The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Tipping Point on Your Church Staff
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Every staff has a leg. And there's a moment, a tipping point, maybe, where frustration or confusion or neglect will finally build until it spills over. And you don't always see it happening. You don't always see it coming until it's too late. Today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, I'm going to unpack what pushes some church staff members past that point of no return and how to recognize the signs before you lose your seams trust your team's trust and engagement. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at ChemistryStaffing.com, and you're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Everything seems fine until one day it isn't. One day your team's showing up, participating, smiling, getting along with each other, everything's great, and then the next, they're gone. There's no energy, the trust isn't there anymore. Maybe you can even tell it in person. We're going to talk about the tipping point, about what pushes a staff member from engaged to exhausted, and what you can do to catch it early. Okay. First thing I'd like to tell you is that it's rarely just one thing. Staff tipping points usually come from a slow build, not a single blow. Okay, so the all those little things add up. The constant miscommunications, not just one-time communication, just the constant drip of miscommunication. Maybe they feel unappreciated on a regular basis. Maybe decisions are made without anybody's input. Maybe there's no dec no clarity at all on the direction or the purpose of the church. And maybe it just feels like to your staff that there's just this emotional, almost kind of whiplash that's going on from all these shifting priorities and everything changing, but nothing ever really changing, right? So all those things alone might not seem like a big deal. And maybe they're not. But you put those all together over time and they start to wear people down. And there are some signs I think that you can see when this is coming. Okay. When does a tipping point, or let me let me rephrase, what does a tipping point look like before it actually tips? Okay, because once it tips, it's too late. You gotta do a lot of damage control. So how can you tell before this happens? Here are some things to watch for. Among your team, have you noticed, and sometimes this is a little bit seasonal when summer things slack off a little bit, but have you noticed a drop or even a sudden drop in initiative or creativity? Maybe people don't bring ideas to the table. Maybe people that used to be all in just feel like they're hanging back a little bit. Maybe tape people are taking longer breaks, maybe they're not showing up to work as much. Maybe you get some of these, and I've seen this in staff meetings, some passive aggressive comments in your meetings. Or maybe even worse, sometimes, I don't know if it's worse or not than a passive aggressive comment, but sometimes just silence. People that used to really contribute now, all of a sudden don't contribute. And the bottom line is if you're noticing that you you had staff that really used to care deeply and now they're just going through the motions, that's a good sign that something's about to happen here if you don't change course. It's easy to write these off as kind of stress or busyness, and sometimes that's what it is, but they may very be signals of something deeper. So, what do you do? What do you do if you start to notice these things? What do you do before everything breaks wide open, before that tipping point happens? Check in before you check out. Let me rephrase that. You need to check in with them before they check out on you. Okay? I'm not talking about a performance review. Don't make this a performance view review. Make it a conversation. And maybe this is something you're just noticing with one person. Maybe it's something you're noticing with a group of individuals or your whole team. Make it a conversation, an individual conversation, not a staff meeting conversation, individual conversation. Ask how you do it. And then ask, how are you really doing? How's your family? What's one thing that I could take off your plate, or what's one thing that we could change that would be better for you in your job role? What's something you wish you could say but you haven't? Because I'm gonna give you a hall pass here. You can tell me anything and there'll be no repercussions. Really, what I'm asking you to do is if you feel like there's an employee or a staff member or your team is headed down this road, it is your job as a leader. I think it's really imperative, and you might even have to do this today if this is something that's happening in your church and on your staff. You need to reset the tone. You gotta be honest with yourself. You gotta be honest with a staff member. Be honest, tell the truth about what's been chaotic. Share that invite, invite that shared ownership for the solution. And really what you need to do is re-establish clarity. What matters, what doesn't matter, and what you're gonna do and what you're going through together. Remember, most staff, unless you've already hit that tipping point, if you just headed up to it and people are a little frustrated, remember this. Most staff don't want to leave, but they do want to feel seen. And if they don't feel seen, you're headed right for that tipping point, I'll tell you. All right. Here's bottom line and my final thought for today. If someone on your staff is close to the edge, it might not be about now. It might be about the accumulation of things over the past three months or six months or a year. It might be all those little things adding up, those little things that you didn't notice, and maybe they didn't even notice in the beginning, but over time builds up and it causes them to pull back and to disengage. I'd love to hear from you. What are some signs that you've noticed when a staff member is reaching their tipping point? Maybe you learned this the hard way. Maybe you didn't recognize it when it happened and the tipping point happened and they left. And maybe during an exit interview, or you just found out afterwards, hey, this is what happened. And I wish somebody would have been able to help me because I didn't really didn't want to leave. I'd love to hear. What have you noticed when a staff member's reaching their tipping point? Reach out to me anytime, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. Love to hear from you, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. We're here every day, right here, Monday through Friday, from whenever you want to listen. On demand, right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. You can listen again tomorrow. Have a great day.
