Employee supervision and baseball

The following post comes from Allison Tennyson, CBF’s director of human resources. Feel free to contact Allison if your church has questions about human resources items.

Baseball.  It’s America’s favorite pastime.  And, it’s exciting, isn’t it?  Watching the duel that develops between the batter and the pitcher.  The pitcher, fixing his hat, stepping on and off the mound, blowing on the ball.  The batter, checking and rechecking the batting gloves, in and out of the batter’s box, adjusting his stance.

A 300 batting average is considered good, excellent even.  It’s good if you win the duel with the pitcher three times for every ten times you make the attempt.  But what if your coach notices something when you’re batting and asks you to make a small change to your stance when you are in the batter’s box?  It’s a small adjustment, and it can be hard to break patterns and habits.  Do you scoff and stubbornly refuse to change something so small when you’re a great batter anyway or do you work to make the adjustment?  What if that small tweak changes your batting average to 350?  Who wins then?  The obvious answer is everyone: the team, the coach, the fans and you.       

A ministry team wants and needs to perform at its best too.  Support staff members report to certain ministers, certain ministers report to the pastor, and the pastor reports to an assigned committee within the church.  We all have “coaches”.  And those coaches can help us make changes that allow us to perform better.

Supervision shouldn’t be seen from a negative standpoint or even be viewed as someone “watching us.”  We could dig our heels in and refuse to make changes thinking we are good enough already.  But if we are open enough to continue learning and to accept that all of life is an ongoing growth process, we have the opportunity to give even more good to the ministry with which we are affiliated.  When handled properly, supervision can be a positive and guiding aid that helps each member of the ministry team to reach his/her full potential.  And when that happens, everyone wins.