Are Your Staff Meetings Worthwhile? (Because They Should Be)

Is your church staff meeting hitting the mark or missing the point? Get ready for a candid exploration of what makes these gatherings soar or snooze. I'm Todd Rhodes, your host, and in today's Healthy Church Staff Podcast episode, we're delving into the juicy insights from our latest church staff health assessment. With a staggering 74% of church staff praising their meetings for being both frequent and purposeful, we're celebrating the ingredients to their success: clear agendas, interactive discussions, and a perfect blend of business and relationship-building.

But wait, it's not all high-fives and hallelujahs—there's a slice of the pie, 14%, that's left with a bitter taste. And let's not forget the 13% perched on the fence of neutrality. We're peeling back the layers to understand their less-than-enthused perspective and discussing how to turn those frowns upside down. Church leaders, take note: we're sharing strategies to give everyone a voice and transform your staff meetings into a powerhouse of productivity and positivity. So, wherever you are on the staff meeting spectrum, this episode has something for you—a blend of real talk, practical tips, and a pinch of humor to keep things lively. Join us and let's get your team tuned in and turned on to the power of well-executed staff meetings.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom, and today we're diving into a topic that affects every single staff member out there staff meetings. Are they really worthwhile Because, let's face it, they should be or else they're just ineffective hosts. So let's talk about it. Here's something to consider, and this comes from our 2023 church staff health assessment. We found that 74% of church staff feel that their meetings are, that their staff meetings are both frequent and purposeful. That's really strong. I thought I was actually pretty surprised at that number that came back last year. That's a pretty strong affirmation and it's a good sign that many churches and staff meetings are right on track. However, as with the good, there's also some feedback that was not glowing. Feedback that was not glowing 14% of over a thousand people that responded expressed dissatisfaction. My goodness, it's a Monday morning when I'm recording this Dissatisfaction and 13% were neutral about whether or not the staff meetings were beneficial. So that gives us a broad spectrum of experiences that we can explore and learn from.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Let's talk about, first of all, the positive feedback. So why do the majority what did I say? 76%, 74%? Why do the majority find that these meetings are mostly effective for them. The feedback that we got says that it really comes down to a few things clear agendas, interactive formats where people can express their thoughts and ideas. And I think there's kind of a side note. I think there's the business part of it, the things that you have to discuss, but there's also the relational part the church staff meetings that when the team is together and they get along, it makes the meeting go much better. And there's just a feeling from those 74% that liked it that the updates from everyone keeps the team on track, it keeps the team aligned, it keeps the team informed. And that's the truth about regular, well-structured meetings is that they can really enhance church communication, which we've been talking about all week here on the podcast, and staff cohesion. So it's like the glue that keeps the day-to-day operation smooth and everybody kind of marching to the beat of the same drum. That's the positive.

Speaker 1: 2:38

But let's look at those that were dissatisfied, because on the flip side, it's really crucial to try to understand why 14% of the people that responded said that not just neutral we're going to talk about neutrals in a second but they're actually dissatisfied with staff meetings. So why are the 14% not happy about staff meetings? Was it the pacing, the content, perhaps the lack of opportunity to contribute? These are areas that I think contribute to dissatisfaction. And if leadership digs a little deeper and really surveys to see and I think you need to do this every once in a while just how are our meetings, what do we need to do to make our meetings better as leaders, I think, as you do, that you're going to uncover some ways to address these gaps and kind of talk to those that are dissatisfied.

Speaker 1: 3:28

Also, the 14%, honestly, that are dissatisfied with staff meetings is probably not just the staff meetings. It's probably their overall level of dissatisfaction with leadership or the church, or maybe they're just restless that caused them a little bit of dissatisfaction. I don't think that's a word either, but that's okay, I just made it up. So those are the dissatisfied people. Let's take a look at the neutral people, because there's over 10%, about 13% of the people that responded back, that said no, I'm neutral, and for neutral, that means to me that sometimes they're yeah, the meetings are okay, sometimes they're a waste of time, they're neutral, and engaging this group, if you're a leader, could be again just varying meeting formats more actively involving everyone in the meetings. Maybe having different parts of the meeting where different people lead the meeting, that could be helpful. But it's really all apart, especially for the dissatisfied and the neutrals. It's about making everyone feel like they have kind of a voice and a stake in the process.

Speaker 1: 4:32

As we've been talking all week about communication, it's not a switch that you flip. It's not like you either communicate tremendously or you don't communicate at all, and this goes for staff meetings as well. So wherever you are today I think I can say this reasonably wherever you are, there's probably room for improvement, particularly when it comes to your staff meetings. So here are some ideas that you can complement. We've mentioned them a little bit before, but switch it up a little bit.

Speaker 1: 5:01

We often, as we said a couple of days ago, autopilot is not our friend in church leadership. When we get so comfortable that we do the same things almost in rote pattern, we do the same things over and over, things get boring, things get bland. And staff meetings believe me, I've been in a few of them that are just everybody's just going through the motions. You've got it from eight to nine on your calendar and you've got to be there. Oh, my goodness, what are we going to do? There's not really anything to discuss, but it's on the calendar, so we're going to be here. Switch it up a little bit. Some meetings might be more informational. Maybe there's a meeting, maybe once a month, that's more for brainstorming. Maybe there's a meeting where you talk about a certain ministry. Maybe you do some feedback sessions. All of these different types of things get you out of the status quo, move you off of autopilot, and it ensures that all meetings have a clear meeting and a clear routine and a clear outcome.

Speaker 1: 5:54

I am a firm believer that every meeting I go into needs to have some type of an agenda, like a written agenda, not just a weekly meeting. You actually have a list of things that you're going to discuss and things that you can put on that agenda. You can be flexible with that, but, going into meetings, it really helps people to be engaged where they know what they're going to talk about. Just doing these kinds of things are not going to only help the engaged those 74% that are engaged feel more engaged but it's also going to help those that are in the disinterested or dissatisfied area and the neutral group to be able to pull them in and get them to be a little bit more engaged.

Speaker 1: 6:35

A couple of other ideas maybe bring an expert in or a consultant or somebody that can speak in, somebody that's not on your team, that you respect, that could come in and talk to your staff. Now you wouldn't want to do this every time, but maybe once a month, once a quarter. Bring somebody in. You can do that very easily now with Zoom or Microsoft Meeting. Bring somebody in just for 10 or 15 minutes to talk. Do a Q&A session, maybe with someone at a different church or somebody that could be beneficial to your staff. That might be a good idea. And the other idea I think is just as we said before just vary what you're doing in these meetings so that they're not the same old thing every week. Encouraging to see, as I said, I was encouraged by last year's results that 74% actually are having staff meetings and feel like these staff meetings are beneficial. So let's continue to enhance our meeting experiences. My admonition to you, if you're in charge of the staff meeting for this next week do something different. I don't care what it is, do something different, just to rock the boat a little bit and something that nobody's expecting. Maybe make it a little bit fun, but do something. Switch that autopilot off and do something different. Okay, so if you've got thoughts, ideas, maybe some really cool things or really horrible things that you've tried in your staff meetings I would love to hear, don't hesitate to shoot me an email anytime at podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. I'd love to hear from you and, if you found this episode helpful, hit, subscribe, consider leaving us a reviewer. It really helps and thanks for listening today.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Also, this series that we've been doing on the podcast is a part of our 2024 Church Staff Health Assessment that we just kicked off this week. If you've not taken the free Church Staff Health Assessment this year yet, you can do that today. It's only going to be open for just a few days this year. You can do that for free at churchstaffassessmentcom and what you're going to do is take that assessment. It's free. It's about 50 questions, but at the end of it you're going to get a score based on your answers to the questions. It's going to tell you how you're doing on the Healthy Church Staff scale that we've developed. Like I said, absolutely free, you can take it at churchstaffassessmentcom. All right, hope. You have a great weekend Next week. Come on back. We are going to be continuing our series on church staff health, and you can only get it right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Thanks so much for listening.