Smoke Signals
Whether you lead volunteers or paid staff, whether you have one direct report or a dozen (pro tip: don’t have a dozen), it’s sometimes impossible to feel like you’re fully in the know of everything happening in their worlds.
It’s not that our team members are trying to get by with anything necessarily. It’s just that they don’t know what they don’t know. And we don’t always know that they don’t know the stuff they don’t know.
Y’know?
But I’ve found that there are a few smoke signals that might indicate a smoldering fire. A few indicators that might point to something that needs to be addressed. This is not an exhaustive list, by any means. The presence or absence of one of the following doesn’t necessarily mean a crisis is coming. But any one of these things should grab our attention and make us ask deeper questions about how our team member is really doing:
1. Missing meetings.
Life happens to all of us. We get sick, go on vacation, or need to attend a kid’s awards ceremony. And whether we love or loathe meetings, they are often the vehicle by which information is communicated and culture is built.
So track attendance. Look for patterns. If you have a team member who regularly skips out on the team meetings (or maybe worse…your one-on-ones), it’s time to dig a bit.
2. Missing goals.
I have a confession: I’m really bad at setting goals. Always have been. But when there is an agreed-upon mile marker we’re trying to hit, and the team member rarely (or never) hits it, that’s an issue. Likewise, continuing to miss deadlines on their goals is probably an indicator that something else has captured their attention.
3. Under-spending the budget.
“But wait,” ye protest. “Shouldn’t we praise a team member for being fiscally conservative?” I’m not talking here about having 4% of their budget left at the end of the year. Categories that are drastically underspent can signal that very little activity is happening in that area of their ministry.
4. News flashes from two levels down.
Whenever a volunteer or staff member skips over their direct supervisor and comes to you, that can be the cracks that reveal some foundational issues: a lack of trust, a lack of listening, or a lack of response. Now to be sure, we have to balance the tension of being an engaged listener, all the while encouraging them to hash it out with their supervisor. But more than the issue at hand, it’s up to us to suss out why we’re hearing something that should’ve gone to their immediate leader in the first place.
5. Little social interaction.
Watch that staff member or volunteer’s posture when the gang is huddling or serving: do they seem to enjoy the people they serve with? Scan the group text thread: are they taking themself out of the playful banter? Think back to the last get-together: did they show up? And if they did, were they stand-offish?
Again, this one thing may not mean anything. They could be shy or introverted. But team members who don’t connect with the team could signal something deeper.
6. A sense of despair or defeat.
All of us have Eeyores in our ministry: those folks with a near-constant negative attitude about the task at hand or the mission in question. But when negativity turns to a sense that “I can’t do anything right” or “I’ll never be good enough for the job,” that’s when we have to intervene and reorient their perspective.
Let me be clear on my intent of this post: I’m not asking you to look for the devil behind every shrub. I’m not suggesting that you stir up your prophetic gifts to stare into the soul of another. But I do believe we should care for those we lead, and part of that care involves caring enough to notice when something deeper may be afoot.
Which of these smoke signals have you noticed in a team member this week?
