Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast
“From Feedback to Flourishing: Building a Unified Team Around Mission and Culture”
April 14, 2025
Dr. Jeff Myers and Jeff Wood
Intro: How do you create a workplace culture where employees don't just show up, but are fully engaged, passionate, and mission driven? Well, in this episode we dive into powerful conversation with leaders from Summit Ministries, an organization that has transformed both their employee engagement and their Kingdom impact. Learn how they're building trust, strengthening collaboration, and aligning their strategy with their mission, all while investing in the next generation of Christian leaders. Tune in to discover key leadership insights that will help you create a flourishing culture in your own organization.
Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.
Al Lopus: Hi, I’m Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of Road to Flourishing, the go-to research-based, Christian-centered guide for building a flourishing workplace culture. My passion is to equip Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces where people thrive and organizations make a significant Kingdom impact. And if you'd like to learn more about me and my book or opportunities for me to speak, this podcast, or recent articles I've written, I invite you to visit allopus—that’s A-L-L-O-P-U-S—dot org. Let’s journey together toward building workplaces where your faith, leadership, and organizations flourish.
Well, I’m delighted to welcome Dr. Jeff Myers and Jeff Wood to the podcast today. Dr. Jeff Myers is the president of Summit Ministries, a ministry equipping young leaders to embrace God's truth and champion a biblical worldview. We're also joined by Jeff Wood, who is the vice president for Finance and Administration for Summit Ministries.
Throughout the conversation today, you'll hear Jeff Myers and Jeff Wood share about, first of all, building a mission-driven culture where you can learn to align your organization's strategy with its mission, ensuring that every team member is deeply committed to the vision and purpose of your organization. Secondly, by fostering employee engagement. Gain insights into creating a workplace culture where employees are not just showing up, but are fully invested in the mission, leading with higher productivity, trust, and collaboration. And third, developing the next generation of Christian leaders. Discover how Summit Ministries equips young people with a strong Christian worldview, and to learn how investing in the next generation of leaders can propel your organization's mission forward.
I think you're going to love this interview. But before we dive in, this podcast is proudly sponsored by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey. Don't wait. This month is a perfect time to gather vital insights from your employees to assess the health of your workplace culture. Dr. Jeff Myers shares, “We knew that we wanted to strengthen our mission impact, and we had to start with our people. The Best Christian Workplace Survey gave us the insights,” he said, “that we needed to build trust, improve communication, and create a thriving culture where our team were fully engaged in the work God has called us to do.” Now, are you ready to transform your culture? Well, visit workplaces.org to learn more and start your journey to becoming a flourishing workplace today.
And hello to our new listeners. Thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this.
Now let me tell you just a little bit more about Dr. Jeff Myers and Jeff Wood. Dr. Jeff Myers is the president of Summit Ministries. As an educator and entrepreneur, Dr. Myers has become one of the world's, in fact, America's most-respected authorities on youth leadership development. Through his speaking engagements and media appearances, Dr. Myers has become a fresh voice offering humor and insight from a Christian worldview. He's the author of 14 books, including Understanding the Faith, Understanding the Times, and Understanding the Culture textbooks, which are studied by tens of thousands of students. His most recent book is Truth Changes Everything. Dr. Myers holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Denver. He continues to engage college students throughout an exclusive signature leadership course offered with Unbound, a project-based education company that prepares high school and college students to become leaders for Christ in the real world.
Also with us is Jeff Wood, the CFO of Summit Ministries, overseeing finance, IT, human resources, and much more. He's been with Summit Ministries for 10 years and has had a long career in Christian ministry leadership, including several decades with Compassion International. He's a graduate of Wheaton College and did graduate work with the Keller Graduate School of Management.
So, here’s my conversation with Dr. Jeff Myers and Jeff Wood.
So, Dr. Jeff and Jeff, I’ve heard that’s how your staff differentiate the two of you in conversations, so let’s use that approach in our podcast today. It certainly is a pleasure to have you both on the podcast. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Dr. Jeff: Thank you, Al. Appreciate that very much. I'm looking forward to it as well.
Jeff: Yes. It’s a pleasure to be here, Al, and appreciate the invitation, and look forward to our time together.
Al: Well, Dr. Jeff, let's start with you as president. Let's start by giving our listeners a brief snapshot of the mission and vision of Summit Ministries. What's the focus for your work? And maybe you could share a story of a young leader who personifies the way you equip the next generation of leaders.
Dr. Jeff: Since 1962, Al, Summit Ministries has equipped and supported the rising generation to embrace God's truth and to champion a biblical worldview. So we want truth tellers. We want people who understand the truth and who bring that into every area of their work. And so over the years, through our curriculum courses and our in-person programs, we've been able to train over a million young adults in a very intensive way, in an apologetic for a biblical worldview that applies to not only what they're doing in their college or university, but well into the workplace. Our graduates have gone into the military, into politics, into business, medicine, science, education, agriculture, all different areas, because they are learning to be leaders in all of those areas.
And you asked me for a story of a young person. There's so many that I would like to tell, but I'll just tell you one from this week. One of our graduates is named Caleb Ragland, and he's a farmer, a soybean farmer in Kentucky. I don't know how he managed to get this position. I think they probably just said, “Caleb, you're going to be the new president of our association because you're younger than us.” But his life is agriculture, and now he's the president of the American Soybean Association. Well, now they've had to weigh in, in the media, on the tariff question. And here you have Caleb, who has been a supporter of Donald Trump, having to, on this particular issue, articulate a viewpoint that is taking exception to the president's policy. And as I watch Caleb, he's been so articulate and so clear in how to engage on difficult issues that I really feel like he's a great example, and maybe not one you would ordinarily hear about. It's just wonderful to watch him stand up for what he believes and to do it in a way that's very respectful.
Al: Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Well, we need more of that in today's world, no question.
And Jeff, when you learned about the Best Christian Workplaces, you decided to really work to build employee engagement at Summit Ministries. So share with us why you decided to work with us, and in the first few years, what it was like working to create a healthy workplace and now a flourishing workplace. And as you and the leadership team receive feedback from the Employee Engagement Survey, what are some of the first action steps that you and the leadership took as you invested to build a healthy workplace culture?
Jeff: Well, we decided to use the Best Christian Workplace because the last place I worked, we used an employee-engagement tool that served the organization very well. But when I got to Summit, I decided to take a look at the other options. And it was great to find Best Christian Workplaces, that brings a biblical—back to what we care about—a biblical worldview, into the Employee Engagement Survey.
So, we engaged initially with Best Christian Workplaces back in 2019. And since that first year, since we took the Survey, we've had a standard action plan, action steps that we've taken with the Survey. We've taken the Survey. Leadership has spent time going through the results, examining them. We read through all the comments that staff provide. And then, each year, we run a workshop with all staff.
And one of the things I've loved about Summit is we've had 100% employee participation every year that we've taken the Survey. We don't turn it off until we hear from everybody.
And so, then, we run a workshop where we bring all the staff together and work through suggestions from staff and small groups. Small groups will then present their ideas for how we can focus improvement in next year for the organization.
We've then used a thing we've referred to as dot voting, not sure if you've used that or not, but dot voting to get the highest priority items for all staff. And so leadership just doesn't take the results and decide to go somewhere. We've involved the staff in identification of key areas to focus on. The leadership then takes those suggestions we've written up each year in employee-engagement commitments from the leadership team. And we've taken those commitments and run them out each year and then held ourselves accountable at the end of the year when we take the Survey again for how did we do?
And it's been amazing. Some of the things that, some of the examples of action steps that has come out of this is, one, increased employee communication on decisions. We'd heard from staff we don't always explain decisions, so we've done a better job of explaining organization decisions. We now have a strategic plan that we update annually, and the need for that came out of one of the Employee Engagement Surveys. We run continuous leadership-training series that came out of one of those surveys as an idea. We now have a great onboarding process for new staff that didn't exist before we started doing the Employee Engagement Survey. It came out of that. We've updated things like employee vacation, holiday schedules, and response to things coming from the Engagement Survey. Created a leadership advisory council that now has an opportunity to weigh in on major decisions in the organization, made up of senior leaders in the organization, not just the top level, but the next level down.
And so, it's just some examples of how we've taken the Survey, gone to this workshop approach, and then created a list of commitments, and then held ourselves accountable to staff to delivering those commitments through the course of a year.
Al: Wow. Jeff, that's amazing. And I would imagine that in the workshops, the staff workshops, you're identifying issues to talk about that come out of the Survey. Is that how that works?
Jeff: Yes, that's correct. We'd look at where did we score the worst and then use that and ask employees for, if this is where we're scoring low, what are some action items that you as staff think we could do to improve that? It's interesting. We've run that workshop now for, I don't know, five, six years. And staff say, when they show up, that that's their favorite meeting of the organization every year, that they love to be in those meetings because they get to participate and to help the organization where it's going in the future.
Al: Well, I love the idea of dot voting as well, so those, you know, specific things come up, and then they're able to actually go up and put a dot on the wall or on the worksheet. Yeah, wow.
Jeff: We actually give them multiple dots. And so they have a choice. Do they want to spread their five dots across five different things, or is there one idea that is so important to them, they can take all five dots and vote for that one item? And it really empowers them.
Al: And just the list of things that have come out of this, from strategic planning to leadership training to onboarding, PTO, leadership advisory council, that's a good outcome. Yeah. Congratulations.
Well, Dr. Jeff—
Jeff: Thank you.
Al: Yeah.
—anything to add?
Dr. Jeff: I think the collaboration Jeff's been describing is the key to the whole thing. We are a ministry focused on the rising generation and helping them learn to communicate truth in the world. And we teach them the DNA of influence is two strands: it's truth and relationship. And there's always a little bit of a concern that because most of my work is outward facing, that we aren't living the way we teach the students to live as an organization. So as Jeff has led us through the Best Christian Workplaces response, led our leadership team through and guided this process, we see the level of collaboration growing. And we have said for a long time, our organization works best when employees become more than employees, when they have buy-in, and then even more when they feel a sense of ownership. And when you go to these workshops and you see these are things we are going to do, we're going to work on these, and you see the consensus that develops, they realize this is not a magic trick. This is really genuinely collaborative, and we are all responsible for getting good results.
Al: And you're just building trust, aren't you? Year after year, kind of going back, consistent, same thing, acting on suggestions. Yeah. That’s great.
Dr. Jeff: One other thing that I did want to mention here, could fit here, but we've used a couple of different tools—one is called Mind Styles. The other one is the 6 Types of Working Genius—to try to understand one another better. And I'd almost, I mean, there are a bunch of different really good tools, but the whole point of a tool is that it gets you thinking about how you might be different than someone else and how your gifts might actually complement one another. So, you know, it's fun working with Jeff Wood because his genius is enablement and tenacity. And my core frustrations are enablement and tenacity. And mine are invention and wonder, and his frustration is invention. So you realize, wow, God actually knew, He put us together in the team that He did, just fitted us so that we could each do what we do best to help the organization flourish.
Al: Well, Dr. Jeff, I’ve got the same, too. I know what it means to have somebody like Jeff Wood on the team, for sure. What a great combination.
Well, let's talk in terms of leadership dynamics, because many organizations like yours have a visionary leader and an operational leader, and both aspects are important in moving an organization forward. So share with us how the both of you, and the whole leadership team, for that matter, have worked together to continue casting vision and strategy and then aligning that strategy across different departments. What are some of the practical ways that you've aligned your strategy across different departments? And I think the Working Genius example is a specific way that you've kind of figured this out. But what are some practical ways? Dr. Jeff, let's start with you.
Dr. Jeff: When we updated our vision statement and mission statement, we also focused on our core values. And then, we have a monthly staff chapel, where everybody gets together. We're together for an hour, and then we have nearly an hour of sort of a reception afterward, where people eat and chat and get to communicate with one another, say congratulations to their colleagues who are finding success in certain areas, ask questions of one another, just catch up personally, all of those kinds of things. That's been really helpful. This is a tough question for me to answer because in a nonprofit organization, the funding mechanism is so different. When we first started, we actually devised, we devised an organizational chart of what the ideal organization would look like. And most of the positions were vacant, and they were not funded. So it wasn't like we just couldn't find candidates. Like, we didn't have money to pay them. So we operated through cross-functional teams for a while. And even though everybody looks back at that as having been a pretty tough time because you're doing your job and you're also meeting with people from other areas across the company to try to get some things done that we don't have an employee to do, at the same time, it helped break down some of the silos. And our company operates with, we have two main programmatic things that we do. One is publishing, and one is in-person programs. And they are very different. If you spun either one of them off, they could successfully operate on their own. So getting people in those different departments to be able to collaborate is always tough. And sometimes it's actually easier when we just don't have anybody else to do it. We have to work together.
Al: Great. Yeah, great examples, yeah. And breaking down silos by having cross-functional teams. Yeah.
Jeff, how about you?
Jeff: As the team working together cross-functionally, we've just done an amazing job. The VP team, as Dr. Jeff mentioned, his wonder and invention and his speaking gifts take him outside the organization and speak. And the collaboration at the vice-president level has just been amazing. And we're able to make decisions in Dr. Jeff's absence in terms of the operations, the organization. And there's a willingness to trade off on priorities so that if advancement is in need of additional resource at a particular time, to put off an event like a vision weekend that they do each year, we can sacrifice some resources in other parts of the organization to be able to fund that. And so that could come from our program side, or it could come from the support-services side that I lead.
So there is this overall commitment to the vision that allows us, at the very practical level, to trade off when necessary and fund what's most important at the time.
Al: Commitment to the vision.
Well, one thing that's notable about Summit Ministries is that you've continued this path of workplace flourishing over the course of years, since 2019. And, you know, of course, in the middle of that journey, you had to flex your ministry, because as you said, part of this is in-person programs. Well, because of COVID, you really had to adapt what you were doing. So some of our listeners, you know, might feel stuck. They've been working on employee-engagement and workplace-health issues for maybe a couple of years, and they've made some progress perhaps, but really need some encouragement to keep working for the long haul. So now that you've been seeing improvement over the years, and again, over that five-, six-year period, and you've achieved this flourishing workplace culture, can you identify some of the key decisions or maybe even a couple of the investments that you've made in your staff that have made a big difference over time? Dr. Jeff, how about I'll start with you.
Dr. Jeff: There are many, and Jeff Wood can speak to many of these in a more specific fashion than I can. But when Jeff came to the organization, we were in the process of just identifying different job levels and trying to figure out what kind of parity and pay can we offer given the market that we have, that we're competing in for good employees. At the same time, we tend to hire people who are mission driven. They come to work not because it is their job and they get a paycheck. They come to work because they absolutely in their heart of hearts believe that what we're doing is making a difference in the world.
We do not ever want to take advantage of that heart by saying, “Well, because you have a heart for this, you're going to be willing to get by with less pay, or benefits aren't quite right.” We have, I think of it as a gold-plated benefits program. I mean, we really take care of people, even to the point where with some of our employees, we have housing that we have available to them, that they can buy at a rate that's a fair-market rate but very definitely competitive. And they can actually live in some of the properties that we have and form a community to themselves. They love that.
It creates, as you mentioned earlier, a lot of trust. COVID, obviously, was very difficult when you run in-person programs. Every camp and conference can tell you their horror stories of what that looked like. But we met by Zoom, our first-ever Zoom meeting, all of us meeting together. And I said to our team—because our impulse is, look, we're pretty conservative. We don't want to step out there and have to go back to our donors and say, “I'm sorry. We can't do any ministry, but you need to give us twice as much money.” I shared this: we are not of those who shrink back, and we press on toward the high calling of Christ. God is giving us this trial as an opportunity to significantly expand the work that we do. A lot of people in our organization, especially in the programs area, look back at that as having been a key moment where we crossed over the barrier of fear and began to become creative in a whole new way.
I remember a meeting where our programs team got together. They were going to meet for one hour and come up with some ideas for offering a virtual program. After four hours, they had more than 200 ideas that they had come up with, and they produced, what is still to this day, to me, the gold standard of a virtual week-long conference program for young adults, that affected young adults all over the world who would never have had the opportunity to participate in an in-person program. They could never get visas here, and even if they could, they could never afford airplane tickets to come here, and yet they were able to fully participate and be Summit Ministry's graduates.
Al: We press on, we don't shrink back, and with that, you've got an international program that works for so many more people. That’s fantastic.
Jeff, how about you? What would you add?
Jeff: Dr. Jeff covered so much of what we did during COVID and how the teams rallied together. I just, I do want to come back to sort of investments and key decisions. Staff are the place we do invest in the most. As Dr. Jeff said, we provide a number of benefits, and we take the salaries very, being salary competitive, very seriously. We annually do competitive-salary surveys, use those to determine, are we up to the standard? The benefits we include are quite good. We provide annual statements to our staff so they can see what is the total value of their employment with Summit. And that's something that we see as important for them to understand, sort of that total value that they receive for their engagement. So it's not just taking advantage, as Dr. Jeff implied, of people that are mission driven, but ensuring that we hire quality people, and we expect quality people to receive quality pay. And so that's something we've done in terms of staffing.
We also invest in quality technology. People need good processes and technology to perform their work. So whether it's a classroom that has state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems so the students can hear clearly what's being said from the stage or whether it's great accounting systems that our staff need to track the systems, we make those investments in the staff and the infrastructure of business processes.
And our goal is steady improvement. And we also have to be careful not to take on too many changes at one time. We've seen that with the Employee Engagement Survey, that those action items that we commit to each year, actually the list of those has gotten shorter to ensure that the things we do commit to are things we can truly deliver on in the future.
Al: Yeah. We've had organizations start off with, like, 20 action items, and they quickly realize that's way too many. And yeah. So you'll focus on what, one or two key new items each year?
Jeff: The last couple of years, it's been two. The first year, I think we had probably five areas that we were going to do in the first year. And it's like, we did okay, but it was a lot.
Dr. Jeff: It's the same amount of time spread over five things. So we did some things that we looked back and thought, “Well, that was fun. Lunch and learns, for example, that was fun, but no, it didn't have as much of an impact as we'd hoped.” It was still fun.
Jeff: Yeah. But in some of those things that we implemented, they weren't just one-year things; they are now part of the culture. And so that's where you introduce new things. And you can't introduce too much new stuff, because people also have a job to do. And so it's been that finding that balance, that new things that you do do become a part of the culture, and you want to sustain the good ones. And if something's not adding value, we've had to go back and say, “Well, it was a good idea for a while, but it's time to stop.”
Al: Yeah. Because oftentimes, when you have a new good idea, that means you have to stop doing some other maybe good, not-as-good ideas. Yeah. But, yeah, Jeff, what you’re saying, the goal of steady improvement, just keeping an eye on what's steady and having that steady improvement.
Well, at Best Christian Workplaces, our ministry partners vary in size. Some are larger, some small, some midsize. And Jeff, you come from a large ministry, Compassion International, you mentioned, and you've served Summit now for a decade. Giselle Jenkins, our Best Christian Workplace consultant, also had experience with a large organization and has led the way in adapting best practices, small and medium-sized organizations as well. So what have you learned over the past few years about assessing available resources and investing in your staff in a way that is scalable? And what are some of the benefits of working on a healthy culture in an organization of, let’s say, 50 to 60 employees at this point?
Jeff: In terms of accessing resources, it's been important to focus on those areas’ improvements we just talked about limiting. And a shotgun approach is not a good way to approach employee engagement. So we've been careful to identify those areas’ improvement. Sometimes we've gone out and looked for books off the shelf to be able to improve in terms of leadership development. We used a book called Lead, Develop, Care a few years ago for some leadership training.
We needed help in developing an employee conversation, employee-performance-conversation approach, and for that we reached out to Giselle, and she actually helped us develop a system four or five years ago that's still in use in the organization to lead our performance conversations. And so that, you know, looking for help outside the organization, if we knew everything we needed to inside the organization, we'd have already been doing what we needed to. So looking for expertise, and we've always gone back to Giselle. If we've had one spot where we just can't seem to move the needle, we've gone back and worked with Giselle, and she's been able to provide resources to help us move things forward.
But one thing I would encourage is talk about the difference between a large organization and a smaller organization. One of the things that I've enjoyed about Summit versus Compassion is that we can see that needle move in a smaller organization quickly compared to Compassion. When we try to drive cultural changes across 20 to 30 offices around the world, it can take years to see improvement in particular areas. And for Summit, with 50 to 60 people, even with 10 to 15 remote, we can see significant improvement in the course of a year or two in the organization's culture and employee engagement.
Al: And I know your employees really appreciate that, too.
Well, it's great to hear about your commitment to your staff and the ongoing investment that you're making in a flourishing workplace culture. That's for sure. And you've invested in leadership development of your own staff, while your ministry works on leadership development for younger adults.
So, I also want to underscore the important aspect of your work in promoting a biblical worldview. And Dr. Jeff, your most recent book, Truth Changes Everything, highlights the issue where truths are self-defined, and people don't necessarily believe there is truth, with a capital T, in our culture. And I'm so appreciative as a seeker of truth myself, and that's what brought me to faith in Christ to start with, I really appreciate that. So why is biblical truth so important as you raise up the next generation of leaders? And what was your urgency in writing the book?
Dr. Jeff: There were two things that made it urgent. One is the topic is so critical. The one thing that is almost universally believed in American culture today, and I'm talking 91% of Americans believe this, that's almost everybody, that the best place to find yourself is by looking within yourself. In other words, you don't try to seek the truth; you simply speak your truth. This is killing this rising generation: 75% of the young adults we work with say they don't have a sense of purpose that gives meaning to their lives; 50% say they're regularly struggling with anxiety and depression. There's a lot of fear. They're telling us, “I don't think it really matters whether I do a good job in college, because the world is going to end during my lifetime because of climate change,” or what have you. “I don't think I should have children because it increases my carbon footprint.” There are all kinds of things out there in the world. There are people who gain power and profit by scaring kids.
We want them to be able to move forward with courage. And in order to do that, you have to start with the idea that there is truth. And the biblical perspective of truth, I go back to John 8:32, where Jesus said, “If you follow My teachings, you’ll be My disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” More young adults identify with the second part than with the first part. They know that they're captive to lots of things they wish hadn't taken them captive, and they want to be set free. Well, what's the key to being set free? You've got to know the truth. That word in Greek is aletheia; it means reality. Jesus is not saying, “Follow My teachings, and we'll all get along better.” He's not saying, “Follow My teachings, and you're going to get rich.” He's not saying, “Follow My teachings, and you'll be able to speak your truth.” He's saying, “Follow My teachings, and reality itself will open up for you.” So helping young adults realize that's not a scary thing, that's a good thing, and that if you embrace the truth as found in Jesus, then you're doing something that has literally changed the course of the world. And that's the reason behind the Truth Changes Everything book.
The second reason it was so urgent for me to write the book is I was going through a battle with cancer at the time and literally thought, “If this is the last book I ever get to write, what do I want to be sure to say?” And that is the message that the truth exists. And it's not just a mathematical formula; it's not just a set of logical propositions; it's a person; it's Jesus. And that one single reality has changed the course of the world for the better in a way that nothing else in all of history has.
Al: Amen. I’ll say amen.
Well, gosh, this has just been a great conversation. We've learned so much, you know. And I think about, going back, and so appreciative of the fact that you're championing a biblical worldview. You've had one million young adults going through your programs. And, yeah, congratulations, Caleb, and for learning how to speak the truth and respectfully for the unique American Soybean Association. It's just one group.
Dr. Jeff: You should watch his videos. Watch them. You know, just put in “Caleb Ragland” and “CNN” or “CNBC.” And he just speaks very plainly, very respectfully, with a sense of humor. It's just exactly the kind of thing you want to see. And he's a farmer. He's not, you know, he's not a senator. He's just doing his everyday job and trying to help as many people as he can. And I love that.
Al: Yeah. What a great example.
And again, how since 2019 you've worked on improving the health of your own organization and how that's led to a number of steps that you take each year, including doing the Survey, looking at the comments, then having a workshop to work on some of the things that came out of the Survey. And how you have your employees with small-group suggestions and dot voting. And then the response from leadership. And what a trust-building process that you've got. And again, collaboration and focus on truth and relationships. The way you're building a sense of ownership with your employees and how that's building an engagement. And the core values, the things that you're doing to build engagement from and cross-functional teams and trying to break down silos. And what you learned during COVID and how that really created innovation and how you're able to really focus on not giving up, but pressing on, as you say. So, and the way you've made investments in your staff in terms of benefits and compensation and making sure that they're being respected in terms of those things as well. And again, your comments, Jeff, on scale and how you're able to focus on improvement. And again, how then, Dr. Jeff, how truth changes everything, and what a great book, and how that can really impact the next generation of youth as they go through your program. So that's a lot to chew on, that's for sure.
Anything you'd like to add that we've talked about? Dr. Jeff, let's start with you.
Dr. Jeff: I don't think so. I just think this has been the best season of ministry. It's been the hardest job I've ever had; been the best job I've ever had. And it's largely because working with guys like Jeff, working with the VPs, and they work so well together. And I trust them, and they trust each other. Because of the strategic plan, which Jeff mentioned at the outset, we've been able to give people a long runway. Here's what you think you can do; we're here to support you along the way; here are the resources that you need; and now let's get it done. So that question, how can I support you?, seems to be one that regularly gets asked in our department meetings, when managers meet with people, and it's flipped, the idea of leadership, I hope, from being the one or two key people at the top with everybody else just running around serving to more of an organization where people really have a sense of ownership.
Jeff: Employee engagement is a key factor for organizational success, but at the end of the day, it's missional success that matters the most for Christian non-profit organizations. So in my opinion, we need to have a healthy, flourishing culture only to the extent that it makes Summit more impactful to the rising generation. So while employee engagement’s really key, I also want to make sure there's this balance, that we don't end up with an organization that only serves the needs of employees at the expense of the youth, but one where we equip and engage staff so that we have not just a flourishing staff, but also a flourishing constituent base for our students, that they would be flourishing as well.
Dr. Jeff: That’s so well put.
Al: Amen, Jeff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. As I like to say, Best Christian Workplaces seeks to have Christian-led organizations set the standard as the best, but also, the most effective places to work in the world. And we believe that will attract people to Christ as they see the body of Christ working so well together. So, absolutely.
Well, I want to thank both of you for your contributions today. Most of all, I really appreciate your commitment to raising up the next generation of leaders who are faithful to God and the truth of His Kingdom. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking in the lives of so many listeners.
Jeff: You’re welcome. I appreciate time with you and wish you and Best Christian Workplaces continued success.
Al: Yeah.
Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Dr. Jeff Myers and Jeff Wood. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
And you can find ways to connect with them and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.
And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing workplace cultures, email me, al@workplaces.org.
You know, a thriving workplace starts with a healthy culture. And if you want to strengthen engagement, build trust, and align your team with your mission, take the first step today. Visit workplaces.org to assess your culture and start creating a flourishing workplace where people thrive.
And keep listening to our weekly podcast as we continue to learn from leaders who are proven inspirational leaders exhibiting Christian character and excellence in their leadership. Next week, I know that you will want to listen as I talk with David Bailey in the continuing role of racial reconciliation in Christian ministry.
Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.
We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.