10 staffing principles (leadership coaching thoughts)

(Read the 1st part of this HERE as a lead in for today.)

Here's my thoughts on Tony's 10 principles on staffing:

1      Create a culture that leads volunteers to do it before staff. i love this and i think we do a really good job of this at Ridge. We have so many high capacity volunteer leaders serving in staff positions (unpaid). i love being a part of that culture! [we get an "A" on this one i think.]

2      1:100 ratio = 1 Staff person (40hrs.) for every 100 peeps in attendance. This is Tony's recommendation for what is healthy. The average = 1:70. i think we're closer to the average. more like 1:66.6 & i know those 3 6s are bad!

3      Pay your staff well. a combo of these 1st 3 principles usually works out. i can see that happening. Tony said he has always wanted to have less staff and pay them a decent wage than stretch the staff and feel like no one is being paid well. He says to push peeps to the point where it’s almost unhealthy before hiring new staff. i can land on 2 sides with this one. i think people will do a lot for vision, not just $...

4      Hire from the inside! whenever possible. You know who they are and how they operate. You know they embrace the mission, vision, values of the church, etc… you've probably been the one to actually train and teach them! *hiring from outside is obviously way more risky! This is definitely the way of the future. i don't know how much longer resumes can survive in church world?

5      Don’t hire from a resume. Look at much stronger characteristics like = passions, personality, leadership capacity, overall capacity, integrity issues (all of this is much more important than education and experience and a freaking resume!) *You can take someone with the right mix of personality, gifts, etc… and make them great, but you can’t teach those things to someone with just education & experience! 

           -> also, if you sniff character stuff before hiring, just remember once peeps are in staff position, any integrity/character issues just get magnified.

6      Hire people like you… i.e. hire people you LIKE. Look at the crazy amount of hours we spend with peeps on our staff! You need to get along well. Chemistry is as important as competency & character. This makes it important to include other staff in the interview process to see if they all click.

7      Hire leaders, not Doers. There will NEVER be enough staff just to accomplish all the tasks! [IT'S ALL ABOUT LEADERSHIP, not tasks!]

8      Long Hellos and Quick Goodbyes. We usually do the opposite! We grab someone with availability, but they may not have the ability. Way easier to tell them they’re not a fit for a role BEFORE you hire them instead of after. We are too slow to have the tough conversation and let someone go. way too slow. [jim collins has a lot of great stuff to say about this in Good to Great.]

9      Staff ahead of growth. (how in the world can you do that? that's a tension.) a few options = staff with volunteers. Raising support is an option. Example – it’s hard to reach students (grow in student ministry) before there’s a leader to own it. [true]

10   Make sure you’re staffing for Attitude. a lot of time we forget peeps’ attitude. We hold peeps accountable for performance, character, spiritual disciplines, but we let them slide on attitude. But it has a BIG impact. Negative attitudes are going to repel people. Hold peeps accountable on this. **This is especially important for admin assistant! Peeps associate her attitude with ME! Peeps assume it’s an extension of my leadership!

   
WHAT IS YOUR REACTION? COMMENTS?

leadership coaching (thoughts)

i'm getting way behind on posting and processing my thoughts on takeaways from the leadership coaching network i'm in with Tony Morgan. You can read more about it HERE.
(i have several thoughts i want to post soon from the past couple months with Tony... i'm learning a lot of great stuff from him.)

*i want to learn and grow and implement these important principles and strategies i'm learning about leadership. i want to put them into action.
here's what i'm thinking about from the last time we met = structure and staffing. we're in a season of change and growth at Ridge so this is a constant conversation and thought process right now... especially within family ministries.
So, we must constantly structure and hire based on what God’s called us to do and our strategy.

 

*i love that Tony backs up what Andy always says about structure = Who is at the lead team meeting is not based on their ROLE, but based on their LEADERSHIP CAPACITY! *Don’t have a structure that keeps the best voices out of the room!

**i posted a few blogs on thoughts from what Andy has to say about this. it's brilliant! you can read my thoughts on that HERE and HERE!

you want peeps at the table who have a global/holistic view of the ministry (no matter their role). Big picture peeps.    

*Tony laid out a good challenge to find kid's ministry leaders who don't like kids! Because they need to be LEADERS who lead adults... not necessarily gifted with kids. i think we do a great job of this at Ridge. There are several leadership positions in kid's ministry that just desperately calls for talented leaders, not necessarily talented kid's people. i think we're rocking this challenge.

Great thought from John Maxwell on leading leaders. Just say to them - “Here’s the address. Here’s the keys. See you there.” – equip, empower, & then let go. [easier said than done, but way easier with good leaders.]

i'm liking the suggestion that between 5-8 direct reports is probably the most you should have at any 1 time. 8 seems like a lot... my capacity might need to stop at the perfect number of 7. But i'll take it a step further and say that everyone (even volunteers) all the way down the organization should probably follow this rule of 7. (everyone leads a few!) nobody should be leading like 10 or 12 people! (not for long anyway.)

*i know our structure and the roles people fill has to allow them to play to their strengths at least 80% of the time! we've got to figure out how to be a better job at this!

*i think this is a good suggestion = in the early days, hire all leaders and no specialists or support staff. you don't have enough room (or $) for them early on. the focus has to be on leaders. then as the church/organization grows, that can shift into hiring more support staff (assistants) and specialists, etc... i really like this and think there is a lot of wisdom in it.


OK, i'm going to cut it off there, but within 24 hours i'll post my thoughts on 10 principles on staffing. great stuff coming...
*i'm actually in Atlanta again right now for this leadership coaching 1st thing in the morning. looking forward to it! (+ really thankful to my awesome friend and host Andy Jones for letting me crash on his couch. always good conversations with this guy...)

leadership coaching thoughts #1

I'm coming up on the 2nd month of my 6 month stint in a leadership coaching network with Tony Morgan. I wrote a little about it yesterday - HERE.

This post is my first go at sharing my takeaways, thoughts, & action steps from the coaching meetings. (This helps me process what I'm learning & hopefully you might pick something up from it as well.)

Discussion on Influence

*Attitude is a really big deal! It’s easy for us to hold peeps accountable to morality and
spiritual disciplines, and their performance, etc… BUT difficult to hold them accountable with their attitudes. We say “that’s just who they are/ who God made them to be.” = [this is so true! Why do we do this?]
We need to have high expectations for our peeps’ attitude. Especially with the peeps closest to us! Because others associate their attitude with ME & my leadership! (it’s critical that staff & leaders have awesome attitudes.) this is HUGE! Church staffs have got to step up in this area!

*This is scary, but I'm glad someone warned me! = the more confident I get as a leader it’s easy to move from a servant leader to a powerful/pushy leader. I dread that & don't want to become that! God, please let me always be a humble leader & a servant leader!

*I want people around me who will tell me what my blind spots are! If there's a running joke around the office about a weakness/flaw of mine, then that's not cool. I need to have someone tell ME so I can do something about it! 

*We gotta lead by example. Let others see how to live life from watching my daily life. I want them to be imitators of me, so I gotta give them something awesome to imitate.

*"we gotta live out the gospel message if we want anyone to hear us saying it." that was an awesome statement, Tony!

*Some intense Questions I am going to consistently ask myself!
How am I influencing people around me? (1 Thessalonians 2:9-12)
Do I see myself in people around me? **Because that's what leadership ultimately is!
Do I like what I see? (i.e. is what's rubbing off on them GOOD?)

*Something I've already implemented from one of our discussions is to put time with people/relationships on the TO DO LIST! Some of my days are simply spent pouring into leaders, but none of the tasks get marked off the to-do list... so I get FRUSTRATED and feel like I accomplished nothing. I'm starting to put "people time" down on the to-do list, so I won't feel like I need to be accomplishing something different.

**One of the biggest things I took to heart was something Tony probably just meant to say in passing. He talked about how he kept thinking of himself as a "young leader" who had so much to learn and he was still in that growing phase... Of course, this will always be true of all great leaders = we'll always be learning and growing, BUT we can't let that hold us back from pouring into and leading others! My lead pastor has encouraged me to make this shift many times! I am trying to take it to heart... to pour out what's in my cup so others might be able to benefit from it if possible.

*Tony talked about the concept of "Killing Cockroaches" which was awesome! There were a lot of great takeaways for me & 2 big ones that I have started implementing already, BUT... I'm going to post about that another time since this post is already too long.

I'm stoked to meet again with the Coaching network this weekend. Excited to learn what God has for me to learn and GROW a lot as a leader!

 And of course I'll be posting my takeaways again!