Latest / The Healthy Church Staff Podcast / They Report to Two Bosses

Transcript

They Report to Two Bosses · The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: You told them to keep both of you.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a recording item.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's a trap.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: With two different inboxes, they send the update of what they're doing and how they're doing twice.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And they wait for two yeses or two no's or two different inputs from two different people, be it one yes and one let me think about it.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then they are the problem for moving too slow.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: If this kind of line of communication sounds familiar, we're going to talk about that today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining me.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Todd Rhodes.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the co-founders over chemistrystaffing.com, and I'm so glad you joined me.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I look at this really as an opportunity to spend some time one-on-one with every person that listens to the podcast.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome, friend.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not going to talk today about being a control freak.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is really an episode that talks.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to both sides, right?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to the supervisors that you've got an employee, but you own half of them for lack of a better way to say it, and somebody else owns half, right?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: They report to two different people.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that was how it was set up in the beginning.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you met really well, right?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't want anybody to feel left out.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you just said, hey, keep us both in the loop.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what the employee heard is that I've got to report to two different people.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Two people can stop this.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: They heard I work for you, but I also work for this other person.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they're also thinking, hey, if I had to pick one, which one do I pick?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if I if they don't agree, am I disloyal to one over the other?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: The loop here is not a boss.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: The loop is a hallway that kind of has two doors in it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Think of your church staff hallway.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: You've got two different doors with two different people and two different ideas.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that person has to report to both of those doors.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you're really putting your employee into a place where you have to start every single request or email with a carbon copy, a CC, right?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: You write emails designed not to pick a side, and that's not communication, it's self-defense.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see it in two chairs on your team right now.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've got a kid's pastor that has two bosses.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the kids' pastor reports to the executive pastor, but there's also a line of reporting to the senior pastor.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because kids are too important to have just one line.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And because you both care, and because the org chart got drawn in a meeting and never finished.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they get notes from both of you.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Different priorities, different timelines, different definitions of what things look good on a Sunday.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when they follow the XP, the senior pastor feels skipped.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: If they follow the senior pastor, the XP feels undermined.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're not confused because they're weak, they're confused because you built two yeses into one job.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe worship is running the same kind of amaze.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've got a worship pastor, a campus pastor, a creative.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: The worship reports to the campus pastor and the creative arts director.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, keep both of them in the lube.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to work together.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're a team.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: But here's where it gets tricky.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: One wants the room to serve the campus, one wants the room to serve the overall church and the branding.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: The staffers write smack dab in the middle trying to translate both of that.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I talk with candidates and in my coaching work with staff people.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: This triangulation happens a lot more often than you'd think.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, if I please one person, I don't please the other person.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: If I don't please this person, I'm not.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times they just delay.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or they pick the lottery inbox that week.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: You call that a maturity issue.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not a maturity issue.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a design issue.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody owns the yes, and everybody owns the follow-up.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I know you're trying to keep everything all connected.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't want a silo.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: You thought two leaders in the loop meant better care for the person and better alignment for the church.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're a family, it's a team.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I that seems good.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: It could be also that you this is how you guarantee no one will own the decision.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's the downside, right?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: You give care that splits the yeses into not cares.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's two bosses and a staffer who, as hard as they try, just can't seem to win.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to talk about today on the podcast.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Both reporting to both people is how nobody owns it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Clarity is one name, not a committee of two with a shared calendar.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: When you can say yes, when both can say yes, both can also stall.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Todd, we're on the same page 90% of the time.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's the 10% of the time that's going to really mess with this employee's head, right?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they're not going to know what to do.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: When you both can say yes, both can stall.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: When both can say no, the staffer never knows which one is the real no.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in worst case scenarios, it almost feels like it's two against one.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's both of my reports against me.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's two of them against one of me.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is that they delay because they don't know what to do.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: They spend the week trying to manage you.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not the ministry.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're not leaving kids, they're not leaving worship.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're refereeing the two of you, and that's not the teamwork that you had planned.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's really the trap that you keep saying is, hey, we're all a team, we're all collaborating here.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Pick one person this week and end that split.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got somebody that reports to two different people, and you can tell that they're frustrated from time to time.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: This week, for that, let's try something different.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Name one decision maker, pick one person with two bosses, and name one decision maker.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Write it down.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not, hey, we'll try to do better about communicating, just write a sentence who they report to, who owns the yes, then tell both bosses, then tell a staffer, same sentence, same day.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: The other leader can still be in the conversation.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to shut the person out.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: But they do not get a second veto.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you cannot name one decision maker, you've already named the trap.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, two inboxes, zero owner of yes.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the bottom line for today.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Keep both in the loop is not a reporting line.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is not an org chart, okay?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is a trap with two in boxes and nobody who owns the yes.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know this one feels maybe a little bit more structural than some of the ones that we've done, some of the episodes we've had here, but I also know that you actually want people who can get a clean yes.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things that we wanted to try and do on the podcast today.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, quick question before we wrap up for today.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: When you're casting vision and dreaming about the future, who's actually in the room?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, on our next podcast, we're going to be talking about why your operations team needs to be at that table, not just cleaning up after the party.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's on the next episode on Monday.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I hope you'll come back and join us.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not subscribed, go ahead and subscribe wherever you're listening to this now.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've got a couple minutes now or sometime over the weekend, I'd love for you to head over to Church Staff Assessment, churchstaffassessment.com.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Take our free healthy or our church staff assessment.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's absolutely free.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Take about 10 minutes, and your feedback will really help my team at Chemistry Staffing as we get a pulse on what's happening in churches all across the country.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Need to get a hold of me?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to work with you and your church.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let's have a conversation.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Podcast at chemistry staffing.com.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's it for today.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great weekend.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be right back here on Monday.