Step one: Have them get a personality transplant. It’s something my business owner uncle told me no one can do. He has been in business for more than 35 years and says he has yet to find someone who can exchange personalities (this of course is not referring to anyone who has schizophrenic tendencies). So either they fit with the organization or they don’t. I don’t want to believe it, but I have seen it enough times now…I have no choice. Operations people are notorious for being task focused and lacking in people skill. This is all fine and dandy until it is within the context of working in a church. The church is not just made up of a gathering of people…it is people. So, when your job is to work with people, you better like working with people.
The church cannot afford to not hire the best, most well rounded, skilled, articulate, lover of God who can win and influence people. Those people who are not that have no place on a church staff. They can make wonderfully productive contributions as the church, but will wreck your church’s junk if they are part of your staff. The Church leadership will always be cleaning up after them as they leave their wake of insensitive destruction because of their focus on accomplishing the task at hand. The skilled operations people know how to get a job done and have everyone happy about it in the end. That’s right…I said everyone happy in the end. If that’s not the case then one of two things happened. The ops people weren’t working well with people or the ops people weren’t working well with people. (Yes, I repeated myself.) The number of people who are so hard to work with that they will never be happy is very small. It takes time and energy to make relational effort as you work together. If your ops people can’t do that they should be doing anything other than working on your church staff.
Do your church body a favor. Hire operations people who love people well, or try to pull off the impossible and have them get a personality transplant. Uncle Jan says you are better of doing the former. After some years in vocational ministry, I agree.
