Why Your Best Staff Member Just Applied for Another Job

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the importance of recognizing and addressing the aspirations of high-performing staff members to prevent them from seeking opportunities elsewhere. High performers often leave not because they are unhappy, but because they seek growth and new challenges. Rhoades emphasizes the need for church leaders to create pathways for growth and have open conversations about future goals with their staff to retain top talent. • High-performing staff seek growth, not just comfort or more pay. • Churches often miss that high performers leave due to lack of challenges or growth opportunities. • Creating growth paths and having 'what's next' conversations can help retain valuable staff members. • High performers might handle multiple roles, making them prime targets for other churches. • Replacing a high performer is costly and difficult, reinforcing the need to invest in their development. • Leaders should ask staff where they see themselves in three years and plan growth opportunities accordingly.

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Transcript

Why High Performers Leave

The Invisible Ceiling At Church

Build Real Growth Paths

Have The Three-Year Conversation

Your Top People Get Poached

This Week’s Action And Coaching Offer

Tomorrow’s Topic Preview

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Today on the podcast, we're gonna talk about what Greg Rostel I think calls an oak crack. You just found out your best staff member apply for another job. The one who shows up early and stays late and makes everything else and everyone else better. And you can't imagine replacing this person when you're sitting there thinking, but man, they seem so happy. We just gave them a raise last year. I know they love this church. But here's what you miss. They weren't looking because they were unhappy. They were looking because they hit the ceiling. And that's what we're going to talk about today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders, along with Matt Steen, over at chemistrystaffing.com. Here's a harsh reality that maybe you haven't thought about, and maybe you've lost this type of a person before, and you're just you're left just kind of scratching your head saying. What just happened? Let me tell you, the best people don't leave because they hate their job. Okay? Let's unpack that just a little bit. We're talking about high performers. And when you've got somebody who's just hitting it out of the park on your team, the high performer. These are your top people. And high performers, I'll let you know a little secret. High performers crave growth more than comfort. Most of the time they want new challenges, they want expanded responsibilities. They want bigger impact. And when they can do their job with their eyes closed, these are the people, your high performers, those that come early and stay late and love your church. They can still love their church, but when they can your church, but when they can do their job with their eyes closed, guess what? They're gonna get restless. And it's not because they're ungrateful. They appreciate that raise that you gave them. They're not ungrateful at all. But they're bored. And they're wired to grow. That's how God wired them. And if they can't grow with you, they'll grow without you. And this is really a part that a lot of churches miss entirely, or at least they miss it until it's too late. And it's what I call the invisible ceiling. You think you're giving a person a title bump and a small raise is enough. But they're not just looking for more money. They're looking for more meaning, they're looking for more challenge, they're looking for more responsibility, they're looking for more influence, they're looking for more life impact. And they see the same tasks and the same meetings and the same scope. Maybe it's got a new title slapped on it. Maybe you gave them a little bit of a raise last year, but they still see the same old. And meanwhile, their friend at another church just got promoted to executive pastor, and suddenly your great opportunity just feels like the same old dead end. Now, listen, I know that you're not a bad leader because this happened. I'm not saying that at all. Most churches have no succession plan or growth track. Matter of fact, many churches, and that's how I grew up in my ministry career. I was a worship guy, right? Usually I thought that there wasn't that most jobs were dead end. I worked in three different churches and I was a worship guy, a worship pastor in each church. A lot of times people will transition out of worship into maybe a discipleship or an executive pastor role. That happens quite often, but a lot of times you stay in your lane, right? And if your church only has one lane for a worship person, they either stay or they go somewhere else to be a worship guy. So how do you get past this? How do you keep from losing really high potential critical people on your staff? How do you keep from losing those people? I think one of the things you have to do is you have to try and think about creating some growth paths that actually work in your church. And that's it's difficult for some churches because you're smaller. There aren't a lot of opportunities, there aren't a lot of things you can pay for. But I think every church has a little bit of leeway in having this, what I call what's next conversations. And here, the key is you want to have the what's next conversation with really high-value staff member before they have start having the next what's next conversation either in their head or with their spouse or eventually with another church. So here's how that conversation goes. And man, a side note here, I think a lot of times we just shy away from conversations because we're afraid of what the answer is going to be. You know what? I'm a firm believer that my mom always taught me don't ask questions that you for questions that you don't want the answer to. But sometimes you do have to ask the question, like just grit your teeth and hope that the answer is good. And if not, it gives you an opportunity to approve. But you have to have the conversation. You have to ask the questions. And here's the question that I think you should ask your staff. Where do you want to be in three years? And then try to create some stretch assignments that help actually expand their influence to help get them there. But maybe you shadow them in areas where they want to grow. Maybe you give them a real voice in big decisions, not in their department. Maybe you show them a future at your church that's bigger than the current role. Those are all things because if you ask, and it could backfire on you, right? You could go ask your worship, hey, where do you want to be in three years? And he might say, not here. You have your answer there. And then that at least having that, asking that question, having that conversation, at least allow you to have some conversations. Because here's one more thing, particularly about your high performers. They're usually doing the work of two people already. That's why they're high performers. That's why they're so valued, because they dig in and they do the work. They're the ones that other staff come to when something else needs to get done. They make you look good as a leader, and they're exactly the kind of person other churches are trying to poach. Did you hear what I just said there? Those, your high capacity people are exactly the type of person, the kind of person that other churches would love to have on their team. And if you don't have a plan for their growth, somebody else does. Somebody else does. The bottom line for today, your best people don't need you to give them everything today. They're there because they love you, they love your church. But they do need to show you you to show them a path to tomorrow. So here's what you need to do this week. Here's what I would recommend anyway. That might be too strong of a statement. Here's what I would recommend this week. I would love for you to have this future conversation. Let's just call it that. A future conversation with your highest performer. Think of the one person, you probably already have them in your mind, the one person on your team that you're like, man, I hope they don't leave. Oh, please don't leave. I hope they don't leave. That's the person you need to have the future conversation with. Ask them where they see themselves in three years, and then work backward to create a growth plan that starts right now. And a lot of times you can do that. Great leaders just don't manage talent, they develop it. And if I hope that this has helped you maybe think a little bit differently about your staff development. The reality is if you lose that really high caliber person, it's going to be really difficult to replace them. And if you do find another really high caliber person to replace them, it's going to probably your replacement cost is going to be much higher than even what you're paying right now. So have the conversation. It's really important. If you need some some guidance or want to have a conversation about even how to how do I even start here, Todd? I'm available for some coaching and consulting. You can reach out to me anytime, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. If I can't help you, I've got somebody probably on my team that's going to work and fit really well with what exactly you're trying to do. So reach out to me. Happy to help however we can here at Chemistry Staffing. You can reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, that's it for today. Hope you have a great day. We're back again tomorrow. Tomorrow on the podcast, we are going to be talking about ministry identity crisis. When your role changes but your heart doesn't. Uh-oh. Here we go. That'll be an interesting one. Hope you'll join us again tomorrow. We're here on the Helping Teacher. Have a great day.