How I Motivated My Staff

Dwight Eisenhower described leadership as “the act of getting somebody else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

The pastor or Christian lay leader constantly finds himself trying to accomplish the same task: motivating his staff and/or co-workers to action that will carry out the goals of the church. He faces problems unique to his job; he doesn’t have the captive audience Eisenhower had, with the coercive force of court-martial at his fingertips. Nor does the pastor have the motivator big business uses so energetically-high salaries.

The Christian leader must use spiritual truths and good management skills to capture the imagination and energy of his co-workers. Solomon said, “Where there is no vision the people perish” (Prov. 29:18). Peter Drucker, in The Practice of Management, calls this giving the staff member “a managerial vision.” In order to properly motivate co-workers, Drucker says they must sense the overall purpose and be convinced that their job, properly done, will be a valid contribution.

How do successful Christian leaders go about creating this “managerial vision” in their staff? Do any of them use negative motivators such as oral and written reprimands, loss of privileges, demotion, or discharge? How do they use positive motivators such as vision, commitment, praise, personal interest, money, competition, and delegation of responsibility? What motivators are available to the Christian leader that may not be available to the corporate manager?

To find some answers, we talked to several pastors of large churches, men who handle multi-person staffs. We found their motivational techniques fell into several basic categories:

Careful Placement

Getting the right people into the proper positions is no accident. Extensive interviewing, evaluating, and testing must take place before clear choices become apparent. After describing how he goes through this winnowing r process. Phil Hinerman, pastor of Park Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis, quickly summed up his “bottom line” regarding personnel placement:

“The answer to staff motivation is to hire the right people in the first place. It doesn’t take any great judge of character to see who’s motivated to work and who isn’t. You hire the ones who are, and ‘move on’ the ones who aren’t.”

Several other pastors emphasized the importance of hiring the right people. William Self, pastor of Wieuca Road Baptist Church in Atlanta, points out that the job doesn’t end with hiring the right person. “Staff members need to know what’s expected of them, what their job description is. You must clearly let staff members know what they should be doing. And when they do it well, you should stroke them.

“At the same time, you must walk closely with your staff, especially when someone is chewing on them. If they’re doing the right job and are still getting criticism for it, you must give them all the support you can.”

Evaluation

Many pastors feel one of the most productive types of support comes in the form of periodic performance review. Self remarked, “Always give an annual review. This does two things: it lets staff know where they are and how they’re measuring up. It also sharpens my expectations of what they should and could be doing.”

Informal evaluation should take place more frequently. Orval Butcher, pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in Lemon Grove, California, is always evaluating staff as part of a regular communicative process. His entire staff meets every morning for thirty minutes of prayer. He encourages weekly mini-staff devotionals as well as mini-staff business meetings. Each month he holds a staff dinner that induces a high level of interpersonal communication.

“I have an administrative staff of four and meet with them once a week for plus a review of current activities. Pastors and youth workers meet every Tuesday morning for breakfast. We communicate about ministry tasks and spiritual needs and then pray for one another.”

Meetings held ostensibly for evaluation have another important effect; they preserve open lines of communication, something these pastors see as essential. Elliot Mason, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Los Angeles commented, “I spend a great deal of time trying to communicate with my staff, trying to be open, honest, and supportive. My relationship with my staff is similar to one a man should have with his wife: a deep level of understanding that is essential for a good working relationship.

“I don’t believe in the kind of motivation that requires a ‘hard sell.’ I ease off the pressure approach because I feel that it’s an improper way to inspire others. People are going to do a good job if it flows out of what they want to do, out of what seems natural for them, out of what they believe in. By developing good lines of communication with my staff, I help them see where their interests and the church’s interest coincide, and that combination is the greatest motivator to positive action I’ve found.”

Interestingly, measuring staff performance at evaluation meetings rarely included a list of minimum standards against which performance could be measured. The pastors with whom we spoke agreed that one of the keys to sustained motivation is letting staff implement the job description as they see fit. Freedom to mold the job develops responsible people. They internalize much of the managerial function and thus motivate themselves by their own sense of what the job requires.

Money

How important is money in developing that sense of responsibility? Two different viewpoints surfaced. Lane Adams, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, feels one of the keys to retaining highly skilled staff is the church’s willingness to pay good salaries.

“For too long the church has operated on the commitment of its personnel and has not rewarded them commensurate with their gifts and responsibilities. I would imagine that in our section of the country we pay associates more than many senior ministers make elsewhere. Consequently, we don’t have a large turnover at Second Presbyterian. Most of our staff are younger men with young families; this means mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, and brains to educate. If someone leaves, we want it to be because he has a valid call from God, not because of inadequate compensation. Besides, a person who is fretting over finances can’t minister effectively. So, one of the things we tried to do is upgrade the level of pay for the associates. I would say the gap between the senior minister and the associates here is smaller than almost any other place you could name.”

On the other hand, John Geisler, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Orange, California, downplays the role of money in motivation. “Money isn’t all that important as a motivator. We have never, to the best of my knowledge, had any serious problems with people who say, ‘I’d work harder or longer, or I’d stay with the church if I got more money.’ We try to be fair. We have a carefully thought out salary schedule, and we give annual cost of living increases.

“Responsibility cannot be bought with money, and I think a sense of responsibility is the only thing that develops motivation. In churches we’re able to use two strong motivators: prayer and the Word of God. There’s a built-in motivational principle in letting the Holy Spirit work through the Word. This is the greatest thing we can do to motivate people.”

Shared Decision-Making

These pastors were enthusiastic about using delegated authority as a motivational tool. Allowing associates to contribute significantly to, and sometimes take full responsibility for, major decisions ranked high on their list of ways to energize the people around them. Lane Adams said:

“Just the other day one of my associates asked me for an opinion on a critical matter. I named two lay people who were involved and said, ‘Whatever you and those two decide is my opinion. Go do it.’ It was a tough decision, but he made it and I’m happy with it.”

When Phil Hinerman heard about the nature of this article, he quickly wanted to tell us about Art Erickson and the responsibility he has taken at their Minneapolis church.

“Art’s one of the rarest guys in America. He served for seven years in Young Life, is a graduate of Bethel Seminary, and came out of Moody Church in Chicago. He’s been here twelve years working with blacks and whites in the inner city. This summer we will have seventy-five days of inner city activity for young people and their families. We’ll raise about $70,000 outside the church for the program, and we’ll spend about $21,000 for an eight-day crusade in our parking lot, featuring Andrae Crouch, Tom Skinner, and other outside talent. During that one week we’ll receive about 150 commitment cards. Half of those attending will be black and half will be white. The whole program is in Art’s hands and I know he’ll do a good job. It’s very motivating for Art to be given that large an undertaking.”

Praise

Adams regularly practices another successful form of staff motivation-praise. “I don’t use what you’d call motivational techniques, because they smack of external manipulation. I believe real motivation comes from within. I do, however, believe in the old Navy dictum, that you should praise in public and correct in private. In my ministry I find that the balance of praise to correction has to be ninety percent affirmation to ten percent correction. If you don’t do the one, they eventually won’t respond to the other.

“An example of this occurred when my associate put together an absolutely sensational Mother’s Day service. While he had a small part in the actual service, it was evident that he had done a great amount of work in organizing and arranging for it. At the end of the service I told the congregation he was responsible for its creation, and briefly explained the amount of work it had taken. I followed that up at our weekly staff meeting with high praise. Several times during the rest of the week, I mentioned to him his successful contribution. This kind of appreciation is highly motivational.”

Such motivational skills don’t come quickly or easily. All the pastors we talked with gave a large share of the credit for whatever people skills they have acquired to respected senior ministers whom they modeled. Motivational know-how isn’t usually taught in seminaries, as Bill Self attests: “Clergymen are often theologically smart and management dumb. Seminaries don’t train students on how to handle a multiple-staff structure. Most pastors have to learn how to deal with staff on the anvil of experience.

“What makes the task even more difficult is that staff members often have different views on how they should be managed. They may view the pastor as a preacher/theologian, but feel he is uninformed and unskilled in their area of expertise, and thus knows little or nothing about what they do or the problems they face. Hence, they view him as unqualified to manage them.

“There is a point at which a staff member needs to know who’s boss. Whatever the style, the leader still has to lead. But pastors in most churches have to lead without appearing too authoritative. They must be masters of finesse.”

All of our pastors agreed that the successful pastor tends to motivate with a sensitive skill born out of concern for individuals. This will naturally lead to concern for the work of the church. Each pastor develops a unique style of demonstrating to his staff that hard work will earn each of them the personal satisfaction of a job well done, and the public satisfaction of pastoral praise and love.

Mark Twain once wrote that “War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas, moon talk by a poet who has not been on the moon is likely to be dull.”

Similarly, perhaps, the greatest motivation for a church staff comes from working for a highly motivated pastor who shows by example how people and tasks work together.