The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Soft Landing_ Helping a Staff Member Exit Well
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Letting someone go from a church world, firing them, letting them go from your staff, it's never ever easy. But how do you handle a staff transition speaks volumes about your leadership, about your culture, about your heart, and about your church. Today on the podcast, we're going to explore what it means to provide a soft landing when it's time for a team member to move on. From communication to care, we're going to unpack the key steps that make all the difference between resentment and redemption when someone needs to depart from your church staff. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, and I am one of the co-founders over at chemistry staffing.com, and I am your host right here every weekday on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. The reality of it is, and there's I don't know of anybody, and I know a lot of people in the church world that love firing people. Letting someone go is never ever fun. But doing it poorly, that can do lasting damage, not just to the person that you're letting go, but it can also do damage, long-lasting damage to your team and to your church and to your credibility as a leader. So today, I think it's really important that we take some time out, just a few minutes here today on the podcast, to talk about how to provide a soft landing when it becomes necessary for staff transition to happen. Because hard conversations can still be handled, believe it or not, with kindness. Okay. When you when it's time to let somebody go, when it's time to firing somebody, I believe I heard Andy Stanley one one time call this when it's time to free somebody's future. Okay, the goal should always be clarity and care. Clarity and care. Those are the goals. When offboarding someone from your team, you need both. You need clarity. This is what's happening, this is why it's happening, and you need care. Clarity and care. Care how it's communicated and what support is going to be offered. Too often, churches pick one or the other. They're either overcaring or they're they provide a lot of clarity, but no care. Okay. A lot of times churches will pick one or the other. All clarity, no compassion. That's going to leave some wounds. Okay. If you show no compassion, you will leave wounds. I'm I do transition coaching all the time, dealing with a couple of always when I'm doing this, I deal with people that have maybe all the clarity they need, but no compassion. Also deal with some in my transition coaching that it's all compassion, but no clarity, right? They want to care really well, but there's no clarity on how this thing's going to end, like the like things like severance and salary and those kind of things. And it just creates confusion confusion when there's all compassion and no clarity. So instead, you need to pick both compassion and clarity. Care and clarity, right? A clear, compassionate process will honor the person and it honors the position and will treat you and your team and your church well in the long run. There are some common mistakes. I've seen lots of churches, and I've talked to a lot of people that were on a church staff that have been let go, that have had their futures freed, as Anti would say. And I see there are some common mistakes that churches often make. One of the mistakes is churches often delay the conversation too long. They wait too long to have that conversation. Other times they just make it personal rather than professional. And there may be some personal reasons why a person needs to leave your team. But you need you can mention those, but you also need to be professional. There are other times when there's just there's no support. There's offering no support or severance whatsoever. It's not caring at all. I've talked to people that have been fired, that were called in on a Monday morning or a Friday afternoon and told that you're no longer on the staff. And go back to your desk, put your things in a box that we provided, and we will meet you at the door. Turn in your keys. You're done. There's clarity there, right? But there's not a whole lot of care. Okay. Another problem I see that happens a lot of times is when there is no either no clarity or no care. There are rumors because when there's kind of a vacuum, rumors will fill up and they will actually beat out the truth. The truth really doesn't matter because the rumors will already take root, right? And another mistake is just failing to own the leadership responsibility. Maybe this the staff member needs to go, but maybe you need to own up to part of this too as to why it didn't work out. Really the goal should be a soft landing for that individual that you're letting go, that you're transitioning off your staff. A soft landing. Now that doesn't mean it's gonna be painless, okay? These things always hurt. They hurt. There's no way about getting around the hurt. So it's gonna be there's gonna be some pain there, but it does mean that it it needs to be thoughtful. Okay, Todd, you've made a good point. We want it to be, we want there to be clear care, we want there to be clarity, but what does this soft landing? What is the soft landing that you speak of? What does this actually look like? Because I've never seen it happen. Because sometimes it doesn't happen. Right? So what does a soft landing actually look like? Here's what it looks like. You give as much notice as possible when you can. Okay? So advanced notice, give them practical support, resume help, references, networking. Contact me, reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. One of the things that I really enjoy doing is what I call transitional coaching, which is paid for by the church. I'll have a church call me up and say, hey, we're getting ready to let this person go from our team. Can you come alongside and help them land softly? And we will do that. I will meet with them over a period, or someone on my team will meet with them for a period of about three months weekly, and we'll go through whatever they need. Everybody's different. Maybe they need a safe place where they can talk about what just happened. Man, I just got fired. This is devastating. We'll talk through that. Maybe they need help with their resume. Maybe they're good with their resume, but they need help interviewing. Maybe they need help knowing how to get good references or how to answer certain questions. Maybe they need help negotiating their salary. All of those kind of things are just really practical support things that will help the person that's transitioning off of your team land somewhere else. So if you have a time where you need to let go of a staff member, reach out to me and let's have a conversation. Because this is really that practical support is really the key to a soft landing. And here's the thing: the moment that you bring somebody in and you tell them that their employment is ending, in a lot of ways, in most ways, you lose the opportunity to offer that practical support because you're no longer their employer. So things are just different. As soon as you make that, you know this, as soon as you make that conversation known and you make that decision known to the employee, to the team member, it's gonna be really hard for you to do the things and say the things that they need to hear in order for them to land well. And then got off on a rabbit trail there, but another thing that's really important is gracious communication to the church. There are people that are gonna absolutely hate the fact that this decision was made. There are gonna be people, volunteers that work with closely with the staff member that you're transitioning that are going to have tons of questions. So you need to communicate well with starting with the people that they worked with the closest. It includes your staff, it includes the volunteers that they worked with. If it's a student pastor, it includes the students that they work with. You need to be really gracious in that communication. And then you need to offer to bless their next season in any way that you can. Sometimes that's severance, sometimes that's with good good recommendations. But you need to try, again, all this kind of going in, giving clarity and care so that they can land softly and land well. So here's the bottom line for today. People remember how you made them feel more than what you said. People remember how you made them feel more than what you said. And offwarding is your chance to end with honor, not just with HR. Okay? Final thought for today letting someone go with kindness is not weakness, it's strength. It's what's healthy and mature, Jesus-shaped leadership looks like. I'd love to have a conversation with you. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com. I can tell you a little bit more about our transitional coaching service that we offer to churches and to people that are being offboarded off of staffs. So again, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, you can tell I'm a little passionate about this because I see so many churches and so many people that I talk to too just they've been hurt horribly. And there is a better way to do that. So reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com if I can help you. And we'll be right back here again tomorrow on the podcast. Thank you.
