Who Gets Fired In Ministry?

Starting and building a ministry requires growing your leadership team in both quantity (number of leaders) and quality (ability + spiritual maturity).

Inevitably a ministry leader needs to take some risks on younger/less qualified people in order to increase the number of leaders, which ultimately grows the size (and health) of the entire ministry.

But how do you determine who to take a chance on and who to fire (or more commonly who do you choose to NOT select for a leadership position)?

Jack Welch shares the answer in this one minute (literally) clip. He describes four managers in relation to the amount of results they achieve and the amount of behavior that’s aligned with the values of the company:

1. Results and Behavior

2. No Results and No Behavior

3. No Results but Behavior

4. Results but No Behavior

Here’s the clip:

This was my takeaway:

1. Results and Behavior–Easy to Keep

2. No Results and No Behavior–Easy to Fire

3. No Results but Behavior–Hard to Keep

4. Results but No Behavior–Hard to Fire

#3 people are the best people to take chances on to grow your leadership base. #4 are the most dangerous because they can get the results you want but at a tremendous cost to the ministry culture.

Have you had as much trouble selecting and empowering #3’s as I have?

Any tips or wisdom on how to go about leading a team that strategically identifies and empowers #3’s?

Can’t see the video? Click here to watch in on my blog.

photo courtesy of delusionalcubsfan

3 thoughts on “Who Gets Fired In Ministry?”

  1. come on man, back off big Z! His case presents an interesting element – there’s mass resentment that I believe it primarily due to his salary. They can’t fire him because he makes too much guaranteed money.

    I think it’s hard to have anyone fired in ministry. I almost thing that sometimes ironically that they get moved laterally and sometimes into higher status jobs – so they actually get promoted. Fascinating.

    good questions on #3 and #4 – worth thinking about more

    1. ah nice the picture works on many levels! i knew it would bait you into commenting.

      we do a lot of pre-firing–finding a “better fit” is what it’s called.

      have seen the lateral then up move happen as well.

      it’s hard to empower #3’s sometimes bc empowerment looks much different than #1’s–you can turn #1’s loose but i have had to be a thought more thoughtful, intentional, and engaged when empowering #3’s–which scaled out is a lot of work for the leader and the team.

      1. Historically many people get moved to “office jobs” and then ironically they end up with more influence and leverage organizationally. I think some of that vibe has changed in the last ten years, but it always presents an odd feel when influence flows to perhaps those who have not yielded much results – whether they have the behavior or not. Interesting.

        I think many people that move to more office or admin or exec roles do so because of gifting and to serve, which is different than the above scenario.

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