How to Coach Campuses in a Central-Staff Model
If you’re a central leader in a multi-site church, coaching your campus counterparts should be one of the main aspects of your job. Coaching builds consistency, it aligns culture, and it gives you the chance to see context, receive pushback, and build collaboration.
But what are the practical ways to coach? I’ll give you those six ways below, but first, let me give you some of my own context. In our almost two decades of being a multi-site church, I’ve run the gamut: I’ve been the lone guy in the central role (one coach over all the campuses) and one of a team of central staff.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve shifted to an Area Director model, where each person on our central Guest Services Team is directly responsible for a certain number of campus Guest Services Directors (GSDs). At the time of this writing, I just recently picked up a couple more campuses because of a role being temporarily vacated, so there are five campuses I’m serving as Area Director.
Here are the six ways we coach from our central staff roles:
1. Start with a good onboarding process.
We partner with our HR team and the Campus Pastor (who is the direct supervisor over the GSD) to make sure that their first few months are loaded with all the things they need to know to do their job well. Everything from Gmail logins to leading a Guest Services Training is covered. We split these items up in “need to know” (i.e., strategies to survive the first Sunday) and “need to grow” (ongoing training designed to help them develop further as a leader.
[Related posts: How Does a Hospitable Culture Apply to Our Onboarding Practices?, Multi-Site: Do You Need a Boot Camp?]
2. Clearly communicate your standards.
Our EPOD has long been the ruling document that outlines a GSDs Sunday morning job description. We’ve broken things down into the Essential, the Preferred, the Optional, and the Don’t. This document lays out expectations clearly, and acts as a North Star of sorts to keep all of our campus GSDs aligned to the main things.
[Related series: Multi-site: You Need an EPOD]
3. Rally the troops religiously.
Our central team hosts a monthly gathering of all our GSDs. Usually taking place on the last Wednesday of the month, it’s a chance for all of our Guest Services staff to get together for a couple of hours for coffee, a light breakfast, general info on upcoming changes, and teaching moments on particular topics. Most importantly, it’s a chance to get similar brains in the room for peer-to-peer learning.
Before we get to the last half of these tips, let me make a confession / full disclosure: because I recently went from three campuses to five, I’m rethinking exactly how I pull all of these things off effectively. To my newly-acquired GSDs: hang tight.
4. Get on-site regularly.
All of our Area Directors have a regular rotation where we’re visiting our assigned campuses, so that we can see our GSDs in their context, troubleshoot their problems, and offer solutions for their success. While visits vary based on the number of campuses we oversee, the goal is that we’re on-site at least once every couple of months.
[Related post: Multi-Site: 6 Best Practices for a Campus Visit]
5. Do a one-on-one monthly.
A monthly one-on-one is a must for the central Area Director and the Campus GSD. This can be a 15 minute phone call or an hour lunch, but it’s an opportunity for the GSD to vent about, ask about, dream about anything they’d like. These are ideally paired with a campus visit, in order for the Area Director to give almost-real-time feedback on what they saw.
[Related post: Multi-Site: 10 Questions to Ask Your Campus Director]
6. Be an “open door” resource as needed.
Nothing in points 1-5 matters if we’re not available to our GSDs on their schedule when they actually need us. Communicate clearly your desire to be a resource and a help. Pick up the phone when they call. Answer their texts, respond to their questions, and you’ll find that your relationship with your GSD will grow in spades.
