Ever been flummoxed by a team member's dip in performance and wondered how it could be sensitively addressed in a church setting? That's precisely what we're unpacking in our latest Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Your host, Todd Rhoades of chemistrystaffing.com, navigates the often murky waters of managing underperformance within the church staff, ensuring the mission remains unhindered. We dissect the telltale signs - from dwindling motivation to a decline in engagement - and ponder their impact on the church's effectiveness, as well as their perception among the team.
This episode takes a compassionate approach to a challenge that can seem overwhelming. We're not just discussing strategies; we're imbuing our supervisory role with a pastoral heart, understanding that behind every underperforming individual could be a misaligned role, a question of capability, or even personal life crises. By addressing issues early and with accountability, we aim to support our fellow staff members back to thriving productivity, all within the caring embrace of church leadership. Tune in for an enlightening session on fostering a dynamic and healthy church community.
Ever been flummoxed by a team member's dip in performance and wondered how it could be sensitively addressed in a church setting? That's precisely what we're unpacking in our latest Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Your host, Todd Rhoades of chemistrystaffing.com, navigates the often murky waters of managing underperformance within the church staff, ensuring the mission remains unhindered. We dissect the telltale signs - from dwindling motivation to a decline in engagement - and ponder their impact on the church's effectiveness, as well as their perception among the team.
This episode takes a compassionate approach to a challenge that can seem overwhelming. We're not just discussing strategies; we're imbuing our supervisory role with a pastoral heart, understanding that behind every underperforming individual could be a misaligned role, a question of capability, or even personal life crises. By addressing issues early and with accountability, we aim to support our fellow staff members back to thriving productivity, all within the caring embrace of church leadership. Tune in for an enlightening session on fostering a dynamic and healthy church community.
Hey there, welcome to this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes and I am one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom. Today, we're going to be talking about a sensitive issue. We all work on a church staff and, unless you're a solo pastor which is great work a lot of times we have people around us on our staff that are serving with us, and sometimes there's somebody on the team that just is underperforming. They're just not pulling their weight, and this could be for any number of reasons, and we're going to talk about it today. And the first thing we want to talk about is how do you identify the signs? Is it a lack of motivation? Is it reduced productivity? Is it a negative attitude? Is it decreased involvement? All of these things can really contribute. We're going to talk about that here in a second. All of those things can contribute to at least a sense that someone on your team is underperforming. Then the next thing to look at is this Do you really see, is this impacting the church's effectiveness, your effectiveness as a staff? Is it affecting the church's mission? Your staff notice? Is this something that's just rattling around in your head or is this something that you know? The staff. Other staff are noticing.
Speaker 1:
Here's the main rule that I wanted to share with you today. It's really easy to get upset when you've got a coworker that's underperforming. But here's the thing you have to approach this and the staff member with patience and with humility and care. You've got to treat this as a pastoral issue, not just an administrative one. If you're working at a law office or an accounting firm, you don't have to treat it as a pastoral issue. But this is the church and you need to steward the spiritual aspect of this as well. It's not just administrative. Always approach it with the heart of a pastor and not as a manager. I understand that this may be a colleague. It may not be someone that you are their manager I'm speaking to managers here but even if it's someone that's a colleague and maybe on the org chart you are maybe in different departments or you're equals it's still important that you approach this person and talk with this person with the heart of a pastor and the heart of a church leader.
Speaker 1:
The best way to prevent future underperformance is to address it early and with care and accountability. Now I'm speaking to supervisors and those that if you feel like you've got a staff member that reports to you that's underperforming. What do you do about that? Again, address it early and address it with some accountability. The first thing I think you really need to ask is what's the real issue here? It could be a number of different things.
Speaker 1:
The real issue with underperformance? It could be they're just in the wrong seat on the bus, maybe they're a fish out of water. Maybe are they called to ministry first of all, and are they called? Are they in the right position? Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. But if they're not called or they're not in the right position, if they're not passionate about what they're doing, then that could be a real reason for their underperformance. Maybe they're not qualified, maybe they just don't have the innate skills. That's a little bit more difficult of a problem to have. But maybe they're just in over their head and they don't know what to do. Maybe it's not a qualification problem, but maybe it's a motivation issue. Maybe they're here Unfortunately yeah, this happens in the church. Maybe they're lazy. Are they proactive? Are they motivated? Do they want to lean in? We talk a lot of chemistry about their people that lean in and their people that that kind of sit back and zone out. So are they leaned in or are they zoned out? And then finally, and a lot of times we disqualify these and don't even think about it.
Speaker 1:
But are there life issues? Is this something that's just started or have they been like this for a long time? Or is this kind of you know, they used to be great and then, just you know, here, the last two, three months, they've just gone off the game. A lot of times there's some life issues. Maybe they're going through a life crisis that you don't know about. Maybe it's a marriage issue, maybe it's a trouble with their family or their kids, maybe it's aging parents, maybe they're going through some kind of financial stress or financial pressure. All of those life issues can really affect, at least in the short term, their overall job performance and maybe make you feel like they're underperforming.
Speaker 1:
So what do you do? You've identified maybe it's a calling, maybe they're not qualified, maybe they're unmotivated, maybe they've got some life issues. But what do you do now that you've identified? Hey, this is not going well, this person is not performing up to par and if it's not already, it very well could impact the rest of the staff and impact our church's mission. So what do I do.
Speaker 1:
Here's some recommendations I have for you. First of all, set some really clear expectations. Unclear roles lead to confusion, and they lead to frustration, and they lead to duplication of efforts, and what I've found is a lot of times with coworkers that are underperforming and this is rocket surgery right here. Write this down, take out a pencil. The underperforming employee either knows that they're underperforming or they have no clue. It's not usually somewhere in the middle. One of the reasons that they do underperform, though, is because they don't know what's expected of them, and that's on you.
Speaker 1:
If you've not given clear expectations, if you've not created some kind of a detailed job description, if you've not outlined key tasks very specifically, maybe everybody doesn't need that, and you don't need to micromanage. We just talked about that earlier this week. Some people need a little bit more rope, some people need a little bit less rope, but everybody needs to know what's expected and what their clear expectations are. So set some measurable goals and outcomes for each role, and reemphasize how each role contributes to the church's mission. That really provides meaning in the work that they're doing, and then set clear expectations, and then set some performance benchmarks, clear metrics, clear timelines for success, schedule one-on-one meetings to provide feedback.
Speaker 1:
These can't be a once a year conversation. If you're not happy with someone's performance, don't have a come to Jesus moment with them one day and then not say anything for the next year. You have to provide regular one-on-one, very specific, very personalized feedback, adjust goals if they're needed, based on changing priorities, and hook them up with some training and some mentors If they're in over their head or they don't know what to do. And even the smallest win, celebrate it. Celebrate that win and celebrating wins will actually help motivate sometimes even the most unmotivated people to make some continuous improvement. So clearly to define the roles, pair them with a coach and support, make sure they have that communication that they have.
Speaker 1:
And if you don't see and much of this can just be good communication at the beginning we're not talking initially about performance improvement plan, pip as we like to call it, although that could come at a later date if you don't start to see some improvement there, and there are times where that those things need to be put in place. But if I can just encourage you, if you've got somebody that's just frustrating and you don't feel like they're pulling their weight, it's time for you not to zone out, but to lean in, work with that person, try to identify their motivation, why they're underperforming. Is it a skill issue? Is it a calling issue? Is it a motivation issue? Is it something else they're going through with life? And then, once you determine that, really try to work with them to set expectations, set benchmarks, hold them accountable and then, if that doesn't work, then yeah, we'll need to talk about more extreme measures.
Speaker 1:
If you need any kind of advice, any kind of help along these ways, these can be really thorny issues and I'd be happy to set up a consultation with you. You can reach out to me anytime at podcast at chemistrystaffincom. We do all kinds of staff coaching and we would love to be able to give you the opportunity to lean into that, if that's something that would be helpful to you. If you have any feedback or response on this podcast, I would love to hear that as well. Any kind of topics you would really love for us to talk about, you can send that in as well. Just send an email to me anytime podcast at chemistrystaffin. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you have a great weekend. We'll be back here on Monday.