The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Silent Killers of Church Staff Culture
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Most church staff problems don't explode out of nowhere. They simmer. You don't get a full-blown dumpster fire of a staff overnight. It happens over time. And if you've got a dumpster fire of a staff, those quiet tensions, that unresolved hurt, those misaligned expectations, the fear of hard conversations are probably what got you to the position that you're in. Because those types of things can slowly rot your team from the inside out. And before you know it, it's like putting gas, filling a dumpster up with gas and just lighting it up. Okay, today we're going to name some of the silent killers of healthy church staff culture and hopefully help you spot them before they do permanent damage. So that you can avoid the dumpster fire analogy that I've overused so much already in this podcast today. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes. I am your host here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Also one of the co-founders, I hope you'll check us out over at chemistrystaffing.com. All right, you feel it, something's off in your team dynamic. Maybe it's a staff member who suddenly stops speaking up, or the passive aggressive comments that you see creeping into the meetings, or that weird tension. It's just weird, that it's just hanging in the air, that nobody can name. Everybody knows that something's there. That ignored conflict is let me use another analogy. It's kind of like black mold. All right, you don't see it right away, but it's toxic. And today we're gonna call it out and we're gonna call it what it is, and we're gonna talk about how to be clear what it is and how to clear it out before that spreads. All right, so I want to talk about five silent killers of church staff culture. Okay? And these are what I think are five of the most common unspoken dynamics that slowly can rot your church staff health. Unresolved conflict, a lack of clarity, a passive aggressive team member, a fake unity mask. And these are just four, right? But you let any of these go unchecked. Okay, let's talk it. Let's talk about this. An unresolved conflict. Everybody knows that there's a conflict, but nobody wants to deal with it. So you sweep it under the rug. And you can get away with that for a little bit, but all of a sudden you've got another conflict, and you do the same thing and you sweep it under the rug. You get another conflict, you do the same thing, you sweep it under the rug, and soon you've got a whole bunch of conflict and nobody's got any clarity. And that's the second thing, the lack of clarity, not only around conflict and what's going to happen and how those will get resolved, but about the around the roles and responsibilities of all the staff people. And if you don't have clarity, that's gonna lead to some passive aggressiveness on your team, most likely. Or the team member who won't speak up directly, the team, the leader who sees the tension, but won't engage it. And then it can often lead to just this kind of this fake unity mask. We all smile. We all know that there's unresolved conflict, we know that people are being passive aggressive, we know that there's lack of clarity, but nobody really wants to deal with it, either for fear of losing their job or it's just too much work, it's just not worth it. And they put on this fake unity mask. We smile in meetings, but we'll talk about what we're ticked about afterwards when our small little huddles. And when those things go unchecked, you don't just lose morale, you lose trust. And when the trust goes, everything gets harder. So avoidance can look like a lot of different things in real life. You might tell yourself, we're just in a phase, it'll blow over. Let's just pray about it. Let's pray through it. That's a spiritual answer. It's also running away from conflict answering a lot of times. Maybe you say they're probably just having a bad week. I'll address it eventually. But avoidance is leadership, and avoidance is a leadership decision too. It always has a cost, and staff members will check out emotionally. Gossip will fill up that vacuum if there's a communication vacuum, and you're going to start coaching per people's personalities, not their performance. Before long, the culture that you once had, that you once cherished, it just becomes almost unrecognizable. So, what do you do instead? It all starts with just admitting that there's the issue and naming the tension. You don't have to have all the answers, but you do have to admit that something's not right here. You just need to have the courage to say, hey, something feels off. We need to talk about this. And I'm for I'm a firm believer in starting not at the staff level. Don't go into your staff meeting and say, all right, this place is screwed up and we're gonna fix it. No, that's not the way to do it. That'll just blow it up more in your face more. You need to do it strategically with structured one-on-ones. Meet with people individually to address real concerns, not just task lists. Okay? Stop making mistaking politeness for peace because they're not the same thing. True peace only comes after truth. Normalize those hard conversations by starting it with you. Make them a habit and don't wait for a crisis to happen. All right, here's the final thought for today. You really can't build a healthy team on fake unity. Peacekeeping is not peacemaking. And if you don't name the issue, we'll name you. That's it for today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope this has been helpful. Hey, if there's any way that I can help you in your staff leadership, and if there's any way that I can help you get to that point where you can say, Todd, I finally feel like I've got a healthy church staff. Reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistry staffing in my email address. I'd love to hear it.
