14 Direct Reports!!! Oh My!!!
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Good morning, Reader, It is March, spring is around the corner, and I am getting my green ready for St. Patrick's Day!!! It also means Easter is right around the corner bringing one of the biggest attended services of the year for most churches. My prayer for you, and all the other churches represented in this community, is that people will come, have an experience with Jesus, and seek out a church home with you. I am also praying that you are given an extra level of energy, strength, inner calm, and clarity as you lead through the next several weeks. This week I had a wonderful conversation with a pastor in the Michigan area. Through that conversation, it came out that the pastor had a very large team with 14 direct reports. I almost fell out of my chair when I heard it. 14!!!! Can we both agree that is simply too many direct reports? The reasoning was that the pastor had just stepped into the position and wanted to establish her leadership voice to the team. Which, I could totally understand, and get behind to a certain extent. As a new pastor, it is very important to establish your tone, leadership style, and authority among the team you are leading. Depending on the style of the pastor that preceded you, it is important to build trust and rapport and help your team understand how you are going to lead them. However, having 14 direct reports is simply way too many. In my experience, there are a few reasons why this happens:
Whatever the reason, it is not a healthy approach to leadership and staff management. As a pastor, you should have between 3-5 direct reports. If you are an exceptional leader that is highly organized, you can stretch that to 8. Reaching up to 9+ is too many. Tony Morgan, founder of the Unstuck Group, says, "...when your span of care gets stretched too wide, you naturally have less time to invest with each person on your team. And that means that over time, the people that you’re leading will become less connected to the overall direction and the priorities of the ministry as they get more disconnected from their leader. And then, the more they begin to operate independently from the rest of the ministry—and this is when silos begin to form." - Tony Morgan, Unstuck Group I would add to what Tony is saying, that this is an unhealthy way to lead as a pastor because it is a path to burnout. When you have that many people coming to you waiting for your decision, looking to you for direction and guidance, and relying on you to step into problems they can't handle, it will wear you down to exhaustion, stress, and anxiety. All factors of burnout. In Exodus 18, when Moses had too many people coming to him, Jethro corrected Moses by telling him, "What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone." I don't want to see you burn out. More than that, I don't want to see you living a ministry lifestyle filled with stress and anxiety. I want you to be fulfilled and flourish in your ministry serving others. If you have more than 5 direct reports, I would encourage you to see if you can get it down to 3. If you have more than 5 direct reports, you need to sit down and do some serious evaluation on how to delegate leadership and authority differently. If you need someone to talk with to help you figure that out. I would be happy to have a conversation with you to help you get there. Respond to this email and we will set up a time to talk. Have an awesome day, Reader!!! |