Video Transcript: Communication

Being an effective manager task 13, communication. The number one complaint in every organization I've ever been a part of is a lack of communication. People think there's a lack of communication. Now, sometimes there is a lack of  communication, we'll talk about how we can improve communication. But just  because people are complaining about a lack of communication doesn't mean  that the organized organization is failing in its communication. It can always be  approved improved. You can always work on communication. But just because  people say it doesn't mean it's true. In church, there are always a group of  people who will say that they're just not informed. They don't know what's going  on, but often it's because they're not involved. Especially I've discovered I  myself am what we call an empty nester. All my kids are grown and out of my  house, and so when I was younger and my kids were home, we were involved in the church camp out. We were involved in all the Sunday school things. We  were involved in the Christmas program. People with kids don't have time for  anything, but they're the ones that are involved in everything. So for years, a  person is involved. They're doing things, and they know everybody. They know  what's going on, because they're involved with everything. Then they get older,  and their kids are no longer in the Sunday school, so they stopped doing that.  They stopped doing the nursery. They stopped being involved with the  Christmas program. They stopped going to the camp out. So they stopped,  really, their involvement in everything, and and, and so then they start feeling it,  you know, I don't know everyone here. I don't even know what's going on. I don't even know we had a camp out. I mean, they're just not paying attention,  because a lot of it doesn't relate to them. And that the contrast between what  they used to be and used to be in there, and they knew everything, and now  they don't. They don't know some of the people. There's new people that have  come I don't even know who they are, because they they're not in forced  proximity with some of those new people. So a lot of times it's just a change of  life. They're not as involved, often as just a lack of involvement. But okay, given  that that just because people complain about the lack of communication doesn't  mean that you're failing in some ways, communication can always improve. And  as a manager of a church or an organization, whatever it is, there's some things  that you can do, communication avenues. First of all, think about the different  ways that we communicate today. There's the phone, there's email, there's  texting. A lot of people prefer texting because you're not interrupting someone.  You can just send it right away, and the person can read it whenever they want.  They can respond whenever they want. Often, Facebook groups, you can start a group for almost anything. We have a church Facebook we have a renovation  Facebook group, of all these different groups, of all these different things. And  people can sort of belong to whatever they want, and they get updates all the  time. With our renovation, we actually put a little video update, you know, just  show people what we've done, where it's going, what's needed, and that works 

really well. There's Google Calendar. People can share the same calendar, so  people can update the calendar, and everyone can see it. Families will do this.  Groups will do this. You can have lunch, an old fashioned thing of actually sitting down with someone, seeing them face to face. A lot of times a meal, certainly in  the Bible, we saw that. We see that all the time, Jesus did a lot of things with  food. He ate with the people that he was trying to talk to. If you if you have an  organization or a building, you may have a desk an office space, you can stop  by someone's desk and do a little chatting, or you can have a formal meeting  with a group of people, a lot of meetings a day. So these are some of the  avenues that we have to use in our communication. The weekly staff meeting, if  you if you're a church or you're an organization, you have the employees that  you have, this seems to be a good practice or a standard practice meeting once  a week to check in with each other, but you need to a few things to understand  about a staff meeting. Number one, understand the ROI of the meeting. That's  the cost return on investment. It's the cost of a meeting. Is the salary times the  number of people times the number of hours. And so just because you have a  staff meeting doesn't mean it has to last forever. You know, our staff meeting in  our church tends to last two hours, but I don't think it has to. So if we only need  an hour, we do our business in an hour, and then we sit around and talk, and  then we feel like we have to be there for some reason. For the extra hour, you  don't have to. Keep minutes of your meeting. Minutes Are you keep track of  what was decided and who will do what by when. So decisions and  assignments. You don't need all kinds of other verbiage. You know, we talked  about this. We talked about that. Keep track of what you decide and what is  assigned. Go over the last meetings, minutes. Okay, what did we decide before  and who was assigned, what and where are we on those things we have to can  we cross them off the list? Or do we is there a problem? Is there something else  we need to discuss on this? Or does someone have to just get this thing done?  So you go over what was in the past, then you look at a new agenda. What are  the new decisions, new assignments that we need to look at, what's coming up  in terms of our schedule as a church. And then finally, this meeting is not the  place for work. Okay, that's probably one of my pet peeves about a staff  meeting. Sometimes you come to a staff meeting and then you're talking about  particular thing. Maybe you're looking at a retreat space, and all of a sudden one of the staff members will just call, you know, it's like, okay, well, let's find out right now. And they're calling and and I like the initiative they're getting right on it.  They're getting this thing done, but now everyone else at the staff meeting has  to watch you make a phone call, and we're not getting anything done. So the  staff meeting is not the place to do work and don't bring you know, you know  work on your phone and schedule and doodling, and you know the staff meeting is a time for everyone's attention to be on what we're doing here, and the goal of the staff is to just check in on what we're doing, not to do any of the work. So if 

people start coming together and they're working now, one is working, one is  not, and then the meeting lasts for two hours, and very little gets done. The staff  meeting is not a place to get the work done. A staff meeting is a place to check  up on the work and coordinate the work. Number six, if a member of the team  has really fallen short of expectations, do not come down hard in the meeting,  but rather plan a time alone with that person. So in the staff meeting, if you're  the manager and you're meeting with everyone, and someone is not doing what  they supposed to do, they had these assignments, and they keep falling short,  they keep not doing what they should do, you could do it right there. You can  say, well, how come you didn't get it done? Let's get this done. I mean, you  could, you could deal with it right there, but why embarrass one staff member in  front of another? Just take them aside later, and now you can talk about it.  Maybe they have a problem that's going on at home, or who knows what the  situation is, they're more likely to open up to you. They're more likely to admit  things. They're more likely to take whatever discipline that you have if you do it  alone. Let people save face. How to run a work meeting? Okay, so you have a  staff meeting that's for checking up on schedules and assignments and you  know what's coming in the future, and how are we going to do these things?  Who's going to be assigned what? But sometimes you need a meeting where  you actually have to get some work done. We have to get this form finished, or  we have to decide on some, you know, retreat planning, and we need to actually sit down and come up with the plan or, or, you know, we have this flyer we want  to do, and what's going to be on the flyer, instead of taking your staff meeting,  where some people are involved and some people are not, decide on a work  meeting, we're going to actually accomplish this particular task. Number one,  pick one thing that needs to be worked on, and that's it, just one thing at a time.  Number two invite only those who are related to that one thing. So instead of  having the whole staff where two are related and two aren't, and two are just  sitting there and it doesn't relate to them, you know, we'll have a staff meeting,  and all of a sudden we're doing stuff on the young people's thing, and my wife is  sitting there with the music and has nothing to do with her, and the thing goes on for 10 minutes, and what is she doing for 10 minutes? So only the people that  are involved with the thing, only one topic at a time, get the work done and then  end the meeting. Okay, so the meeting is to get the work done. So when the  work is done, meeting is done. In how to run a brainstorming meeting, put one  topic in the middle of a whiteboard. So the topic is outreach. How are we going  to reach more people in our church? That's our topic. Number two, let anyone  come up with any idea they want and write them down with no positive or  negative comments. So let's say, or let's say, instead of outreach, it's hospitality.  We want to do outreach, but we want to, we want to somehow use hospitality to  reach people. Okay, that's our topic. Okay, so it's in the middle of the white ward. Then let the people come up with whatever ideas they have. Well, hospitality, we

can have a contest where you know, to see how many people each family can  invite to their home for the whole summer, and we'll have some prizes at the  end. Okay, so that's one idea hospitality, where you have a pig roast in our  parking lot. Okay? Now you could say, well, how much is that going to cost,  really? The community just had a pig roast. Does that really work? So you could  criticize it. You could come up with all the positive and negatives about this idea. Or you could just leave it go. Just let people come up with whatever ideas they  want. And they start coming up, well, we could have a concert in the park. We  could all wear, you know, our pathway, it's the name of our church. We could all  put on a t shirt and and, and visit every business, and, you know, with a  megaphone, and invite people to our church. You can come up with all kinds of  crazy ideas. So you list as many ideas you can think of, and when the ideas are  done, you erase the board, and then you say, Okay, those were the ideas that  we thought of. They were the low hanging fruit. Now I want us to come up with  crazier ideas next. Erase the whiteboard. Now I want you to share things that  you didn't dare share things that are totally, absolutely, 100% off the wall. Okay,  so how can we do this? How can we do outreach? Okay, we'll all make a box,  get a crate, and then we'll all go and we'll stand on our crate every 10 feet in our town, and we'll sing one of our songs, or whatever. You just let people have fun  with the you know, well, that's a crazy idea. Well, can you come up with a crazier idea? And then they do, and people are throwing ideas, and all of a sudden, you know, maybe out of out of 10 crazy ideas. There's actually one that someone  can use towards a good idea. The idea of brainstorming is to get your brain  working. Most people can't think of anything. You say, Okay, give me one idea  and they can't think of anything. So the idea is to loosen up the brain. Because  the problem with with our brains is we have breaks and and all our lives, we say  something, and then right away, we get feedback on what we said, and people  are very quick to judge ideas. If you come up with an idea, there'll be 10 people  that don't like it. I don't care if it's a great idea or not, there will be 10 people who are dead set against it. So we have grown up in a culture that has done that to  us. So our brains are afraid to think, and we certainly are afraid to say the ideas  that we think. So we have to, we have to work at this. So if you, if you work with  your people, and you have brainstorming sessions about almost everything,  eventually, people can learn to just say what they think, put it out there, get  ideas, crazy ideas doesn't matter. And finally, we'll be able to think of things.  Number four, take all the ideas and vote on the top three and then evaluate  them. Okay, so eventually you can evaluate, but first we want to have enough  out there to even evaluate. So how do you evaluate ideas? Well, what are the  potential problems? Okay, so you finally decided on a few of these ideas. We're  going to have a pig roast. What's the problem? Okay, our how are we going to  advertise this? How are we going to market this? Why would anyone come to  this? You know, on and on and on. If our church people are doing all the work 

that it takes to do this, who will have time to mingle with the people? So what  are all the potential problems? What are the potential benefits? We're actually  offering something we all have something kind of positive. We're doing it  outside, so that even if people don't come, they can see something is happening here at this place. So you eventually. You evaluate the problems, you look at the at the good things, and then you try to figure out what's the best thing to do. So  ongoing communication. So those different ways of communicating,  communicating, having meetings and so on, but ongoing communication always have an open door. As a manager, anyone can visit me at any time. If you have  a question, you have a thought, you can email me, text me, stop in, talk to me. I  am open to any thoughts that you have. But number two, walk around,  especially if you have an organization where there's a lot of people, a lot of  employees working there, and a lot of people that you manage, they're not  always going to come to you. People are not going to come to you. As the  manager, you're going to be the last resort. So you can have your door open.  You can say to people looking and talk to me anytime, but often people will not  talk to you. They don't want to bother you. They don't want to bring this as an  issue so, so then you need to walk around. You need to go to them, go to  people, stop in informally. It's not a big deal. It's not a meeting. It's not like, hey, I want a meeting with you. I want to talk to you. I want to grill you about certain  things that you're doing. No, I'm just walking around. Stop at your desk. How  you doing? Hey, what are you working on? And then it gives people a chance to  share what they're doing. So communication, really, it's about, about being  persistent, about leaving doors open using all the different forms. Today, there's  no one way to communicate anymore. It used to be, you know, you could you  could talk on the phone, you could write a letter, you could have a meeting. Now, there's, you know, 12 different ways to communicate, and certain people prefer  certain ways of communicating. So find out what is the preferred method of  someone hearing what it is that you have to say, and their preferred method of  them speaking to you?