If God has entrusted you with a team of people to help your church reaches its full redemptive potential, then you probably struggle with trying to get the most benefit from them.
Well, assembling and getting the most out of your staff is one of the toughest things that a pastor deals with in leading a growing church. On top of all that has to be done from week to week, staff communication can quickly become overwhelming.
In one of my recent coaching networks, someone asked this question: “How do you deal with all the questions that staff members bring you?”
What a great question – and one that many of us don’t think to ask. I wanted to take just a moment to share a principle on this topic.
Here’s the quick hint (in case you’re running late for an appointment):
If Your Staff Has Questions, Demand Options
What I mean is that, as a leader, you should never respond to a question from a staff member (in person, by phone or email) unless they first give you two or three suggested answers.
Why?
1) Because they know better than you. The fact that they are asking tells you that they have already spent more time thinking about it than you have.
This is essential, because it only gets more true the larger your church grows. When The Journey was just getting started, I knew everything that happened in every area. Not so these days.
Let the staff member share their thoughts on the question, then you can help them build on those thoughts.
2) Your staff needs to learn to think for themselves. In leadership development, it’s vital that you are being intentional about helping your staff learn to think.
If they can just run to you and let you fix it every time they run into a problem, how are you helping them grow?
Use your staff’s questions to teach them to think.
3) Perhaps the most important reason for implementing this principle is that you get better answers when you have multiple people thinking about the solution. It’s the old “two heads are better than one” idiom.
All of us are smarter than any of us.
I hope that’s helpful!
Nelson
P.S. If you missed this week’s Staffing Webinar on the “Top 3 Staffing Mistakes,” you have a chance to catch it next week. I will be doing it again on Tuesday and Wednesday but you better hurry and sign up as this will fill up.
In this NEW 75-minute webinar we will walk through each of the three most common mistakes, what you can do this week to correct them, and how to ensure that you’re doing everything you can to cooperate with God to lead your staff and grow your church.
There are a limited number of spots available for each webinar. These webinars are Tuesday and Wednesday next week. It’s FREE to participate but you must RSVP at this link below:
http://www.
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