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
The Crisis Hire That Broke Your Team
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
Be sure to subscribe to The Healthy Church Staff Podcast wherever you regularly listen to podcasts.
- - - - -
Is Your Church Hiring?
If your church is searching for a new staff member, reach out to Todd for a conversation on how he might be able to help.
Are You Looking for a New Ministry Role?
If you are open to a new church role in the next few months, add your free resume and profile at ChemistryStaffing.com.
You know what it's like when you just when you just you feel like you just gotta hire somebody. You don't care who it is at this point, you just gotta hire somebody to take off some of the pressure. And hiring under pressure is it's sometimes unavoidable, but it almost always comes with consequences. And I want to talk about that with you here today. We're gonna talk about the warning signs of a crisis hire, the un unintended fallout that will follow most often, and then how to resist that panic button instinct when your church is short staffed and you're overwhelmed and you feel like you're dying. Hi there, my name's Todd's one of the co-founders at ChemistryStaffing.com, and I'm here with you every day as your host here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm not sure how you found me or found the podcast, but I'm sure glad you're here. Alright, here's a scenario for you. All right, your kids pastor just quit. Your student ministry is unraveling, and Easter's seven weeks away. And you're drowning. What do you do? What do you do? You panic hire, right? And three weeks later, you regret it. Today we're gonna talk about tackling the hire made in crisis and the long shadow that it can cast over your staff and your culture and even your credibility. Okay. Crisis hires sometimes feel necessary. But here is the truth. I need you to listen here. They are very rarely necessary. You might be short-staffed, you might feel like every Sunday just feels heavy. And the temptation to fill that seat quickly can be absolutely overwhelming. But let me tell you, someone who owns a staffing company and works with churches all over the country and a half for years, the urgency distorts your clarity. Let me repeat that because that's really important. When you feel like you're overwhelmed, your urgency can distort your clarity. And crisis mode hiring ski a lot of the hard questions. Is the person actually qualified? Will they align with our culture? Are we just plugging a hole? A short-term fix can create a long-term fracture. So, what happens when you panic hire? Okay, here's what I've seen. And I've seen it again and again. This isn't theory. This isn't what if, this isn't hypothesis. This is actually what happens again and again at many churches when you make it panic hire. Staff resentment from being left out of the process. You're gonna get that. If you just go in and unilaterally make a hire without including the rest of the staff, even if they're tired, there's gonna be some resentment there. There could be a culture clash that feels just impossible to undo because you can't unscramble that A once you've hired the person. And it can turn into a revolving door, if I can spit that out, of really quick exits and restarts. And one of the biggest issues that you don't think about, but it happens, and I've seen it over and over again. Your leadership credibility will take a hit when you make that panic hire or when you make a bad hire because people are gonna be sitting back, they won't ever tell you this. But they're gonna sit back and they're thinking, they're gonna say to themselves and amongst themselves, yeah, I don't know what they were thinking. They really didn't think this one through. Normally they make pretty good decisions, but this time I don't know what they were thinking. So you're gonna end up with wasted salary, wasted time, wasted emotional energy, and the damage often lasts a lot longer than the tenure of that hire itself. So what do you do? What do you do instead? Because if you don't hire somebody, you're still gonna be in a crisis, right? I really think sometimes you just need to take a deep breath. Nope, I I've been there, man, and I know it's hard, and you want to slap me right now for saying slow down and take a deep breath, but slow down, sometimes you just have to slow down to speed up a little bit. Okay? So maybe you need to use an intern or some volunteer leadership to stabilize the ministry that's in question for at least a few months so that you can get your wits around you and make a really good hiring decision. Communicate honestly with your church. Hey, we're prioritizing the right hire, not the fast hire. I know you're frustrated, I know you're impatient, but we gotta get this right. So we're gonna prioritize the right hire, not the fast hire. And ask your team to help carry the weight temporarily. I know they're spread thin already, but a lot of times they will step up. And even if you do have to hire quickly, make sure that you use some clear role benchmarks and you vet for alignment over charisma. You can have somebody, and man, somebody can charm the pants off of you if they've got just this charisma, but you're and if you're in a panic mode, you'll hire them, and all of a sudden, a couple weeks in, two months in, that charisma is gone. And you're wondering, how did I get charmed by this person? Make sure you involve multiple voices in the decision. Don't just have it be your voice. Desperation should not drive out your discernment. All right, here's the final thought for today. If you're in crisis mode right now, I feel you. I know that it's real. The crisis you're feeling is real, but let me tell you, something that could go even worse and put you into a worse of a tailspin than what you're feeling right now is hiring the wrong person. It won't fix your crisis. It will amplify it. And what you hoped would eliminate all of this stress and pressure and crisis, quite frankly, is it it very well could amplify it if you make a wrong decision, if you hire the wrong person. So here's my question for you today. What's one step that your church can take to avoid panic hires in the future? Maybe you've made one in the past and you've got something that you'd like to share with me that, hey, Todd, this is what I learned. I'd love to hear from you. And maybe you're in the middle of it, you're in the middle of a panic situation, you need a staff member and you need somebody to talk you off the ledge. I'd love to be able to do that. Just reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. I'd love to have a conversation with you and see if there's a way that we can partner and help your church. All right, that's it for today's Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Remember, even when you're in a panic, you need to slow down, take a deep breath. You'll thank me later. You won't thank me now, but you will thank me later. Take a deep breath. And don't make that crisis, hire. It very seldom ever works out really great in long term.
