The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
When Culture Is the Problem (Not the People)
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Most churches assume turnover or morale issues or underperformance is a people problem, but more often it's not a people problem, it's a culture problem, and today we're going to unpack some of the invisible forces that are shaping your church staff culture and how they might be working against the very things that you're trying to build. Hopefully, we're going to learn together, you and I, how to diagnose cultural dysfunction and start the slow, steady process of change. Thanks for joining me. I am so glad to spend a few minutes with you here together on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at Chemistry Staffing.
Speaker 1:All right, you replaced the role twice, maybe even three times, and every time it seems like you get the same results Low energy, staff tension. They don't last long. There's a quick exit. But here's the thing it might not be the person you've hired. It might be the person you hired, but it might not be. It might be the culture that they were hired into isn't a really good, healthy culture. And today we're going to talk about what happens when some of these invisible dynamics of your team could be the real problem. All right, culture is what people feel, even if you never name it, and sometimes people will actually name their culture we're this type of culture or we're this type of culture, but that might not be the case. Culture is really how people feel. Culture isn't your value statement. It's how your team experiences and how they feel on Monday morning when they come into the office after a busy weekend of services and all kinds of obligations. How do they feel? Are they energized or are they exhausted? I often use the analogy of how do you feel, how does your staff feel when they pull into your church parking lot or the church office on a Monday morning or a Tuesday morning or a Wednesday morning? Are they energized or are they exhausted? Do they feel like they can speak up or do they feel like they need to self-censor? Does everything feel urgent and chaotic, so much so that there's no downtime, there's no time to reflect, there's no time to enjoy? Leaders create culture by what they celebrate, by what they tolerate and by what they ignore. So every church has a culture. Your church has a culture. It could be a bad culture. It could be a good culture.
Speaker 1:I want to talk during this next section here about how you can identify your culture as bad. What bad culture often looks like at a church. One of the things is that conflict is buried. It's not resolved. If you have a lot of conflict and you've not resolved it, you've got a bad culture on your hands. My friend, bad culture looks like this People don't give honest feedback because they fear the consequences.
Speaker 1:If you can't have an honest conversation with your staff and if a staff member cannot give you honest feedback without fear of retribution, guess what? You've got a bad culture. Decisions are made behind closed doors Now some decisions you have to use discretion on. But if every decision comes from the top down and it's behind a closed door and you never even say why you're making the decision or the reasons behind it, guess what? You've probably got a bad culture. If expectations change without any kind of warning, you probably have a bad culture. Performance issues are avoided instead of addressed. You've got a bad culture. I feel like Jeff Foxworthy here. You might be a redneck. If this happens, you've got a bad culture. But again, if multiple good people fail in the same role, my guess is it's not a people issue, it's structural. Guess what. You've got a bad culture. You, it's structural, guess what. You've got a bad culture.
Speaker 1:So we've talked about what culture is. We've talked about what bad culture looks like, so let's talk about how to start changing a broken culture, a bad culture. First of all, you just have to admit it. You've got to name the problem. What is not working?
Speaker 1:Ask your team what's one thing if there could be one thing that you could change at this church, on our staff, in our leadership, what's one thing that you could say out loud that you could change about the way that we work? Ask for that input and don't penalize them when they tell you what they're thinking. Document the behaviors you want more of and those that you won't tolerate. It's really important. Reinforce change in every one-on-one meeting and every team huddle. Once you decide what good culture looks like and you've written down those things that you want more of, reinforce them At staff meetings, at team huddles over lunch, in one-to-one meetings. All that is hugely important in changing culture, because you can shift a culture, but you can only shift it by consistent and intentional leadership over time. It takes time. So here's the bottom line for today If your staff culture isn't healthy, no hire will fix it, matter of fact.
Speaker 1:They will come in and they will inherit your culture. You need to fix the soil, not just the seed, and it takes time. It takes a good amount of time and a good amount of effort. Bad cultures will not fix themselves. If you wait around for them to guess what, they're going to get worse. Bad cultures always get worse. They never get better unless you intentionally work hard to fix them.
Speaker 1:How have you dealt with culture in your church? Maybe some things that you've done that have helped turn a bad culture around. I'd love to hear those things. Maybe you're in a bad culture and you're just like Todd. I need some help. Can you help me? Reach out to me. Read all the emails that come my way.
Speaker 1:Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Reach out to me, tell me your story. Let's see if there's any way that I can help you, maybe with a resource, or connect you with another person, or maybe I can help you myself. I'd love to do that when I can. All right, that's it for today's Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope it's been beneficial and helpful for you. Thank you so much. It means so much to me that you listen each and every day. If you haven't subscribed, go ahead and subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. That kind of helps the algorithm to push it out to more people so they can discover the podcast. But also we'll alert you when a new podcast comes out every morning, monday through Friday. Thanks so much. Have a great weekend. We'll be back here on Monday.
