Crisis Mode Is Not a Leadership Strategy

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff podcast, host Todd Rhoades discusses the pitfalls of living in crisis mode as a leader and offers strategies for healthier leadership. He differentiates between urgent and important tasks, emphasizing the importance of strategic planning and empowering others to prevent crises before they arise. • Crisis management is often mistaken for leadership because of constant busyness. • Living in crisis mode prevents strategic planning and innovation. • Empowering others to solve problems is essential to avoiding bottlenecks. • Healthy leaders distinguish between urgent and important tasks. • Writing down urgent requests can help identify true priorities. • Blocking time for strategic thinking is crucial for effective leadership.

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Transcript

The Monday Morning Fire Drill

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You walk into the office on Monday morning and before you can even sit down, three people need you right now. Your worship leader's laptop died on Sunday night. So he's on your what do I do? I need a new laptop. A key volunteer just quit the attack. And of course the youth pastor needs an answer about summer camp right now. And by 10 a.m. you're already behind what you had were excited about getting going on your Monday morning you haven't even touched. And by lunch, you're putting out fire number seven. This isn't leadership. This is crisis management. And it's killing you and your team. Hi

Why Crisis Mode Feels Like Leadership

SPEAKER_00 0:49

there. This is the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistry staffing.com. Thanks so much for joining us. Here's one of the things that a lot of us as church leaders don't realize, or at least we don't take the time to even think about. Crisis mode feels like leadership because you're busy. It feels like leadership because everybody needs you. It feels like leadership because seemingly you're solving problems. You feel important, maybe even heroic at the time because you're the only person that can fix this. But here's the truth. If everything's a crisis, nothing actually is a crisis.

What Chaos Does To Teams

SPEAKER_00 1:34

And here's what happens when crisis becomes your default. Your team stops thinking ahead because they know that you'll fix it. Staff members start creating urgency to get your attention. Has that ever happened? Where you feel like somebody's making stuff up just so that they can get some of your time? Planning becomes impossible because today's fires always win, so you never get to the stuff that you really need to be planning. And sometimes your best people just get tired of the chaos and start quietly looking somewhere else. You become the bottleneck, even though you're making most of the decisions. Innovation dies because survival takes all of your energy. And listen, I know what it's like to be in crisis mode. I've lived in it, I've dwelt there for more time than what I would like to admit. And I know that you didn't choose crisis mode. It chose you. But I want to talk a little bit today, and hopefully this will be an encouragement to you about what I think you can do, what healthy leaders can do differently.

The Reset Toward Strategic Leadership

SPEAKER_00 2:44

First is just do a reset, okay? A total reset. Distinguish between urgent and important. Healthy leaders ask, what could have been done six months ago to prevent this? They schedule time thinking and protect it like it's a meeting with Jesus. They empower others to solve problems without them. We talk about this all the time on the podcast. You cannot be the bottleneck. You need to empower other leaders around you to solve problems and yes, to make decisions so that everybody doesn't have to come to you. Healthy leaders create systems so that the same crisis doesn't happen twice. And they say no to really good opportunities that just they're great opportunities, but they derail the main mission. The reality check for today is that your team is watching how you handle that pressure. Because whether you realize it or not, when you panic, they panic. When you're reactive, they become reactive. When you act calm and you think strategically, guess what? They're gonna learn to do the same. Crisis leadership teaches your staff that really planning doesn't matter. Strategic leadership, on the other hand, teaches them that preparation can prevent the panic. So here's today's bottom line. Here's what I would love for you to take away today. This being in crisis mode just feels like you're constantly in crisis mode. Here's your bottom line. The goal is not to eliminate crises. You're always gonna have crises. It's to stop living like everything has a crisis. When in reality, most things aren't.

Two Simple Practices For This Week

SPEAKER_00 4:27

So this week, I'd love for you to do two things. First down, write down, get out a piece of paper. I'm a firm believer on a pencil and a piece of paper or a pen and a piece of paper. I find that I can process my thoughts a lot better when I'm writing them down and thinking through them as I'm writing. First, write down every urgent request that comes your way. And by the end of the week, you're gonna have a long list. And then ask yourself how many of these were actually urgent? How many of these were actually urgent? They might have been important, but were they really urgent? So that's the first thing to do is write those down. Second, block off a couple hours this week. It's still early in the week. You can block off hopefully a couple hours on your calendar, just for some strategic thinking. Don't let anyone book over it. Pretend it's a meeting with Jesus, because in some ways it might be your meeting with Jesus, right? Use that time to ask what fires that are happening right now could we do something about to prevent for next month so these things don't continue to happen. Your church needs leaders, not just firefighters. And believe it or not, just taking time to be strategic and leading through and coming up with solutions and delegating all these things are going to help you to get out of this crisis mode. You've got

Get Help And Keep Showing Up

SPEAKER_00 5:44

this. I know you do. Hey, if there's any way that I can help you or your church, whether it comes to healthy church staff, hiring, fire, and compensation, all of that is what we do at Chemistry Staffing. Matter of fact, we love to do it. We've given our ministry lives to it. So we would love to be able to come alongside you and assist. And if there's any way I can do that, reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com, or you can check out my website. It's a weird URL, it's Todd.church. All right, that's it for today. We're here every weekday on the Healthy Church Step Podcast. So I hope that you will be back and join me right here again tomorrow. Have a great day.