Is the Communication Line Open? Your Staff Holds the Answer
Apr 25, 2024Season 1Episode 79
Todd Rhoades
Unlock the secrets to a well-oiled church staff team with me, Todd Rhoades, as we journey through the nuances of effective communication. Faced with the reality that a significant portion of church workers seek better dialogue among their ranks, this episode unveils the tools and techniques for cultivating a culture brimming with connection. Learn how leadership plays a pivotal role in this transformation and discover actionable strategies, like feedback mechanisms and communication audits, to ensure every voice is heard and valued.
Embarking on this exploration, we also celebrate the anticipation of this year's Church Staff Health Assessment. With last year's thousand-strong voices echoing the need for change, we're set to dive even deeper into the collective wisdom of our church communities. By dissecting the fibers of team dynamics, I'll guide you through understanding and enhancing your role within your church staff. Don't sit on the sidelines; your insights are the catalyst for our collective growth. Reach out to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com to contribute to a healthier, more vibrant church staff landscape.
Unlock the secrets to a well-oiled church staff team with me, Todd Rhoades, as we journey through the nuances of effective communication. Faced with the reality that a significant portion of church workers seek better dialogue among their ranks, this episode unveils the tools and techniques for cultivating a culture brimming with connection. Learn how leadership plays a pivotal role in this transformation and discover actionable strategies, like feedback mechanisms and communication audits, to ensure every voice is heard and valued.
Embarking on this exploration, we also celebrate the anticipation of this year's Church Staff Health Assessment. With last year's thousand-strong voices echoing the need for change, we're set to dive even deeper into the collective wisdom of our church communities. By dissecting the fibers of team dynamics, I'll guide you through understanding and enhancing your role within your church staff. Don't sit on the sidelines; your insights are the catalyst for our collective growth. Reach out to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com to contribute to a healthier, more vibrant church staff landscape.
Hello there, my name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom and you are listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, but you already knew that because you clicked on the link to listen to it. You're listening in your favorite podcast player. However, I don't know how you found us, but I'm so glad you did, and we are in the process of talking about church communication this weekend. All of this comes out of our survey that we did, our assessment that we did last year and one that we're starting again. We actually started it, opened it up to the public yesterday. It's our annual 2024 started. It opened it up to the public yesterday. It's our annual 2024 Church Staff Health Assessment, and I would love for you to head over to churchstaffassessmentcom churchstaffassessmentcom and take our free Church Staff Health Assessment for 2024. And you will. At the end of that, we ask you about 50 questions on seven different areas of church staff health and when you finish that up, you'll get an email that gives you your results and compares you to what we're learning from other church staff and how healthy you actually are. So this week we're looking at some of the results that we learned last year. We had over a thousand people take the first annual church staff health assessment and we're talking specifically about our first kind of key indicator area of church staff health and that's communication. And today we want to talk about how to build a connection, a culture of connection. And yesterday we talked about some of the results that we learned from our assessment last year. We want to continue that today.
Speaker 1:
Today we want to talk about this statement that we presented to over a thousand church staff. The statement was simply this our church staff communicates well with each each other and the results were really interesting. I strongly agree. About a quarter of church staff say yeah, we actually. I strongly agree. We work really well and communicate really well with each other. About 36% said that they strongly agree, but about 40% when you total up the lower end of the scale, about 40% of all church staff of those 1,000 people that responded feel that staff communication could be improved pretty significantly.
Speaker 1:
And this divide in understanding reflects a divide in church staff teams to address. We really want to address the 17% of people who expressed some dissatisfaction in communication, and that's almost 17%. It's almost one in five. People say that their staff really doesn't communicate well with one another. Obviously, what we need to do is try if we want to become healthier as a church and healthier as a team and if I'm a staff member and I want to become healthier as a church and healthier as a team, and if I'm a staff member and I want to become healthier as a staff member we really want to try and cultivate that culture of connection and that culture of communication. We need to create an environment that's less about maybe some instructions and maybe more about conversations, maybe less about rules, maybe more about trying things, and we really need to encourage open dialogue. We need to encourage some active listening and some just genuine engagement among our staff members. And, if you hear me, if you are one of the leaders of your staff, if you're a senior pastor or an executive pastor or serve on the leadership team, your leadership really plays a crucial role in this process. You and the way that you carry out and lead your team really makes a difference in how well your team not only communicates with each other, but how effective they are in their roles that they play on your staff.
Speaker 1:
Here's some of the key takeaways just off this one question, and let's start off with the good side. Okay, more than 60% say that they're satisfied Overall. They feel like communication between staff members is okay. Now that doesn't mean there's not any room for improvement. We should always strive to do better and you're going to hear me say over and over communication and communication strategy in your church is not a one-off deal. It is a continuing. You got to constantly strive to do better. Satisfaction today shouldn't bind our progress for tomorrow. If we feel like we're doing really good today, we should try and do even better tomorrow. But it's something that you have to take a proactive approach on.
Speaker 1:
Communication usually doesn't just happen, particularly when you're trying to address staff concerns and those that remain neutral. So let's talk a little bit about those that are. When we said, hey, our staff rate how you feel about your church. Our church staff communicates well with one another, we said 60% say yeah for the most part. That leaves 4 in 10, 40% that say no, we really don't have really great communication, and that's those are the ones, those the 40%. Then maybe you know who those people are. Maybe you don't know who those people are and I'll share, as we go through this series on the podcast, how you can even find out a little bit more about how your staff is feeling about your church. But the proactive approach really needs to be toward those 40% to try and to address their staff concerns and really to try and engage them, because right now they're neutral.
Speaker 1:
How do you do that? What are some ways that you can do that? Let me give you a couple here, anyway. The first is to implement some feedback mechanisms and regular I like to call them communication audits that will help identify and resolve any underlying issues. So chances are, if you have somebody that's on the fence on to whether or not your church staff communicates well with each other, chances are they feel like they're not being heard or they're not able to contribute. As you do this kind of communication audit, make sure that you have ways for people to give feedback. Maybe it's anonymous, but I prefer in-person to cultivate the relationship with the person so that there's a good back and forth of conversation going that they don't need to do it anonymously, and forth of conversation going that they don't need to do it anonymously Really, and focus on I would say, let me put it this way I would focus on trying to create a united, cohesive, more effective team.
Speaker 1:
Everybody can speak individually, but when we communicate together and we encourage collaboration. That's when the real strides can be made. So, if you can commit to determining how you can get that feedback, particularly from the 40% that are disconnected, chances are you're getting feedback from the 60% that feel like communication is going well. But it's the 40% that you really should need to be concerned about and building a culture. As I said, and I'll leave you with this today, it takes time and it takes consistent effort. You can't just flip the switch on communication and expect every those 40% to say, oh okay, hey, I got an opportunity to give some feedback. It's a continuing improvement process. You need to value every voice and you really need to create an environment of trust and support so that people feel not only valued, that they're a valuable part of the team, but valued in a way that they can express their ideas, their thoughts, their concerns and that they can feel like they're being heard. That's going to be a huge stretch in making your church a really healthy church and a healthy place for your staff to be from a communications standpoint. We're going to continue our conversation tomorrow. We're going to talk, drill down even a little bit further on this communication and we're going to talk about is your church, a safe place for your staff to share their ideas. So I hope you'll come back and join us for that tomorrow.
Speaker 1:
In the meantime, if you've got a few seconds right now, I would love for you to do it now or maybe even later today. If you've not already done, go head over to churchstaffassessmentcom. Churchstaffassessmentcom and you can take our free assessment. Probably take you 15 minutes, 10 or 15 minutes totally free, but at the end of that you will actually get an email from us that takes your scores. It gives you a score one out of 100, and tells you, on a scale of one to 100, how healthy you are.
Speaker 1:
We're going to compile all of this. We had a thousand people take it last year. We're going to compile all of this. We had a thousand people take it last year. We're going to have, hopefully, even more. Take it this year. That'll give us just a really good reading, not only year to year, how things have changed, but how you're doing specifically and how your church staff is doing in the area of communications and six other really key vital areas. Keep listening here on the podcast. We're going to go through each one of these in the next few weeks and it's going to be a really healthy study on how to create and how to be a healthy church staff member. So I hope you'll join us. If you have any comments, feedback about the assessment or anything you hear here on the podcast, or maybe an idea for a future podcast, reach out to me anytime. It's podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. We'll talk to you tomorrow.