CEO Pastor: Recent Episodes

CEO Pastor

At CEO Pastor, we believe that managing ministry better makes ministry better. We’re here to provide the management expertise every church leader needs to produce the ministry experience every church leader wants. We strengthen and support church leaders by helping them interpret and implement management ideas and principles in their unique ministry contexts.

Each episode is no more than 30 minutes long to accommodate your busy schedule. New episodes are available every Monday. Won’t you join us?

Key Takeaways:

There are two ways to motivate your team: extrinsic motivation (from the outside) and intrinsic motivation (from the inside).

Extrinsic motivation can be achieved by allowing your team to do different jobs or take on different roles, giving them learning opportunities, and by giving them gifts, words of affirmation, or quality time.

Intrinsic motivation can be achieved by giving your team a sense of meaning, choice, competence, relatedness, and progress.

Intrinsic motivation is more powerful than extrinsic motivation because it comes from within each team member and doesn't depend on outside influences or rewards.

Every team member will be motivated by different things. Try to figure out what motivates each team member and incorporate as many intrinsic motivators into every job and role in your organization.

Key Takeaways:

Training and development can come from both outside and inside your organization. Most options from outside your organization will cost money but most options from inside your organization will be at low or no additional cost.

Outside training and development can take the form of seminars, simulations, individual and group assignments, and conferences. Self-study is another form of outside training using educational books, podcasts, blogs, and videos.

Inside training and development can be done through on-the-job training, task or job rotation, coaching and mentoring, and group learning in committees, workshops, and working groups.

Compiling a list of recommended training and development resources can help people in your organization quickly access the outside training they need to improve their skills and knowledge.

Remember to be deliberate about finding opportunities to learn from others in your organization whether one-on-one or in group settings.

Key Takeaways:

Evaluating your team’s behaviours and results at the end of the year or at the end of a program, event, or project is key to finding out where they shine and where they need development.

Using an evaluation scheme that takes into account whether the team member is new, experienced, or at a manager or leadership level, you can use the criteria you’ve set for the behaviours and results you’re expecting from that role to determine whether the person is below, meets, or is above expectations in each area. This type of evaluation scheme is ideal for team members who are on staff. Anyone above expectations is likely ready for a promotion or raise and is able to help others improve. Anyone below expectations needs more training or, if they aren’t improving over time, may need to change roles or be let go from the organization.

360 degree feedback is a great way to get a full view of a team member’s contributions, whether they are on staff or a volunteer. The team member’s manager, peers, direct reports, and “customers” provide an evaluation of the person’s contributions. Agreement on a particular strength or area for improvement is a great indication of where someone can contribute even more or where they could use more training and development.

Remember to make feedback as objective as possible and to ask for feedback soon after the program, event, or project you’re using for the evaluation.

Key Takeaways:

Once you’ve set and discussed the behaviour and results expectations for a team member, you can start giving them ongoing feedback on how they’re being both effective and ineffective in their role.

Praise your team for exceptional performance and help them determine areas where they can improve.

Don’t forget to notice and acknowledge the everyday ways each person helps your team and organization succeed. People like to show off what they’re doing, which gives you an opportunity to praise their know-how and hard work!

Key Takeaways:

Creating a job description for each role in your organization is the first step to evaluating the behaviour and results of your team.

A job description is made up of:

A job title,
The person the role reports to,
A brief overview of the position including a description, what success looks like for the position, and how the position fits into the organization as a whole,
A list of 5-7 essential duties and responsibilities, and
A list of 5-7 qualifications for the position.

Evaluating both behaviour (a leading measure) and results (a lagging measure) helps you find people who have the skills to act in positive ways that yield results for the organization. You want someone who is good to work with and gets results!

The behaviours evaluating are the core competencies required for the position (likely listed in the essential duties and responsibilities and the qualification sections of the job description) and the results you’re evaluating have cascaded down your strategy map to become the goals the person in the position is trying to achieve.

Resources:

CEO Pastor Podcast Episode 010: Strategy Map — Learning and Growth Perspective (for links to core competency descriptions and rating scales in the Resources section)

Key Takeaways:

Leaders need to listen to, understand, and act on feedback for that feedback to be effective.

Getting honest, productive feedback from your team can be difficult if you haven’t built a culture of trust and safety around giving feedback to leaders. If you’re still creating a positive feedback culture, use body language to help you gauge how your team is reacting to what you’re saying and doing.

Other leaders can become your mentors and give you feedback on your leadership style and challenges. Remember to consult other leaders in your field and leaders outside your field, both those who are ahead of you and coming up behind you on the leadership journey.

The Lord is the ultimate source for honest, unbiased feedback. All you need to do is ask!

Resources:

Harvard Business Review, “How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback”

The Enterprisers Project, “10 Ways to Get and Use More Honest Feedback from Your Team”

The Global Leadership Podcast, “Embracing the ‘Meta Skill of the 21st Century’”

The Behavior Panel on YouTube

Key Takeaways:

Leaders need to take the time to self-assess because they people with whom they’re working aren’t always comfortable providing them with feedback.

Self-assessment does take time but it can help leaders avoid or reduce the impact of issues in the future, saving time in the long run.

Journalling is a great method of self-assessment because it gets things out of your head and onto paper where you can more easily evaluate things from a distance.

Personality and skills assessments are often useful tools to help us see our blind spots or consider ourselves from new angles.

Resources:

Art of Manliness Podcast Episode #671: Begin the New Year by Reflecting on These 3 Life-Changing Questions

Unabridged Leadership, Self-Reflection in Leadership - Part 1: Ambitions, Values and Personality

Unabridged Leadership, Self-Reflection and Action in Leadership - Part 2: Thinking Styles, EI, & Making it Happen

Key Takeaways:

Performance management is a system that helps an organization measure and manage activities and outputs to ensure it meets its goals effectively and efficiently.

An organization’s leaders and individuals working within the organization are evaluated with a performance management system; the organization, in whole or in part, and its processes are also evaluated using a performance management system.

Effective performance management systems:

Clarify responsibilities and expectations.
Enhance individual and group productivity.
Develop individual capabilities through feedback and coaching.
Align individual and group behaviour with an organization’s values, goals, and strategy.
Improve communication within the organization.
Are the basis for deciding how, when, and where to deploy an organization’s staff and volunteers.

Key Takeaways:

Humility is crucial for being a good leader in any organization because it helps you realize you don’t have all the answers and you need to listen to and learn from others.

A good leader looks for people who are better than they are; they aren’t intimidated by others’ success.

Success in ministry is often defined by how well you work with people you don’t get along with rather than with people you do get along with.

Key Takeaways:

Targets are the results (outputs) you would like to achieve when you complete your strategic objectives.

Measures are the key inputs into achieving your targets that should be tracked regularly to indicate progress toward your targets and provide opportunities to make any corrections required to execute your strategy successfully.

Targets and measures can be measured objectively (ie., percentages or dollar figures) or subjectively (ie., comments or self-evaluations).

Initiatives are the programs, systems, and projects the organization will implement to achieve your strategic objectives.

A dashboard can be created to monitor all of the targets and measures you are tracking in one place and to help you focus on your objectives regularly.

Don’t forget to roll your strategy out to your “crew” — they should be able to see where they fit and how they can contribute to the organization’s success!

Key Takeaways:

The learning and growth perspective aligns your human resources (staff and volunteers) and your physical and technological infrastructure with your strategy.

Define your organization’s learning and growth needs to support the strategic objectives on your strategy map:

Technology and infrastructure requirements.
Organizational culture requirements (does your culture align with the core values on your strategy map?).
Core competencies (knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal attributes of your staff and volunteers).

Consider the time, energy, attention, and finances that your staff and volunteers have available and whether they are serving internal “customers” (others working within the organization) or external “customers” (those your organization serves).

Resources:

Michael D. Watkins, “What is Organizational Culture? And Why Should We Care?” (Harvard Business Review)

Edward J. Cripe, 31 Core Competencies Explained (Workforce.com)

CPA Canada, The Chartered Professional Accountant Competency Map

Asian Efficiency, TEA: The 3 Pillars of Productivity You Need to Unlock Your Full Potential

Key Takeaways:

Your internal processes can support relationships your organization has with:

New ways to serve those you’re currently serving or new people you could be serving (or a combination of the two).
Deeper relationships with those you’re currently serving.
Effective relationships with external stakeholders.

Your internal processes can create opportunities for operational excellence:

Improve your current processes by reducing costs and increasing speed and quality results.
Fully use your assets.
Manage capacity.

Remember that internal processes are the foundation required to support and achieve the objectives you’ve set in the beneficiary/stakeholder and stewardship perspectives of the strategy map.

Resources

The Organized Money: How to Start Getting Organized for the New Year

Key Takeaways:

The stewardship perspective of the strategy map encompasses your finances, physical assets (assets you can touch), and intangible assets (assets you can’t touch such as your website and social media presence).

There are two main stewardship strategies:

Grow your revenue by finding new donors and by increasing donations from current donors.
Make your current revenues and assets more productive by reducing direct expenses (costs associated with running your programs) and indirect expenses (costs you would have regardless of whether you were running any programs) and by using the assets you already have more efficiently.

What are your next steps?

List every way you receive money and every physical and intangible asset you have.
Brainstorm ways that you can grow your revenue and increase productivity by using the ways you already receive money and the assets you already have.
From your brainstorm ideas, decide on 3-5 objectives that directly support your beneficiary/stakeholder objectives, being careful to balance the growth and productivity approaches.

Key Takeaways:

Make sure you define your “customer” clearly and correctly — beware of serving your “employees” instead of your true “customer”.

There are three general customer value proposition strategies:

Operational excellence focuses on streamlining operations and reducing costs.
Product differentiation focuses on creating a product or service that stands out from the crowd.
Customer intimacy focuses on personalizing a product or service based on a customer’s needs and cultivating a long-term relationship with customers.

No matter which customer value proposition strategy is used, the basic aspects of a product or service, customer relationship, and brand identity need to be maintained to appeal to those you serve.

Ministry organizations will usually choose to focus on customer intimacy — getting to know the people they serve so they can tailor their services to their needs and create ongoing relationships with them.

Resources:

Art of Manliness Podcast Episode 518: The Quest for a Moral Life

Competitive Strategies: Operational Excellence, Customer Intimacy, Product Leadership

Key Takeaways:

There are two sides to everything: a strength can also be a weakness and vice versa; a threat can also be an opportunity and vice versa.

Use PESTLE to help you think through the factors that can present opportunities and threats to your organization.

Don’t be afraid to ask for an outside opinion on your organization’s strengths and weaknesses. The opinion may not be completely correct but there may be a nugget of truth that you can use to improve on your weaknesses. You may also be pleasantly surprised at what others think you do well!

The people in your organization and the organization’s culture are often big factors in an organization’s success.

Key Takeaways:

A vision statement defines what the organization is working towards and why.

A mission statement defines how the organization is going to get there and is made up of three components:

The impact the organization will have.
The audience the organization wishes to impact.
The one to three actions the organization will take to have an impact on its audience.

Values represent who you are as an organization and are used to make organizational decisions.

Strategic themes and results are medium-term goals and the outcomes the organization wants to see when those goals are accomplished.

Key Takeaways:

A strategy is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term goals under conditions of uncertainty.
Jesus and Paul both used strategies in their ministry (Matthew 10; Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; Acts 17)
A strategy map can help communicate your strategy within your organization:
People tend to remember visual representations of ideas better.
A visual representation of your strategy can help you identify holes you need to fill to achieve your organization’s goals.
People can see how they fit into the strategy and why what they do is important.

Resource Links:

Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, Harvard Business Review, “Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It”

One-Page Balanced Strategic Plan Example for Government Not-for-Profit

Key Takeaways:

A CEO focuses on the future of the organization rather than the details of how things get done.

It’s best not to approach a problem as if you know the true answer already.

Be careful not to solve the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself.

Micromanaging and trying to do everything yourself often leads to burnout.

Communicate with and ask questions of those who are closest to the work to find out what could be done differently or what changes they would like to see.

There’s usually more than one “right” way to do something and it’s important to be looking for the new “right” way to do things.

Everyone should have the freedom to learn skills as they develop and then to put their own spin on them.

Create an environment where people feel comfortable to learn at their own pace.

People get confidence when they feel trusted. It gives them the confidence to keep going.

People often learn the most from their mistakes. Mistakes may be costly in the short term but they usually become valuable lessons for the future.

Resource Link:

Cornerstone Baptist Church — Stratford Podcast: Work as a Blessing + Interview with Cindy Dockendorff (interview starts at 27:30)

Key Takeaways:

A CEO is:

1) The highest ranking person in an organization.

2) Responsible for the overall success of an organization.

3) The ultimate authority in making final decisions.

The CEO reports to and is directly accountable to the board of the organization.
A CEO’s responsibilities are:

1) Making major decisions.

2) Managing overall operations and resources.

3) Being the main point of communication.

Key Takeaways:

Church leaders and pastors are running organizations with little to no training on how to do so.

Churches and faith ministries are similar to family businesses — in fact, churches are families!

While business training could help church leaders run their organizations better, most business training does not focus on non-profits much less churches!

This podcast will explain management principles and ideas specifically for use in ministry contexts.

20- to 30-minute episodes will be released every Monday.

Please let us know if you have suggestions for helpful topics or something you’re struggling with that you’d like to have addressed!

Resource Link:

Harvard Business Review Ideacast Podcast Episode 777: What Sets Family Businesses Apart