When it’s a Personnel Problem

This week I had the opportunity to hang out with Raul Palacios, the Executive Pastor of Flamingo Road Church and a few of his team members. Under the leadership of Lead Pastor Troy Gramling Flamingo Road has experienced explosive growth moving from one campus to six campuses in the past three years.  What a humble and creative team of people!  In this video interview Raul talks about dealing with employee performance issues.  You can scroll below the video to see my Takeaway Summary.

My TAKEAWAYS

• When momentum begins to slow down look to see if there is a personnel issue you need to deal with.
• Make “truth telling” a value in your culture.
• When facing a barrier ask yourself the questions: Is there a personnel decision that I know I need to make that I haven’t made?  AND, Am I going to have the integrity to deal with it?
• We must be willing to deal with painful decisions sometimes in order to keep growing.
• Delaying tough decisions can hurt the credibility of the leader.
• We think people aren’t aware, but people know who the low performers are that are hurting the organization and they are just waiting for the leadership to deal with it.
• What do you do when there is a performance issue with an employee?
  • Option #1 Retrain:  Is it a training issue?  Can we get them new tools or get someone to come along side and help them?
  • Option #2 Reposition:  Is there another position we can put them in where their gifts would fit better?
  • Option #3 Remove:  Are they a bad fit for the organization?
• There is always blessing after that tough decision…but there is always another challenge coming on the heals of that tough decision.