Hey everyone, welcome to the Vander Bloom and Leadership Podcast where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in.
SPEAKER_01Hey everyone, welcome in. We've gone and asked all of you what are some questions that you have for William when it comes to the topic of hiring. I don't think there's anyone else that would know any more than when it comes to hiring the right people at the right time, William.
SPEAKER_03Can you tell we're negotiating compensation later today? That's right.
SPEAKER_01But um all right, first question. Here we go. We have from a listener named Alex. She wants to know how do you decide who should be in the room in meetings? In the context of a staff meeting, how do you know, hey, John, you get to be in. Susan, I'm sorry you didn't make the cut. How do you decide that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I think the first question to ask so that we get to your answer is why are we having a meeting? You know, I I kind of am getting to maybe it's just an age and we've all worked together a while, maybe we don't have to have as many meetings. But it's almost like meetings are a necessary evil, but sometimes we just plan them for no reason. Yep. So why plan a meeting that way? Why, you know, to me, ask the why about the meeting. Yep. Is it you know, my mother used to say to me when I go on a trip, I want you to lay out all the clothes you need for the trip and then put half of them away. Because you don't need that much. I needed that advice. It's it's that sort of thing. We don't need that many meetings. Now, second thing to answer is how much do we want this meeting to cost? Explain that. Uh I'm paying you an hourly rate.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03I'm paying Alex right now. The podcast costs more when three of us are in here than just me. Uh, but sometimes it's needed, sometimes it's worth it. And I think we do a disservice to our people pastorally when we don't do the math on how much meeting costs. Because people are like, well, why can't I be in the room? Yeah. I mean, they're they're on any given workday here, they're, I don't know, 25, 30 people, but not our whole team, right? And even in a team that small, we have a conference room where lead team meets on Fridays. And if anybody's meeting back there, it's like, well, they're meeting back in that room and there's some stuff going on. And there's a a we and a them that starts to happen, and people who are in charge and people who aren't. I think if you can just say, why are we having the meeting and how much do we want the meeting to cost? It costs money to have people attend. So it's not about whether you're smart or not, it's whether it's smart use of God's money to have 20 people in here when we really ought to have three, or to come with no agenda instead of giving people homework ahead of time to come to the meeting. So who should be in the meeting, who's not? Why are we having it? Yep. If if why we're having it is we got to get something done fast, well, that's a different roster for me than the troops are feeling uneasy and we need to garner up some support and show that we're listening and hearing what's going on that we need to improve. Yep. That's a different list. Yep. Why are we having the meeting? How much do we want it to cost? And and that, if you can start to use that language, even in a meeting where it's necessary, hey guys, there are 10 of us in here. I hope you know how important this is to us because we're literally spending whatever the dollar per hour to have this meeting. It's brilliant. So, and if people don't think that way. No. But if they start to think, oh my gosh, well, we don't need to spend that kind of money on, you know.
SPEAKER_01So that's great. Uh relating to hiring with that, um, you've talked before about the importance of getting face-to-face with someone in the interview process. Um, how do you toe that line? Uh, when in the process of hiring should that first face-to-face meeting be versus oh, I can just, you know, Zoom resume, you know, and then getting to eventually that face-to-face in the room moment. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, uh there's I'm hearing I heard a different question when I first heard you ask.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03I heard uh, when should I get involved in the hiring process? And maybe that's me. You know, you guys are hiring for your teams. I don't get involved in every one of them. So when should I and when should I not? That's a that's a fantastic question to ask. Uh let's go to your first one. The the the real question was when should we meet face to face? Yeah. Okay. Um the question I would ask is what kind of work are they doing? Like if they, if you're this is an absurd example, but if you're a huge church with a television ministry with a prayer line that works virtually and people take your calls and pray with you, you know, that kind of thing, that's a real thing. Yeah. All of that work is done virtually. It is. I don't know why you'd need to meet them face to face to know how they're gonna do virtually at a virtual job.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay. If it's a pastoral care person that is your church's emissary to the hospital, sitting with people as their family members die, I I don't think I'd have any conversation over Zoom. Maybe one to just get to know you, but I gotta I gotta see you. So I think kind of similar to your meeting question of who should attend, well, why are we having a meeting? Well, what are we facing and what kind of person is it that we need? I think going back to the why will always give you the answer for uh when should I meet them, face-to-face or in person? Well, what kind of work are they doing? Why am I asking that? Why are they coming here? If it's really valuable that they be human-to-human, I'm gonna I'm gonna insist on face-to-face pretty quick. That's great.
SPEAKER_01High performing teams, they exist in a lot of different spaces and places. Mainly in business books that tell you about high-performing teams. That's right. And it has to be in the title, too.
SPEAKER_03Or maybe sub, maybe subtitle. You know what? All the teams that I have ever witnessed, thousands and thousands of thousands, are made up of broken human beings. So high-performing teams just means a little less broken at the moment than everybody else.
SPEAKER_01But just you wait. Those high-performing teams, they must have some commonalities. Maybe what's one habit, one trait that you've seen that seems to pop up pretty frequently when examining those?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think uh the first thing that pops to my mind is the law of momentum. And that's the lots of people have said this over the years. But if you want to figure out what God wants you to do with this with your life, go get around a place where God's moving. Yep. And you'll start to hear. Like, go where God's moving and you'll figure out what to do. I think the churches that I see that have teams that are healthy and thriving are teams that are always asking, where's God breathing? Or you could say it clinically, where's the momentum? Yep. Momentum is a weird thing. And it it is the breath of God in our business. And so if he's breathing on a an outreach ministry to special needs families, guess what? Healthy teams said, and let's pour into it. Uh and they're they're they hold their systems loosely and their beliefs very tightly, but they they watch for momentum. And because momentum is everything, negative or positive. I mean, it's it's a funny, funny thing. And there is a law to it. If you've got it, run with it. That's great.
SPEAKER_01That's great. Hard conversations, they are just oh so fun. And I know there are some there are some people who I do know enjoy, weirdly enough, those difficult conversations. But for the other leaders who maybe can fall into the default of peacekeeping versus peacemaking versus addressing something when it needs to be addressed, why do people usually wait, maybe unpack the heading cost of that as well?
SPEAKER_03Why do people wait when it comes to hard conversations? Um because we're not any good at them, because they're we're afraid of them, uh, because it's a perennial pain point. Look at the book Crucial Conversations. I mean, it's sold 18 bajillion gajillion copies because we don't know how to have those conversations. And there is inside us a sinful nature. Yep. And so question for you. You know, you I'm a believer in the power of firsts, right? The first time something happens in scripture that's that's important. Yep. Um what is the first question God asks in the Bible? Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_01Um I mean, I want to I think of asking Adam and Eve where they are.
SPEAKER_03That's it. Where are you? Come on. Our default position for hard conversations is to hide. I mean, it's it is very natural to go looking for fig leaves. We have a fig tree at our house. The girls named her Eve. Oh, don't eat from it though. Yeah, don't well, it's a non-fruit-bearing so uh Jesus spoke to it, I guess. But uh don't no more fig for you. Uh you have to read the book to understand the joke, but it's there. So, you know, our default position is afraid and ashamed. Yeah. And don't want to be naked. That's our default position. Now, the beauty of the gospel is do you know what the first question in the New Testament is? No. Where is he? Wise men came from the East saying, Where is he? That's great. You see the inversion there since Jesus has entered, we can enter hard conversations. So you know, that's a the you can go use that in a sermon. I still remember I'll give I'll give props. Chap Clark from Denver Seminary. I was at Fun in the Sun at Jekyll Island. Yes, I'm that old. Uh, but but first question God asks, where are you? And we don't have an answer. But if you hang out around him long enough, you'll start, where are you? And you can start to have some real conversations. Now, hard conversations, how do you really have them? First of all, notice that they're hard. Secondly, tell people they're hard. I want to have a conversation. It's not easy. Yep. You're and then right after you do that, unless you're firing them right then, don't say, I want to have a hard conversation and leave it hanging. Say you're not getting fired. Unless you're actually not say that. Yeah, then or hand them a box. You know, no, seriously, oh you're not getting fired. Yeah. But we need to have a hard conversation. And and they're just hard. Yeah. But I'm hoping that I can you'll just hear me and receive it and then uh send me back whatever feedback you need. But they're hard. And you know, I feel like I need to find a fig leaf. I don't want to have a hard conversation, but I think naming it as hard really helps. Yeah. And then uh a couple just small pointers. Okay. Yeah. If you want to praise someone and give them really great feedback, write it down. That's great. If you want to give someone constructive, negative, however you want to call it, feedback, say it out loud. There's a couple reasons for that. First of all, you will never be as mean in person as you will in an email. That's so true. You just won't so true. You know, the guy that invented the machine gun thought he would had brought world peace because he thought, who would dare use such a thing? But what what he didn't realize was it's a lot easier to kill somebody from a distance than it is up close. So negative. It's a lot harder to stick someone with a knife than it is to fire a drone missile from a video game. Like so, so if you get person to person, chances are you'll be more pastoral. Yep. Yeah. And if you say it verbally. Now, here's the other thing: whatever feedback you give someone in written form, they're going to read 900 times. So limit that to positive things. Yeah. They will remember what is written and they will go back and read it over and over. Encouraging words should be written. Handwritten is the best. Hard conversations need to be verbal. You don't want them to have ready access to replaying everything that was said. You know, obviously, if you're in an HR conversation, you need to document things. Maybe it's two people talking to one, that sort of thing. But but in general, the hard conversations I think are verbal. Yep. And the the positive conversations are written. And you'll be surprised how many of your employees will keep every written note you have that comes in that's positive. Yep. That's you know, and then when you get to the hard conversations, just you don't have to inflict punishment. You can just say things and say, you know, I'm gonna tell you all this. You don't need to respond right now. We do need to circle back, but you know, that's just basic conflict resolution. The the root of it all to me, though, is to admit on the front end, hey, I'm terrible at these. You're not getting fired. But if it's a weird feeling, I'm probably generating it. I feel like Adam and Eve in the garden. I'm sorry in advance. Yeah. And just it's kind of our default position. Yeah. If you're feeling weird, you're probably just in a default. Now the having said that, it's too valuable. Your success is too valuable for us to not talk. So let's let's and then go from there.
SPEAKER_01That's so good. That's so good. When it comes to buy-in, how do you create people getting on board with an idea versus I don't know, you know, people who are maybe more resistant to jumping in? With what generation? Uh let's go me first, and then let's go get older. Young first.
SPEAKER_03The younger the per the team I'm working with, the more I have to assume they know more than I do. One of the things that you'll notice is in that podcast we talk about how you deal with different generations. Yes. Right? So the younger generations, gone is the day where the old guys have the answers. The young guys have the answers. So for me, I I need to ask more questions with a younger group and let it be their idea. Uh and and I would say anyone that grew up digitally native, you know what I mean when I say that? Like they grew up on that iPhone. And on online at least, and on the iPhone, uh, they're they're not real trusting of commanding advice. This is what you need to do. Like, yeah. It's a great thing. They're also very, very leery of leaders who say, So what do you think we ought to do? And it's really one of those have you ever been one of those Bible studies where it's fill in the blank and they have a word they want you to guess? Oh, yeah. You you're supposed to induce that inductive You're so close, you know, to the right answer. Oh, you're almost there. Yeah. So we don't have to say anymore. You see how his generation responds to that. I have to tell people all the time, I am not I'm a verbal processor. So I'm gonna throw ideas out, but I'm not the leader that throws out ideas so that I lead you to a conclusion I already have. If I have a conclusion, I'm gonna tell you what it is. Yeah. So how do you build consensus with younger people? If it's uh we're getting ready to move our office. Okay, we're we're moving to a different space. Yep. We haven't moved in 11 years. Pretty amazing. We just ran through our lease and re-upped for a better space. Uh, when it comes to uh telling people how where we're going to live next and where the copier is gonna be and the main, you know, I'm just gonna say, okay, we're moving. Here's the why. So you can understand the why. Yep. But I'm not gonna try to try and convince you that this is the right thing. It's the decision I've made. Yes. And here's the why behind it. And people generally get on board. Okay, he's not trying to say he knows it all, but here's the why. If you don't have the answer yet, really genuinely ask the questions. That's great. That's great. Yeah, and and I think uh as you move to older, it all those things sort of soften. I'm not as worried with somebody my age, I can say, I need you to sell this many things this month. And they'll say, Okay, sounds good. Instead of saying, Well, what did I do wrong? Oh no. If you know, this feels traumatic and less process. And so I think there's less need for all that diplomacy the older you get. It's like we're Neanderthals or something, but you guys know more than we do. But but at the older employees, I think you can just tell people a little bit more. I do think the days of command and control. Oh, pastor's gonna go off on the mount and come back with a 10-year vision. I that I'm not seeing that that much. I'm seeing uh the best ideas come from teams. Collaboration. Yeah. I'm not a super huge fan of you have to have a no senior pastor, just a collaborative team. I know that happens. I haven't seen it last. Yeah, but uh I would say it depends on the group, it depends on the age group, and the more digitally native they are, the less I need to sound like I know it all. That's great.
SPEAKER_01That's great. We already talked about this a little bit, but um in terms of meetings and one-on-ones, is there a flow or maybe a structure that you have found um works well for you? And is there a different flow or structure depending on like the level of within the organization the person you're at is you who you were talking to?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yep. That dep that has changed with different people. Okay. So I had a COO one time who would send, we'd have our one-on-one on Friday morning, and he'd send me uh a recap of the week, all the work he'd done, all the one-on-ones he'd had, what he's dealing with, long email, three or four pages long on Thursdays. And then our meeting was 10 minutes long because I'd read all the stuff. It's like this looks good, this do that, this, this, this, done, dun, done. That was that was different. Jen and I, I probably had uh our COO now, I've probably learned more from her than any COO I've had. And and you know, you'd think she's she's run this giant corporation, Lush, before she came here, and you think she'd have all these corporate secrets. Actually, I walk in her office someone I hadn't seen her in a day or two, and she says, Well, I've got a list. Do you have a list? Yes. What's your list? What's your list? We go through the lists, that's it. Uh we're actually pretty bad at having the quarterly review and that so I I think it's been very individual dependent. Yep. Uh how present am I? I don't need to swoop in and micromanage somebody if I'm trying to be detached. Yep. So it to me, it's tailor-made. I it I'm becoming less and less a fan of cookie-cutter solutions to staff issues. That's great. David said, Behold, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, or I am fear. He's talking about one individual. And we're all just different. I mean, that sounds so pedantic, but we're all incredibly unique. And when you put a group of 10 or 20 people on a staff, or a hundred or five hundred, or even just five, you've taken a bunch of fearfully, wonderfully things and and put them in a very unique mix. So I think uh it's gonna be different for every team, but it's whatever yields the best results. That's all. That's great.
SPEAKER_01Hiring what matters most? Character, competency, or culture.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Let's take those one at a time. Character. Everybody's a character. People are really interesting. Yeah. Oh no. In all seriousness, um, you know, people have a past. Sometimes that's better. Oh, we have a client in a client in Las Vegas that loves it when we bring somebody with a criminal record that's met Jesus. Um I mean, like, so it's context-specific, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it a felony or misdemeanor? Like, I think they're kind of hoping for the felony. So you and like relate to the crowd or whatever. So you know, it the character thing, that's so hard. Everyone needs to have pristine character. Nobody has pristine character. So, you know, uh the number of people on the planet that make stupid decisions is directly correlated to the number of people on the planet. That's it's just, and I know that because I look in the mirror every day and say, oh my gosh, is this all I got to work with? So it, I mean, it there is not a situation where people aren't gonna make dumb decisions. But if you can uh find a place where they have room to make a dumb decision, yes, and then give them the latitude to make the dumb decision, you you're gonna win people over staffing-wise in a way that that is uh it's irreplaceable. If you give away tasks, you'll raise up doers. If you give away authority, you'll raise up leaders. If you look your team dead in the eye and say, I'm gonna give you authority to do this, and we've even done it in interviewing. So that there's uh we get character, chemistry, competency. We want to see their discernment above that because our our job is discernment. Yep. And whether they have one past for this kind of situation or another for this kind of you know, Mark Beeson, great pastor who's now with Jesus, used to say everybody's got a past, William, just so it's in the past. So, you know, like it character, where it where are they in their fallness, right? I don't know the answer to that. And there's some places. Where they're just in a place where they think they're great. I've been there where I was beaten up in life and I thought I was in great shape. I wasn't. So sometimes it's a seasonal thing. Like I run into people all the time who've gone through a really rough patch professionally. They're not ready to enter the game again. It's not. So character, it's interesting to me that Jesus never once showed us an answer to the question, how long should it take to recover from a fault? Yeah. He didn't. He he restored Peter to ministry pretty much right after he got out of the grave. And the last time he saw Peter, he was denying him. Yep. Other places it takes a long time. So it's it's a contextual thing, and you have to pray for discernment. What are the character flaws? Is there a moral red card that's been drawn? Does it still affect? I mean, we've got a whole seminar on that. We put it in the show notes how to tell if somebody's recovered from a fall. It's it's a PDF, you'll find it really helpful. On the character side, make sure you never do a podcast with somebody that has their phone on and it rings into their ears. That's bad character. Sorry, don't hire me. Uh bad competency. I I, you know, competency is overrated. And I say that intentionally, uh, because competency for the most part can be learned. It's not natural born competency. That happens from time to time. But most of the time, if a person doesn't know what they're doing and doesn't have competency in a ministry job, you can teach it to them. Yes. If you are if you are trying to be the worship leader and you cannot carry a tune, then that's a problem.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03Right? You're not gonna be the lead worship vocalist if you cannot speak. Like, literally can't make a sound. It's not gonna happen. I'm not gonna be the slam dunk champion. Like there, it's you're just not gonna be able to learn some competency. But for the most part, what you're talking about in ministries, people's skills, human-to-human skills, and showing them God's love and how to live. I mean, so that can be taught. I don't pay a ton of attention to particular competency. I do pay attention to whether people have hustled at their job. That's great. You know, are they hungry? Do they hustle? The great Brad Lominick book, the three H's. I it's just uh uh a humble, hungry hustle. Though it it do they have those things? If they have those, I can probably teach them the job skills on the back end. And I think for church leaders, that's they need to get liberated from thinking, are they competent enough to run the whole system or run the youth ministry? Run that should be pretty easily taught. You you have you what I don't know how to teach, ask me again in 10 years when I'm older and and maybe I know something. I don't know how to teach cultural fit. So me, culture is how a team behaves while they're trying to get the mission God has given them done. God assigns a mission, here's where we're going, how we're gonna treat one another as we go there. That's culture. And and I don't know how to teach that. And every culture is unique, ours is unique. There's some really smart people who would never ever fit in here or want to work here. Having cultural fit begins with knowing what is your culture. I haven't been able to hire people that don't have cultural fit with us and have it work out. Here's a really uh non-personal example. I'm batting about zero for hiring people who've only worked in large companies for our company. Yeah. Our culture, we're scrappy. We're not a startup. I mean, we've been around a long time. We've done and completed 4,000 searches. We're not, you know, brand new. But everybody's a player coach here. Yeah. There's not a get my assistant to do that or get your team or you know, and people who've been in large businesses, you're like, well, they must know what's going on and what what to do. And they do know large-scale things, but they don't know a thing about life on a PT boat. They've only lived on an aircraft carrier. And I've not figured out how to teach that. Yeah. But I have recognized it as a I might not be equipped to teach that. So they better already have that. I can teach the competency. If they're honest with me about their character and we decide that it's a good time to, then we can deal with whatever's in the past. But the chemistry, the cultural fit, I I genuinely don't know how to how to teach that. So my advice right now is learn what your culture or your chemistry of your team is and make sure the person that you're hiring innately behaves that way. That's good. And it and then a lot of the other things will fall to the wayside. That's great. We're a service culture. Like we're a service company, right? Some of our best hires are people that didn't graduate from college at all, but they worked at places that had service culture, and you can't teach that.
SPEAKER_01No. So you can't. Well, we've gone through a whole bunch of questions for you, William. I want to know, is there anything that you just want to you want to make sure our listeners hear that they that they get maybe something you would need to get off your chest? Yeah, hiring's hard. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, I've said it a bunch of times, but if you're afraid of hiring, good. Oh well, it's anytime you add a team member, you change the chemistry of the team. Yep. And that's a venture into the unknown. And hiring at its at its core is full of anxiety because venturing into the unknown is anxiety-ridden. I have seven kids. I've got one at home still, she's 16, she still wants the nightlight on. We don't like the unknown. So if you're feeling squishy about it, that's normal. If you're feeling like someone from your church or internally is the perfect person because I already know them, you might be right. Many times that's exactly right. But boy, you better put a second set of eyes on it. Because you might just be saying, I don't want to go into the dark where there's stuff I don't know. I feel like I know this, so it will probably work. So if you're feeling squishy about hiring, that's totally normal. If you're feeling drawn toward an internal candidate, it could be great, but it could just be you trying to not engage with the unknown. And I would just say, you know, you're going through an unknown. It costs too much to undo a bad hire, to rush it, or to go pressing the easy button. So just face that unknown and go in there with Jesus and uh it'll be fine. If we can help you, we'll help you. But uh face the unknown.
SPEAKER_01That's so good. That's so good. Well, hey, we're gonna link everything that William mentioned in the show notes below. Um, but if you have a comment, maybe an idea for a future episode, make sure to leave that there. We love hearing from you guys about um what direction and what what topics we should even cover and get William's insight into. And uh, we'll see you in the next one.
SPEAKER_00Thanks again for joining us on the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're looking for more leadership resources, you can find us at Vanderblumen.com and on socials at Vanderblumen. We'll see you again next week where we continue discussing how to build, run, and keep great teams.