Staff Development | Coaching Churches

Category Archive: Staff Development

The Skills Every Staff Member Needs

Posted by on July 7, 2019

So often in church life, just like the corporate world, we take people who are good in ministry and try to make leaders out of them. There is a tremendous gap between people who are great with students personally and their ability to enlist, train and empower great student lay leaders. The lack of intentional leadership development for church leaders contributes more to church failures than anything else. This post by Church Fuel is a great start:

“Teams come in all sizes and styles. Some teams wear uniforms, practice daily, and compete in tournaments and championships. Some work together on a building project, a life-saving endeavor, or in pursuit of a prosecution. No matter what the team looks like, a common goal is always the pursuit.

Churches have teams, too.”

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Don’t Be The Boss Who Talks Too Much

Posted by on May 4, 2019

There is a real tension between making sure everyone understands the vision and there is great alignment compared to the tendency as leaders to talk too much. This leadership skill is amplified when leading church staff or lay leaders because there is an even higher need for total buy-in moving forward. This HBR post is the type of leadership development pastors need:

“As head of a startup, I always want to make sure everyone on my team understands the vision for what we’re trying to achieve. I also want to make sure we’re hearing, considering, and incorporating everyone’s ideas, and acting quickly to iron out problems along the way. So we have a lot of group conversations. A lot.

We discuss our mission, goals, and the steps it will take to achieve them. Every time, I look for new ways to say things, in hopes of making the vision crystal clear and discovering even slight differences in how various team members understand our goals.”

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What Does It Mean To Be A People Leader

Posted by on March 17, 2019

One of the greatest problems facing the church today is that we have the wrong metrics for success. As long as we place a higher priority on how many people are coming to the building over how many lives are actually being changed, we are going to fail. All leaders fall into the trap of measuring the means and loosing site of the end result. This Forbes post is a great reminder of what all great leaders know:

“Leadership can mean many different things to different people, but it often directly ties back to how a person’s contributions impact a business’s bottom line: “My efforts saved us X amount of money,” “My strategy resulted in X amount of new clients,” “I closed a huge sale that brought in X dollars.”

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6 Lessons For Every Leadership Style

Posted by on March 4, 2019

One of my passions is to help church leaders develop the ability to lead in their context with the same level of effectiveness of any corporate leader I coach. So as a regular priority, I will be posting best practice leadership development content to increase our potential to impact the kingdom. This Forbes Post will be helpful:

“In my experience as an entrepreneur and coach of business executives, I’ve seen that great leaders can at times be treated as if they’re invisible. Not many people see what goes on behind the scenes to create and shape new leaders, whether you’re in charge of a team or an entire company. And unfortunately, leadership training isn’t always a priority.”

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The Single Best Way To Motivate Your Team

Posted by on February 24, 2019

The classic leadership division for the last 50 years has been between leaders who can primarily drive results and those who have the ability to prioritize relationships. The first group would be in operations and the second in sales. Today unless you can do both and everything in between you will not be effective. This Carey Nieuwhof post is excellent:

“There are some kinds of leaders (often in churches and not-for-profits) who are wonderful with people, but whose organizations don’t produce great results. Often there’s little accountability, a general drift, poor metrics and just a lack of overall excellence. But the leader’s a really nice person.

There are other leaders (often in rapidly growing churches and businesses) who are not so great with people, but there’s tight accountability, laser-like focus, clear results and tremendous progress.”

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5 Meaningful Words Of Encouragement For Spiritual Leaders

Posted by on February 10, 2019

The hardest leadership job on the planet is leading a local church. In reality your customers are both your volunteer work force and financial investors all at the same time. When they stop helping or even worse leave that immediately causes concern if something is wrong. This post by Dan Reiland is an inspiring reminder:

“As a leader, you know the importance of encouraging people. It’s impossible to over encourage people as long as you are sincere. And I’m sure you’re not only generous but intentional about your encouragement of others. However, leaders need encouragement too, right?”

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Beyond The Walls

Posted by on March 21, 2017

The days of build it and they will come are over for churches. We may not want to admit it but for most Christians when they talk about church in their minds it’s about what happens at the buildings and not out in the community.

I recently met with a very successful committed Christian who is a pediatrician who wanted to grow more spiritually and get more involved in ministry. It was obvious to me from the very start of the conversation this meant to him taking on more responsibility at the church.

I began to share with him the vision that he could do more through his practice to reach young couples for Christ than we could ever do at the building. They would not even come to the building to hear Billy Graham but they were several new couples sitting in his waiting room every week expecting their first child.

In this postmodern age, we must never minimize the importance of the church gathered for worship and ministry but we must prioritize the church scattered for evangelism and missions. We must find new ways to take the gospel to where people live, work and play.

By the end of the conversation the light had come on for my friend because he no longer had a career but he now had a calling. That’s what happens when you change the definition of success from increasing profits to impacting people.

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The Number One Priority In Hiring

Posted by on September 28, 2016

I have hired a lot of people over the years from working in the corporate world to being involved with several different non-profits. I ultimately take all of the factors involved and put them into one of two major categories, character or competency.

Competency is the possession of the skill set, experience or aptitude to do a particular job with excellence. This can be accessed through a variety of performance evaluation tools and talking with references.

Character is the sum total of the moral and ethical qualities of an individual that is based on their core beliefs about life. This takes quite a bit longer to evaluate and many times references will give you only one side of the story.

I make sure I am able to spend a lot of informal time with the person so that I can eventually move beyond the interview script and hear their heart. I also never hire a key person without meeting their spouse.

The priority of evaluating this part of the person must take first place over all other qualifications. As a matter of fact, character has moved to the top of the list in the corporate world.

The first test in hiring anyone at General Electric under the leadership of Jack Welch was the character quality of integrity. He wrote, “people with integrity tell the truth and they keep their word. They take responsibility for past actions, admit mistakes, and fix them.”

Someone has well said, your ability may help get you to the top but it will be your character that will keep you there.

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6 Habits Of Trustworthy Leaders

Posted by on September 26, 2016

Trust is a hot topic and for all the right reasons. If you and your team have it, great things can be accomplished. Without it nothing gets done well. There are clearly things you can do to make deposits into your trust accounts and this Fast Company post lists some key ones:

“Do the people in your office trust you? Maybe not as much as you think they do. Consulting firm EY released its Global Generations 3.0 research which found that less than half of full-time workers between the ages of 19 and 68 place a “great deal of trust” in their employer, boss, or colleagues. Another recent survey from Globoforce’s WorkHuman Research Institute found that 80% of employees trust their colleagues, but only 65% trust senior leaders in their companies.”

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The Most Effective Teams Adapt To Change

Posted by on June 8, 2016

The ability to lead change well is both art and science. The development of the plan and the definition of the metrics are often the easy part. When to make the change and at what pace are challenging. The role of teams in leading change is defined in this Forbes post:

“A recent Economist article stated that “teams have become the basic building-blocks of organizations,” and I disagree. I disagree because they’ve always been the building blocks of performance, and it’s only now that leaders are beginning to realize the power of “we” and networks after working so long for “me” in hierarchies.”

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