We continue our dive into the crucial role of emotional intelligence (EQ) in church leadership, specifically focusing on team dynamics with Pete Stedman from Norwest Anglican Church in Sydney.
What We Discuss
- What happens if you neglect EQ in a team
- A framework for understanding EQ
- How to foster a positive team culture that values EQ
- How to equip church leaders to build strong, emotionally healthy teams
Tool Box
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Bradbury and Greaves
I Told Me So by Gregg Elshof
242 What I Have Learnt In Leadership with Pete Stedman
380 Why EQ is the Edge Every Leader Needs Part 1 (Pete Stedman)
Credits
This episode was brought to you by Youthworks
The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia
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Transcript
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service.
G Day, I’m Pete Hughes.
Welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel centred ministry.
Every week One Thing’s brought to you.
I reach Australia and we would love to see thousands of healthy evangelistic multiplying churches all over our country, and we will see thousands of healthy multiplying leaders and teams.
0:28
Part of that, of course, is emotional intelligence.
That’s what we’ve been talking about.
We talked a little bit about that in the last episode.
Pete Steadman’s back again for this episode.
Welcome back, Pete.
Thanks for having me back.
Mate, you, you have been thinking about this, but let’s just stop.
We’re we’re, we’re getting towards the end of 2024.
0:46
We’re in the right year.
What’s what’s been a highlight for you for this year?
Oh, look, if if I think about church, it’s been a really big year for us at Norwest.
We’ve been off site for six months doing a building project.
So that’s been a huge dislocation. 5 services down to three in a new location.
1:05
But I think the thing that’s been deeply encouraging is seeing my staff team and our congregation come together to pull off something that would be impossible for any one person.
So it’s just been a delight to see the household of God step up in new ways and new roles to enable hundreds of people to be able to gather in a school hall when they’re not used to that.
1:26
That’s not what they’d rather do.
But it’s been a real joy to watch and it’s made us excited about being back in a couple of weeks.
Oh, I bet.
Yeah, that’s right.
That’s the thing about being in a temporary location going, oh, I can’t wait to get back into it.
But oh, that’s that’s really encouraging to hear at because that’s the thing when when churches are under stress, they tend to come to be together.
1:43
And it can be a good stress.
In this case, it’s a good one for building.
Sometimes it’s a bad stress, but it’s a good thing to do.
But for now, you press play on another episode of the one thing.
Why EQ is the edge every leader needs.
This is Part 2.
Make sure you’ve listened to Part 1.
1:58
Go back and listen to that.
But this is Part 2.
Today’s podcast is brought to you by Youth Works.
Youthworks is a Christian, not for profit organisation based in Sydney.
They seek to equip and empower every church to run effective youth and children’s ministries.
2:14
They collaborate with local churches, schools and organisations to Orient young people for life in Christ.
Find out more at youthworks.net.
And now back to the podcast.
Pete, in the last episode we we started to talk a little bit more about emotional intelligence and leadership.
2:33
What happens to the team if the leader isn’t actually paying attention to EQ?
What what happens when it goes wrong?
That’s a huge question, isn’t it?
What what happens to a team when the leader doesn’t pay attention to EQ?
Look at best.
So I think you’ve got a best case scenario and a worst case scenario at best.
2:50
Maybe very little, maybe very little.
You’ll have a team where if if you have a team where not much thoughts given to EQ, it may not become dysfunctional, but it certainly won’t be as healthy as it could be.
So there could well be a lack of affection and care between the team members.
3:08
The team might actually become quite functional and transactional, driven by goals alone rather than by any sense of brothers and sisters contending shoulder to shoulder, side by side for the Lord.
There could be a sense that people are just doing a job in their silos rather than being key members of an ecosystem that actually is mutually dependent upon one another.
3:28
And there might also be like disinterest in other areas of ministry beyond what the team member is serving in.
There might be a blindness to where staff members team members are struggling.
There could well be a distance between the team leader and team members.
So not great, but maybe not disastrous.
3:45
Do you reckon the team leader actually needs to be the the key person here?
Can they actually kind of go notice there’s somebody else on the team who’s got a better emotional intelligence and lean on them?
What do you think?
I think if the team leader recognises that, they’ve probably got pretty good emotional intelligence.
4:02
Yeah.
But however, I would also say I, and one of the things that I live by is that if there are people in my team who are better at something than me, which is most of my team in most areas, to be frank, then I absolutely call them to step up and lead.
And if I, if I, if I struggled in the EQ space and I had someone who didn’t, I would actually give them permission to speak up regularly and clearly to me about blind spots that I had.
4:27
I’d say you need to do this.
Otherwise we’re dead in the water because I want to grow in this space.
But you’re better at it than me.
I’ve got a psychologist on my staff team.
She’s amazing.
She picks up things, she talks to me about it.
She gives me insights.
Man, we are so much Better Together.
Where she feels the freedom to speak up clearly and loudly.
4:46
It’s better for everyone.
That I reckon that just that phrase, you’re better at this than me, that that just shows an amazing emotional intelligence.
And this may be a a time as you’re listening to stop and actually think about who in my team or who in my church is better at whatever than I am.
5:03
Because I think that’s a really helpful exercise.
Just keep reminding ourselves, we don’t have to do everything.
We don’t have to be the best at everything, but there are people who are better than us, and that’s a great gift from God.
Yeah, so, so the question you asked is what happens to a team if you don’t pay attention?
So at best it’s not great, but it may not be disastrous.
5:20
The the final thing to say on that, if it’s, if it’s, you know, if it’s just not great, is that your staff members won’t stay long term.
They they won’t stay long term because no one likes being in a, in a context where what you do is merely transactional, particularly in a ministry context.
So you’ll have, I think you’ll have high turnover of staff.
5:37
It it may not be big blow UPS with your staff team, but staff just won’t stay so so that’s at best.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
At worst it gets pretty ugly.
I would say at worst, if there is low EQ and attention’s not being paid to it by the senior leader, I’d say it’s relationally and emotionally and maybe spiritually deadening for people and the team can maybe will spin out of control.
6:02
So what does that look like?
I think you get factions that can form within a a ministry team, both for the leader and against the leader against or for the ministry, the ministry philosophy, the strategy, the culture of the church, everything feels like a battle.
Team members can then or staff can then get burnt out.
6:18
And I don’t use that term flippantly like most do.
I actually mean some sort of actual emotional depletion and burnout where your staff feel like the the ground under their feet gives way.
They lose their sense of self.
They’re not sure up from down the impact that that that has on them.
6:36
And then their families, their mental health, their, their wives, their children, their spiritual health is devastating to see.
And so that that will, that can happen often can happen in a, in a, in a worst case, trust breaks down.
But when trust leaves, something replaces it.
And I think what replaces it is cynicism and suspicion.
6:53
So as a result of that, and, and I’ve seen this in other contexts, when that cynicism and suspicion is in place, every new decision then from that moment on, every conversation, every new insights becomes interpreted through a particular narrative framework that is exceedingly difficult to break and might be true, but might not be true.
7:15
But if you have members in your team who have have a fixed position about what someone’s like, it doesn’t matter what they do.
From then on, you interpret everything that happens, even the best things, with the best intentions, through a framework that’s almost impossible to see beyond now.
At that point, things are very bleak.
7:31
Sure.
What what I’m hearing there is that if you’re a leader who isn’t paying attention to emotional intelligence, things could be going along quite well.
But when things go bad, they’re going to go really, really bad.
So you may be in that season of going well, everything’s going OK, So I don’t need to pay attention to this.
This may be the moment to go.
7:47
Actually, I need to step back and think about what’s going to happen because if I don’t get this right, it could all fall apart.
Now I, I want to just ray something with you.
This is Daniel Goldman’s done a lot of thinking about EQ and emotional intelligence.
8:06
He’s sort of come up with this quadrant.
Let me take you through it and then I, I want you, I want us to hear your reflections on it.
He said emotional intelligence sort of starts with self awareness.
That is how am I going and how how am I feeling?
And we talked a little bit about that in the last episode, then that it can move to self management.
8:22
That is, how am I dealing with the emotions that I’m feeling or my emotional state.
There is also another site where there’s self awareness.
There’s also social awareness of being aware of what’s going on in the room, what’s going on in other people.
How do I read that?
8:38
And then moving to like self awareness moves to self management, social awareness moves to social skill.
That is, how do I in my management of myself and being aware of what everyone else is able to move forward, does that, does that ring true to you, those, those four?
Yeah, it does.
It’s funny.
8:54
I’m not a maths brain, so I’ve always found quadrants hard, you know, I mean sort of.
Boston Consulting Group and Mckinsey’s always threw out quadrants for everything and I find it so hard to read.
These things, maths is amazing.
We’re gonna go, OK?
No.
No.
OK.
So let me tell you that you’ve broken my heart.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
Just to read the route, you’ve broken my.
9:10
Heart and I’ve got it.
I’ve got that.
So quadrants aren’t my thing, but, but Gorman is helpful because actually, as I have looked at this, essentially what he’s saying is firstly, read yourself.
Yep.
Secondly, read others.
Then once you’ve read yourself, work on yourself in terms of reading others, work on how you engage with others.
9:30
Well, so that’s, that’s as simple as that’s, I’m sure grossly simplistic and probably offensive to a mass brain, but but that’s sort of how.
And that, that’s my understanding of it.
And it works for me that, that there’s a logic to that that makes sense.
Yep.
Look, I actually found this when I was going through this with my ministry coach.
9:46
What I found helpful about this was to work about where my weak spots were, and ironically I was actually pretty good at the social awareness and social skill, but I wasn’t really great at my own self awareness and my own self management.
So categorise those things to go.
This is where you need to.
Work.
10:01
And it reminds you that it’s not enough just to focus on what’s going on over here, but to draw it back to yourself.
And it’s not enough just to work on yourself, actually, you need to be thinking about the impact of that on the networks of relationships beyond yourself.
Yeah, it is very.
Helpful for that.
Now let’s move on to to that.
How does that affect the team?
10:18
Because when you bring someone onto the team, that does affect the dynamics and the social network of of your team.
When you bring someone new onto your team, how what do you do when it comes to cultural EQ?
How do you introduce them to that?
Yeah.
So the first thing to say is that I will only employ people at Norwest, only bring people onto our ministry team who have a well developed cultural EQ that that’s they just have to if they don’t, they won’t join the team.
10:43
How do you work that out in in the interview or in the in the?
Process.
So let me tell you why I will only employ people with high EQ and then I’ll answer that.
Yeah, and I need to say that the shape that we have is particular to Norwest.
So I’ll explain that.
See, what you need to know about Norwest is we are a very suburban church.
10:59
We’re not on any major Rd.
We are buried deep in a suburb.
And at the end of the day, people who come to Norwest in our suburban context, all they want to know is that they’re loved.
That’s it.
It’s really simple.
So whilst Norwest is quite a large church, it is at it’s heart a small church.
11:17
People know one another, all the pastors know our people, we spend time with our people, we know their kids and their kids names, we’ve spent time in their homes.
And for a Church of our size, I actually think that’s reasonably distinctive.
I used to visit every new family who came to Norwest in their home until we hit 600 and it became unworkable, unwise and my staff said this is not the best thing for you to do.
11:37
And they were right.
But that tells you a bit about the culture of Norwest.
Now in saying that, I’m not saying that you can therefore have low EQ and serve in other churches and that’s fine.
But there is something different about a suburban church to a regional church or maybe a cathedral.
11:53
There’s a different expectation around what that ministry is and what it looks like.
And so therefore I’ve realised that in our context where family lives are so enmeshed, and not just on a Sunday but throughout the week, high EQ is critical.
It’s my understanding Norwest is a reasonably large church now and so but what you but you you’ve just described as a small church, but it’s it’s got that it’s a large church, but it’s got because of that EQ it’s got that small church.
12:18
So we.
What we publicly say is Norwest is a large church with the heart of a small Yep.
And we have 5 services on a Sunday with up to 200 in in the room.
And that feels very different to a room of 500.
It feels like you can still be known that you look around, you turn around, there’s a pastor there and he’s saying, hey, how’d, how’d you end up going in soccer on the weekend?
12:35
You know, and actually I was praying for you about this thing.
Where’d that end up?
That.
So actually I think one of the things we’ve seen offsite when we’ve collapsed 5 services down to three is our people have been surprised at how large we are because we don’t feel large because of the number of services we have across the day.
I think that’s a really helpful thing to say because I, I regularly get people coming to me saying I don’t want to be part of a large church because I’ll lose that.
12:57
But actually, what they’re they’re afraid of is I I’m afraid of losing the emotional intelligence of our church as it grows.
Yeah.
And but you’re saying it doesn’t have to?
No, it doesn’t have to, but you need to give careful thought to it.
Yeah.
Now let’s come back to your staff, the staff coming on on board again.
13:13
How do you how are you working that out?
How do I work out whether a new staff member has EQ or a potential staff member?
So firstly, during the initial engagement and the interview phase, I’ll I’ll meet with a prospective team member a number of times in a number of locations and in a number of different contexts.
13:28
So recently I put someone on and I think I met up with him seven times before an offer was made.
So I met up with him at college, I met with him in his home.
I wanted to see how he spoke to his wife and how he engaged with his kids.
We met in a coffee shop because I knew he was respectful to me, but I had something to offer him.
13:46
I wanted to see was he respectful to the waiter who had nothing to offer him but a cup of coffee.
I met him by myself.
I met him with others, both men and women.
And what I was looking for a part, you know, I was looking for a bunch of things, but one of the key things I was looking for was his ability to engage with me, make eye contact, be interested and be interesting.
14:07
So I was looking for cues and clues about how he moved through life, how he navigated life in different contexts.
I was listening for whether there was a warmth and affection for others in the way he spoke about them.
I, I was watching for glimpses of personal insight and humility.
Was he able to articulate what he wasn’t good at as much as as what he was good at?
14:26
I was listening for the way he spoke about Jesus and his love for Jesus.
Was it forced or was it natural?
I’m really looking for developed EQ in different contexts.
Again, that’s that’s helpful because you you’ve got some key sort of observable ideas, but in in one sense it is a vibe like there’s.
14:44
It’s absolutely vibe.
And we’ve got to acknowledge that and say, yeah, you know, it’s a gut feel that’s there.
Which means you can get it wrong.
Yeah.
But you there are key things that you’ve you’ve mentioned there that have been really helpful in terms of the way he treats other people, why he treats the the waiter in the coffee shop.
That’s a great 1.
So yeah.
Yeah.
14:59
So then there’s a second thing we do.
If during that process, we are growing in our confidence and conviction that this person has the right chemistry to join the team and the right EQ for to to be a part of the noise team.
We’re then very clear and very early on about the strategy, the culture and direction of Norwest.
15:17
And the reason for that is because I’ve learned that most staff issues are essentially linked to mismatches of expectation.
So we want to be very clear on expectation upfront, both for his good and for ours.
And so there’s a couple of documents that we give to potential staff to try to bring a very clear sense of expectation as it comes to culture and direction.
15:36
They’re to read through them and then we speak to them about how they found that, what their thoughts are on that.
So two key docs.
The 1st is our 10 year strategic plan.
This lets potential new staff know where we’re heading and what shapes our ministry and missional endeavours.
What that means in practise is that when a new staff member comes on, they’re absolutely free to bring their new thoughts and passions and experiences.
15:57
In fact they must.
But they are not free to say hey, I don’t really want to be part of a church planning church Now.
It’s perfectly acceptable to have that view, but it’s absolutely not OK to join our staff team having read and agreed to our six strategic goals over 10 years and say actually I’m not up for that anymore.
16:14
So that clarity upfront for them is really helpful.
But the second dock I think is the one that has been most helpful actually when it comes to all of this.
It’s called a document we wrote called the Norwest Way.
It is a very clear enunciation of our values that we hold to as a staff team. 5 values.
16:32
That’s all it is, but that’s what we hold to.
And for new staff to join us, they only join us if they are up for these things.
These are the five hills we will die on as a staff team.
They absolutely shape the way we serve together.
Now, is that different to your church values?
This is just.
16:47
This is just for you as the team.
Yeah, so we don’t have church values, right?
We’ve only got staff values, the newest way.
We’ve never made them public.
And yet it’s fascinating.
They have become the values of the Church, even though the Church doesn’t know them, because it all comes down from the top.
I’m sure it will, yeah.
17:03
And So what we’ve found about our values is actually at one level, it’s not that important what they are.
It’s the fact that we have them, we agree to them, we hold one another to them, but they’ve been so critical.
Now one more, one more thing to say on this is once someone is on board, and this is important, Pete, once we’ve put someone on the staff team, we have a flexible approach to their role as part of the team.
17:27
What we want to look for over time is, is their role a good fit for them as part of the whole?
Because actually you can get that wrong and we’ve got that wrong.
I’ve just learned over the years that different staff have different capabilities and capacities due to a range of factors within their control and outside of it.
17:44
On a large church staff team or even on a small church staff team, differing roles have differing levels of demands.
And so we want to wrestle with the fit for the person for the role.
Even right now at Norwest, we’re looking to move some people around for 2025 just because of fit.
18:01
Now again, this is articulated in interviews way upfront.
We say to people, please don’t join Norwest for this role, but for the mission, for the ministry, for the culture and for the team, because I can guarantee you the role, your role will change.
It sounds very much like when you join Norwest, you’re joining the team.
18:19
You’re not, you’re not actually being a a, you know, taking on a position.
You go, we’re in the team and whatever the team needs, that’s what I need from you.
And yeah, you got to be OK.
Well, and interestingly, I’ve just put someone on who’s starting in Jan and we interviewed her for a role and it was she was very interested and we were interested in her.
18:36
Then we at second interview we put a different job before her, a different role.
I could have changed even before then.
And we said, hey, this might seem like we’re disorganised, we’re not.
But actually this is now the role looking at, she said, you know what, that’s the role is actually after all the time.
And so even even before someone comes on, things can move a little bit, which sounds disorganised and like everything in flux.
18:54
It’s not, but in a dynamic church, things move and change, and you want people with a flexibility and a willingness to actually run towards a greater goal than their personal tasks in the midst of that, which includes me.
Yeah.
And if you’re setting up that expectation at the start upfront, yeah, that’s that’s really important.
19:11
Yeah, OK.
So that’s bringing somebody on and but you’ve talked a little bit about the the culture of your team.
What, what, what have you put in place to foster a good culture of communication and care?
I mean, we’ve talked about the Northwest Way, but talk me through a bit more on that.
Yeah.
So look, as I think about this, I think there’s three ways we think about how the communicator as a team and how we care for one another on our team.
19:30
And, and I think we think about that relationally, We think about that structurally and we think about that culturally.
So relationally, perhaps the most obvious one is, and I’m sure everyone does this, but we I regularly catch up with team members and at the next layer down, my pastors are catching up with the the team members under them.
19:48
So I coach five staff and I meet with them fortnightly.
In that time we read God’s word together.
I also check in on life and family and marriage and kids.
Not always and possibly I should more, but that regular touchpoint is key.
And apart from that, I feel like I’m not knowing my team as well as I need to now.
20:06
You’re you’re doing that one to one, is that right?
Yep.
Yep, 1 to one, yeah, with with my five direct reports and I’m doing that fortnightly.
So that’s relationally, structurally, every Monday morning, our very first meeting of the week as a team is called Stories of Grace.
So it’s 30 minutes where we just share with one another the wonderful kindness of God that we’ve seen over the last 24 hours, 48 hours, the last seven days.
20:28
Stories of conversion, stories of answered prayer.
It’s just been a brilliant way for our team to come together and and celebrate God’s kindness in the midst of a busy church life.
Is that coming from Sunday or is that coming from throughout the whole week?
Is that so?
It’s Sunday, it’s Friday youth, it’s kids programmes, it’s a special needs ministry.
20:46
It’s anything that’s happened in the in the last week or so.
OK.
So that’s yeah, sorry, go I.
Was gonna say, but we’ve added something new to that meeting and this was raised by I’d spoke before about the lady on staff who’s a psychologist.
So we call the meeting Stories of Grace, but she then recently said how about we add to this meeting right then something called needs for Grace.
21:04
Oh wow.
So we close out that meeting just with 5 minutes by asking the team if in the week to come anyone needs a little extra care or latitude because of something that might be going on for them.
That would be helpful for the whole team to hear.
Now, not everything in that context is appropriate to be raised and sometimes there’s nothing that’s raised in that context at all.
21:22
But it gives a permission and it sets a cultural tone for that group for for the for the ministry team that actually sometimes we limp.
That’s completely fine.
Let’s just do that with our eyes wide open and in a way that we can be generous.
And and let’s carry, you know, each other’s burdens along the way.
21:38
I mean, that’s what that’s what we hear in Galatians is that.
Absolutely.
And we love to do it.
So, so that’s relation, that’s structurally.
Then culturally at Norwest, as I said before, the Norwest way, we’re very clear in our staff culture to the extent that we have the five cultural markers that absolutely shape all our interactions with one another and we hold one another to account on it.
21:55
New staff only come on board if they agree to it.
And there are two cultural markers in a in the newest way that are there to ensure good communication and great care.
So in regards to care, one of our cultural markers is humility lives here.
22:11
And the byline is because we’re all works in progress.
We let the best idea win.
We give one another the generous assumption and we’re quick to say sorry.
So that just shapes for everyone how we actually are to behave and respond and love one another in our interactions.
22:29
Doesn’t always happen.
And every now and then you’ll hear a conversation saying actually, hey, do you know how in the Norwest way it says this, I just felt in that context or, or hey, you know, in the Norwest way, it says this.
I don’t feel I spoke to you in a way that actually honoured that.
And I just want to say I’m sorry.
So we give people permission to fail.
We give, we call people to a generous assumption that we’re not critical and cynical of what he probably, he’s probably late because this or that.
22:51
No, no, he’s probably late because maybe you got a flat tyre.
It’s the generous assumption, you know.
So that’s in regards to care.
In regards to communication, one of our five markers in the noise way is that we want to be courageous in communication.
And the byline for that is because of our love for each other.
23:07
We will have timely, full and frank conversations.
One of things I’ve learned over the years is that when there are issues between staff members, it is very easy to sweep them under the rug.
We often do that in the name of godliness, but it’s actually cowardice.
It’s cowardice.
We’re not prepared to look someone in the whites of their eyes and say, hey, I was really hurt.
23:26
Can we talk about that now?
This has just worked so well for us.
And I want to be clear, this is not a Romans 12 thing where you know, as far as it depends upon you live a peace with everyone.
This wasn’t driven by my godliness.
This was driven by the fact that when there was unresolved issues in my staff team, I lay at home in bed at night and couldn’t sleep.
23:44
So this is entirely self certain, but I’m so thankful that God can work through even the things that I need to put in place so I can sleep at night to bring function or greater function to a staff team.
And so we, we, we, we have full and frank conversations, gracious in their tone, but clear where we actually want to call things out and be quick to apologise as we need to.
24:05
Now one more thing, probably for our staff meetings, and this is a bit of a crossover between the relational and the cultural categories, but in our team meetings we’re big on honesty and clarity and humour.
So honesty as appropriate.
If I see emotion or heightened emotion in someone in a meeting, I’ll sometimes as appropriate, call that out.
24:26
So it’s happened recently.
I saw someone being frustrated by something, by the questions I was repeatedly asking and I needed to say, hey, can I just say I’m sorry?
I can see that I’m frustrating you and I certainly don’t mean to.
I just want to ensure that we’re on the same page on this as we make these important decisions.
That stuff.
24:41
And we came back later and said, hey, I was a little frustrated, but that was on me, not you, man.
Everyone’s trying to own it.
Yeah.
And it’s just delightful.
Isn’t that great?
Yeah.
When everyone tries to own the situation, it just solves it so much that no one’s sitting there pointing the finger and going, well, you’re frustrating me is going well, actually.
24:57
What did I contribute to that frustrating moment?
So that honesty, again, it only happens in a trusting environment, but it’s been great in terms of clarity.
None of this is profound, right?
But I just know if we leave a meeting and we’re not on the same page, we’re in trouble.
So we always want to have just a shared commitment to whatever the objective is.
25:13
And even if it is frustrating like it was in that other meeting, we want to keep working together until we’re aligned.
Then the third one is humour.
Yeah.
And I use humour to de escalate conflict and stress and to put people at ease.
Now to be clear, it’s not that funny, but what it does do is it changes the weight of the room.
25:33
If you can weigh a room, you can’t weigh a room.
But if you can weigh the emotion in a room, humour can lighten that.
It removes heaviness and and that’s a handy tool to have when it’s needed.
And, and humour and, and, and just that idea of play and banter and that sort of thing actually is a sign that your your team is operating well.
25:51
It’s something you should be looking for as a leader.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Can I say just one more thing and maybe just something that has to underline all of this?
It’s until I finished the last episode.
These structures, Pete, mean nothing.
That they mean nothing unless there is a genuine sense of affection, love and trust amongst your team.
26:10
Because the completely unprofound truth is that no system or programme or structure will work unless your team feels like you love them.
So you’re going to love them.
Now that’s tricky because you’ve got to love them in a way that they feel loved.
26:26
I’ve never met a pastor who hasn’t loved his staff team or his church.
I’ve never met that.
But it’s one thing to love people, and it’s another thing to love people in a way that feels like love to them.
Yeah, that’s such an important thing, isn’t it?
Because you can say, well, I love people because I do this and this and this and people are going, I don’t feel loved.
26:46
And you know, if you, if you really do love people, they need to hear that.
They need to feel it.
They need to know that they’re being loved.
And the tricky thing is, each of your staff members will feel loved in slightly different ways, and the only way you can actually start to get that right is by knowing them.
And that only happens if you spend time with them.
27:02
It’s our investment of time.
Yeah, Yeah.
All right, Pete, I want to get to the one thing but and we talked a little bit about what’s the one thing about emotional intelligence than the last one.
But I I want to ask you give me a story that that shows the importance of leadership and emotional intelligence.
Yeah, OK, look, I have a staff member right now who’s going through just, he would say the hardest thing.
27:24
He’s gone through very difficult season for his family.
It’s not impacting him directly.
It’s it’s others in his family.
But of course it’s it’s crippling him.
And you know what, Pete?
A number of years ago, eight years ago, I went through something very similar, different in detail, but similar in scale and pain, I think.
27:39
And I met up with him just a few weeks ago and he was weeping.
I’ve never seen this guy cry.
He was weeping in a meeting with me.
And that man just needs care.
He needs love, and he needs time.
And you know what?
27:55
The ministry he overseas will be fine.
You know, a robust doctrine of the sovereignty of God is very helpful at certain times.
It’ll be fine and I just needed to slow down to think about what I went through.
I remember when I went through this, I remember walking down the aisle, an Isle at Bunnings, upstairs at Castle Hill, sobbing and not being able to stop.
28:16
And I only need to think about that for a moment to realise what this guy was going through, where managing him becomes difficult.
Is he for me as a leader if I’m driven by personal insecurity or jealousy for another church’s success or my sense of identity at Norwest being linked with people being happy?
28:34
And therefore I’m fearful of complaints that could come because he’s not, you know, doing his role fully or the hard questions that might come If, if any of those things are plugging away in my heart, I’m not going to love him.
Well, if I can handle all of those things, if I can live with all of all of those things, I’ll love him well.
28:50
I’ll give him that space and we’ll work out what the the future looks like together.
You, you can’t and you can’t love him well.
If you’re sitting there with a position description going well, you’re not fulfilling these things when your life’s falling apart.
Like let me, let me love you and help you.
If someone had done that to me when I went through what I and I was the senior minister, I said no one was going to, but I I would, I would have resigned on the spot.
29:09
I just said you can you can shave your PD like I’m not interested.
Yeah, yeah, Pete, thank you so much.
This, this has been the last episode.
Absolute gold.
Really do appreciate your thoughts and your experience and your honesty in, in, in the way that you’re growing in this area.
29:25
So thank you very much for joining us in the Toolbox.
We’ve got a couple of different things.
We’ve got the emotional intelligence by Bradbury and Greaves, which I mentioned in the last episode.
I told me so.
But we also have the Norwest way.
So you get a picture of what that’s like, but we don’t want you to take it and just copy it and use it where you are.
29:42
You want you need to develop this with your team.
You need to talk it through and go, what are we as a value, as a value system?
What are we going to do as a team?
This may be a good place for you to start, but it is not the place where you want to end.
If you got something else that you want to cover or you want to just, you know, maybe raise some of the things that have been raised here and go, we need to push into that a bit more.
30:01
Then make sure that you email us resources at richaustralia.com dot AU.
Once again, thanks Pete Stedman.
Thanks.
For having me, great to be here.
I’m Pete Hughes, chat soon.
