The Team with The Right Wrong People - Episode 383
Feb 12, 2025
In a deep dive into staffing challenges, the hosts tackle the concept of having the 'right wrong people' on church teams. They explore assessing leaders beyond performance metrics and discuss the critical four levels of leadership capacity. The importance of evaluating roles separately from individuals is emphasized, along with tools for understanding staff dynamics. Expect insights on the value of outside perspectives in decision-making, practical steps for leaders, and the personal growth needed from senior leaders to foster healthy staff structures.
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Strategic Staffing
Churches often hire reactively, but strategic staffing supports ministry vision.
Evaluate current staff leaders beyond basic performance metrics.
insights INSIGHT
Recognizing Staffing Issues
One sign of misalignment is constantly reacting to staffing gaps instead of planning proactively.
Another symptom is team fatigue from wearing multiple hats due to a lack of clear roles.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Outgrowing Roles
High-performing staff members can become frustrated as church growth surpasses their leadership capacity.
This often necessitates a role change, not removal.
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How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues
Patrick Lencioni
In this book, Patrick Lencioni explains how to identify and cultivate the three essential virtues of an ideal team player. The story follows Jeff Shanley, a leader who must restore his uncle’s company’s cultural commitment to teamwork by identifying and building a culture around the virtues of humility, hunger, and smarts. Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for leaders, HR professionals, and team members to create a culture of teamwork. Ideal team players are described as humble (sharing credit and emphasizing team over self), hungry (self-motivated and diligent), and smart (emotionally intelligent with common sense about people)[1][3][5].
Necessary Endings
The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward
Henry Cloud
In 'Necessary Endings', Henry Cloud challenges readers to identify and end unhealthy relationships, businesses, and practices that hinder personal and professional growth. The book emphasizes that endings are a natural part of life and necessary for moving forward. Cloud provides practical advice on making tough decisions, using metaphors like pruning a rose bush to illustrate the need for intentional endings to allow for new beginnings and growth. The book is designed to help readers achieve the personal and professional growth they desire by proactively correcting the bad and the broken in their lives and businesses[2][3][4].
In Part 2 of our church staffing series, Sean and Amy tackle another challenging oxymoron: having the right wrong people on your team.
In this episode, we unpack:
How to assess your current staff leaders beyond basic performance metrics
Understanding the four levels of leadership capacity (10s, 50s, 100s, 1000s)
The importance of evaluating roles separately from the people in them
Tools and assessments for understanding staff wiring and capacity
Plus, we discuss the value of outside perspective when making tough staffing decisions, share practical next steps for leaders and explain how to avoid creating the same challenges in future hiring. We also address the personal growth needed from senior leaders to build and maintain healthy staff structures.
This Episode is Brought to You By Planning Center: Planning Center is an all-in-one toolkit to organize and run your ministries. And what is a ministry without volunteers?
Planning Center helps you build a sustainable and balanced volunteer schedule that aligns ministry needs with people’s availability. Then, you can connect with your team using chat, where you can coordinate ministry details, make announcements, and engage in fun conversations with your teammates.
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