The Skills Expiration Date: When Your Team's Expertise Becomes Obsolete

In this episode, Todd Rhoades discusses the importance of updating long-term staff skills to maintain effectiveness and avoid becoming outdated. By fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional development, leaders can support staff like Cindy, a long-term children's pastor, in refreshing their skills and keeping their performance aligned with current expectations. The episode emphasizes curiosity over criticism and suggests practical steps to encourage growth and adaptation. • Long-term staff may become outdated without realizing it. • The importance of maintaining skill relevance and ongoing professional development. • Encouragement to start with curiosity, not criticism, when addressing skill gaps. • Practical steps like attending conferences and pairing with newer staff for fresh perspectives. • Role of leaders in facilitating skill refreshment and cultivating a growth culture. • Celebrating small changes and encouraging experimentation. • The risk of competence turning into incompetence without growth.

Have questions or comments?  Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com

Be sure to subscribe to The Healthy Church Staff Podcast wherever you regularly listen to podcasts.

- - - - -

Is Your Church Hiring?
If your church is searching for a new staff member, reach out to Todd for a conversation on how he might be able to help.

Are You Looking for a New Ministry Role?
If you are open to a new church role in the next few months, add your free resume and profile at ChemistryStaffing.com.

Transcript

Host Intro And Newsletter Invite

Cindy’s Ministry Stuck In 2016

Skills Expire And Drift Hides

Build A Skill Refresh Strategy

The One Question Challenge

Help, Contact Info, And Close

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Even your best staff members can become outdated without realizing it. Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about how to help long-term team members adapt their skills without crushing their confidence or losing their loyalty. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistry staffing.com, and I'm your host here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hey, before we get going today, I want to tell you about a brand new project. Today's the first day I'm releasing it. It's called Church Leadership Radar. Church LeadershipRadar.com. It's a daily email newsletter that you can get. It's absolutely free, but it tells you that brings together a lot of the things that I'm looking at. It's either news or resources that I find that I think are really helpful and things that you should know about, things that you might want to read every day as a church staff member. A lot of things that I just don't have time to mention here on the podcast every day. So you can get that absolutely free. Just head over right now to churchleadershipradar.com, pop in your name and your email, and you'll be all set. You can, it's absolutely free. You can unsubscribe. All right. Today on the podcast. All right. Cindy, your children's pastor, has been with you, let's say for eight years. She's faithful, she's loved by parents. Every kid, she knows every kid's name. Your pastor might not know all of your kids' name names, but Cindy does. The only problem is she's absolutely awesome. She's stellar. Here's the problem, though. Her programming looks exactly like it did back in 2016. The same games, the same songs, the same approach to everything. And meanwhile, the new families visiting your church expect something maybe a little bit completely different than the 2016 children's ministry program. And you're watching Cindy's competence slowly turn into, can we say it? Kind of incompetence, okay? And she has no idea that it's happening. And that's one of the things that nobody really wants to admit about long-term staff. Skills have shelf lives just like milk in your fridge. And what made somebody exceptional five years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago might make them just kind of average or blah today. Technology changes, cultures shift. Oh my, have we seen a culture shift in the past 10 years in this country and in the church world as well? Expectations evolve, but here's the kicker: the person with expired skills is usually the last person to know about it. They're still getting positive feedback from the people who've been around forever. And that can create a dangerous blind spot because this is the drift that nobody really sees or talks about, and especially the staff member. Your long-term staff start living off their reputation instead of their current performance. They've stopped learning because they think they've already learned enough. They can do the position inside out with their eyes closed and with their hands tied behind them. And sometimes when they get to that state and their confidence level is that high, new ideas start to feel threatening instead of exciting, and they become defensive when they hear you or somebody else suggest any kind of change to their ministry. You starting start routing new initiatives around them instead of through them because it's just easier. And you find that the gap between their confidence and their competence keeps growing farther and farther apart. Now listen, these are not bad people. And they're not lazy staff members. They're not. They're just human beings who get a little bit comfortable. And could be that maybe even you're starting to get a little comfortable in your role if you've been there for five or ten years. You never know. That's something that you can consider as you listen to the podcast today. So what I'm going to hopefully get you to think about this week is what I call a skill refresh strategy. Okay? And it starts with curiosity, not with criticism. That's where you need to start as the person who is the boss of the staff member or their direct supervisor. You always want to start with curiosity and not criticism. Here's what I mean. Instead of telling them what they're missing or just saying, hey, I want you to do this, ask them what they're learning. Okay? Ask them what they're learning instead of telling them what they're missing. Send them to scot some conferences in their area of ministry. Pair them with some newer staff members who can maybe give some or share some fresh perspective. Maybe try and do everything you can to create a culture where everybody is just expected to grow, not just the new hires. And this is really important, especially it's important for new staff members and younger staff members as well. But people that have been doing this for 5, 10, 15, 20 years, they need professional development as part of their process and as part of their role at the church. And if you're not doing that, if you're not sending Cindy to a children's ministry conference every year or every other year, so that she can get access to some of these other ideas if she's not naturally curious, you need to be able to do that. And I would suggest that even that you make professional development part of every staff review as well. And you just need to be able to celebrate when somebody changes an approach or try something new. You need to take away, I've seen some churches that are just so risk-aversive that they don't want anybody to try something new. You need to be able to give people, especially long-term people, the opportunity to try new things, to change new things to encourage them to do. And then when they do that, even a small thing, celebrate that with them. So think about your own skill set from five years ago. Chances are, if you're a good leader, and I know you are, because you listen to this podcast, right? Think about your own skill set though five years ago. What were you doing five years ago that you would never do now? Your staff need that same opportunity to evolve, to evolve. The goal isn't to replace them, it's to refresh them. And your church is going to get better when your people and your staff, especially people like Cindy that have been on your staff for a long time, your church will get better when Cindy gets better. So here's your bottom line for today. Competence without growth eventually becomes incompetence. And the person with the outdated skills is always the last person to realize it. So here's your challenge for today. Pick one long-term staff member and ask them this question. Hey, Cindy, what's one thing that you'd like to learn or try in your ministry area this year? Then actually help them do it. Don't wait for them to ask for help because they probably won't. But your long-term staff are assets that are absolutely worth investing on. We talk about that all the time here on the podcast. It is so much better when you've got a staff member like Cindy to work with her and to retain her and to encourage her and to get her to hopefully be able to try new things, help them stay sharp. So much better to do that with your current staff than to have to replace them. So much easier, so much better, so much less costly. And when Cindy's better, your church will be better.

unknown 7:28

All right.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

I hope that's been helpful for you today. Hey, if there's any way that I can help you or your church on any kind of healthy church staff initiative, including what we talked about here today, feel free to reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. And also, as I mentioned at the start of the podcast today, check out churchleadershipradar.com. I think you will enjoy the daily newsletter. It's not a lot of fluff, but I think it's a lot of things that you're gonna want to read every day to be a more informed and a better church staff member. Churchleadershipradar.com. Just pop in your first name and your email there, and you're all set to get absolutely free. You can unsubscribe in anyway. All right, that's it. Tomorrow we're gonna be back here on the podcast. So I hope you'll join me then.