When Ego Enters the Room_ How Staff Pride Hurts Your Church

This episode of the Healthy Church Staff podcast, hosted by Todd Rhoades, explores how ego and pride subtly infiltrate church leadership teams, undermining trust and collaboration. It emphasizes the importance of cultivating a humble team culture where input is invited without fear, and success is rooted in collective impact rather than individual achievement.• Ego in church staff can appear in subtle ways, not just through overt behaviors like boasting.• Pride often thrives in insecure environments, linked to fear rather than just arrogance.• Healthy teams prioritize collaboration, sharing credit and impact over image or titles.• Humility in leadership is magnetic and builds trust, which is essential for effective ministry.• Encouraging input and admitting mistakes fosters a culture of trust and collaboration.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Naming Ego’s Hidden Disguises
• 0:21 The Real Threat To Team Culture
• 1:22 How Insecurity Fuels Pride
• 2:33 Humility As A Leadership Advantage
• 3:32 Final Challenge And Listener Invite

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

It doesn't always look like boasting. Sometimes it hides behind spiritual language. Sometimes it hides even behind burnout. But ego on a church staff is deadly. And today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, we're gonna unpack the subtle ways that pride can creep into your leadership team and how it damages trust and collaboration and what a healthy, humble team actually looks like. This one may sting a little bit, but hang with me. It's worth it. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over chemistrystaffing.com, and your host right here every day on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. What if the biggest threat to your church staff culture isn't theology or burnout or budget? We talk about all three of those things, theology, burnout, and budget a lot here on the podcast. But what if your biggest threat for you and your church staff isn't any of those things, but it's ego. And what if it's not just your team's ego? What if it's your ego? Let's talk about the subtle ways that pride and ego can seep into our leadership teams and what we can do to lead with humility and health instead. Ego doesn't always look like what you think ego looks like. It's a tricky little booger, right? It's not just loud voices or platform hunger or name-dropping. It can be something much more kind of covert. The need to always have the final say, avoiding feedback or critique, withholding credit from others, maybe making ministry decisions to protect your image, but not your team members. Ego can wear a hundred different disguises in ministry, and it's usually most visible in hindsight, which creates some problems, right? Pride thrives in insecure environments. You can't confront ego without talking about insecurity. But because the need to prove and defend or dominate often comes from fear, it comes from fear, not just arrogance. So sometimes your staff egos balloon when wins are courted and not shared, or when feedback feels dangerous, or when the senior leader gets defensive really easily, or maybe it's when titles and rows are roles are more protected than the mission. Healthy church teams celebrate impact over image. Now, while we're talking about humility and ego here, let me say this humility isn't weakness, humility can be magnetic, right? What draws people to Jesus isn't just Jesus' power, but it's his posture as well. And Jesus's posture and his humility need to show up on your church staff team as well. You need to be able to invite input without fear. You need to be able to let the best ideas win, not just the highest title, or whoever holds the title gets all the ideas that get put into place, right? You need to admit mistakes publicly and share stories that elevate others. Success wins. Man, we talk about that all the time here on the podcast. Because here's the truth when humility leads the room, the trust will grow. And trust is really the soil where ministry actually takes root. Alright, here's the final thought for today. Ego always over promises. But humility, humility delivers. Want to build a magnetic team culture? Start by making room for others and letting go of the need that maybe you have to always be the hero. I'd love to hear from you today. Where have you seen ego sneak into church staff culture over the years? Maybe it's something you're dealing with right now on your staff. Maybe it's something you saw 20 years ago in a leader or maybe in your younger self. I'd love to hear what your experience has been with ego and how it sneaks on to a church staff. Love to hear your story, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. And if there's any way I can help you or your church, reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, we will be right back here again tomorrow on the podcast. Hope you'll join me back.