S6E34: Important Insights for Employee Retention, Communication, and Innovation

Are you experiencing greater than unusual turnover of your staff? As a leader, how do you inspire your team, care for your people, and practice healthy communication?  And how can you unleash an atmosphere of innovation in your organization? Ted Esler, President of Missio Nexus, shares insights on the importance of employee retention, the keys to effective remote communication, and innovation for Christian-led organizations.

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In this episodE:

• Missio Nexus is all about cooperating, collaborating, and really trying to promote and foster the completion of the Great Commission (02:27)
• What drew Ted to the President role at Missio Nexus? (04:12)
• "My personal passion is that together we can be doing a lot more than we can do separately." (05:33)
• Our research has shown that there are eight keys that directly impact the engagement of missionaries. The most important is what we call Inspirational Leadership. Christian character is a big part of our definition of Inspirational Leadership. When we think of Christian character we include high levels of trust between leaders and staff, leaders demonstrating compassion and being open and honest. What are ways organizations can develop these competencies?   (06:00)
• "Open communications is a high value." (06:49)
• "Personal relationships are key to high levels of trust." (07:20)
• Ted's favorite book of the bible on leadership and relationship is Philemon (08:11)
• "Partnering with your staff to bless others is a powerful component (09:42)
• Let’s focus on missionaries in the field. The effort and time involved in selecting people, training, equipping, and launching them is enormous. What are some best practices that you see among mission agencies – those leadership practices that are making the difference in setting people and teams up for thriving? (10:49)
•  Many of these leadership practices are important for other types of organizations, even if you are not sending people overseas. Retention of people is an important area for a thriving organization – this is true in the US as we are seeing high numbers of people changing jobs, and of course, for mission agencies, turnover impacts their ability to fulfill their ministry goals. What are you seeing as the trend in missionary turnover? (13:27)
• What are some specific ways that leaders can care for their people and help them grow, so they stay engaged? (16:29)
• Another important item is to address areas of weakness in your staff by offering developmental opportunities, not just pointing out the weakness. (18:27)
• At BCWI we also see that Healthy Communication is an important driver of a flourishing culture. Many organizations had to learn how to communicate with remote staff in the past 18 months, but mission organizations have been doing this forever. What can we all learn about healthy communication – especially communicating over distance and cultural divides – from the best practices in mission agencies? (21:20)
• "I think the first rule of remote communication is to understand that there are some conversations you cannot have remotely." (22:42)
• Purpose schedule time to have face-to-face conversations (24:04)
• Those thoughts on the next generation of leadership are so important. And releasing the next generation to lead also relates to the topic of Innovation – an area you have done a lot of research and thinking about. Your new book is The Innovation Crisis: Creating Disruptive Influence in the Ministry You Lead.  As you describe the need for this book you say, “If you’re leading a ministry organization, your job isn’t just to see the change that’s coming but to get your people ahead of the curve—then stay there. Jesus himself was an innovator.” Tell us more about why innovation is so important for all of us to embrace? (26:03)
• In the book, you write about the importance of fulfilling a relevant mission. Why is that important for innovation? (33:14)

Additional Resources

Buy a copy of Ted's book: The Innovation Crisis: Creating Disruptive Influence in the Ministry You Lead 

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Read a complete, word-for-word transcript of the episode.

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