The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Staff Personality Problem You’re Ignoring
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You ran the Enneagram, you did the strength binders, and everybody's got a label. But something's still on. And today on the podcast, we're going to dig into some of the real staff personality problems, like what happens when personality is a temperament, and attitudes go unchecked beneath the surface. And we're going to undercover, uncover why assessments alone don't create healthy teams, and what leaders must do when personality clashes become culture killers. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes. I'm the co-founder over at chemistrystaffing.com, and I'm your host right here. Like it or not, on the church, the healthy church staff podcast. You've labeled everyone, a seven on the Enneagram, a D on the disc, the woo from strengths finders, and yet something on your team is just not clicking. And actually, we see churches sometimes will actually not hire somebody based solely on a personality test. Maybe their Enneagram number is wrong, or their disc is wrong, or they're not that woo in the strength finder. And hiring is much more than just looking at a personality test. Because sometimes personality tests can be a little deceiving. What if your biggest staff personality problem isn't one that you can diagnose with one of those tests, or just by looking at a chart? That's what we're looking at today. We're diving a little bit deeper into the clash between the surface and what people's personality profiles can tell you or can say, and how you can lead through it before it wrecks your team. Alright, so there are some limits with personality tests. Here's my take. People either absolutely love and live and die by the personality test, and everybody has their favorite one, or they're somewhat skeptical, or they don't care for them. I am in that category. I'll be upfront and honest right away, mostly because I don't like taking them. I don't like taking somebody poking my brain or something when I don't want to be poked. I don't know. But then when I get the results, I'm usually like, ooh, wow, that's pretty spot on. We love these assessments. Some of us love them, some of us hate them. But a lot of times we love the assessments because they can give you some clarity and some language. They can tell you a lot about a person that you don't know that well. But personality frameworks don't do certain things. And you need to remember this as you're looking, as you're looking to hire somebody, or you're looking at somebody on your team and you're looking at whatever personality profile you want to use. Personality profiles do great in some areas, but they don't do great in other areas, like these. Like they don't reveal emotional maturity. I've not seen a personality test that could do that yet. They don't predict your spiritual health, although there are some tools that what I find is that people can lie. Believe it or not, pastors can shade the truth a little bit, even when they're taking an assessment. And they don't account for any kind of power dynamics or conflict styles that this person might have on your team potentially. Okay? A team of compatible personalities can still implode because real chemistry is a lot deeper than labels and it goes a lot deeper than what you're going to find on any personality assessment. Personality clashes actually show up. It's rarely dramatic, it's usually pretty slow. It's the passive-aggressive resistance that begins. Maybe it's the constant idea that shut down's that shuts down the skeptic. It could be the fixer who just doesn't listen and does their own thing, or the dreamer who avoids any kind of follow-through, but they've always got great ideas. These aren't bad people, but unaddressed patterns of relating, fracture, trust, and effectiveness. So you need to be on top of these. So what do you do about it? How do you pay attention? Because that's the thing that you really have to do. You have to pay attention to behavior, not just the wiring. Because wiring is one thing, and how people act out, even with their wiring, is something sometimes totally different. So how do you do that? One way is to just set clear relational expectations alongside of those job expectations. Yes, people can absolutely kill on their job description. They can hit it out of the park on their job description, but nobody on your team likes them, right? So you need to set some of those clear relational expectations, how people are going to relate to each other alongside, superimpose them on top of those job descriptions or those job expectations. You need to be able to normalize the that peer-to-peer feedback and the team reflection. We talk about that all the time here on the podcast about communication and teamwork together. And you need to be able to coach toward that self-awareness, not just the productivity. Like you can get everything done on your list, but you can tick off everybody in the office at the same time. You've probably worked with that person before. I know I have. And here's maybe even a bonus tip. Maybe do a team detox where you just pause and talk about how you're working together and not just what's what you're working on. So maybe talk about those team dynamics and how you can improve them. Maybe you need more time together. Maybe you're isolated, maybe you're siloed, and getting everybody together can kind of help with that. All right. I hope this has been helpful. Final thought for today is just this. And I'm speaking to the people that hate the assessments, and I'm people speaking to the people that love the assessments. All right. Great teams on your staff, on your church staff, are not built on matching personalities. They're built on it's a lot bigger than that. They're built on mutual maturity, they're built on empathy and on mission alignment. And sometimes personalities clash. And you as a leader need to be on top of that and make sure before people end up hating each other, that they can learn how to mitigate those personality clashes and actually get to work together. I'm interested, what's one personality clash that you've seen drain a team? Maybe it's something that's draining your team right now. Maybe it's something early in your career that you saw that was just so dysfunctional. There's one person, one personality that just ruined it for the whole team. I'd love to hear your story. Reach out to me podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, that's it for today's podcast. We just celebrated. This is episode 501. Last week, I missed it. I totally missed it. We celebrated our 500th episode here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. And I know some of you have been along for the whole ride. So thank you so much. And if you want to catch up on anything, you can always go to chemistry staffing.com slash podcast, and you'll see each and every all 501 episodes right there for you. All right, thanks for listening.
