Your Voice Matters: Does Your Church Leadership Really Listen?

Unlock the secrets to building a truly collaborative church staff in our latest podcast, where we dissect the surprising findings from our healthy church staff assessment. As we sift through the voices of over a thousand church staff members, discover the pivotal role of open communication within church leadership and how it can revolutionize your ministry. 

I'm Todd Rhodes, your guide through this journey of transformation, where we not only analyze the statistics but provide you with a toolkit for change. Learn how to engage the 20% who are on the fence with their feedback, and effectively address the concerns of the 21% who feel their voices are overshadowed. This episode is laden with real-world examples, and I offer practical advice to ensure every team member feels valued and heard, turning feedback into a cornerstone of your church's growth and success.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff podcast, and this is where we discuss any and all things that hopefully are of interest to you if you serve on a church staff. Today we are talking about something that every church actually every organization needs to succeed, and that's open communication, especially feedback. My name is Todd Rhodes, I'm your host here at the Healthy Church Staff Podcast and I'm also one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom. So let's talk about leadership and communication, open communication, especially From our healthy church staff assessment that we did last year. We had over a thousand church staff respond to one of the statements that we made about open communication, and here's what we found. It's really interesting About 61% of those000 church staff surveyed felt that their church leadership is truly open to feedback and actually implement some changes based on that feedback.

Speaker 1: 1:13

So that's really encouraging. 61% Until you start thinking about 61% that's pretty good, but what about the other 39%? Let's unpack this just a little bit. Okay, those numbers. 61's pretty good, but what about the other 39 percent? Let's unpack this just a little bit. Okay, those numbers. 61 percent of staff If your church is average and I always want to emphasize this, so some churches are going to be well above that.

Speaker 1: 1:34

You might have 70 or 80 or 90 percent of your church staff that feel like your leadership is open to feedback. It might be 50, 40, 30, 20% if you're having an issue in this area, but 61% if your church is average. Agree that the church is open to feedback. 21%, that's almost a fifth. That is actually my math is good. If you listen to this podcast, you know that my math is not good. My math doesn't math a lot of times. But 21% is, I think, just a little over a fifth of your staff If your church is average. Disagree with the statement that your church leadership is open to feedback. Plus, there's another 18%. That's unsure, okay. So let's talk about, first of all, 61%. We're not going to talk about them right now, because they're good, they feel they're on team you, they're on team church and they feel like there is good opportunity to give feedback, that the church is open to feedback and that the church is actually willing to change.

Speaker 1: 2:37

But let's talk about, let's tackle, the neutrals first. Okay, nearly 20%, I think it was like 19.4 or something like that. Said that we give them the opportunity. Disagree, strongly disagree neutral was right in the middle and then strongly agree and agree. But 20% said neutral. And so what does that mean? It means maybe they're new, maybe they've not had an opportunity to give some feedback, maybe they're unsure if it would make a difference.

Speaker 1: 3:07

But you want a quick win to make your church better in this area of communication and feedback. Concentrate on those that are neutral, because they're the ones that are going to be the easiest to get in your corner, they're going to be easiest to make a difference with. So get this group involved. Share stories of how you've done changes in the past, how you've gotten feedback. Hey, we got feedback from John a couple of weeks ago and it was really great feedback. Thank you for that, john, and, matter of fact, we're going to do something differently because of that. Those, even in a small thing, in a small way, that's going to make a huge difference and it for the people that are neutral. This is going to make a huge difference in the way that they perceive and in the amount of feedback that they give you. Showing that their ideas can lead to change can pretty easily, in some instances, sway that neutral group into feeling more positive and heard.

Speaker 1: 4:05

All right, so let's talk about the people that are negative. About 21% said that I just I don't know that my voice is valued here. I don't know that leadership really listens. I don't know that there's really any change that I can exhibit here. What do you need to do there to sway them? A little clue here they are harder to sway than the neutrals and that could be because they feel like they've been burned in the past. Maybe they've made some really positive what they feel are really positive suggestions. Maybe they've given input. Maybe it's fallen really positive suggestions. Maybe they've given input, maybe it's fallen on deaf ears, maybe they gave their input and you did something totally opposite. I don't know, and sometimes there's instances where that needs to happen.

Speaker 1: 4:55

But for the people that feel negative in this area of feedback and communication and change, there's only really one way to bring them over and that's to make sure, even if you don't take their suggestions, that you value their suggestions. That means you have to have some kind of a forum whether it's a group meeting, whether it's meeting individuals individually with this person where they can feel comfortable and safe in providing feedback and ideas and ways that they think that they can make the organization and the ministry better. If you can at least get to the point where they will share ideas and feel like they're heard. I think that's half the battle. Now the other way, once you get to that half of the battle, is to make sure that you encourage them to bring those ideas and, when possible, say yes.

Speaker 1: 5:56

So many of our churches, everything with staff, is an automatic no, and that shuts down creativity. It shuts down innovation. Whenever you can say yes, see if there's a way that you can say yes, especially with somebody that doesn't give a lot of feedback. When they do give some feedback, see if there's a way that, first of all, they can feel really valued in their contribution. They can feel really valued in their contribution. But secondly, is there a way where you can give them something from that to encourage them? That's going to be one way that you're really going to be able to turn people from either that neutral group or that dissatisfied group.

Speaker 1: 6:35

So really, as leaders and in our churches, we should want feedback to be a core part of your church works, of how your church works, and if you don't value feedback, there may be some other issues at play. One of them might be a little bit of arrogance, that you think your way is better than anybody else. Man, this is a team project At least I think it should be in churches. So listen, solicit the feedback, solicit ideas. How can we make things better? How can we serve more people? How can we serve people better? How can we make better impacts and greater impacts in people's lives? You've got a team. Utilize that collective intelligence of your team.

Speaker 1: 7:17

All right, so I've preached enough today. I will get off of my high horse, but I tell you this is really an important thing on church staffs and it will make a difference in how long your staff stays. When a staff knows and feels like they've been heard, it changes everything. Your engagement comes up, your church becomes more responsive to the community it serves, and positive feedback trends are great, but don't stop there, leadership. You've got to find ways to keep listening, listening deeply and acting on what your team shares, and you need to be able to show them that you're serious about making their ideas shape your church's future. Okay, I just got on my high horse and kept preaching again. Dang it. This time I really will get off my high horse. I appreciate you listening.

Speaker 1: 8:10

I hope this has been helpful to you and we're going to continue this week talking about in our series on the Healthy Church Staff podcast, about guess what? Healthy church staffs and what we learned from our survey last year. I tell you what we're doing. Our survey again this year. The same questions, 50 questions. I would love for you if you haven't taken it already head over to churchstaffassessmentcom. It's absolutely free. You'll get a report after you submit your answers. We will give you a report that tells you how we think you're doing on seven key areas of church staff. Like I said, it's absolutely free at churchstaffassessmentcom. And then we're going to take everybody's hopefully about 1,000 or maybe even more than that. We're going to take all the responses and issue a report at the beginning of the summer that's going to show the trends even from last year on how our church staffs are doing. I think it's going to show the trends even from last year on how our church staffs are doing. I think it's going to be really valuable.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Again, head over to churchstaffassessmentcom to take that today. It's open just for a very limited time, so I'd love to have you be a part of it and, as always, you can reach out to me anytime just by sending an email to podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. And I would love to hear where you are, what you need help with. Happy to help. However we can. We do some coaching here, some paid coaching as well. We also can help your church with staff openings if you are looking for a new staff member. So any of those things we would love to be able to partner with your church on, you can reach out to me anytime at podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Okay, end of commercial. End of podcast. Todd Rhodes out. We will see you here tomorrow.