The Staff Culture Code You Haven’t Written Yet

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the importance of having a written culture code for church staff teams. He explains how an unwritten culture code can lead to confusion, misalignment, and burnout, and provides guidance on how to formalize these unspoken norms into a concise and collaborative document.• Every church staff has a culture code, whether it is written or not.• An unwritten culture code leads to guessing and inconsistency among team members.• Misalignment, conflict, turnover, and mistrust increase without clear expectations.• A written culture code should be short, simple, honest, and collaboratively created.• Include guidelines on behavior, communication, and values in the culture code.• Encouragement to identify and document unspoken rules for better team alignment.

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Chapters

• 0:08 The Hidden Culture You Already Have
• 0:19 Why Unwritten Norms Create Chaos
• 1:18 The Cost Of A Fuzzy Culture
• 3:06 How To Write A Culture Code
• 4:12 Make It Team-Owned, Not Top-Down
• 4:52 One Unspoken Rule To Write Today
• 5:16 Connect And Daily Wrap-Up

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Your church has a staff culture even if you've never ever written it down. And that unspoken code might be creating more confusion and clarity. Today on the podcast, we're going to explore why your team needs a written culture code and what to include in it and how it can prevent future dysfunction and misalignment and burnout. Alright, thanks for joining me today on the podcast. This is the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I'm not sure how you found us, but I'm glad you did. My name's Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over chemistrystaffing.com. All right, every staff team has one, even if it's never been written or talked about or even explained. I'm talking about your church staff's culture code. The culture code, the unspoken rules about what's normal, what's expected, what's rewarded, and where you can't go, what's off limits. Okay. So if you don't write it down, people are going to start guessing. And when everyone's guessing, a lot of times they're going to guess different things, and chaos will not be far behind. So culture codes already exist, even if you never ever made one, even if you've never talked about it, even if you don't even know what a culture code is, even if you've never written it down, your team picks up on certain patterns, like who gets praised and who doesn't. What kind of behavior is tolerated? What kind of behavior is promoted? What does it really take to succeed on your team or at your church? And who can say what in which settings? Who has permission and how much permission? And how much candor can you show? The problem is if it's never defined, it's constantly being reinterpreted by numerous people. And that is going to create inconsistency and confusion and mistrust. And guess what? There's a cost about all of this mistrust and all of this kind of everybody having their own opinion but nothing being written down. There is a cost to having an unwritten culture code. New staff members have to figure it out the hard way. Sometimes it takes them a long time to figure out what's going on at a church. And if you had it written down, boy, it'd be a lot easier for them, wouldn't it? Maybe honest feedback feels risky when the norms are fuzzy because everybody feels somewhat different. And misalignment is going to grow even if the mission is clear and conflict is going to inevitably escalate at times because expectations are just unclear. And eventually you end up with higher turnover and low trust on your team and teams that you thought looked really great on paper, but the reality is they're just not functioning well. So what should you do? First of all, you try and write down a culture code. But what do you include? What is this culture code that you speak of? It's not that difficult, but it is important that you write it down. Here's my suggestions. First of all, keep it short, keep it simple, and keep it honest. Okay? Short, simple, and honest. The old SSH, as they say. But here are some things you can include. How we're going to treat each other, how we're going to handle disagreements, what's expected in our meetings, how we communicate, and how fast we communicate, how we will define a win, how we live out the church's values. And here's a tip: you don't have to come up with this all on your own. A lot of this is what's already happening, right? It's just not been written down. So maybe have your team help you build it. That way it's not just top-down. It's not like an edict from the top of the mountain that you say, this is our culture code. No, it's more team-owned. And that way you can kind of get out what's what everybody is interpreting as your code and actually put it down on paper. So here's the bottom line: your staff culture is happening with or without your input. Okay, so why not, if it's already happening, why not name it and shape it and write it down? Write down your church's culture code. Here's the question for today. What's one unspoken rule on your team that needs to be written down? Everybody knows it, but nobody's ever really admitted it. Write that down. What's the thing that has really corrupted your culture because it's not been written down? I'd love to hear from you. You can reach out to me anytime, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, that's it for today. We'll be right back here again tomorrow, as we are every weekday, Monday through Friday. Hope you'll join me. My name's Todd Rhodes listening to the Healthy Church Podcast.