about how to lead well and how to build great culture. Let me know what you thought. Connect with us on Instagram or Facebook at get4sight, that's G-E-T, the number four, s-i-g-h-t, or you can find me at Jenni Catron. We're also at LinkedIn at the 4sight Group, and I would love it if you would share the episode with another leader. If you haven't done it yet, would you leave that five star review? Let us know. Give us some feedback, so important for us to continue to build a resource that serves you well. And actually I am in the throes of my planning for 2024 for the podcast. So, seriously, your ideas matter. Email me at podcast at get4sightcom. And I think that's everything for today. Friends, I hope you have an amazing week and keep leading well, and we'll see you next time.