Reorganizing your Church Staff-Aligning according to Strengths

One of the biggest stress points for most companies/HR Professionals/CEOs etc after deciding to realign or reorganize their company is , “Who goes where?”  Traditional HR practices would tell you to simply align the organization according to job experience and job function.  For example, if you have someone who has done finance for 25 years and managed at least 5 years, place them in a leadership role over the Finance/Accounting function.  Although I agree with this in its most basic form, I would like to throw out an additional step or thought to the process of realignment.

In our serious on Church Organizational Structures, we have discussed the importance of determining the Right Church Organizational Structures opposed to the current one.  After going through this pain-staking process, why would you want to simply place someone and not the “right one” into the roles you have newly created?  Example?  Using our accounting example above, what if you are looking for someone to become more of an integral part of the management team and the individual described in our example above is known to be more of an introvert and likes working in a silo.   Would placing this person in the role simply based on their experience be the absolute right decision?  Not hardly.

Now, again, I hate to speak tongue in cheek, but you do need to be sure you are following some type of a church job description for compliance reasons.  With this said, do not feel so bound to hire only on the “paper” qualifications.  There are ways to incorporate the personality aspects or “right fit” tests for any position as discussed in our sister blog, Christian Management Consulting.

Might I suggest using another tool?  Our sister blog has discussed using the COLORful Masterpiece Personality Series in daily life, but it can also be used in determining the right person for the right job.  This process can be used most effectively when developing your church job description.  How so?

Well, in order to best understand, we need to do a quick run down for you on the COLORful Masterpiece Personality Series.  If you want to read more, please be sure to read on our sister blog to best understand, nonetheless, here is a quick run-down:

Ok, again, if you are qondering more, read the series, but using what we have above…  In the example we have been using with the opening in your newly created Church Organizational Structure, we have a unique need.  As a rule/assumption, most of the time, your accountants and finance types who enjoy crunching, analyzing, and working with the numbers will be a Blue.  This personality type is great at details, tasks associated with details, and working on numbers, but the interaction with others piece poses a problem.  Most of the time, your Blue personality will enjoy and often try to work alone on their projects.  There is not a significant need for interaction with others unless it pertains to the tasks.  So, would you necessarily want a person who has “no extreme need” for social interaction to be the member of your new “collaborative” executive team?  Sure, they meet the basic qualifications, but what about the other qualifications?

In this series, we will begin looking at how you can use the COLORful Masterpiece Personality Series to develop accurate job descriptions as well as using this program to realign your organization according to everyone’s abilities, not their just their qualifications.

If this article was of interest to you, please check some of the others in this topic by clicking on one of the titles below:

Divide or Don’t Divide?  Church Organizational Structures

Questions for Church Organizational Structures

Reorganizing your Team According to their Strengths

Building the Right Church Team

Church Organizational Structures : A Bit More

Discovering The Right Church Organizational Structure

Discovering The Right Church Organizational Structure – Part II

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About the Writer:

Trent Cotton has spent a number of years in management and business consulting. After spending some time in the field, he joined the HR department, beginning in recruiting and eventually serving as the Department Head of HR for one of the major lines of business. With such a varied background, he works to bring all of these together to help churches and other Christian organizations incorporate some common business practices into their ministries to enable them to better serve the Kingdom. He currently works for SourcePointe, an HR Outsourcing Agency while continuing to own and operate Christian Management Consulting as a ministry. In his free time, he also writes a lot on Church Development as a Church Consultant.