Transcript: How Investing in Faculty and Staff Led to Record Enrollment and Giving // Michael Lindsay, Taylor University

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“How Investing in Faculty and Staff Led to Record Enrollment and Giving“

March 17, 2025

Dr. Michael Lindsay

Intro: What if the key to transforming your organization success wasn’t just strategy but a healthy workplace culture? Well, in this episode Dr. Michael Lindsay, president of Taylor University, shares how intentional leadership, values-driven decision making, and investing in people have led to remarkable growth in both faculty/staff engagement and institutional success. So, learn how Taylor University has doubled the number of employees who are engaged, leverage prayer-driven leadership, and built a thriving workplace culture—insights that every Christian leader can apply to their own organization. Don’t miss this conversation on how faith-filled leadership fuels Kingdom impact.

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-driven, Christ-centered guide to building a thriving workplace culture. And my passion is to equip Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces, where people thrive and organizations make a Kingdom impact. And if you'd like to learn more about me, my book, opportunities to have me speak at an event, 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.

I’m delighted to welcome Dr. Michael Lindsay to the podcast today, and he’s the president of Taylor University.

Throughout our conversation, you'll hear Michael share about the power of prayer in leadership, emphasizing how prayer-driven leadership has shaped decision making at Taylor University, creating a culture where God’s wisdom is sought at every level. Secondly, how to double employee engagement through intentional leadership. You can learn how Michael transformed faculty and staff engagement by focusing on clarity, communication, and commitment to people. He shares practical strategies on how Christian leaders can cultivate a thriving workplace culture, where employees feel valued, heard, and connected to the mission. And thirdly, navigating change and growth through faith-based decision making. Michael discusses the importance of staying mission focused while leading through transition and expansion. He shares how Christian leaders can make value-driven decisions that balance institutional growth, team well-being, and faithfulness to God’s calling. These insights will equip you with practical strategies and spiritual wisdom to build stronger faith-driven workplaces that flourish.

I know you're going to love this interview with Dr. Lindsay. But before we dive in, this podcast is proudly sponsored by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey. It’s the largest research-based, Christ-centered employee-engagement survey available. 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. Michael Lindsay reminds us in today’s podcast, leaders who intentionally invest in the flourishing of their people will see remarkable results, not just in engagement but in the long-term success of their mission. At Taylor University a focus on workplace culture doubled faculty and staff engagement, proving that when leaders prioritize people, organizations thrive. So, 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 we want to welcome our new listeners. We’re grateful that you’re here and honored to invest this time with you to bringing valuable insight-filled episodes like this one.

So, let me tell you a little bit more about Dr. Michael Lindsay. Dr. Lindsay serves as the president of Taylor University, one of the nation’s leading Christian universities. And since stepping into leadership, he’s increased fundraising tenfold, doubled student enrollment, and overseeing the expansion and refurbishment of 40% of the campus, positioning Taylor for long-term growth and impact. He’s the author of numerous scholarly publications and books, including his most recent book Hinge Moments. He earned his PhD in sociology from Princeton College and holds graduate theological degrees from Wycliffe Hall at Oxford University and Princeton Theological Seminary.

So, here’s my conversation with Dr. Michael Lindsay.

Michael, it’s great to have you back on the podcast, and I’m looking forward to our conversation today.

Dr. Michael Lindsay: Thanks so much for having me on.

Al: You’ve been at Taylor long enough now that the freshmen that you arrived with will be graduating this spring. And I love the motto at Taylor University: life to the full, from John 10:10. And that's been a key verse in my life. So, as we start our conversation, share with us a story of a student who you've seen exemplify this kind of life. I'm sure that there are many inspiring student stories, but sure one that gives us a picture of someone who's made the most of their experience and education at Taylor.

Michael: I’ve been super excited to see the success of Zane Callison. Zane graduated with a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics, what we call PPE around here. He was interested in going to law school, but as an undergraduate became quite engaged in the importance of criminal justice reform. So many people who come out of serving time, incarceration, have a difficulty getting their feet settled. And, of course, as a society we want to reduce recidivism, the likelihood of people returning to their wanton ways, but we need to have structures in place to help them. And expungement of criminal records for those who did not commit serious crimes is a great way to help people to get a clean start. And a number of Christians have been involved in that kind of work for the last 20 or 30 years. But it's exciting to see a college student take that on. And I saw it happen here on our campus as he began to work with local authorities, particularly with a local criminal-justice-reform organization in the state of Indiana. And it really began to motivate him as he began to see, how could I help these ex-prisoners return back to their families, to their communities, and help them to sort of get on the right pathway? That really motivated him to try and study hard for the LSAT and to do well academically. And we were thrilled when he was admitted to Harvard Law School, which is where he's headed in the fall. And I think there'll be a lot of great things coming out of Zane's life. So much of it was shaped by the faculty mentors who came alongside him and helped him, and the experiential learning that he had here at Taylor. He's representative of the kind of students who try to live into that life to the full and to take that with them to their respective callings when they leave this place.

Al: Yeah. That’s a great story. Improving the health of a university like Taylor's is an ongoing process. And you've been assessing the health of your organization with the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey now for four years, since you really started. So, first of all, let me express my congratulations on the success that you've achieved in significantly improving the health of the culture. And in fact, congratulations on being a certified best Christian workplace. That's a significant achievement. I also know that you and your leadership team use Taylor's Employee Engagement Survey results to understand the improvements you've made, but also, to begin to plan action steps as you keep moving towards improved health. So take us on the inside of some of those leadership-team conversations. How does your team set goals and decide where to invest energy, based on the results of the Employee Engagement Survey?

Michael: When we first took the Survey, to be honest, the results were quite discouraging. I think we were in the second percentile of all folks who have taken this instrument, and as a former survey researcher, I knew that wasn't a good number to be at. I had always assumed that the culture of this place, which is so student centered, would also be really healthy for our faculty and staff, but I actually learned that wasn't the case. So we began to set specific goals of what an overall engagement score might look like, and we shared that as a leadership team as part of our institution-wide goals. I also identified one senior leader who would own that goal and work on it every single day.

So, as we have been working steadily, we have seen improvement each year, and we were thrilled to finally get to the mark where we could be certified, which felt like a real step forward for us. We still have room to improve and still areas to grow, but we also have tried to really help specifically train our managers. We have about 600 employees at Taylor and probably have 60 or 70 managers. And the experience of our employees is really driven by their interaction and responsiveness and engagement with their manager. So those frontline managers make all the difference for somebody to have a positive experience or a negative experience. So we began thinking very deeply about, how do we equip those individuals?

We also realized that we needed to hold our frontline managers responsible. So the leadership team sees the results on a department-by-department basis. And if we have five good responses per department, that gives us enough data to be able to see, where can we make some real improvements?

And as we've increased accountability and responsibility, we've also increased recognition and reward. So that's become part of an incentive plan, where we provide performance bonuses for those folks who have done a really great job. And all in all, it's just really helped us to be more focused week in and week out, month after month, to be able to see appreciable gains in our employee engagement. And of course, it's reflected in a whole host of other measures of institutional thriving, which has just been really great for us.

Al: Yeah. We're going to talk about those a little later, but let's talk about your senior leadership team at this point. You know, let’s continue this conversation. And a college president wears lots of hats, and you need an effective team to lead the university, for sure, and you've got a great one. So, what are you learning about building a strong team and encouraging each member of your team to keep growing as leaders, both in terms of their own personal character—and I oftentimes call it the Christian character—as well as competence and leadership as you've mentioned, especially with your 60 to 70 managers?

Michael: Well, we certainly believe it's important for the senior leadership to be encouragers and to motivate people, so oftentimes I say as president part of my job is to be the chief encouragement officer. So I'm very intentional about that. And we want to encourage our folks, particularly my senior leadership team, I want to encourage them both to pursue, as it says in Psalm 78, integrity of heart and skillful hands. David's described as having both of those things, and we think that that really matters. So we have really worked significantly in putting forward specific plans and strategies.

As an example, about a year ago, a book came out called Lead with Prayer—a couple of my friends were co-authors of that book—and I read it, and I found it to be very compelling. So then I asked my senior leadership team to read it—we as a cabinet went through it—and then, we developed an intercessory-prayer movement that we wanted to have across campus. So each member of the cabinet was paired with someone else, and we took on five or six departments—we probably have about 45 departments across the university—and just last week, my partner and I met with those individual department leaders. So seven individual meetings for about 30 minutes where we asked them, what's happening with your people? What can we pray for? So we write down those prayer requests, and then we prayed with them in that meeting. And we've now done that three times over the course of the last nine months. That's a specific example of how we're trying to help lead with a higher degree of character.

On the competence side, we've worked really hard to build a series of performance measures, everything from financial goals and enrollment strategies to academic-program growth and investment in our people. And you improve in the areas that you measure. So we've been very focused on saying, what are ways that we can measure the kinds of competence elements that we need to see across the university? And it's been encouraging to see my team really respond to that.

I do think part of what you have to do as a chief encouragement officer is to celebrate little wins, specific milestones. So even just last week at my senior leadership-team meeting, one of the vice presidents had done just a great job, and all of us were pleased and proud of the results that he and his team had delivered. So I gave him a gift, had him open in front of us, and we celebrated the achievement. Those kinds of things I think really help to solidify the kind of culture you're trying to build at the leadership level.

Al: Great stories. Yeah. As leaders, we can only lead from what we've built into our own character and foundation. So, in your own leadership journey, Michael, what are some of the specific practices and habits that have kept you on track as far as following Jesus in every aspect of leadership?

Michael: Well, my wife would say, I'm not always on track, and she's quick to tell me when I need to get back on track. So I think having a spouse who knows you well and is not afraid to offer a corrective word has certainly been part of my own journey. But I find that daily time with the Lord really does matter. And I think particularly all of us in leadership would say we want to do that, but in reality, we don't always do it. But I have found a regular practice. I use the “Bible in one year” app out of Holy Trinity Brompton in London. Nicky and Pippa Gumbel have done that. And that's been a really good resource for me because I can read it or I can listen to it, and I can do it no matter where I am that day. That is a way of helping me to get into the Word, and that has been very useful.

Intercessory prayer is important in having an active prayer life. I find that leading a life of prayer as the saints have done over the centuries is harder and harder for me because I find that the busyness of my schedule, perhaps the way I prioritize my life, I don't always pursue a life of prayer throughout the day. But if I can start my day with some intentional time with the Lord, both offering requests, but then also listening to the Lord, that really does make a difference. So I have a set of prayer requests that I pray through over the course the days. I have a card for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on, and that's been very helpful for me.

I also really believe in the importance of Sabbath keeping. I didn't always, that wasn't always part of my life, but I work really hard. For me, Sabbath really starts with Saturday night dinner and ends with Sunday night dinner. I like having the ability to do a little bit of email work, a little bit of planning on Sunday night before I go to bed. I wake up feeling a little bit more on top of my week. But my wife and I are pretty consistent with that. I will travel on Sunday, and I will do work on Sunday. But I try to compensate for those exceptional Sundays so that I really try to preserve a degree of regular Sabbath keeping that also helps me to be more consistent in my worship and more consistent in my rest.

Al: Those are great practices. And you reinforced it, just going back to the book Lead with Prayer, and how you've modeled that prayer life throughout the university. And that's the book by Peter Greer.

Michael: It is.

Al: And Cameron Doolittle? Yeah.

Michael: That’s right.

Al: Yeah.

Michael: It’s a great resource. And my leadership team has just embraced it, so many of them have started sort of lead-with-prayer initiatives in their different areas. So the provost is doing something, the chief advancement officer, so that's been encouraging.

Al: Well, I'd encourage our listeners to look up that resource. And actually, Peter and I have talked about that on this podcast. It's a great book. Yeah.

So, Michael, as I've mentioned, Taylor's made significant progress, and you were referring to it just a minute ago yourself, certainly in the health of the faculty and staff culture. And you've in fact doubled the number of employees who are engaged at Taylor. So how has that made a difference on your campus? How has increased faculty and staff engagement impacted the work of the university overall?

Michael: Well, it's coincided with significant thriving in a number of areas that are just measures of what we think the Lord is doing more deeply in each of our lives. So our incoming student number has grown by 50% in that period of time. We're now at record enrollment. Our annual giving used to be around $12 or $13 million, which is a lot, and we're I'm very grateful for that, but the Lord has chosen to show remarkable generosity through our support members. And just last fiscal year, we ended up raising $135 million. And so far this fiscal year, we're north of a hundred million. When you have great philanthropy and great enrollment, those, then, generate resources that you can use to be able to invest in your people. So we were able to provide one-time incentive bonuses to all faculty and staff in a way that we've never done before. For full-time faculty and staff, that was a $5,000 bonus. And you know, when you're a housekeeper making $25 or $30,000 a year, that's a really big impact. But it makes a difference even for my most-senior faculty. They're able to take a vacation they were not planning on, or to do something special for one of their kids. All of these become ways in which the flourishing of our campus ends up leading to the flourishing of our people. And it's been very encouraging.

Now, we hold these things loosely because the Lord gives and He can take away. We recognize that. But I do think that as we have built a more engaged team at Taylor, it's allowed us to be more focused on some of those key measures, which, then, generates the kind of resources that allow us to do even more for greater Kingdom effectiveness.

Al: Those are great, great examples, great statistics in terms of growth in student body, growth in giving and generosity, and your ability to provide bonuses for your employees. That's fantastic.

Well, we all know that Christian higher education is complex, and there's a variety of pressures on leaders like yourself. And we also hear about the coming demographic cliff, the baby bust that came out of the Great Recession, and how that's moving into the college years here in the next couple of years. So, there may be fewer college-age students to recruit from, so what are some of the foundational strategies that you and your team are focusing on to help make Taylor a preferred choice for young people and their families in the future?

Michael: Well, you're right that the demographic cliff is upon us, and the college-bound population in places like the Northeast, the Midwest, and even the West is going to decline over the next 10 years. The South has some areas of real growth, and so I think as institutions become more national and diversify their recruiting bases of operation, that will make a difference. Places like the Carolinas, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, those are all areas of growth. But the real opportunity is that the global college-bound population is growing by leaps and bounds. So we've got to find ways to connect with Christian families around the world who care for our kind of education, and to find donors who might help support because cost of living in Ghana is very different than the cost of living in the United States, so it's harder for folks to be able to scale. But literally today I'm hosting on campus a delegation from Ghana, which includes one incoming student who's going to join us and is interested in health professions. We've got to do a lot more of that.

I also think if you're going to survive in the environment of the demographic cliff, you have to be able to grow market share, and the surest way to do that in higher education is to diversify your offerings. So more academic programs. We've just launched a new program in nursing, just launched a program in mechanical engineering, just established a new Cornwall School of Business and Leadership, launched a new PhD program in leadership. We're launching a graduate program in physician-assistant studies. So as you grow the academic offerings, you are able to increase your market share.

Now the key thing, Al, is that you have to grow those things without significantly increasing your expenses. So you have to be strategic and say, we can't do everything. We have to figure out, where do we have islands of health and strength right now, and how can we expand on those? For Taylor, science fields, engineering, health professions have been areas of strength for decades at the university. And so we want to build on that. So computer and data science has always been an area of strength, so we're launching a program in artificial intelligence. Business and finance have been areas of strength for a long time, and they're growing. So we're saying, “Okay. Well, how can we take the work that we're doing in economic development and build an undergraduate major in that field?” That's really how, I think, most universities are going to be able to survive the tsunami that's coming from the demographic, changes that we're seeing.

I also think, though, as we become more global, it opens up the pools of opportunity for us. Now, those are subject to geopolitical forces that you can't control. I can't determine how many of my students will get student visas, and I can't control, where will conflicts break out that might affect the ability for students to be able to travel or relocate? But I absolutely believe that the kind of campuses we have on Christian colleges in the United States, they are the global gold standard for Christian higher education. So there are students from Latin America, students from Asia, students from Africa, students from Europe, Australia, that really want to be here, so we've got to figure out, how can we make it within financial reach for them? And that's where you get a combination of growing your enrollment and growing your philanthropy to make it all possible.

Al: Yeah. I love your idea, the way you call it, islands of health, and to build on those, and that's where you're going to have the most success. I love that.

Well, thanks so much. This has been a great conversation, Michael, and I’ve really appreciated it. Going back to the beginning, where you talked about one of your graduates this year, Zane, and moving into criminal justice reform as a focus on life and the impact that he's going to have, certainly, going forward. And I appreciate, also, the way that you've taken the Employee Engagement Survey and used that to help build engagement throughout the university, doubling the number of faculty and staff that are engaged as we measure it and really using that to train managers, the front line, as you describe it, to have them responsible for a culture and at the same time providing the recognition and rewards that really help to reinforce great culture. And the way you've identified, yes, leaders need to lead with the integrity of heart and with skillful hands. As leaders of organizations, we want to have all of our employees. Let's start with the character, the integrity of heart, and then, the competence with skillful hands. And the description that you had of just leading with prayer and how that's building into the character of the university. And also, as you've described, your own personal practices that keep your heart in tune with the Lord's and how important that is in Christian leadership. So, this has just been a great conversation. I know that the future is going to be strong at Taylor as you become the preferred choice, one of the preferred choices, in Christian higher ed around the world. So, thanks so much.

Is there something that you'd like to add that we've talked about?

Michael: Al, you didn't ask me to say this, but I found your book to be incredibly helpful. We had all of our leaders read it. I think the FLOURISH framework is a great, easy way to get your hands around key measures for success. And as we've attended to those different areas—and I mean, we really have worked on them—it's actually made an appreciable difference. So thanks for giving us a good tool and a resource that we can turn to. I think when you're in leadership, you're always wondering, how do you spend your time and energy? And we think that the Road to Flourishing was a great resource for all of our managers, and it's helped us to get calipers on trying to build that engagement, which, in turn, has made a real difference for the whole university to be able to thrive.

Al: Yeah. Well, thanks, Michael, and I might add that my co-author, Cory Hartman, is a Taylor graduate, so there you go. Dividends, as we think of them, from the past for the future.

So, well, thanks for your contribution today, and most of all, I appreciate your commitment to equipping the next generation of Christian leaders as they develop themselves through the Christian college experience that they have at Taylor. And again, thanks so much for taking your time out today and speaking in the lives of so many listeners.

Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Michael Lindsay, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did

You can find ways to connect with him 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, please email me, al@workplaces.org.

And as Dr. Lindsay has shown, flourishing workplace cultures don't happen by chance. They're built through intentional leadership, a commitment to people, and faith-driven decision making. If you're ready to transform your organization's culture, take the first step by assessing where you are today. The Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey can provide the insights that you need to create a thriving, ministry-focused, mission-driven workplace.

And if you're looking for a practical roadmap, check out my book, Road to Flourishing. Visit workplaces.org to start your journey toward a flourishing workplace today.

And next week, keep listening to our weekly podcast as we learn from Christian leadership thought leader Steve Macchia talking about 10 traits of a vital ministry. You won't want to miss it.

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.