The Performance Review Revolution: The Art of Growth-Focused Feedback

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades addresses the common pitfalls of church staff performance reviews. He highlights the tendency to either avoid necessary hard conversations or to be overly critical, which can damage morale and effectiveness. Todd proposes a more balanced, development-focused approach to performance reviews that fosters staff growth in competence and character by starting with encouragement, addressing specific behaviors, connecting performance to mission impact, and implementing a development plan. • Challenges with church staff performance reviews: avoiding tough conversations or being overly harsh. • Importance of providing honest feedback that promotes growth in competence and character. • Common pitfalls include encouragement without feedback or a focus on faults without support. • Recommended approach: start with their calling, address specific behaviors, not character flaws. • Link performance to mission impact and involve staff in identifying obstacles. • Emphasize development plans over corrective actions to encourage growth. • Overall objective: help staff become who God designed them to be in their roles.

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

The Cost Of Avoiding Hard Talks

A Growth Focused Review Framework

Discipleship Over Task Management

Three Questions To Rewrite Reviews

Templates And Newsletter Invitation

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Most church staff performance reviews either avoid the hard stuff or they crush people's spirits. Come on now, guys. There's gotta be a better way to give honest feedback that actually helps people grow in both competence and character. We're gonna peel back all the layers of how most churches get it wrong. I wouldn't say most churches, many churches get it wrong when it comes to performance reviews right here today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Thanks for joining me. My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders along with Batsina over at chemistrystaffing.com. This week we're taking a look, started on Monday, and we've got today and then tomorrow and Friday that we're going to talk about performance reviews. And let's say, let's start out here today. You just finished a performance review with one of your staff members. You walked in with three real concerns about their work. You walked out having addressed absolutely zero of them, none of them. Instead, you spent 20 minutes talking about the issues, complimenting their heart, mentioning their growth areas in passing, and they left feeling encouraged but unchanged, and you felt like a coward because you didn't really bring up what you wanted to really bring up. Sound familiar? That's what we're talking about here today. We've turned performance reviews in a lot of churches into an annual charade. We've turned them into these kind of elaborate kindness competitions. Or they're incredibly mean and nobody wants to ever go through another one again. We're afraid sometimes of hurting feelings that we hurt futures instead. We mistake being nice for being loving. We confuse encouragement with enabling. Meanwhile, your staff member keeps making on those same mistakes. The team keeps carrying their slack, and you keep hoping that they'll figure it out on their own. And guess what? Spoiler alert, they probably won't. Here's what happens when we avoid the hard conversations. And I would say I mentioned the two extremes. The avoiding the hard conversations and just being overly nice and telling them how great their heart is, but not really coming out and seeing where we need the improvement. That's the one side of the spectrum. The other side of the spectrum is you go in and you say absolutely nothing nice, and it's just that it's a beatdown. But today we're talking about what happens more on the other side where we avoid those hard conversations. Because a lot of times there's a little bit of a drift that goes on from the time you hire somebody in the first year, second year, third year, over time there's a drift. The staff member thinks they're crushing it when actually you think they're struggling. And then they get blindsided when issues finally explode. The rest of your team loses respect for your leadership because you're not handling it, and everybody knows that there's problems, and you start managing around their weaknesses instead of developing their strength. Your church culture will suffer over time if you don't have those hard conversations because those standards will disappear and everybody will see it. Everybody on your team, everybody on your staff will see it. The only person that's not going to see it is the staff person that thinks they're just hitting it out of the park. Now listen, your heart to encourage people is exactly right. I want to encourage you in your encouragement, right? But encouragement without honesty isn't love, it's enabling. So, what I would propose to you, if you as a person that's giving those annual reviews, if you tend to side on the side of just encouragement, but have a really hard time giving concrete ways to improve, I would encourage you to think about some type of a growth-focused approach. And here's what that might look like. Okay? Start with their calling, not with their failures. Okay? Start with their calling, not with their failures. God has gifted you for ministry, John, which is why we need to talk about this. Okay? That one sentence maybe becomes a few paragraphs, right? You don't just kind of start there and go right into it, right? But you do you start with the encouragement. John, God has really gifted you for ministry. You're doing so many things well, but there there are a few things that we need to talk about because I think that we can make you better. Okay? Name those specific behaviors, not character flaws. Okay? If it's character flaw, that's a totally different category. But if it's a behavior, that's when you need to name it. But your con your reports are consistently late. That's totally different than saying, John, you are so disorganized, you're just very disorganized. That's different than saying, God's gifted you to ministry. But there's some things that you need to do, and those reports are really important, and you're there's been more than once that you've been late on those. Connect performance to a mission impact. Hey, John, when this happens, when you're late on your report, when you don't do this, when you don't follow through with this task, here's how it affects the people that we're trying to reach. And then ask before you tell, what do you think is getting in the way here, John? And then end with a development plan. I'm not talking like a pip performance improvement plan. Those uh I'm gonna do a whole weekend, week series on on pips here. I've got it on the schedule, I think, for next month. This isn't that. This is when you sit down with them, just give them some concrete things that they can do. Not a corrective action plan, but a development plan. So that they don't just walk out feeling like you criticize them. And here's what a development plan looks like. It's all in how you phrase it and how you roll this out. You say something like, John, here's how we're gonna help you grow in this area. Okay? This changes everything about how people receive feedback. Ministry, at its very core, is discipleship. It's not task management. That's where we make the mistake. We think, we just need to get we're I need to get this off my plate onto John's plate, and John, you just need to get it done. That's task management. Ministry, though, is discipleship, and you need to be able to work with John and disciple John through that. Your staff reviews should develop disciples who happen to do ministry work because character and competence grow together when the feedback is done right. People will leave feeling challenged and equipped, not crushed and confused. So here's the bottom line for today. What I want you to walk away from today's podcast. The goal of a performance review isn't to make people feel good or bad. Repeat that, because that's really important. The goal of any performance review isn't to make people feel good or bad, it's to help them become who God has designed them to be in their role. So this week I want you to I want to challenge you to rewrite your performance review template. Add these three questions. How is God developing you through this role? That's number one. Number two, what obstacles are preventing your best work? And number three, how can we most help you grow in the areas that matter the most? If you need some help, I have developed a performance review system for churches. And just reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com if you would like more information on how you can get a copy of this, how you can order a copy of this, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. No matter where you are, maybe you've got a well-developed performance review system. I think this might give you some added ways to make it even better. Maybe you've got one that's really horrible. I think this will give you the building blocks. Maybe you don't even have one. You can't tell. Todd, I don't remember when anybody in this church got a performance review annually or otherwise. This template and this resource will help you to be able to start from scratch. So if you're interested in that, just reach out to me at podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, your people want to grow more than they want to be comfortable. Most do. So give them that gift. Okay, and that gift comes out of doing a really good job with their annual performance. At least it's a start. Okay, that's it for today. Thanks so much for listening. Hey, I just started a brand new email newsletter called churchleadership radar.com. So much that's on my radar that I read, I'm a pretty prolific reader on church staff stuff. I'm and church just happenings, news, and resources and leadership. Every day I come up, I scour probably about 50 sources last time I checked and find the my top three picks for the day, things that I think you should know or at least be aware of. And then there's usually maybe five or six other resources that I think are really great leadership resources that you can glance through. And if there's anything there that interests you, you can click on the link and go not selling anything. Uh it's just a resource that I gather all these resources and just don't have enough time on the podcast. So if you're interested in that, you can sign up just do your first name and your email address, absolutely free over at churchleadershipradar.com. All right, that's it for today. Hope you'll join me again tomorrow. We're talking again tomorrow about performance reviews. And let's see, tomorrow we're going to talk about linking performance reviews to spiritual formation in the church. So that'll be a government.