The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Why Staff Exit Interviews Are Too Late to Save Your Culture
Churches often discover staff culture issues too late, only learning painful truths during exit interviews after resignations have already occurred.
• Exit interviews function more like autopsies than checkups, revealing issues when it's too late to fix them
• If team members only speak truth on their way out, that signals a culture problem, not just a communication issue
• Staff often feel honesty equals disloyalty, creating unsafe environments for feedback
• Quarterly "stay interviews" provide proactive opportunities for honest conversation
• Powerful questions include "What's frustrating you?" and "What might make you think about leaving?"
• Anonymous tools can help gather honest feedback when trust is still building
• Leaders must model vulnerability and demonstrate that honesty won't be punished
• Even with good practices, exit interviews remain valuable for identifying patterns
If you need help with exit interviews or navigating staff culture challenges, reach out at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com to learn how our team can support you.
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Most churches don't realize that their staff culture is in real trouble until somebody resigns, and by then it's too late to fix what's broken. Exit interviews often reveal painful truths about toxic church leadership and poor communication or burnout, but those insights come only after the damage is done. Today we're going to unpack why exit interviews aren't enough and what you can do as a pastor and a church staff member to help surface these hard truths earlier, and how to build a feedback culture into your church staff structure that doesn't depend on somebody quitting to get those honest answers that you really need. Hi there, thanks for joining me. My name is Todd Rhodes, I am one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom and I'm your host right here every weekday on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. So today's question is what if the most honest feedback about your church staff culture only shows up after somebody quits? We talked about this in the intro today. By the time you sit down for that exit interview, it's not just feedback, it's fallout. And if that's your only strategy for learning the truth about your team, your culture that's already in trouble, about your team, your culture that's already in trouble. So today we're gonna dive into four different things, four different ideas. I think that will help you in this area to find out this feedback before it's too late.
Speaker 1:Accident interviews let's start here. Accident interviews are the same as a postmortem right. They're not checkups. Most exit interviews are treated like autopsies. All right, we need to go in and we need to figure out what went wrong after it's too late to fix it. Now, don't get me wrong. Exit interviews are incredibly important and whenever somebody resigns, you do need to do that postmortem Okay, and you might find out some things that you wish you would have known six months early. Maybe it would have changed the resignation. But you do need to do those exit interviews. And, side note, if you don't want to do those, you want a third party to do those. We do those here at Chemistry Staff and you can reach out to me. I'll give you contact information later in the podcast.
Speaker 1:But exit interviews are important, but they're not checkups. They are postmortems. They're more like an autopsy. I wish somebody had asked me this six months ago. That's what you hear a lot of times from an exiting staff member and they're finally honest because they don't have anything to lose. Right, they've already quit.
Speaker 1:But by the time you're hearing the real stuff, the burnout, the frustration, all the bad stuff and the dysfunction. It's not feedback, it's evidence, and it's often filtered through hurt or anger or disappointment, and that's just not helpful, because the damage is done and the person is leaving, and it could be somebody that you loved and somebody that you wanted to have on your team. It could be somebody that you didn't, but it could be somebody that you loved and somebody that you wanted to have on your team. It could be somebody that you didn't, but it could be somebody that you're just absolutely floored that they resigned and now you're hearing that they've not been happy for some time. So, instead of treating exit interviews like a culture barometer, you need to start asking why did we wait until somebody resigned to ask how they're really doing and if you ever do an exit interview?
Speaker 1:First of all, most churches don't do exit interviews. You always should do an exit interview and if you find that you're blindsided when you do an exit interview, the next time you get somebody that resigns, do an exit interview if you're not used to it. If you find that you're blindsided, then you really need to take note here, because you've waited too late and you've probably sacrificed some relationship and a staff member that maybe you didn't have to, so you don't have a feedback problem, you've got a trust problem. So we often say it's too late. We hear all of this Now, we're blindsided by it and so I should have asked for more feedback. It's not a feedback problem, it's a trust problem. If your team isn't speaking up before they resign, it's not just because they don't have thoughts, it's because they don't feel safe. They have thoughts and they don't feel safe bringing it to you Okay. And if your team only speaks truth on their way out, that's a culture problem. It's not a communication. It is a communication problem, but primarily it's not the communication piece, it's the culture problem that your team doesn't feel comfortable with coming to leadership and saying this is what's happening to me.
Speaker 1:Leaders often say in most churches hey, we're open to feedback. You get in your staff meeting and say, hey, anybody got any feedback here? But staff often feel like honesty equals disloyalty. If you're going to confront somebody who's in charge or your pastor that has spiritual authority over you, and you try to share an honest concern, many times it's met as if you're being disloyal. And if you approach it with disloyalty, categorizing it disloyalty, you'll never get honesty from your staff, and that's just. It's a dangerous equation.
Speaker 1:So what you need isn't just more feedback forums. What you need is to change your culture. You need a culture of psychological safety where truth-telling is normal and it doesn't cost somebody their job or their reputation, truth-telling is normal and it doesn't cost somebody their job or their reputation. Many churches we talk to people we call them candidates, people that are looking to change church jobs, and a lot of times they tell us that just, I'm in a bad culture where I cannot. Things are going horribly wrong and I have no one that I can confide in because I would lose my job. So I'm looking for another job and will resign when I find another job. That's just a horrible way to set up your culture.
Speaker 1:So how do you create a culture of ongoing truth-telling? And can I tell you this this is not in my notes, but the biggest obstacle to an ongoing truth-telling culture is leaders don't want it. They don't want to know what the truth is, because the truth might incriminate their leadership or the truth might make them uncomfortable, or the truth might mean that they need to lead differently. So how do you create this culture of ongoing truth? First of all, you have to fess up and say things are not good here and we need to make it better. I need to make it better.
Speaker 1:How do you get better insight than what you get in an exit interview? You build pre-exit rhythms that just allow for honest conversation. Maybe you try quarterly stay interviews, okay, instead of exit interviews? Maybe do a quarterly stay interview, simple one-on-one check-ins with questions like hey, what's frustrating you right now? Todd, I would never ask my staff. Why won't you ask your staff what's frustrating? It's probably, if you're not asking your staff what they're frustrated with, either you don't care or you don't want to know. It's really important that you ask these kind of things, and what I'm suggesting is maybe once a quarter, maybe once every six months, maybe once a year, I don't know. I think once a year is too far, but this should be a regular rhythm. I love the idea of a stay interview what's frustrating you right now?
Speaker 1:Here's another question what's one thing you wish leadership would hear? What do you want to tell me? There's no repercussions here, you're not going to lose your job. I'm not going to think you're disloyal, but what's one thing that you wish leadership would hear? What's one thing that you wish you could tell me without any repercussions. What are you thinking about your future here? What's making you think about leaving, even a little? If you were to leave in the next six months or a year, why would it be? These are some really powerful questions. They're proactive questions. They're not reactive. You're not waiting for someone to resign. You're not waiting for somebody to tell you this in an exit interview when they're off and they've got their van packed and they're ready to go to a new church. This is very proactive. Go to a new church. This is very proactive.
Speaker 1:So use some anonymous tools, even if you need to. You can use them sparingly, but use them strategically. One of the things that we have coming up this fall is a healthy church staff assessment that we do. We've done it the last two years, we're going to do it again, and we've used this individually to help staff members know how healthy they are in their current role. But we also have options for churches to come and see, using this anonymous tool, how their staff is doing, and we can even give the same assessment to your leadership team and your board to try and determine is everybody on the same page here? What are our blind spots.
Speaker 1:It's really important that you normalize this leadership vulnerability, and that is so absent in many churches. If leaders don't model honesty, then your team won't either. So here's the key you don't wait for somebody to leave to hear the truth. You've got to ask for the truth. You've got to ask those questions proactively, and you need to do it early. And then, when you hear that feedback, need to do it early. And then, when you hear that feedback, you have the information that you can change the trajectory of the future for that staff person, if that's what needs to happen. So you get the information beforehand when you can actually take steps on it, and then you do something about it. And then, when somebody does leave because people leave teams all the time that's why I have a job and I'm thankful for that. But I wish honestly, I wish people never had to leave their church, because that's long-term ministry, is where it's at baby, and when you're constantly moving around, it really cuts into the amount of ministry work that you can do. So don't waste the moment when somebody does leave.
Speaker 1:Yes, exit interviews they're too late to save your culture, but they're still valuable if you use them right. So, instead of defending your decisions or explaining things away. Listen for themes, watch for repeated patterns and document that truth that you're hearing without spinning it. Okay, I hope this has been helpful to you. My advice to you just on the way out here today if you're not doing exit interviews, when you do have a resignation, you need to do an exit interview. And if things are sour or you don't want to do them yourself because we talked yesterday about the family in ministry maybe you don't want to talk to your brother or sister about why they're leaving Reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. We can do a third-party exit interview and actually I would recommend that because they will tell us things that maybe they won't tell you.
Speaker 1:But when you have a resignation and exit interview absolutely vital to figure out what happened there. Again, it's an autopsy. You're dissecting what went wrong or why they're leaving, and sometimes that's a great reason. But you need to know that information. But I would say, man, take that, stay, interview and run with that, schedule time with your team. Ask them those vulnerable questions about how they're doing, what they're frustrated with, why they would leave, if they're even thinking about leaving. Take that and you have to go into it with a spirit of no. I want to know what people are thinking. I want to know what the culture is. If you have your head in the sand, you're just going to end up with more resignations on your desk and more exit interviews to do or not do.
Speaker 1:That's the encouraging word for today. It really is an encouraging word. Be proactive. That's one way, that's a great way to build a long-term, healthy staff. All right, if there's any way that I can help you or my team here at Chemistry Staffing can help you, we do exit interviews. I've mentioned that. You can reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. If you find yourself just stuck in your culture, you're like Todd, I've got a staff or I've got a team or our structure. Something just isn't right here and I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure how to tackle it. Reach out. I would love to have a conversation, hear your story and see if there's any way that we can come alongside and partner with you and help. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. All right, that's it for today. We will be back here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Step Podcast. Hope you have an absolutely great day.
