One of the most important decisions you will make as a leader is who to bring onto your team. The wrong hire can cause conflict and inefficiency, whereas the right hire can multiply the fruit for your ministry!
How to make the right hire for your team
- Be clear on your values
- Be aware of what you are looking for in your team members
- Be committed to what you don’t want
- Be unwavering in your convictions of the essentials
- Be patient
I have followed and studied football (American soccer) for the better part of four decades. Today the game is so sophisticated and the advent of sports science so evolved that they are able to track every move of the athletes. There are statistics on the number of kilometers run, the number of successful passess made, the number of tackles, and on and on. What interests me is when you have a player who is a high performer at one club, but is moved to another top club and does not excel like you might expect. They are not scoring like they have in the past, their movements are not in sync with their teammates, or their persona is not as confident.
How is it possible that a player will look out of place with one team and at ease in another team? The problem – poor analysis!
The decision-makers made a choice based on the data they collected, but likely without understanding how this player would interact with his/her teammates. Now they are now stuck with a player they probably paid a lot of money for that doesn’t work as well with the team. One of the highest paid athletes in the US is Loinel Messi who arrived in FC Miami for $60 million plus a percentage of sales on new Apple TV subscriptions and Adidas purchases. The point here – the team management took a bold step to bring in arguably the best player to ever walk on the planet and match his potential impact with a package that would be commensurate with the impact on the club. This was a very clear cut deal – if you get Messi, you win!
Any new hires you make will parallel this scenario on the scale at which you operate in your church or ministry. Finding the best talent for your team can be challenging and it often takes longer than you expect. But the effort is well worth the investment in time and resources.
- Be objective when vetting prospective new hires; be really, really objective when hiring a friend or previous partner (be aware of your motivations, or feelings of obligations, when hiring any person)
- Allow the information you collect to speak for itself; you might have a great match on skills while reading a resume, but once you interview in person, you see they have poor people skills
- Do your homework before you start taking applications: have a clear job description, know the budget (or budget range) and be clear on qualifications.
- Have an exit strategy in mind if this doesn’t work out. Communicate clearly about what you wish to see after they are hired. It’s often wise to have a 90-day trial before committing to hiring someone.
- Be upfront with the disqualifiers; talk about what happens if lines are crossed, etc.
Questions for reflection:
- What are the lessons you’ve learned in the past when I’ve hired well?
- What lessons have you learned when you haven’t hired well?
- Who do you know that has hired well you could learn from?
- What changes do you need to make to your hiring process?
- What tools can you utilize to assess prospective new employees?
Here is a tool that might help you hire well in the future – CLICK HERE
Do you want to take your team on the disciple-making journey together? The Discipleship Collective helps you mobilize other disciple makers. Take the Disciple Maker Quiz to discover the habits in which you are excelling and the growth points on which you need to focus. Then invite other members of your team to join you. It’s FREE and you can use it as often as you like!
If you want your team to be better equipped to make disciples consider the DISCIPLESHIP COLLECTIVE.
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash
