How is your staff team in your church? How is your adult leadership team?
If you answer one of those questions with crappy, horrible, toxic, you need to read Sticky Teams: Keeping Your Leadership Team and Staff on the Same Page
I was asked to read this book for my new church, and I was impressed the content in this book, and I think every staff team should read this. There are practical guides for any church leader.
One of the most practical chapters is titled: 6 things every leadership team needs to know. Here are the 6 things:
1. Ignore your weaknesses.
2. Surveys are a waste of time.
3. Seek permission, not buy-in.
4.Let squeaky wheels squeak.
5. Let dying programs die.
6. Plan in pencil.
One of the points that stood out to me is, “let dying programs die”. I am always amazed at how many church programs are still running even if they are so dysfunctional. Is it that youth workers have a fear of conflict? Or do we love running old dying programs? Osborne states the issue with dying programs, “Without a commitment and willingness to cease funding and staffing the programs that no longer work, we’ll never have enough money and energy to create the future.” We need to kill dying programs, you need to kill dying programs or at least modify them. Sometimes you can salvage a program, but from my experience it is better to start fresh instead of rebranding an old dying program.
Another awesome point from this chapter is to let squeaky wheels squeak. Larry Osbourne states, ” The natural response of most leaders and leadership teams is to oil these squeaky wheels. We alter our plans or give these folks extra attention in hope of silencing their criticism. Unfortunately, it seldom works. Most squeaky wheels keep right on squeaking, for one simple reason: they don’t squeak for a lack of oil; they squeak because it’s their nature to squeak.” Stop trying to please people, and start living on mission. What are you called to do? Once you know your calling, you will find it a bit easier to endure conflict. The lie that we as leaders believe is that we can bring these people on board with our vison. Sometimes that is true, but a lot of times these people will be unhappy anywhere they go. Osbourne states this reality, “My mistake was assuming that it was possible to keep a squeaky wheel happy. I failed to realize that some people will be unhappy no matter what.”
This is a great book. Make sure to check it out on amazon. I would suggest to read it first and then read it with your adult leaders. It would be great to have everyone on the same page!
