Transforming Your Ministry: The Impact of Strong Team Dynamics

Can strong team dynamics truly transform your church's ministry? Join us for an enlightening episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast as we uncover the secrets behind the 2024 Church Staff Health Assessment. I'm Todd Rhoades, your host and co-founder of Chemistry Staffing, and today we're diving into the nuances of team dynamics and collaboration within church staff. Discover why some churches excel in fostering a collaborative environment while others struggle, and learn practical strategies to enhance your team's communication and teamwork.

We break down essential tips for creating a cohesive and productive team, including encouraging open communication and promoting team-building activities. Whether it's through a casual team lunch, an immersive retreat, or collaborative projects, we'll provide actionable insights to strengthen relationships and minimize conflicts within your staff. Tune in to understand the critical role of strong team dynamics in achieving a healthy and effective ministry, and take away valuable ideas to help your church staff thrive together towards common goals.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom and your host right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Today we're going to continue our series that we've been on last week and this week bringing you some of the results that we discovered from our 2024 Church Staff Health Assessment, and today we're talking about team dynamics and collaboration. A healthy team is one where collaboration thrives and everybody's working toward a common goal. But honestly, achieving that kind of dynamic takes some real intentionality and effort. It doesn't just happen, and our 2024 assessment sheds some light on how church staff's teams are functioning and where we might have some room to grow Overall.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Here's some findings in the report. First of all, it's a little bit of all over the place. Team dynamic scores vary across different churches. Some churches have a great team dynamic. Others staff members report a strong sense of. Some have a strong sense of teamwork and collaborations, but there's others that do not feel a sense of teamwork and collaboration. Every church is different, but I can tell you, no matter where your church is and how your church scored, how your staff scored on the team dynamic in the church staff health assessment. There is always room for continued collaboration. Matter of fact, I don't know that there was one church that scored perfectly in the area of team dynamics, and that just suggests that there's a need for some stronger collaboration and some clearer communication with teams to ensure that everyone is working cohesively and together toward common goals.

Speaker 1: 1:51

Okay, so let's break this down a little bit. Okay, when it comes down to it, team dynamics can make or break your ministry and your church. When teams work well together, they work well together. When things work, they work, and when they don't, boy, do they not work? So when teams work well together, they can accomplish great things. But when there's a lack of collaboration or communication, when the team dynamics are not good, what it can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts and a lack of productivity and it can turn into a real dumpster fire at your church. So it's important to regularly assess the health of your team dynamics and take a closer look and take steps to foster that collaborative environment where everybody feels valued and included.

Speaker 1: 2:41

So what are some ways that you can improve this team dynamic? Some of this is it's just not. I like to say it's not rocket surgery. Right, there are no like. I wish I could just blow your mind with. That was an incredible idea. These are things that that chances are you should be doing or you could be doing better, but they're harder to implement, that they're easier said than done, okay, so let me just go through these really quickly. The first is just to encourage, to get that team dynamic and the collaboration you have to have open communication. So you've got to create an environment where open communication is not only encouraged but it's valued, and this means fostering a culture where team members can feel comfortable sharing their ideas and their concerns and their feedback.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Promote some team building activities. When was the last time you and your staff maybe got out of the office and just hung out and did some team building activities? Regular team building activities can actually strengthen relationships. They actually improve collaborations. And what does this look like? It could be a retreat. It could be as simple as a team lunch or starting a new project that is just by its nature more collaborative. That require different departments or different staff, people that don't normally work together to be able to work together. So those are just a couple of ideas encouraging the open communication and then promoting those team building activities, because here's the bottom line Strong team dynamics are absolutely essential and you know this for a healthy and effective ministry. It's about creating an environment where collaboration and communication respect. Those are all norms. Everybody just expects them.

Speaker 1: 4:42

Here's your call to action today. I gave you some potential team building activities. I mentioned that it could be a retreat, it could be a team lunch, a collaborative project there's three, take your pick. All right, I'm going to suggest to you between the retreat, that can take a lot of planning and can be rather costly, right, if you're going to go offsite to a retreat center or something for a couple days or three days with your staff and team, that can take a lot of prep work, takes a lot of budget sometimes that you might not have. So let's put that one aside for now. If you've got the resources and want to do that, sure, go ahead and plan that.

Speaker 1: 5:25

A climber to a project again, that takes a little. You got to have the idea first of all. You got to brainstorm all of that. You got to come up with who's going to be. That's a little bit more complicated as well, so let's put that off the table as well. All right, so we've already taken off our retreats. We've taken off the collaborative projects off your plate. Don't worry about that this week.

Speaker 1: 5:42

What I want you to do this week, though, is schedule a team lunch. Okay, schedule sometime within the next two weeks I'll give you three weeks, okay, I'll give you three weeks. Schedule a team lunch. It could be the entire team according to the size of your church, it could be a department, it could be department heads, but schedule a team lunch and just get together for the purpose of getting to know each other better, having fun fellowshipping and just building that team. It doesn't have to be a rigid agenda. It just needs to be getting people together and doing some things that help strengthen relationships and that eventually improve collaboration. So that's your bottom line and that's your call to action for this week, within the next three weeks. Do it now. Get your calendar out right now and send out some invites to schedule a team lunch. Could be five people, could be 10 people, I don't care, it's up to you, but you're making a step to really stop making it easier said than done and actually do something right. Take a step to improve your collaboration on your team, take a step to improve the team dynamics on your team, and it will make a difference, I promise you.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Okay, you can go and download our 2024 Church Staff Health Assessment. It's 84 pages of beautiful color PDF. I'm pretty proud of this piece. It took a lot of work. We talked to 1,200 different church staff people across the country and got their input, and I think you're going to find this to be a really interesting read. If you're a leader of a team or if you're just not just if you're a staff member at your church, I think you're going to want to read this. You can go to chemistrystaffingcom slash staff health chemistrystaffingcom slash staff health and you can download your free copy there. And if there's any way that I can help you in team dynamics and collaboration, anything staff hiring, firing, anything staff related, any question you've got for me, any input or feedback on this podcast, you can reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Okay, until tomorrow, I hope you have a great day. We'll see you again here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. We're here every day, monday through Friday.