The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

The Lie You’re Telling Yourself About Staff Fit

Episode 453
In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, host Todd Rhoades challenges the common church hiring practice of prioritizing cultural 'fit' over competency. He argues that overvaluing 'fit' can lead to hiring staff incapable of meeting the church's needs, ultimately stifling growth and maintaining the status quo. Rhoades emphasizes the importance of defining success and responsibilities before evaluating a candidate's fit, advocating for a balance between chemistry and capacity to foster a dynamic and effective church staff.• Churches often prioritize 'fit' over competency in hiring practices.• Overvaluing 'fit' can result in a lack of capable leadership and maintain the status quo.• Rhoades advocates for defining success and needs before evaluating cultural fit.• 'Fit' often substitutes for comfort, which doesn't equal capability.• Hiring should balance chemistry with capacity and be open to candidates who challenge norms.• The analogy of hiring a worship leader for guitar skills instead of leadership skills underscores the main argument.

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SPEAKER_00:

He's the great guy. He just wasn't a great fit. Sound familiar? Churches often overvalue fit and undervalue whether somebody can actually do the job. And in today's episode, we're challenging the unspoken assumptions that we make about hiring for chemistry over competency and how it's hurting churches in the long run. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffing.com, and I'm your host right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast every Monday through Friday. I'm not sure how you found us, or if you're a regular listener or a brand new listener, or watcher, viewer, but I'm glad you're here. All right, today we're talking about staffing. And you ever hear this one? We love them. I hear this story all the time. We love them, but they just weren't a good. And sometimes I just shake my head and say, what does that even mean? So today I'm going to be really honest and I'm going to call out one of the most common and most misleading phrases in all of church staffing. Because when we say fit, somebody really didn't fit. Sometimes what we really mean is we never really define what success looks like, or else we would have never hired them in the first place. Yeah. To all my friends that have told me, hey, they just weren't a good fit. Most all of them, the second part of that comment is I would have done something differently when I hired them. So let's look at that today. What, let's start here. What we think fit means. And churches often say that they're just looking for someone who fits the culture. And that sounds good, right? We're just looking for somebody that can fit into our team, that can fit into our culture, that fits us theologically, that fits us, that just fits us. We just want a good fit, right? Everybody wants a good fit. That sounds really good. But sometimes when we just generically say, hey, we just are looking for somebody that has a good fit or that's going to be a good fit, sometimes it's almost a, can I say it, a lazy way? I'm speaking truth here today. Kind of a lazy way when we say, hey, we just want somebody with a good fit. It's a lazy way to say, hey, we want avoid hard conversations. We want to defy to default to people to hiring people who look like us and who think like us. After all, those people that are just like us are going to make really great fits. Sometimes, yes, sometimes no. Other times we just miss incredible leaders who don't immediately blend in. So when here's what I want you to think about, and this might be worth it just for listening to the podcast today to get this one kind of analogy, okay? Fit is often another word that we substitute even without even knowing it. Fit often is a substitute for comfort. And comfort doesn't always equal fit or cap capability. Okay. It's well, you can say that you want a good fit, but really you might just be looking for somebody that that looks like you, talks like you, that you know, yeah, are they gonna fit? Are they yeah, are they gonna bring you exactly what you need? Maybe not. Okay. Sometimes we overvalue this chemistry, this fit hiring. And I'm at chemistry staffing, so we chemistry is important. That's why we named our company chemistry staffing. But if you're only looking at chemistry, if you're only looking at that fit, it feels right, the chemistry. Hiring somebody who gets it but doesn't grow into the role that you really need them to do, that can sometimes be a trap. And what you end up with, if you do this over time multiple times, you can end up with a bunch of agreeable staff that are great fits, but they can't execute their way out of a paper bag. You create this monoculture where no one challenges the status quo, and you dismiss the very person who could help your team mature. Now hear me. Chemistry matters. Chemistry matters extremely it really matters a lot. But chemistry cannot carry competency. It can't. So what do you prioritize instead? You need to define success. And we just did a podcast on this on Monday. Go back and listen to it. You need to define success before you define fit. All right? Define success. What do we need this role? What do we need this person to accomplish? Define that before you find the person that you say is going to be a good fit. And then clarify the outcomes and the responsibilities and the expectations and evaluate then and only then, evaluate both the chemistry and the capacity of the person that you're thinking about hiring. You need to stay open to someone who might challenge your norms a little bit, okay, in a healthy way, because sometimes the best fit doesn't always feel like the right one. And boy, we have conversations with churches all the time where they're like, I'm just not sure. And we have to tell them sometimes the best fit doesn't feel like the right fit because you really want somebody, you want somebody that's just gonna fit in and hop on the boat and take a ride. You don't want somebody that's gonna paddle upstream a little bit when honestly you need somebody that's gonna paddle upstream a little bit. Okay. So keep your mind open and uh don't just hire for chemistry. So here's my final thought. Here's kind of the bottom line. Hiring for culture fit without competency is like hiring a worship leader because they play the acoustic guitar, not because they can lead. Okay? Those are two totally different things. Let me repeat that, okay? Because I think this is I think it's pretty profound. Hiring for culture fit without competency, hiring somebody that you like or you think is going to fit your culture, and you hire them because of that, not because of what talents or competency they bring to the table. Hiring for culture fit without competency is like hiring a worship pastor because they can play the acoustic guitar, not because they can lead. Okay? You can I've seen a lot of people that can play acoustic guitar really when they've even got the voice of an angel, but they couldn't lead their way out of a paper bag, and they can't stay on your staff very long because they can't do really what you needed them to do. They fit the team. Yeah. But they can't do what you need them to do. Alright, so what do you mean? I'd love to hear from you. What do you mean when you say somebody's not a fit? Because we've all said it, right? I want to I would love to hear from you. Podcast at chemistrystaffing.com is my email address. Send me an email if you've used this. This person seems like a really great fit, or this person wasn't a really great fit. Tell me, really dig into that. Think about that. Write it out on a piece of paper, write it in an email to me, and tell me what did you really mean? And what did you learn? Was that was fit the most important thing? Or would you, if you could have a redo on that, would you redo that higher? I'd love to hear from you. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com. I hope you'll join me again right here tomorrow. We're here every day, Monday through Friday. You can grab some time with me over a cup of coffee or I've got some Ice Mountain spring water here that I am chug-alugging this morning. So you can reach out anytime, podcast at Chemistry Staffing, and join me again right here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Have a great day.

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