As part of realizing that goal, CCCC created employee engagement discussions so staff could discuss their well-being and development with their supervisor.¹ Our staff and their immediate supervisors have had great success in building open and honest conversations with each other. We believe their strong relationships are the basis for a healthy workplace environment, as evidenced in our Best Christian Workplaces survey results. In this post I will share the process we use and provide a list of the discussion questions. CCCC members can go to The Green to discuss this post and download the CCCC Employee Engagement Policy—which includes the detailed process—and all its related forms. The comments section below is open for all readers.

Towards Authenticity in the Workplace

When it comes to having conversations with staff members, the big question to address is: will employees honestly share what they really think? Don’t employees need the protection of anonymity to be honest? I’ve previously addressed this issue and given suggestions for how to increase authenticity and trust in the workplace. This post builds on the foundation of that post.

CCCC believes Christians should be able to share their honest thoughts with one another. We should not be afraid of retribution from those in authority over us. Some might say this is an unrealistic, idealistic fantasy! But why should we settle for less than God’s way in how we work together in Christian ministry? Aren’t we supposed to model for the world what kind of a society God wants us to have? Aren’t our workplaces like smaller versions of society? Shouldn’t we, of all people, be able to demonstrate a workplace in which every person is honoured and respected?

As the leader, it is your responsibility to set the tone for honest conversations. You might model disclosure by being transparent (as appropriate) about what you are thinking. And if a staff member does take a risk and open a dialogue with you, you must make it a good experience for the staff member. Thank them for taking the risk and raising the matter. All the supervisors in your organization should likewise be trained to be open to any and all feedback from their direct reports. We can only expect staff to honestly share if they are certain that their thoughts will be well and warmly received. This environment of trust will form during the back-and-forth process of open and honest discussion over time.

The Christian way of living in community is the way of authenticity, transparency, and vulnerability, choosing to be real with one another and learning to live and work together, seeking to understand and be Christ to one another.

Listening to Staff

So here’s one key thing we do at CCCC to facilitate open and honest dialogue with our staff. We schedule six employee engagement discussions per year for each staff member to have a one-on-one meeting with his or her supervisor.

Rules for Discussions

These meetings follow a few simple rules:

1. The meeting is about the staff member, not the supervisor. So, there is no discussion about the employee’s work, no assignments are handed out, and no performance feedback is given. Staff is encouraged to share whatever is on their mind.
2. The role of the supervisor is to ask a series of open-ended questions that have been provided to the employee before the meeting and then listen to the answer. The supervisor may ask follow-up questions for clarity or to dive deeper into what the employee has said. The supervisor may also answer any questions that are raised or provide explanations, but the meeting is about listening, not debating.
3. Both the supervisor and the staff member can make commitments based on their conversation.
4. All commitments are documented so both the employee and the supervisor are accountable for acting on their commitments.

Protection for Staff

To protect staff from our own failings as Christian leaders, CCCC has a Grievance Policy and a Whistleblower Policy. But before anyone has to take one of those two drastic steps, we’ve made it clear that no staff member will suffer retaliation for being honest in their relationship with their manager.

The Discussion Questions

Each of the six meetings is centred on three questions. These questions are asked only once per year, so over the year we ask eighteen questions. Each question came from researching employee engagement. Some were provided by researchers and some were developed by us based on research. At each meeting, one question relates to the employee, one to their supervisor, and the third to the organization as a whole.

In addition to the three questions that change with each meeting, there are three standard questions that are asked at every meeting:

1. What do you think I should know?
2. What else you are thinking but are reluctant to tell me? Please share it.
3. What can I do to support you over the next two months?

Here are all the questions arranged in a single list:

The Process

1. The meetings are scheduled for every other month starting with April (the first month of our fiscal year).
2. The cycle for each meeting starts by asking all supervisors if there is an additional question they’d like to include in the discussion. This allows for the possibility that there might be a particular concern about staff morale at any given time.
3. The meetings are set up and the questions are sent to the staff. Their written responses are sent directly to their supervisors before the meeting.
4. The first item on the meeting agenda is to review the commitments for action that were made at the previous meeting. The results are discussed and, if everyone is satisfied with the results, the commitment is closed. If it is still unresolved, it is added as a new action item and tracked again. Either party may escalate the matter to the supervisor’s manager.
5. The employee’s answers to this meeting’s questions are then discussed and new commitments are made.
6. The employee receives a copy of the action form, and the employee’s answers and the commitment form are sent to the Head of Human Resources, who will review them and prepare a report to leadership if there are any trends.
7. A seventh meeting is held in the month after the sixth and final employee engagement discussion of the year. These are conducted either by skip-a-level supervisors or the Head of Human Resources. The purpose of this meeting is to independently check with staff that they are satisfied their concerns and ideas have been heard and dealt with fairly.

The Benefits

Because of these meetings:

• New ideas are brought forward for consideration.
• Improvements to systems and workflows are made.
• Misunderstandings and misconceptions are cleared up.
• We get to know each other better and mutual trust is enhanced.
• Staff have a bigger picture of the ministry and how it works.
• We are all more engaged with the ministry.

May God bless you and your staff as you enjoy richer and more meaningful conversations!

The post Employee Engagement: Honest and Safe Conversations appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

But is your organization ready to evaluate itself?

Evaluation Anxiety

Does your organization and its culture support critical, objective self-evaluation? There actually is a phenomenon recognized in the social sciences as Extreme Evaluation Anxiety (XEA).¹ At its worst, people suffering from XEA also suffer from depression and low self-esteem, and they withdraw from social interactions to avoid the possibility of people judging them negatively. That extreme form of anxiety may be rare in the workplace, but there are lots of people who have ordinary anxiety or negative attitudes towards evaluation. If there are enough of them on your staff, no evaluation is going to be helpful because they will work to undermine it. They don’t necessarily have a malicious intent, but they are stuck in their belief that they are performing well, and they naturally think the measurements and standards that support their self-perception are the ones the evaluation should use.

Bringing the topic closer to home for ministry leaders, the authors of Accountability and Effectiveness Evaluation in Nonprofit Organizations discuss the psychosocial problems associated with evaluation, saying that the basic issue is that people like to succeed, and if there is a failure, they prefer not to be seen as responsible for it. The authors call this phenomenon an LGAB attitude: Look Good, Avoid Blame! This can result in two problems:

1. Their fear of an unfavourable assessment causes them to try to bias the evaluation from the start, when the evaluation process is being designed
2. Their wish to avoid responsibility for failure causes them to start the blame game in earnest when actual results do not match expected results

The solution isn’t as simple as saying “Don’t worry about the evaluation.” Even though people are told the evaluation is intended simply to reveal problems that might exist and provide information to help resolve the problems, they will still believe that if there are problems, they will be blamed.

The challenge for evaluators is that an LGAB attitude turns the evaluation from an objective process into a political process, and then you might as well save your time and money and not do it.

Avoiding the “Blame Game”

So, how can you avoid the blame game and do the kind of evaluation that will help your ministry step up its game? You need to go deeper than just reassurances to the staff, which may or may not be believed. There are three basic strategies to create an environment that welcomes evaluation. They will take time to implement because staff need to see that what management says to them is, in fact, true in their own experience.

1. Create the Right Corporate Culture

Corporate culture needs to embrace:

• A commitment to the mission that is greater than a commitment to a program or any other means to an end. People who are passionately committed to the mission will be ready to change or grow for the sake of advancing the mission. So look for passion for your mission, when recruiting and for people already on the team. Do everything you can to build passion for your mission among the staff. Start with yourself. Be sure you have an inspiring passion for your mission and model it for the staff.
• Seeing projects and programs as experiments. Assume they can always be improved upon by applying what you learn from experience. Everything should be as good as it can be, based on the circumstances at any particular time, but it should be celebrated as a good thing that we can learn from experience. It’s no failure to discover that improvements are possible. The staff should truly believe that “We did the best we could with the information and circumstances at the time.”
• A willingness to identify and challenge sacred cows. Nothing except your Christian identity should be untouchable. Everything should be up for discussion. Remember, cows became sacred because at one time they were a key success factor. But that was then, and this is now. Whoever created the cow in the first place was probably an innovative person, and in this day with these circumstances, that person may very well be the first to overthrow the sacred cow they once created and create something new!
• Re-thinking decisions that have been previously made. Like the sacred cow, decisions were made with the best available information at the time. With new information, a different decision might be warranted. Don’t stick with a bad decision just because time and money have been invested in it. The financial concept of sunk costs applies here. You’ve already spent time and money following through on that decision. There is no getting it back. But do you have to keep investing in it when you now know there is a better way? Don’t throw good money after bad! Make a fresh decision today and move on. If you can recoup anything, that’s good, but otherwise, what’s spent is spent. You should always search out a fresh perspective based on current circumstances when making decisions, making the very best decision today that will guide you to the most attractive future.
• Inquiry and exploration. Reflection, curiosity, and what-if scenarios should be a regular part of organizational life. This will prevent staff from rigid thinking that there is only one way to get a result. If evaluation shows there is a better way, staff should be open to that rather than be defensive about the way they did it.
• Rational, evidence-based decision making. Resistance to unfavourable evaluation results and resistance to change are often based on emotional, rather than rational, grounds. Train your staff to always look for evidence to support assertions.

In short, we need to identify our organizations as learning organizations, and make every type of evaluation risk-free by treating each one, including individual performance reviews, as opportunities to learn.

Corporate culture must put the highest priority on every person and every program performing at their very best. Every opportunity for improvement should be cause for celebration, because no person or program is perfect, and every improvement helps us better fulfill our mission. The focus should be on how the positive outcome of an evaluation improves our results.

2. Involve Staff

Once you have a supportive corporate culture, you can involve staff in designing the evaluation process without fear of political agendas. Staff can help you decide certain critical elements of the review, such as:

• What will be reviewed and how. It is particularly important that outcomes rather than activities are evaluated.
• What standards will be applied to the data to determine how good they are.
• How the final results will be interpreted and used.

Analyzing the final results is a subjective task, so the criteria for how the results will be interpreted needs to be set before the evaluation is done. Human nature being what it is, if the benchmarks for deciding what is acceptable and what is not are determined after the results are known, the bar will be set so that employees achieve the result they want to see.  So before the evaluation is done, answer these questions:

• What distinguishes between satisfactory and unsatisfactory performance? What objective criteria will you examine?
• After measuring the objective criteria, how good do the results have to be to be considered poor, good, or excellent?
• What would it take for a program to be terminated rather than modified? How bad would the results have to be?

3. Support Staff

Staff need to understand that evaluations benefit them too. They should know that the purpose of a program evaluation, or even their own personal performance evaluation, is to help the program or them be more successful. In other words, when you do evaluations, you are for them, not against them. The benefits for staff are:

• Job security: When an organization performs well, jobs are more secure because donors will see the impact the charity is making and want to fund it.
• Skill enhancement: Evaluations can lead to training for new skills, which enhances an employee’s capabilities and value to the employer.
• Personal significance: When staff become more successful in their jobs, they have greater job satisfaction and a higher feeling of significance.
• Greater enjoyment at work: Staff may have more interesting work, or new equipment or work processes that make doing the job easier or more effective. At the very least, they will know that the work they are doing is important work, because they know they are playing a part in achieving great results.

Conclusion

Evaluation is a critical part of being a good steward of your mission, the people, and the resources that God has given you responsibility for. It is worth the effort to ensure that the culture and the staff support objective evaluation of their work. God bless!

The post Evaluation: Avoiding the Blame Game appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Poverty is like everything else. In the end it becomes bearable. It acquires a pattern and comes to terms with itself. One vegetates — that is to say, continues to exist in a wretched sort of way that is just sufficient to sustain life.

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables ¹

This paragraph leapt off the page when I read it. What a vivid description of the way life becomes when there is no vision for anything different than what is and when people settle for what they are already getting! Why should such a sad state be accepted as normal and something to be endured indefinitely? Why should anyone fall into a rut and be content to stay there? Leaders need to know how it is that they could fall into a rut, and if they find themselves in one, how to get out.

Leaders must not fall into a rut and lead in a wretched sort of way that is just sufficient to sustain organizational life!

How We Fall Into Ruts

Here are some ways we might fall into a rut:

• Pessimism overcomes activism. Every mission-driven organization exists to make a difference in our world. That means every Christian ministry should be an activist ministry, a change agent, driven by a vision of the ideal. The enemy of activism is pessimism, which could be defined as realism negatively magnified and gone wild.
  • When we succumb to “this is just the way it is,” we lose the edge that keeps us actively engaged in our mission.
  • When we settle for whatever is our current experience and make that the definition of what is normal, we lose sight of what could be.
• Lack of self-reflection. Leaders who are not taking the time to reflect on their own leadership using prayer, journaling or any of the other spiritual practices that are available to us, are lacking in self-leadership. Leaders without self-reflection are like a ship adrift, maintaining life aboard the vessel but not realizing the boat isn’t going anywhere! That may be a pleasant place to be, but it isn’t fulfilling the ship’s purpose of taking people from one place to another. Leaders must challenge their own leadership. Don’t wait for a board or major donor to do the job that you should be doing yourself. Leaders ought to be their own most objective, insightful, relentless critic.
• Tiredness/Loss of Passion. These factors may or may not be temporary. If the leader has lost the spark which invigorated their leadership, if they feel burnt out, it’s time for a sabbatical to recover that spark or to let someone else lead. Leaders need a passion for their mission!

How To Recognize You Are in a Rut

It shouldn’t be hard for a leader to recognize when they are in rut, as long as they are self-aware. These questions are ones I’ve picked up from others which should help a leader identify if they are in a rut:

• Do I still feel challenged by my role or can I do it with my hands tied behind my back?
• Is anything big happening in our ministry?
• Am I looking forward with excitement about anything related to the ministry?
• Does the ministry need anything that it doesn’t already have?

If the leader isn’t self-aware and not asking these questions, at least one of the staff members probably is, and most likely more than one. The leader should proactively ask the team these questions individually as part of a one-on-one meeting, and see how they feel. Their responses may alert the leader to something the leader has missed.

Getting Out of a Rut

The following suggestions can help a leader get out of a rut:

• Prayer and discernment. You are leading Christ’s ministry, and he will certainly have something to say to you about it. This is foundational to anything else you do. Book yourself a spiritual retreat and spend time alone and in quiet with the Spirit.
• Go back to your first passion and vision for the mission. This is the advice Christ gives to the church in Ephesus: Go back to your first love!²
• In addition to recovering what you once had in terms of passion and vision, take a fresh start at developing your vision for what the ministry could achieve. This is all about rediscovering God’s purpose for the ministry and your call to it. You go back to recover your passion and vision and then you project forward to discern where God wants you to go from here.
• To expand your concept of what is possible, get outside of your ministry world; go look beyond your organization, denomination, subsector, generation and see what is happening elsewhere.
• State what you believe about the way things are and then challenge those paradigms. Prove yourself wrong!

Recognize that if you, the leader, are in a rut, then the staff probably is too. This means you have a bigger job than just getting yourself out of a rut – you must help everyone else to get out as well. That also means the ministry’s culture must change because somehow the culture has supported the complacency that got you into the rut in the first place.

Get out!

If you have fallen into a rut, immediate remedial action is required. You’ll have to shake things up, including yourself! The good news is that Christ and the Spirit are with you, still have a purpose for you and your ministry, and will give you everything you need to get back on track.

Key Thought: Life is easy when you are in a rut, but then you are no longer leading!

The discussion guide for The Church Needs Some R&R applies to this post as well.

The post Getting Out of a Leadership Rut appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

• Do we trust one another enough to say what we really think about the workplace environment and culture without fear of retribution?
• Is anonymous feedback all we can get?
• Does anyone in management even ask what people think?

A caring leader will want all employees and volunteers to have a good experience and feel significant, valued, and fulfilled as they contribute to the ministry’s success. All of these good things should happen if staff and volunteers believe they can safely bring concerns and suggestions to management.

Christian Faith in the Workplace

If people are afraid to speak up, something is wrong. Isn’t our faith all about reconciled relationships, love, grace, forgiveness and forbearance? Aren’t we all one in Christ with no Greek or Jew, male or female, master or slave?

Yes, we have power differentials and hierarchy to assist with coordination and decision-making, but they must never be used to run roughshod over our co-labourers in mission and create a bad work environment. Our Christian faith levels all differences between people, including workmates.¹ Everyone in a ministry workplace is a peer; just peers with different responsibilities. Treat them well and care for them.

The Christian way of living and working together in community is the way of authenticity, transparency, and vulnerability. We are supposed to:

• be real with one another
• learn to understand each other
• be Christ to one another

Even in the workplace!

Let’s Get Real

What I’ve described is very idealistic, the way things should be and will be when we have all reached perfection in the image of Jesus Christ.² But unfortunately, we are all at various stages on the journey towards perfection. And that means that workplaces might be, or probably are, less than the ideal.

As a senior leader, I believe my leadership should be such that people feel completely safe sharing difficult things with me. It’s my job to create an environment in which people can safely say what they really think, even to me – the CEO. While I may hear some hard things from time to time, it is all for my good. I need to know rather than not know. In fact, the only way I can protect myself against CEO Disease is to make it safe for people to express a concern or complaint that they have, not just about the workplace, our strategy, or our decisions, but even things about me personally.

What about anonymous feedback?

People may be more willing to tell the truth if they can do so anonymously. Anonymous feedback has its pros and cons, and they differ depending on whether it is the only kind of feedback received or if it complements other forms of feedback.

Anonymous Feedback Only

Anonymous feedback is a way to start moving towards trust and authenticity if you haven’t already got it. Even though anonymous feedback on its own isn’t all that helpful, it is better than nothing at all. It can be quite a wake-up call if management hasn’t asked for feedback before, or if management is unknowingly contributing to a bad work environment. It is particularly helpful if leadership is simply blissfully unaware of what is happening outside its own ranks.

Boards should require anonymous feedback obtained through an independent third party as a prudent check on the kind of leadership being given by the senior leader.

I highly recommend the Best Christian Workplaces Institute survey as the instrument to use for anonymous feedback. CCCC brought it to Canada more than a decade ago to help Christian workplaces become truer to our faith and we still use it ourselves every few years.

The problem with anonymous feedback, particularly if it is the only feedback you get from staff and volunteers, is that it is really hard to interpret on its own. For example, if the survey asks only for numerical ratings, there is no context for the response. If staff report a distrust in leadership, why is that?

• Was there a miscommunication between parties?
• Did the staff member have an unrealistic expectation that wasn’t satisfied?
• Is management really not to be trusted?
• Is it management in general, or a particular manager?

You don’t know and cannot know.

You might take the anonymous information and dig deeper with another anonymous survey that asks for an explanation of the score. CCCC does this, and the responses have been quite helpful. But people may not want to be very specific for fear of identifying themselves. Remember, most Christian churches and ministries are quite small in terms of staff: two-thirds of the thousands of CCCC members have between one and ten employees. It probably wouldn’t be hard for them to guess who said what! By the same logic, you are even less likely to have anyone speak up in a focus group.

This reality leaves leadership uncertain about what the exact issue is, and with no clue as to who they should talk with to better understand the score.

Anonymous & Direct Feedback

If you are getting direct feedback, for example in meetings between managers and their direct reports, anonymous feedback is a good test of the quality of the direct feedback. The direct and anonymous feedback should be the same, if everyone is speaking up and voicing their honest opinions.

Anonymous feedback coupled with direct feedback provides good corroboration that people are giving direct feedback that accurately reflects what they really think. This gives leadership a lot of confidence in what people are telling them.

Authentic Face-to-Face Feedback

What we all should really want is a Christian work environment that doesn’t need anonymity in order to receive honest feedback. Anonymity, in my view, runs counter to everything Christianity stands for in terms of human relations. At CCCC, the leadership team is committed to leading in as Christlike a way as possible. We want everyone to feel safe to express their feelings to their manager, and to myself as the organizational leader.

Creating the Environment for Trust & Authenticity

Leadership Response

We leaders have to work at overcoming the imperfections in ourselves so we can receive all kinds of feedback and respond as the good stewards we have been called to be. If you ask employees and volunteers what they think, you’d better be ready to hear people challenge your strategy, the culture, your leadership, and so on. It isn’t always pretty!

Trust and authenticity cannot even begin to develop in the workplace if leaders at any level are not willing to accept it. Therefore, building a workplace where trust and authenticity reign begins with the leaders getting the right attitudes to support such a workplace.

Leaders should start by recognizing that they are neither perfect nor omniscient and can always benefit from other perspectives. Leaders, be humble and don’t be self-centred. You’ll do much better if your focus is on the ministry’s mission and the employee’s welfare rather than on your own personal success and interests.

In staff meetings and one-on-one meetings where people are expressing their opinions and observations, be aware of your body language, tone of voice, and choice of words. Even if you don’t like how it is being said, keep an open mind.

• If they are talking about your own personal leadership, ask yourself, “Is there some truth in it?” Even if you think the person is completely wrong, ask yourself, “If I wanted to be even a better leader in that area, what would I do differently?”
• If they are challenging a strategy or a practice that you think is the right one, ask yourself, “What objective evidence do I have that the strategy/practice is still viable today or will be tomorrow?” Research it. You may be surprised.

Close the loop on the conversation by getting back to the person. Thank them for raising their point and tell them what you did as a result and why. Encourage them to come to you any time they have a concern or suggestion.

Culture

Create a culture that invites critique and inquiry for the sake of the mission and organizational health. Be clear that critiques are not about assigning blame but about finding ways to do things better. Welcome the opportunity to delve deeper into organizational life and work.

Let team members know that their safety and welfare is a concern of top management.

Get in the habit of asking creative questions that invite many different perspectives to be aired. Some great questions appear in a fun post I wrote titled Imagination – the spark that ignites.

Policies

To protect staff from our own failings as Christian leaders, have a conflict resolution policy for dealing with employment-related matters, and an ethics/whistleblower policy dealing with ethical issues.

Have a clear position that no staff member will suffer for being honest in their relationship with their manager.

Trust & Authenticity

In the end, after you have prepared yourself to receive feedback in a positive way and have created the environment for safe expression of opinions, whether people will actually offer their thoughts is up to them. Some people are just too intimidated for one reason or another and will not say anything. The anonymous feedback is the only way you will hear from them. But at least you have done everything in your power to help them have a voice.

My prayer for you is that you will have a workforce of staff and volunteers who enjoy and get life from the work they do for your ministry, that they and you will be one happy, trusting team, and that there will be authentic bonds of Christian love between you as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Key Thought: Christians should be able to have safe relationships with each other, even in the workplace.

The post Trust and Authenticity in the Workplace appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The risk in writing this post is that someone will misuse it to try to make their appreciation seem more authentic than it really is. That’s not what I’m trying to accomplish!! What I want to do is help you avoid undermining your authentic expression of appreciation in the eyes of the recipient.

In terms of authenticity and appreciation:

1. Only the person giving appreciation can know with certainty if they are being authentic or not. They know their motivations and how much they really believe what they are expressing. For the giver of appreciation, authenticity is reality-based.
2. For the person receiving appreciation, they cannot know with certainty what is going on inside the head of the person giving appreciation. They can only make a judgment based on their interpretation of previous history with the person and how convincingly that aligns with the appreciation now being received. For the recipient of appreciation, authenticity is perception-based.

Developing Your Perceived Authenticity

If someone doubts the authenticity of your appreciation when you really are being authentic, other than being very clear about telling them what they did and why it touched you so much that you want to tell them you appreciate it, there isn’t much you can do in the moment. Be gracious and leave it at that.

The solution to helping people see you as the authentic person you really are is to help them see you as authentic, consistently, over time. So:

• Be genuine, expressing care and concern, always meaning what you say, and never having hidden, ulterior motives.
• Be transparent and vulnerable to the appropriate degree. The more people think they know who you really are, the more they will believe you. This is why leaders tell stories about themselves. It isn’t that they are self-centred. What drives their story-telling is the desire for their team members to better understand them – what has shaped them, what their values are, how they make choices.
• Be sure that your actions always align with your words.

When it comes to expressing appreciation,

• Ensure you only give appreciation when you really mean it
• If you tend to express appreciation a lot, maybe cut back a bit. If you appreciate everything, especially things others might regard as trivial, your appreciation will soon come to mean nothing.
• Be appreciative when you don’t have to be. There are times when social norms demand an expression of appreciation, such as at retirement parties or when a gift is received. In situations where there is no social pressure or formal requirement for appreciation, your voluntary appreciation will be more believable.

One factor that makes appreciation different from recognition is that recognition is based solely on performance. Appreciation, while similarly triggered by performance, is much more about an enduring trait of the person. In other words, recognition is about what the person did and appreciation is more about who the person is.

• A person might catch an error in some work. You can thank them for catching the error and maybe nominate them for a recognition program, but you can have more impact by expressing appreciation for their consistent attention to details.
• Someone may have helped a family through a critical crisis. Again, there might be a recognition program for what they did, but you can also show appreciation for their empathy and patience which equipped them to handle the situation so well.

You will come across as more authentic when you show deeper understanding of the enduring qualities that are the foundation for the person’s success.

Authenticity will also be more apparent when you aren’t fixated on appreciating just one personal trait. When you show appreciation for a variety of traits it means you are really thinking about the person, and not relying on a stereotype you have developed of that person. If you can think of four or five traits to appreciate in a person, it increases the likelihood that you will see at least one thing to appreciate about them every day or two.

You could also, at a later time, tell the person, “I was just thinking about it again, and wanted to say how much I really do appreciate…” Going out of your way (when it is unnecessary) to stress the appreciation tells the person that your appreciation wasn’t just a fleeting thought, but was real enough that you are still thinking about it some time later.

General or vague appreciation may be real, but is more likely to come across as insincere. So you want specific examples to connect to the general trait you are appreciating. You must actively look for things to appreciate and have an eye for detail. For instance, receiving a report on time may trigger an expression of appreciation. That’s fine – that’s individualized and specific. But what makes it really authentic and memorable for the receiver is for you to look at the report and find something even more specific in it to appreciate. For example, the logic of the layout, the design of an infographic, or the extra graphic design to draw your attention to an important fact are all deeper, less obvious things, and pointing them out will add punch and depth to the appreciation.

People who wait passively until something impresses them will likely miss a lot of opportunities to appreciate staff.

Key Idea: Authenticity requires consistency and transparency.

The post Authenticity and Appreciation appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Appreciation Languages

The five appreciation languages are:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Acts of Service
3. Tangible Gifts
4. Quality Time
5. Physical Touch

The last language, Physical Touch, is limited in the workplace to handshakes, fist bumps, and the like, and doesn’t receive much attention in the book. The other four languages, however, get lots of attention. Each language has a variety of dialects which further fine-tune how appreciation could be expressed in that language for any particular employee. For example, dialects for Words of Affirmation could include whether the appreciation is given in public or private, verbally or in writing.

Chapman finds that everyone has two primary appreciation languages. The other three may mean nothing at all or just very little. The point is that you have a certain way of wanting appreciation to be expressed to you, and your natural tendency is to appreciate others in the same way you’d like to be appreciated. That will work for some people, but for others you will completely miss the mark and even risk turning what you think is a good interaction into a bad interaction for that staff member. For example, you might express appreciation with words, but the way the employee feels appreciated is by receiving a gift with some monetary value, perhaps a gift card for a restaurant. The employee might discount the verbal appreciation because it is just “cheap words” that don’t really mean anything.

If you’d like to be more intentional about expressing appreciation to your staff, you’ll find the book full of insights on how to give appreciation well. Plus, each book has a coupon code which allows you to complete a quick online assessment to discover your own primary appreciation languages. You can then do what I did, which is purchase additional assessments to help your staff discover theirs.

Once the staff know their primary appreciation languages, they can share them with you and other staff and that’s when the fun starts. Effective appreciation should start to fly in all directions: top-down, peer-to-peer, and maybe even bottom-up. My daughter taught at a school in Nepal which posted all the staff members’ appreciation languages in the lunchroom, making it easy for everyone to appreciate each other in meaningful ways. Can you imagine a ministry with everyone appreciating everyone else like that? What an encouraging workplace that would be! I’m sure productivity and real-world impact would soar!

Appreciating Groups

Because there are different languages and dialects, appreciation can be customized for each team member so they get just the right appreciation for them. But you don’t want to be that narrowly focused if you are expressing appreciation to a group. Ideally, you would find ways to incorporate two or more languages in order to appeal to a broader group of people and hit at least one of each person’s top two preferred appreciation languages. That means using any three of Chapman’s top four languages (remembering that he says Physical Touch never shows up as a primary appreciation language in the workplace).

For example, I do an irregular coffee run to pick up a drink for everyone. I have a list of staff members and their usual Tim Horton’s drink order. I surprise them by personally delivering their favourite drink to their desk while thanking them for the great work they are doing (a Tangible Gift, an Act of Service, and a Word of Affirmation all wrapped up in one act of appreciation)! Efficient, isn’t it?

Another example of combining appreciation languages was when I took a staff member to lunch (a Tangible Gift and Quality Time), told him verbally what I appreciate about him and then gave him a card with the same sentiments handwritten in it (verbal and written Words of Affirmation).

Appreciation in the Bible

Three biblical verses stand out for me as I think about appreciating staff. None is about appreciation directly, but each covers an aspect of appreciation and together they provide insight into why appreciation is so beneficial to your ministry’s success. Two verses are about encouragement and the third is about relationships.

• Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing (1 Thess 5:11).

This verse reminds me to look for things to appreciate in others and to use Words of Affirmation to encourage and build them up in two ways:

1) Affirm what already is: We can encourage and build people up by expressing appreciation for what we see in them, especially when what we see are things they don’t appreciate or even see about themselves. It’s human nature to undervalue what we are good at because to us it is so easy and natural that we believe there’s nothing special about it. Instead, we value what we see in others that we find very difficult to do or be ourselves. If we fall into this trap, we will not reach our full potential because we’ll be focused on developing areas of relative weakness, which probably won’t have much room for improvement, while neglecting to capitalize on our strengths, which probably have lots of room for further growth. Expressing appreciation for the strengths people bring to their work can redirect people to a more fruitful use of their abilities and greater fulfillment of their potential.

2. Affirm what could be: Leaders should look not just for existing strengths, but also for the seeds of future strength. Be watchful for traits, interests, and budding strengths that could be combined and/or cultivated to expand the person’s potential. For several years, I carried an acorn in my pocket to remind me to look at people with two sets of eyes. With one set, I see the acorn as it is today – an acorn. But with the second set, I see what the acorn will become – a mighty oak tree! When we look at people, we should try to see them not only as they currently are, but also as they could become. Affirm the potential you see and encourage them to develop it.

• And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds (Heb 10:24). This verse invites us not just to inform people about their potential, but to actively incite them to develop more of it.

I always think of a race when I think of spurring someone on. I’m either running beside them on the track as a pacer, challenging them to push themselves to do their best, or I’m cheering from the side of the track, encouraging them to press on. We see Paul cheering the Corinthians as he spurs them on to give generously. He affirms the intention they had already made to give, and challenges them to give at least as well as the Macedonians gave.¹. Affirmation coupled with challenge is definitely a way to spur someone on. Give a person a vision for what they could accomplish. Over the years, I have had a number of people spur me on, either about myself or about CCCC, and each time it forces me to ask, “Why not?”

• To Timothy, my beloved son (2 Tim 1:2). This way of addressing Timothy is perhaps the most intimate look we get into Paul’s inner life. Timothy was not his biological son, but he had become so close to Paul that Paul thought of him as the son he never had. The relationship is very warm and intimate, and speaks to Paul’s recognition of Timothy’s potential and his dedication to seeing that potential realized.

Paul’s deep love and appreciation for Timothy and his effectiveness at developing Timothy were based on the significant time they spent together over the years (Quality Time). As a result of his investment in Timothy, the younger man matured into a great Christian leader. This is a reminder of how important Quality Time is for developing another person, learning to appreciate who they are, and encouraging them in their development. Paul’s investment of time in Timothy should inspire us to do the same. Find one or more young people with high potential and invest in them.

Key Idea: Ministries will flourish as leaders appreciate their staff and build them up.

The post Appreciation in the Workplace appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

I am not referring to money, but people!

Getting the right people to serve in your ministry is challenging enough. To lose them due to poor leadership attitudes and behaviours seems almost criminal in that light. Losing staff that way is a completely avoidable tragedy!

Appreciation’s Contribution to Success

Whether your staff and volunteers fulfill or don’t fulfill God’s purpose for them in their ministry roles is largely a matter of how much your team members feel they are appreciated, and that means it all comes down to your leadership!

Why is appreciation so important?

• Appreciation is critical to your mission success because it goes a long way towards creating a positive, encouraging environment in which people can flourish, be all that God intends them to be, and do all that God wants them to do for the success of your ministry’s mission. You never know in advance which staff member God might have given you for a spectacular contribution that may not ever be made because that person was unappreciated and not encouraged, and either quit or did just what they were told to do and no more.
• In addition to the emotional environment, appreciation provides excellent feedback and encouragement to the person regarding their hard and soft skills. It helps them be more successful by giving them understanding of what they are doing that contributes positively to someone else’s work, to the ministry’s success, and to their own career success.

In a Harvard Business Review article,¹ Tony Schwartz says that appreciation in the workplace is very important because:

• Everyone wants to feel they truly matter, and that their contribution is recognized.
• The highest driver of employee engagement is whether or not they feel their manager is interested in their well-being. Appreciation is one way to indicate that interest.
• Appreciation lifts people up, makes them feel safe and energizes them. These factors free them up to do their best work.

Your ministry’s best performance will come when its employees and volunteers feel truly appreciated by leadership. Appreciated people will flourish with leadership’s encouragement and support and will be high-performers. They will more likely get the job done than those who are not appreciated. So why would any leader not be generous with expressing their appreciation for others?

Why Some People Don’t Give Appreciation

Lack of appreciation can be due to a number of factors that can be related to one of four attitudes:

1. Transactional utilitarianism is a term I’ve coined to refer to the practice of objectifying people as units of production. Staff members are seen as the products of a commercial transaction; an exchange of time for money. In this scenario, there is not much need to express appreciation because the person has merely done what they contracted to do. The utilitarian perspective can see people as expendable and replaceable. So without commitment for the longer term, there isn’t much effort put into building a real relationship. Significant development opportunities might not be offered because the payback isn’t considered fast enough. With the focus solely on utility, there may be ever-increasing and demanding pressure for continuous productivity improvements. Workers have probably heard the leader say many times, “Great, you did what you were paid to do!” and nothing more.
2. Personal insecurities can cause leaders to be overly reliant on hierarchy, power, and authority, leading to leadership that can be demanding, coercive, and even abusive. These leaders tend to come down from mountaintops to dispense their vision and plans, and aren’t interested in what anyone else might suggest. They need to come up with all the answers themselves, and they see alternate possibilities raised by others as threats to their leadership. Insecure leaders may not be appreciative because they either don’t want to feel indebted to anyone or they are afraid of being seen as not able to do everything themselves. I’ve heard of one leader who told his staff, “I’m not paying you to think! I’m paying you to do what I tell you to do!”
3. Thoughtlessness is at the root of why some people won’t express appreciation to others. These leaders simply don’t care about the social graces or about the human need to be affirmed. They don’t even see the effort that has gone into a result. They don’t wonder about what it took to do something. And even if they did see something praiseworthy, the idea of expressing appreciation never occurs to them. If pressed, they might say, “Sure I appreciate you. You’re still on the payroll, aren’t you?”
4. Presumption diminishes feelings of gratitude and appreciation and replaces them with unilateral expectations. Some leaders just take people for granted. A volunteer who agreed to do one activity may be pressured to take on another. A staff member may be told to stay late without any consideration of their personal circumstances. There is no sense of negotiation. Phrases like, “Would you consider…” or “Is there any way you could…” just aren’t in their vocabulary. The expectation is that staff and volunteers will do whatever it takes to get the job done and that this is just part of what they signed up for.

In all these scenarios, people are valued for their capacity to produce, not for themselves. They are seen only as workers, not people. If recognition is given, it is only to use the person as a model for others to emulate.

Lack of Appreciation’s Consequences

The effect of not giving appreciation can be devastating.

For individuals, lack of appreciation:

• Lessens how hard people choose to work
• Lowers job satisfaction
• Robs the individual of feeling significant at work
• Prevents a person from enjoying their work life
• Causes people to become bitter and resentful over their treatment
• May result in people questioning their faith or losing passion for the ministry’s mission due to disillusionment with the behaviour of their not very Christ-like leaders

For the team, lack of appreciation:

• Creates a workplace culture devoid of positive traits as the team becomes bitter and resentful
• Work relationships deteriorate if the way leaders treat staff influences how staff treat each other

For organizations, lack of appreciation can result in:

• A bad reputation for leadership’s un-Christlike behaviour, losing support from donors and volunteers
• Loss of goodwill, if staff adopt leadership’s attitudes towards people outside the organization
• Increased workflow problems due to higher absenteeism and lower productivity
• Missed opportunities and lost potential because an organization can only flourish if its people are flourishing

For leaders, lack of appreciating others:

• Can cause them to suffer some serious negative consequences. For example, leaders often get the credit for the success of their organizations, as if they did it all by themselves. If leaders believe this and don’t appreciate others for what they contributed towards the success, pride will be their downfall.
• Leads to pride, which leads to hubris, feelings of invincibility, omnipotence, and omniscience. What could go wrong? Hmm.
• Leads also to self-aggrandizement. Who wants to work for someone who thinks they can do it all by themselves?
• Negates the role that God plays in your life. Moses recorded a clear warning from God about forgetting the role that God played in your success!²

For the leader’s own good, they need to give lots of appreciation. Doing so:

• reminds them that they are part of a team,
• keeps them humble as they acknowledge the help they received, and
• helps them see their team members as blessings from God.

Appreciation Has a High ROI

Long term success comes to organizations with staff who are creative, passionate, committed, and engaged. Money can’t buy these traits. Appreciation is what causes people to voluntarily offer these traits to those they work and volunteer for. Since it doesn’t cost a ministry anything much to appreciate their people, there is no reason not to do so. When appreciation isn’t given, the cost to the ministry, the team, the leader, and both the employees and volunteers is far too high to bear.

Key Idea: Appreciation is the way to go.

The post The High Cost of the Unappreciated appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Metaphors are mental pictures that capture complex ideas in a memorable snapshot. Here are some metaphors describing the church:

• One I’ve often used is ‘outpost of the kingdom of God.’ God’s kingdom is a rich theological concept which Christians understand to greater or lesser degrees, but which the general public only understands taking the term at face value. While we apply it spiritually to people who choose to follow God’s lead, the secular public interprets it as an actual social structure of government and law. It has connotations of theocracy about it, and that scares people. An activist campaigning against religion was quite surprised when I told him the evangelical agenda did not include making Canada a theocracy. He assumed that was our goal, and that would be a natural assumption based on some of the imagery and words we use in our churches.
• Christians often use warfare metaphors to describe ourselves individually and collectively as the church. We put on the full armor of God and fight spiritual battles. We sing choruses that use battlefield and conquest imagery and that have a triumphalist posture over the world and the forces of evil. I wonder what my activist friend would think of these.
  • We know that we think of warfare in terms of spiritual warfare, not physical warfare. And we know it is directed against the spiritual forces that stand against God and never against people. People may be under the influence of ideas and forces that keep them from God, but they are never the target. However, they may not understand such a nuance as that and might feel threatened by such metaphors. Warfare metaphors tend to distance us from the very people we want to evangelize. It makes people with whom we should be talking our enemies, and we all know we don’t consort with the enemy! Warfare metaphors also suggest coercion through conquest. Again, be careful how these metaphors are used. We fight against Satan, never people!
• We speak of the church as being a light shining into the darkness. That’s very biblical too, where we are described as beacons and lamps. But this metaphor casts the relationship of the church and the world into very black and white terms. Spiritually, there is light and there is darkness. This is true. There is no grey. But because the world was created by God and has his imprint stamped all over it, there is goodness in the world as well as darkness. Light and darkness become more nuanced in the non-spiritual context.
  • If light is our guiding metaphor, we will likely overlook anything good in the world and unnecessarily call it dark, or write the good off as an aberration. The church would not be able to affirm anything in the world, and that would be our loss because non-Christians do have lots of knowledge the church can use. It would also ruin our credibility because there are, indeed, good people in the world who are not Christians. They don’t know God, but they do lots of good things nevertheless. If we try to say that only Christians can be good people, well that just isn’t so. There is light and dark, but outside of the spiritual realm it has nuances to it.
• The Bible provides many more metaphors for understanding what the church is. Principal among them are the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, and the temple of God. These metaphors focus on who we are in relation to God rather than the world, and so are not as problematic as the other metaphors I’ve described.

And of course, we don’t have to draw on the Bible to find metaphors for the church. We can make up our own. For example, in the previous post I used these words to describe the church:

• Under assault
• Squeezed
• Beleaguered
• A minority facing overwhelming competition
• Defensive
• Clinging to a past when state and culture aligned with it

If this cluster of words represented the full extent of my thinking about the church, then my best metaphor for the church would be a city under siege. My strategy for the church would then include (metaphorically speaking):

• Withdraw to safety behind the city’s walls
• Reinforce the walls
• Arm myself with as many weapons as I can find or make
• Change life in the city to a wartime footing
• Plot strategy to attack the enemy
• Protect against spies by distinguishing between ‘us’ and ‘them.’
• Recreate whatever we used to do outside the city walls (such as growing food) so that it can be done inside the city, and then we never have to leave the safety of the walls.
• Think of the city as a fortress, not a city

If I were really in a city under siege, these might be smart things to do. But are they at all helpful when we apply these strategies to the church? Is retreat into a fortress the best way to move forward? For portions of the church, this does seem to be their guiding metaphor, even if it is unstated.

The Quest for the Best Metaphor

The issue isn’t whether or not the biblical metaphors are valid. Of course they are all valid. There is nothing wrong with any of them. In fact, all of the biblical metaphors are helpful to me in various aspects of my life, spiritual growth, and ministry.

But we must be aware that whichever metaphor we use as our primary metaphor, it will shape the strategy and behaviour of the church a certain way. The question is always, “Is the way this metaphor is shaping the church in today’s environment helpful to our cause?”

What the church needs now is a metaphor to help us collectively navigate through the next leg of our journey together, which might be anywhere from fifty to three hundred years or more. Barring a miraculous intervention by God, I don’t see much changing in the next generation or two.

A Helpful Metaphor of the Church

Let’s be blunt about the situation the church is in today.

• Its favoured position has been lost.
• It’s in a culture that has very different ideas about virtually everything from sexual identity and morals to rights versus responsibilities, to notions of individual versus community well-being.
• Christians are very much in the minority, and we form a particular minority that it seems quite okay for the majority to mock and attack (thankfully, in Canada, attacks are mostly only made with words).
• We are surrounded by a culture that makes it increasingly difficult to practice our faith. For example, many Christians can no longer regularly worship at church on Sunday morning because they must work. If they aren’t willing to work Sundays, there are often career repercussions.

A growing number of Christian thought-leaders are saying that the very best metaphor for the church today is that of the church in exile, and I agree with them. Like the Jews living in Babylon:

• We are a minority community in a host culture that is not ours.
• We are subject to its laws, some of which we find difficult.
• We mourn what has been lost and have no idea when the situation will change.
• We have to find a new way of being the church just as the Jewish exiles had to find a new way to be Jewish without the Temple and without the Holy Land.
• We have been humbled, and must now pursue our mission from weakness, without the affirming structures of the state to support our work.
• We have to repent of the things we did or did not do that contributed to our current condition.

More broadly, we could also think of the church as now being in diaspora, a permanent form of exile. But in the Canadian context, isolating the Canadian church, I think exile works best.

Finding a Way Forward

The exciting truth is that while our reality has flipped upsidedown, God’s has not. God is still actively at work, implementing his plan even when we are in exile.

We can learn what he wants us to learn from this experience, and we can find new ways of being the church, new approaches to serving our country and our world, that I believe will lead to greater mission success than ever. I believe we are entering a new era of creative Christianity, and that working with God, all things are possible. We can still be a blessing to the world. The church once gave the Western world hospitals, universities, and institutions of care. What might similar gifts from the church to the world look like today? Get your creative juices flowing!

Why are we where we are today? Perhaps we became too prideful, too complacent, too cocky, with the trappings of power. God may have placed us in exile to reset our strategy, to help us acquire the humility from which his Son inaugurated his kingdom.

Let’s learn all we can and get on with the church’s mission in a fresh, new way. I’m confident that we’ll discover sooner or later the tremendous blessing that this so-called setback has been for us.

As this series continues, we’ll explore more about how the church in exile metaphor can help us be a better church. Stay with me!

Key Point: The church has lost its place of dominance and been marginalized by society

The post A Guiding Metaphor for the Church appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

At a young age, I discovered one of my family’s values – order and tidiness! I obviously on that day was not displaying our family value, which up until that time Mom may have presumed I had simply absorbed through association with my family, osmosis-like. Well, in the midst of something that was out of place or generally unkempt, I was told point-blank that our family values proper order and tidiness. Everything has its place, so put it there! And then my mom told me a story to reinforce the point. Her father had a spacious three car garage, and in the basement beneath the garage was a huge workshop full of benches, tools, drawers, and storage bins. She remembers her father working on a car and asking her to get a particular nut and bolt from the workshop for him. He told her exactly which drawer of which bench she should look in, and then within the drawer, precisely which of the 16 little cubicles held the desired object. Everything, every nut and bolt, was in exactly the right spot!

That story has stayed with me all these many years. Wouldn’t I like to be so neat, tidy, and orderly that I could tell you with precision exactly where something is! In fact, my wife is amazed that I can go into the basement and, most but not all of the time, find exactly what I’m looking for and be back upstairs in less than two or three minutes.

Such is the power of a story to transmit a value so that it sticks!

Corporate Values

If you did a spot check of all your staff, how many could recite your ministry’s values? They should be able to tell you exactly what they are without much thought, because they should be consciously thinking about them, making choices based on them, and generally living them out day-by-day.

Ensuring the corporate values are a part of daily life in a Christian ministry is one of the crucial strategies to prevent mission drift. As a ministry leader, it is your job to transmit your ministry’s values to your staff, volunteers, and supporters.

But if you are going to have corporate values (which of course you should), make sure they are your real values, the ones you are willing to suffer and sacrifice for because you believe so strongly in them. Don’t settle for motherhood values, the ones you think you should have.

The values you want are the ones that really matter. Your corporate values will either come out of your fundamental corporate identity or strategy, or they will be a response to a time in your ministry’s history when their absence caused a significant problem. Unless honesty has been a problem or is so integral to your ministry’s identity that it has to be a real focus, it is not a corporate value, it’s just a good value. Choose just the few crucial values that deeply matter to your ministry.

Transmitting Corporate Values

The two best ways to transmit your values are to model them yourself, and to tell stories about them. The two go together. Modelling values alone assumes people will pick up on the values osmosis-like, which may or may not happen (as I know from personal experience!). Telling stories alone will not have power unless the leader personally exemplifies them. Otherwise, they are just stories about someone else, usually long ago in corporate history. Telling stories (whether from history or current events) that are visibly supported by the leadership team’s actions today is a very powerful way to transmit your values.

A great resource for developing values-based stories is a book I’ve already told you about by Stephen Denning: The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative.

Crafting a Values Story

Denning has some very helpful tips for creating a powerful values-transmitting story:

• You can start with the corporate values and think about when someone did something that embodied those values, or you can think about crucial turning points in your ministry’s history and see what values were embodied in that moment.
• You can do the above either for the ministry as an organization, or if you want to connect the values to yourself to show how vital they are to you, you can do the above analysis using your own life.
• You don’t need a full-blown story. Review the parables that Jesus told. He told them in minimalist fashion. You don’t want to clutter up the story with so many details that people have to wait for you to tell them which details are important to your point. Only say what must be said to make your point.
  • My opening story contained just the  points that highlight the value of order and tidiness
    • a large space
    • someone who doesn’t know where something is being told by someone else exactly where it is with certainty from memory
    • a preamble connecting the reader with the story through me
    • evidence that the value has survived three generations, showing that Mom’s story was a powerful part of transmitting that value, thus validating the point of this post.
• A story with a twist will be much more powerful than a story that plays out as one would expect. Most, if not all, of the parables Jesus told had very unexpected twists. A Samaritan helping a Jew? A father demeaning his position (in that culture) by physically going towards his profligate son to welcome him?
  • Stories where the tables are turned are very memorable! If you can, build the unexpected in to your story. I told a true story up above, and it didn’t have a twist. But if you are creating a fictional story, such as Nathan did when he confronted David with his sin, you would certainly want to put a twist into it.
• You don’t have to spell everything out. It may be better not to even mention what the value is, but tell the story so that the audience is left thinking about it and then reasons out what the value is. Let them have the fun, and the reinforcing memory, of their own “Aha!” moment. So you could say, “Here’s what I’d like to hear about the service we provide. A person in need…” and then make up a story.
• You could tell a story about some other organization or person that exemplifies the value if you can’t find such a story in your own ministry.
• Finally, you could make up a story, as Jesus did with the Parables. “There was a woman who…” or something like that will start a great parable of your own.

So take your top few values, and try crafting some stories! Guaranteed they will make your staff meetings more interesting!

The post Transmitting Corporate Values appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Surprisingly, it is not just Christian agencies that lose their Christian identity; although rare, churches can too. As I write this, a United Church of Canada minister, Gretta Vosper of West Hill United Church, is a self-declared atheist fighting not to be defrocked as a Christian minister. Two-thirds of her congregation walked out in 2008 after she did away with the Lord’s Prayer, but still there are people (less than 50) who attend the church and support her as their ‘minister’.

In terms of Christian ministries, Christian identity has two components:

1. Christian values and culture
2. Christian mission

When either or both of these become lacking in a Christian ministry, we can say that mission drift has occurred.

Mission Drift

In Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches, authors Greer and Horst trace how originally Christian organizations (such as Harvard University and the YMCA) lost their Christian identities, and how others (including Compassion and InterVarsity) have retained theirs. They report that most formerly Christian organizations did not intend to lose their identity, but they just “drifted quietly, gradually, and slowly.” This accords with the research findings in the first post of this series.

To prevent mission drift, our Christian faith must really matter to the life and work of our ministries. Ministry leaders must integrate Christian faith into all aspects of their ministry’s existence so that a Christian identity is passed on from one ‘generation’ of staff to the next. Greer and Horst found that all too often the passion of one generation became the preference of the next, and then became irrelevant to the third, in the same way that the Israelites lost their faith in Judges 2:10.

So, directors and leaders,

• When was the last time that faith was a crucial factor in any major decision?
  • Beyond trusting God to provide, have you had a robust, theologically grounded discussion that reframed the issue?
• Do you really believe that faith is essential to your work?
  • Would your organization suffer if it became completely secular? If it wouldn’t suffer much, then perhaps you aren’t making as much use of your faith as you should be.
• Does faith saturate every aspect of pursuing your mission?
  • How does your Christian worldview intersect with HR practices, program design, etc.?
• Does it permeate your culture?
  • Are people comfortable expressing their faith outside of formal prayer or devotional time? Would a visitor to your ministry immediately get the sense that faith matters?
• Is it a pass/fail screen for new board and staff recruits?

If you didn’t have a recent example of faith factoring in a decision, or if you answered “No” to any of the questions, then you may have a problem with mission drift. There is a handy free assessment tool you can use to see how much in danger of mission drift your ministry is (starting on page 92 of the Mission True Workbook).

Responsibility for Preventing Mission Drift

Both the directors and the senior leader are responsible for guarding against mission drift. In fact, in Mission Drift, the authors found that in every case of lost Christian identity, poor board recruitment and governance were driving forces behind mission drift.

If you think that directors and staff would never be the source of pressure to change your identity, the authors report that the pressure to secularize isn’t so much exerted by forces from outside the organization as it is by forces from within: your supporters, employees, and directors.

So let’s look at how directors and executives can ensure there is no compromise on your Christian identity.

Board

The board bears ultimate responsibility for safeguarding the mission and corporate identity. The main risk factor in its ability to do this well are the directors themselves, for several reasons:

• Term limits guarantee that there will be turnover on the board, risking the loss of corporate memory. Term limits are very healthy because they bring new blood and fresh thinking to the board table, but over time you could end up with a board that is only familiar with the last four or five years of history, making gradual drift harder to see.
• Directors are involved in the ministry, but their lives are wrapped up with their vocations elsewhere. There is a heightened risk that they will bring values and culture from another organization (often a secular organization) to the board table with them.
• Board members may not have the theological resources to protect against mission drift. Few directors are likely to have a formal theological education, making it possible that in spite of being very devout and faithful Christians they might overlook the theological assumptions or inconsistencies implicit in the choices they face.

The board must therefore intentionally ensure it is equipped to safeguard this ministry’s mission. They might:

• Read a corporate history of the ministry featuring the development of its values, culture and mission. Corporate histories should include stories that are part of the corporate lore that exemplify its Christian identity.
• Include a discussion of the corporate history, values and mission at each board orientation.
• Study a theology of whatever the mission is about. For example, Christian Horizons has a theology of disability that guides its work.

Practical steps might include:

• Embedding Christian faith as deep as possible in your corporate documents so that they are hard to change. A statement of faith might be in your bylaws and a Christian purpose in your corporate objects.
• Intentionally asking “Which biblical-theological principles apply to this decision?” when making significant decisions such as setting priorities, approving capital projects, or relating with senior staff.
• Asking how well the board demonstrates faithfulness to God through its meetings and work.
• Vetting potential board recruits for
  • their passion for the specifically Christian nature of the organization. If the ministry lost its Christian identity, would they still be interested in serving?
  • how much their faith affects their daily lives. Are they serious about their faith?
• Setting longer board terms (although if the longer term causes people to serve only one term rather than two, then stay with what you have).
• Adopting a self-perpetuating governance model, so that the selection of directors is a carefully considered appointment by the board rather than an election by a possibly uninformed membership.
• Ensuring they do not pressure the staff so much that the staff feels they need to compromise the Christian identity to fulfill the board’s expectations.
• Keeping an eye on the senior executive to ensure corporate culture and mission strategy remain thoroughly Christian. Just as potential directors are asked about the application of their faith in their lives, the leader should also be asked (if they don’t talk about it themselves) about how their faith works itself out in daily life. In what ways does the senior leader give evidence of being led by God? What is the leader doing to ensure that the staff is committed to the Christian identity?

Senior Leader

The senior staff leader bears responsibility for the ministry living out its Christian identity on a daily basis. The main risk factors leaders face are: 1) loss of personal Christian vitality, and 2) reliance on worldly thinking. These are very real risks because:

• Ministry leaders are usually quite absorbed in their ministry, and might sacrifice their personal spiritual life for the sake of more time for the ministry. Alternatively, they might end up conflating their personal spirituality with that of the ministry’s, thinking they are one and the same. Neither of these must be allowed to happen.
• Agency leaders, unlike most pastors, might not have any formal theological education, creating a lack of awareness of how a Christian identity could affect the organization beyond just having a staff devotional time.
• There is much that worldly wisdom has to offer in terms of scholarship and research, but it must always be considered in light of our faith. Leaders may be prone to do what works rather than what is theologically sound.

Leaders can safeguard the mission by:

• Studying the ministry’s history. Senior leaders should be better versed in the ministry’s history than anyone else except perhaps the archivist. I outlined how I did this at CCCC (follow the links in this post for specific examples).
• Either taking courses in biblical-theology or reading up on it, so that they can think theologically about the mission and operations of the ministry.
• Developing their own rich spiritual life and learning to discern God’s leadership.
• Ensuring that they see themselves first as followers and only secondly as leaders. They must feel personally led by the Holy Spirit in their leadership. If they don’t feel this is so, they should reflect on their own spirituality.

Practical things a leader can do to prevent mission drift include:

• Be the model for living out what the ministry stands for.
• Watch corporate culture very, very closely. Ensure that faith matters within the general culture, not just at leadership meetings.
• In Mission Drift, Phil Smith notes that “People join your organization who are very excited about portions of your vision, but are either opposed to or don’t care about the rest of it.” Unless you have intentionally decided to hire non-Christians for some roles (which can be fine), you should hire only those who are passionate about everything the ministry is and represents.
• Build the senior leadership team’s capacity for theological reflection and spiritual vitality through their professional development plans. Have staff think theologically about their own work.
• Ensure theological discussion is a true discussion and not a sermon. The leader shouldn’t be the only one raising matters of faith.
• Document God’s call to your founders and previous leaders. Why did God cause your ministry to be founded? Are you still true to this call today? If the call has changed or developed over time, document how and why it evolved. This prevents unintentional drifting. Do the same for your corporate values. Have they changed, and if so, has there been any compromise or is there an even greater dedication to being a godly organization?
• Watch for concrete examples of how faith intersects with your ministry and write them up as stories to add to the history and lore of the ministry.
• Define key terms in your strategic statements. It’s amazing how different people can interpret the same word in so many different ways. The CCCC End statement consists of only ten words, but a short paragraph explains what the End statement means to us.
• Ensure that all marketing and branding statements reflect the corporate objects and by-laws. (CRA Charities Directorate also checks this when doing a general charity audit.) Sometimes the language of strategy doesn’t play as well to your audience as language developed from a marketing perspective, so different words might  be used. This is okay as long as the public version retains the intent of the internal statements. So compare the statements and be sure you have not compromised your Christian identity.
• Finally, watch the board very carefully. The board and the senior leader are mutual checks on one another. Bring to the board’s attention anything they are doing or not doing that could result in mission drift.

Conclusion

A Christian ministry is successful to the degree that it is faithful in how it pursues its mission and experiences corporate life. Both the board and the senior leader must be on guard, watching over the ministry as if from a watchtower, to survey everything about its organizational life to ensure that its Christian faith permeates every aspect of its existence. If you want God’s blessing, you must be faithful.

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