Managing Staff During the Interim Time – Transcript

Jim Latimer
Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministers: best practices and quick help from interims for interims – wisdom from the field. My name is Jim Latimer. I’m your host today. I have with me the Reverend Erica Avena. Erica is a longtime interim. She is willing to share some of her wisdom about managing staff during the interim time. Erica, thank you for being with us today.

Erica Avena
Great to be here. Thank you, Jim. Yes, so we talked about managing personnel during the interim season. I just want to begin with the idea that the interim season, the transition season, at any congregation offers a reset moment for staff if they want to take advantage of it. The departure of the previous pastor was probably not their idea. And so they will be on their own journey, which is a little different from the journey of the congregation, with their role with the congregation and how their work is sitting in the congregation.

I have learned not to go in with an agenda. Instead, I have learned to go in and have open ended conversations with staff about their roles when they are ready to do that. In the first weeks and months of an interim ministry, staff are often not inclined to get into it. Others of them will be in your office having deep personal conversations. And so I’ve just learned to be open to where they’re at in that moment.

And I’ve also learned it’s quite unpredictable. A couple of things about what we find there. Some of the issues which staff are dealing with will be things that can be fixed. And so those things we strategize together about how those problems might be solved in the interim season – whom do we need to get on board with that, etc. And then others of those issues that they’re bringing will be things that cannot be fixed, things that need to be managed. Jim, this is one of the big takeaways for me from the training I did on consulting with congregations: there are problems to fix and problems to manage and don’t mix them up, because you’ll not be happy. You can’t get a successful outcome. So sometimes staff need to be reminded that they’re dealing with a problem that needs to be managed with their excellent leadership, and how do I support them as an interim? How does the congregation support them for the long haul in managing that issue? And then that’s where we have those conversations.

So another category of personnel issues is the one where everybody was avoiding a problem before I got there. And they were hoping not to deal with this problem person on staff. So I have learned to strategize with leadership on how to handle this. You need to think pretty carefully in the congregation about which of the lay leaders are appropriate to bring into those conversations when you want to be protecting the staff person’s privacy so that their issues are not widely known. If there is a problem person on staff, the likelihood is that lots of people are aware of it already. And so taking appropriate steps to build accountability around it, strategize compassionately about how to handle that, is really appropriate.

Now, I think that interim clergy fall out in two categories here. I have been in several conversations with interim clergy, Jim, where my colleagues have said they will absolutely not fire anybody while they’re doing an interim. So if that is where your energy is, you need to tell your congregation that back when you’re contracting. That’s something that needs to be flagged for the leadership so they know that. And most of my colleagues, to be fair, who feel that way, have said that to their congregations, “I’m not here to fire people for you. I don’t see that as my role or my calling.” If that is where your heart is just own that, and be upfront about that. I have not felt that was appropriate in the ministry settings where I have served. So instead, the ministry settings where I have served, the senior pastor, which is the role I was, the interim senior pastor was, in fact, the head of staff. And so firing typically would fall to that person in a settled situation. So it was appropriate for, at least in my view, for me to be doing that, as the interim.

So if you are in that position, there are some things to think about. The best practice is to be as generous as you can with severance. Time it carefully to maximize any benefits that person might have with the insurance. Do not expect them to work again for your church after they have learned that they are being let go. They may negotiate that they want to continue working, which you can then talk about. But it’s pretty heavy news to deliver that somebody is going to be concluding their employment in the congregation, and so anything you can do to support them in their transition as they move out from there is to the better.

I have to say for those who are listening to this, in the near term – we’re in the pandemic right now – there is pandemic unemployment insurance which is available for people who are let go which is very generous and is another important benefit that can be offered right now. So doing as much as you can to support them to make good choices in the future. The church will feel much better about it.

I don’t recommend firing anybody. It is usually hornet’s nest of problems, especially if people in the congregation are emotionally connected to that person. One example Jim, which is quite an extreme example, I actually had somebody actively working in a congregation who was in hospice care. She was actively in hospice care and she was still working and the bell choir that she was working with loved her dearly, but she could not do her job anymore. She just wasn’t well enough. And I talked about it with them. And we let her go gently. And honestly, she thanked me in the end for it. She said, “I don’t know why I just haven’t been letting this go. But I do recognize the church needs to move forward.” And it allowed her some peace of mind in her last days of healing.

So letting people go isn’t, always a negative. But we do need to bring all of our discerning pastoral care antenna to that moment. And hopefully, those of you listening to this will be in the position of needing to bring people on, which is a much easier move emotionally. However, it also needs to be done very carefully in an interim season because those hiring decisions are much better done by the incoming settled pastor. But if you need a janitor, you need a janitor. So, do what you can not to set up problems for the next person as they’re coming in, which is really the rubric for all of our interim work – that we’re seeking to set up a good staffing arrangement for that person as they’re coming in. Allowing them as much self determination around staff as they can possibly have.

Jim Latimer
Nice Erica. A lot of really rich things there. I really appreciated how your basic approach around staff is to be truthful – to face the truth and face it compassionately, but for heaven’s sake face it and deal with it. We don’t serve congregations well as interims by letting things get swept under the carpet.

Erica Avena
You can really set the next person up for failure by handing them that person on staff that everybody knows needs to go, but nobody’s got the guts to have that conversation. That’s the conversation to have in the intern season.

Jim Latimer
Thank you so much, Erica for sharing your wisdom with us on managing staff during the interim time.

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