The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
When the Trust Falls Apart
Trust erodes silently in church staff teams through small, consistent breaches like withholding information, avoiding hard conversations, and inconsistent leadership. When trust breaks down, staff members disengage, play defense, and create a culture of suspicion that undermines the church's mission and effectiveness.
• Trust is your team's emotional infrastructure—invisible but supporting everything
• Five trust killers: withholding information, delayed feedback, avoiding hard conversations, saying different things publicly and privately, and inconsistent leadership
• Rebuilding trust starts with naming what everyone already knows
• Consistent actions must communicate: I see you, I care about what you think, I'll follow through, and I want this to be a safe place
• The opposite of trust isn't conflict—it's fear
• Fear has no place on a healthy church staff team
Reach out to me at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com and share one small way that leaders can rebuild trust on their team. I'd love to hear your story or help your team become healthy.
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
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Trust does not break overnight. It leaks out slowly through silence, through mixed messages, hidden agendas and failed follow-throughs. And today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, we're going to take a gut, honest look at what causes trust to erode in church staff teams and what leaders can do to restore it. So if your team feels guarded or frustrated or disengaged, this might be why we're going to dig into it right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom and your host here every day, every weekday on the podcast. Thanks for joining me. Every notice how quiet the room gets in your staff meetings not a peaceful quiet, a cautious quiet, like everybody's waiting to see what they can't say. It's a symptom of trust that's broken or is breaking. And today we're talking about that slow erosion of trust on your team and how to rebuild it before it's too late. All right, let's start with the whole idea of trust and how trust breaks. Okay, Sometimes trust breaks boom, just like that, but a lot of times in fact most times trust doesn't break loudly, it just it quietly leaks. Trust rarely explodes. Sometimes it does there's a scandal or something and it explodes but a lot of times it doesn't explode, it evaporates. A promise that gets forgotten, maybe an offhand comment that wounds you or wounds somebody on the staff. Maybe there's a pattern of decisions that are made without any input. Nobody kind of knows who's making the decisions or why they're making the decisions, or the decisions don't make sense. Trust is your team's emotional infrastructure. It's invisible but it holds up everything. And when it's strong, people speak up, they take risks, they lean in. But when it's weak, when the trust is broken, when it's silently evaporating in your church and on your staff, people will play defense and they'll cover themselves. Do a little CYA action there and they'll disengage. So I want to talk about five things that I think could be quietly eroding trust on your church staff team and I'll go over these really quickly and then I'll give you some pointers on maybe what we can do to move forward.
Speaker 1:So five things that could quietly erode trust on your church staff. Number one is withholding information or transparency. If you're making decisions and not explaining kind of the thought process behind it, or you're just kind of lording decisions over people, or you're just kind of saying, hey, this is the way it is, or you're a senior pastor and say the elders want us to do this but it's really your decision. If you're withholding that kind of information or transparency, that can really quietly erode trust. Maybe you deserve to give some people you owe some people some feedback and you just haven't given it. You say you're going to but you don't. Delayed feedback is a reason. Avoidance of hard conversations you need to have a hard conversation but you don't have it. You know you need to have it. The other person knows that the conversation needs to be had but you don't have it. That's another way that you can erode trust. If you say one thing publicly but you say another thing privately, that erodes trust and it's an integrity issue, if I can be quite honest with you.
Speaker 1:Another way is just inconsistent leadership or mood-driven decisions. Do people walk on? Do they tread lightly? When you walk in the office some days, Can they tell the first two minutes? They see you what today's going to be like if they're around you. If you're moody or you're inconsistent in your leadership, it can decay trust and maybe there's just no follow-up on real concerns or suggestions. None of these things feel huge in the moment. You can get by. You can take a day or a week or even a month, and these things aren't really a big deal, but over time, they're going to create, slowly and silently, a culture of suspicion and a culture of hesitation and eventually, the culture of disengagement.
Speaker 1:Todd, how do we rebuild trust? Maybe you've got some of this stuff going on. Maybe it's been a slow burn for quite a while on your staff. If you're honest, Rebuilding trust, I really think, starts with one brave step. Okay, you ready? You ready for this? You want to rebuild trust? Here's how you do it. Start by naming what your team already knows. Hey, I know, trust has been a little thin lately. Let's talk about it. Okay, that is brave, it's a brave step, right, and it's something that you have to be a little bit vulnerable in doing.
Speaker 1:But in rebuilding trust, you have to first admit that there's been a problem. Hey, trust is not what it needs to be around here. Let's talk about it. And then, once you put that on the table, you can take consistent actions that say hey, number one, I see you. And maybe this is in a group setting, Maybe this is on an individual setting, according to where the trust is broken, but consistent things Number one, I see you. Number two, I care about what you think. Number three I'm going to follow through. And number four I want this to be a safe and an honest and collaborative place and that means I want your input, I want your opinion, Because, you see, trust just isn't rebuilt in a retreat.
Speaker 1:You can't do it in a weekend. It's rebuilt on a Tuesday afternoon in how you respond when someone brings something hard to your attention. It's built on Thursday morning when you have that hard conversation. It's built over time and it starts with acknowledging that there's a problem and figuring out exactly what you're going to do about it. So here's my final thought in the bottom line for today.
Speaker 1:Okay, the opposite of trust is not conflict. People get confused with that. They think if there's not trust, there's conflict. That's not the opposite of trust. The opposite of trust is not conflict, it's fear. And fear, my friends, has no place on a healthy church staff team.
Speaker 1:So I'd love to hear from you Reach out to me, podcast to chemistry staffing. Answer this one question for me what's one small way that leaders can rebuild trust on their team? I'd love to hear your story. Maybe you've just gotten done, or, if you're ever done, but rebuilding trust, I'd love to hear what you did and what was helpful to you. Maybe you're a place where Todd trust is broken and I need to figure out how to work it out. I'd love to talk with you and figure out how I might come alongside and help you and your team become healthy. That's really what I enjoy doing is making sure that church staff teams are healthy and get healthy. Okay, let's talk about that. Reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistry staffing. I would absolutely love to hear from you. All right, that's it for today. We're here every weekday on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Join me again right here tomorrow, Tomorrow.
