Dan Reiland is the Executive Pastor at 12Stone Church in Lawrenceville, Georgia. He previously partnered with John Maxwell for 20 years, first as Executive Pastor at Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, then as Vice President of Leadership and Church Development at INJOY.

Dan is one of many outstanding mentors for our Leader Groups – leadership collaboratives for senior leaders of large churches, focused on helping leaders break through their toughest challenges and leadership lids.

THE ART OF HIRING GREAT LEADERS
by Dan Reiland

Hiring a staff member can be stressful.

It’s a big decision, and you never know for certain how it will work out.

Smart leaders will do everything possible to make a wise choice when hiring, not the fast choice. When it comes to hiring, fast seems expedient, but more often than not, it’s expensive in the end.

It’s been my responsibility as an Executive Pastor for many years to make good hires and to lead a team that makes good hiring choices. I’ll admit that on occasion, this process keeps me awake at night. It matters that much. Building a great team is an art. You will make mistakes, I have, but there is much you can do that will help you choose wisely.

Of course, there is much more to it, but if you are on the go today, here are eight Quick Tips that will help keep you out of hot water when hiring.

   1. Know what you want.

When I’m coaching leaders in hiring, I hear this phrase far too often. “I’ll know the right person when I meet them.” That may indicate good instincts, but it’s not a good strategy. Be very clear on what you are looking for before you begin your search. If you don’t know exactly what you want when hiring, you’ll be tempted to change your mind in the moment based on emotion.

Stick to your hiring criteria

When it come to hiring, never lower your standards. It’s easy to lower your standards when you are under pressure and need some help. But hold steady and wait for the right leader. It’s better to continue with an unfilled position, even with some extra work to do.

After you write a clear, concise bullet point job description, write a list of criteria (standards). Here’s an abbreviated example: 7 years experience, at least 2 years in a church of 500 or more, college degree, carried primary responsibility for a minimum of 40 volunteers, strong people skills, etc. Write down what you desire and stick to it.

Always make team-based hires.

Hiring staff was never meant to be a solo endeavor. We all have blind spots, personal biases, and favor certain personalities. We like who we like!

You can easily remedy personal bents and hiring biases by working with a team of 3-5 people who will do all the interviews. Each person then interviews the candidate with a specific set of questions.

Always interview more than one good candidate.

A good rule of thumb for smart hiring is make it a goal to have at least three viable candidates to interview. By viable, I mean leaders that you would seriously consider hiring. Not one sharp leader and two that you would never consider. This practice dramatically enhances your process because with three great candidates, you quickly see which one is best for your team.

Make your reference calls. I know not all reference calls are fruitful, but make them anyway — touch base with friends who might know the candidate. Sometimes that one call can seal the deal or save you from great heartache.

Use personality testing. There is no need to bombard your candidates with several tests, but one or two is a wise practice.

Invest maximum effort in matching people to your staff culture.

You can’t overestimate the significance of team culture when hiring a new staff member. The candidate may be a sharp leader and have an amazing track record, but that doesn’t mean they will be successful on your team. Take plenty of time to get to know them as a person and a human being, not just someone filling a position.

Don’t sell the virtues of your organization.

When hiring, don’t sell the virtues of your church team, just live them, the candidate will pick them up quickly. Of course, you can speak favorably about your staff team and the culture you enjoy, but you must be honest about the shortcomings that need improvement.

Be direct and very candid in your interviews.

When you interview a potential staff member, don’t hold back. Ask candid questions. Ask the tough questions. This isn’t the time to be polite and reserved. Kind and respectful, yes, but don’t take an easy and surface approach. As you consider hiring someone, you need to really know this person, and they need to know the real you.

Pray and trust the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

It’s OK to trust your gut, but as I mentioned earlier, that’s not enough. You need a process and a team. And equally, if not more so, you need to pray and seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

God cares about who you hire; it’s His church. Ask Him who He wants on your team!

More resources from Dan Reiland can be found on his website https://danreiland.com/

The post The Leader’s Dilemma appeared first on Leadership Network.

Source: The Leader’s Dilemma

The post The Leader’s Dilemma appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: Thanks for joining us for another episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m so excited to have William Vanderbloemen from the Vanderbloemen Search Group with us today.

Vanderbloemen Search Group started out wanting help churches find pastors. They now have branched into doing a few other things such as consulting, succession planning and serving ministries in their staffing needs as well as churches. In everything their passion of helping teams and organizations build their culture remains.

William is with us today to talk about building your culture and how he’s shared what he’s learned in his new book, Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace.

Identify the unique culture at your church. // The truth is, we’re all a little crazy. Churches are staffed with broken people. You make it work not by trying to find people who aren’t crazy (ie. perfect), but by finding people who have the same kind of crazy that you do. Churches do this by asking themselves the question: when we’re functioning at our very best, what are we doing that’s common to us but would be uncommon to other teams around us? That’s a nice way of saying, “What kind of crazy are we?” One of the examples the Vanderbloemen Search Group identified for themselves is that they are super responsive people. As William jokes, “Why are you calling me back at ten o’clock; you should wait until tomorrow?” This type of “crazy” came up again and again, and it turned into a value that they called ridiculous responsiveness. Don’t just be mediocre or vanilla, show the ridiculousness in the values that your church has.
Culture needs to be guarded. // Good culture attracts people, and staff stick around longer when their is good culture at an organization. If you’re a church planter and don’t yet have staff, you may have key volunteers that serve as your staff. Regardless of your organization, choose one person that should be in charge of overseeing the culture aspect of the team building. Guarding the culture is important enough to be a part of their job and not something that someone does on the side or during their spare time. This individual should spend 30-35% of their time making sure you’re cultivating good culture and it’s being kept on target. Be intentional about culture.
Internal versus external hires. // William started Vanderbloemen Search Group because he wanted to see the church move farther and faster. Why should a great church spend half of their time without leadership? This problem was one he wanted to solve. In his work with pastor placement, William has found that the smartest clients have developed ratios of when to hire from within versus when to hire externally. If you’re looking to sustain a culture, or push a culture forward in a particular area, you should be looking at an internal hire. On the other hand, if you’re looking to shake up, grow, change and do something different in an area, an external hire is a great thing to do. Regardless of whether you’re hiring from within or outside, the person needs to be the right one for the job.

You can find the book Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace at www.culturewins.org. Or learn more about the Vanderbloemen Search Group at www.vanderbloemen.com.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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Lightning Round

Helpful Tech Tools // Hubspot’s blog

Ministries Following // Ramsey Solutions (Dave Ramsey)

Influential Book // Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter

Inspiring Leader // The Pope

What you do for fun // Golf, Running, Spending time with his wife

Contact // www.culturewins.org and www.vanderbloemen.com

Source: Why Culture Wins at Your Church with William Vanderbloemen – unSeminary

The post Why Culture Wins at Your Church with William Vanderbloemen appeared first on Passion for Planting.