Does Your Staff Trust Its Leaders? Results May Surprise You

Ever wondered how church leaders can navigate the choppy waters of staff and congregational needs? Join me, Todd Rhodes, on the Healthy Church Staff podcast, where we dissect the results of our 2023 Healthy Church Staff Assessment. With insights from over a thousand participants, we explore the high seas of church leadership, where 67% of staff members report satisfaction with their leaders' ability to communicate and make value-aligned decisions. But what about the 18% who are dissatisfied? We're setting sail to uncover the undercurrents of discontent and chart a course for improved leadership.

This week, we don't just celebrate the success stories; we also confront the challenges head-on. From the importance of transparency and support to the necessity of listening, our discussions are aimed at understanding the full spectrum of leadership effectiveness within church communities. As your co-founder of Chemistry Staffing and fellow journeyman on the path to healthier church environments, I'm here to share strategies that help leaders enhance their influence and foster a vibrant and engaged staff. So tune in, because we're not just talking about steering the ship—we're learning how to ensure every person on deck is ready for the voyage.

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.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hello there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders of Uber at Chemistry Staffing and if you've been following along, I hope you have for the last. This is our third week. We're doing a series on Healthy Church Staff. We're sharing a lot of what we learned last year in our 2023 healthy church staff assessment that we did and, by the way, side plug here we are currently in kind of the open enrollment period for you to take the 2024 healthy church staff assessment. It doesn't cost you anything to take the assessment. We'll ask you about 50 questions on all different types of church staff health questions and when you're done, we will send you an email that gives you a score. It's cool. It's between zero and 100. It gives you a reading on how you're doing as far as staff health and how healthy you are as a church staff member. You can take that anytime at churchstaffassessmentcom. It's churchstaffassessmentcom.

Speaker 1: 1:07

So we started our series a couple of weeks ago. We started with five episodes on communication and then last week we did five podcast episodes on job satisfaction. Today we're going to start our series. This week, all five days, we are going to be talking about leadership and we're going to dive right in here with what our leaders, how well our leaders, serve us. Again, this was an assessment that was given to church staff members. We had a little over a thousand people give their responses. Current church staff people give their responses and here's the response we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 1: 1:42

We gave everyone this statement. Here's the statement. I think the leadership of my church serves our staff and congregation. So how did people respond to that? We asked them hey, do you strongly disagree? Are you neutral on that? Do you agree or do you strongly agree? Let's start out here.

Speaker 1: 2:01

It turns out that a solid 67% of people that's over 700 people out of the little over 1,000, feel pretty positively. They either agreed or strongly agreed that their church leadership serves both the staff and the congregation really well. 67%, but that's not everyone. Not everybody's on board. Matter of fact. 18% expressed dissatisfaction. That means they either disagreed or strongly disagreed. Another 15% were right in the middle. They were neutral, not sure if they're quite getting the leadership that they need or deserve or not.

Speaker 1: 2:36

So what's behind this? How do we look at this? For many, it's about seeing their leaders communicate effectively and make decisions that resonate with the church's values and take actions that clearly support where the church is headed, where the church is going. And for the 67 that said, yeah, I think our leadership is doing a great job. They feel like they have a captain who's not only steering the ship but makes sure that everyone's on deck and ready for the voyage. So that's all part of the communication and the leadership of those 67% that said, which is roughly 70, almost 70%, seven out of 10 that say yeah, I think our leadership does pretty good. So that's good, but there's always room for improvement. Even if you're a leader that has almost everybody on board, you can still be a better leader. You never arrive.

Speaker 1: 3:30

Let's talk about some of the people that are dissatisfied. Right, it was about 18% that said to that statement that boy, I disagree with that, or even I strongly disagree with that. So that's the elephant in the room, the 18% who aren't thrilled. What's missing for them? It could be a number of things, and we found out from our assessment last year, from the results, that it could be a number of different things that's causing people to be dissatisfied. It could be a lack of transparency, it could be a lack of integrity among the leadership. It could be a lack of support where they just feel. The staff members feel like they're not supported, like their voices just aren't being heard and regardless, it's really crucial for leadership to open up more channels of communication we talked about that on the communication week and really listen to these concerns.

Speaker 1: 4:23

Here's a side note In churches and your church, results may vary. So your church may be very healthy and that 67 approval number it might be up in the 90s or it could be an unhealthy situation where your church staff I've talked to church staffs and been part of church staffs where it's about there's about a mutiny is about to go down. Folks, if something doesn't change with leadership, they're going to see massive and substantial people turning in resignations because they're not happy. What I would tell you is, if you are a leader, you need to know the satisfaction level of your staff and sometimes your perception of how staff view. Leadership and the reality are two totally different things and I'll tell you a little bit more about that and how the church staff assessment might be able to help you in just a bit.

Speaker 1: 5:14

But that's how I think you address those that are dissatisfied. You really need to be able to address and kind of self, be self-aware enough to know, okay. So how am I being received as their leader? And what can I do to do better For the neutral group? How about those people, the 15% that are neutral, that are on the fence? What do you do for those people? Engaging those groups might mean just you pull back the curtain a little bit on. You know some of the decisions, some of the whys and some of the hows that you're making, perhaps not in everything, but in some things. Where it's possible, you involve them more directly in the decision making process and and give them feel like they have a dog in the fight in some of the decisions that are being made. But a lot of, from the reaction that we got from from the respondents last year, a lot of the dissatisfaction, and the neutral group really told us that, look, I don't feel like decisions are being made, or that the decisions that are being made don't make sense, or that I just don't trust the leadership because they don't communicate with me. So those are the big, big bucket items that we're seeing.

Speaker 1: 6:22

What do you do with this? What do you do with this information? First of all, if you haven't already, like I said, go and take it. It's at churchstaffassessmentcom See how you're doing individually. That's the first step. Churchstaffassessmentcom will run you through all the questions. It takes you probably about 10 or 15 minutes to do that, absolutely free. But you'll get a report card back that kind of says how you're doing and in the area of leadership, we'll ask you this question and it will tell you where you are on that scale.

Speaker 1: 6:49

Now, if you're the leader of a staff and it's vitally important that how your staff views you are they satisfied with the leadership of the church? And a lot of times you're either because you're not very self-aware and believe it or not. Yes, some of us just aren't as self-aware as others, but sometimes it's because of a lack of self-awareness. Or sometimes you're just the last person to know because you see things through a different set of eyes. Right, we are doing something different. It is a premium model of the assessment.

Speaker 1: 7:21

But if you are in leadership say you're a senior pastor or an executive pastor we have a couple modules of the assessment this year that we're doing that will allow you to get anonymous feedback from all of your staff on leadership and compensation levels, and all of that that will give you the information you can use to make a plan to get better. We can help you through that if you need help. But there's the staff component, there's the leadership team component and there's a board component. How does your board feel about the leadership and compensation levels and all of that? If you are interested in pursuing that for your church team, for your church staff, just send me an email at podcast at chemistry staffingcom. I'm not a big sales guy, but I do think that this could be the first step in helping you make some really important and long-lasting improvements on your church staff team. So if you're interested in an option, just reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom.

Speaker 1: 8:22

But really, guys and gals, just to wrap up, effective leadership it's absolutely pivotal. It's absolutely everything in ensuring that everyone not even just staff, but everyone that sits in the back row on Sunday mornings to sits in the front office, to make sure that everybody feels supported and valuable. And while it's great that most church staff feel like they're well-served, we've got to keep pushing for 100%, 67%. While that's good in some instances, it's not cutting it. Guys and gals, we need to do better. We need to make our leadership better and let's try and make it our goal to make our leadership as effective and inclusive as we can. So that's it for today. Today is the first edition of the podcast that we're talking about leadership and we're going to do that all week here on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 9:13

I hope you're enjoying the podcast Wherever you listen. Be sure to subscribe. We've got I think this is episode 80-some, so we've got a lot of episodes. If you're new to the podcast, you can go back and catch up pretty quickly. They're all pretty short, but subscribe. If you would like to leave a review A good review, of course, we would appreciate a review as well. That really does help us out. All right, thanks so much. We will be back here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Thanks for listening, thank you.