Mistake # 4: Avoiding the painful and difficult decision to dismiss staff
By Stovall Weems
(Part 3 of 3)
This is the last part of Mistake #4 – The most dangerous kind of person you could have on your staff is someone who is gifted and talented but has a different agenda. This is someone who acts like a team player and says all the right things, but behind closed doors they are undermining leadership, speaking against decisions and violating Biblical and staff values. They bring strife wherever they go and usually cannot work with a team of peers. The people they have underneath them they draw to themselves and develop an “us and them” mentality. They are a tremendous source of pain and fatigue to the rest of the team.
I’m not talking about having disagreements with each other. As a richly diverse staff, we have lots of healthy discussion, and share different points of view. This is a very regular and productive component of our lead staff meetings. I’m talking more about using disagreement as an instrument of division and undermining authority. It’s really more of a heart and behavior issue and is very serious.
When strife begins to enter a team things begin to go to another level in danger. The longer it is tolerated the more people will get hurt. The person who sows strife is blinded to the fact that they are hurting people. Many times they are deceived in thinking they are actually helping people, or even protecting them. For the sake of self-preservation and their own agenda they will defile and hurt anyone they can with their poison. (Hebrews 12:15) God hates strife, and He hates discord. (Proverbs 6:16-19) If this is present in the staff, it must be dealt with swiftly and decisively. I am very thankful that this has been very rare on our staff. However, if someone on our staff causes strife or discord, they are given one warning. Then, if it happens again they are immediately dismissed.
Thanks so much for all your great comments so far on this series. Next week I’ll continue with Mistake # 5.
Stovall
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4 Responses to “Mistake # 4: Avoiding the painful and difficult decision to dismiss staff”
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these post have been really good. thanks Pastor
Stovall,
Since reading your blogs on “dismissing staff” I have virtually fired every one of my staff members…LoL! Only kidding. These blogs really have helped to confirmed some things that I have had to deal with in the past months concerning my own staff. You’re right. These are difficult measures, but necessary none the less.
I am beginning to realize that when we keep staff that should be dismissed we not only hurt the church, but we also hurt the person that we fail to dismiss. They will only realize there own potential when they are exactly where God wants them to be.
Thanks for your insight!
Great insight… thanks for sharing.
Mike
Pastor Stovall Thank you for watching out for us!