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Policies Create Machines, Values Create Empowered Teams · Church Staff Book Club

• Jonathan Malm: Policies are the what and values are the why. My name is Jonathan Maum and I'm here with Jason Young. We are talking about The Comeback Effect. It is a book that we wrote. It's a book about hospitality. In this podcast, we won't always be talking about books we wrote. Our goal with the podcast is that we would just learn together. One of the best things about a book club is that you just get to see other people's perspectives, other people's insight into what they read. Our hope is that if we can all read together, we can learn together and grow just a little bit more than if we had read by ourselves. that's why we're picking books. We go through them chapter by chapter, ⁓ kind of outlining the general ideas of the book. So whether you read them, whether you don't read them, you'll get something from this podcast, but obviously it's great if you read along with us. But yeah, so this chapter we're talking about, chapter nine of the comeback effect is choose values over policy. We were talking a little bit poor, Jason. ⁓ You mentioned something. about Disney's values and I liked them all. Yeah, they have these five keys and what's interesting about them is safety is above all of them. And so, you know, a big question around values and policies ⁓ could be this, which is most important? Are they the same? Are they different? Is it about priorities? Does one support the other? And when I think about Disney and You know, some of you may be Disney fanatics, some of you may, you've never been, or you might be boycotting Disney for various reasons. Yeah. For sure. For sure. All across the spectrum, right? ⁓ One of their core values, safety's first, it's above show, it's above everything else. And what's interesting is when you look at the value and then all the systems, the systems that allow safety to be executed well, are really support mechanisms. for the value and I like to think about it this way. Policies protect systems, values protect people. And so I think what you'll hear us talk about through this episode is like, what's the difference? When do I think about one over the other? And maybe the best way for me to start is this. I had this little, we'll link this. ⁓ you can see my ring light in there. We'll link this on the website, but these values, there's six of them, faith, family, relationships, passion, grit, and excellence. These are values for me. These are the kind of the boundaries that help me make decisions. These are, know, if I'm like, I'm not sure what to do. really, okay, let's filter it through values. And so as we talk about today, we're gonna talk about how policies are great for consistency. But values are probably the actual thing that create the trust with people. So yeah, because I think about, think about, you know, we've all been in the organization that has random rules for everything. You know, the, the, especially, think the funniest thing is always in the soundboard, like don't raise the knob above this level. Don't, ⁓ no coffee in this area. No. And there's like, it's all because of And there's always a story behind every one of those policies, right? Like someone did something and then they made a policy for it. And it's funny, one of the things I learned in, I live in Texas and we did a Texas constitutional law in college. And they're like, the constitution is a mess because there's a rule for everything and every rule is in the constitution. So it's like the random things, there's even like contradictory rules. There's like, that's kind of what we're talking about with this chapter. The idea that like, what if we could give people ⁓ framework to work within of things that we want to see, things that we want people to feel, things that we want, you know, this is what we value as an organization and make decisions that support those values instead of just a thousand policies because nobody will remember them first of all whenever we have a thousand policies. ⁓ It will be restrictive. So sometimes there will be an exception to a rule, but because the rule is there, your volunteers will be afraid to break that rule. And because ⁓ Yeah, sometimes the rules are just bad. Sometimes these rules are just ridiculous and it just makes people feel dumb, like having to abide by those rules. Yeah. mean, think about, Jonathan, think about if you go eat at a place or maybe flown on a particular airline or stayed at a hotel or, know, just think about two different places and you have two different experiences and maybe the primary or the... The moment that changed everything was the response. For example, something was about food. I don't know, I'm making this up. And they're like, well, there's nothing I can do. It's just, that's our policy versus somebody's like, hey, here's what I can do. It feels like, I don't know if this is a fair thing to say. So if you disagree with me, I could, you probably have merit to do so. But so many times I think policies end with like a no. Yeah. N-O, like no. Yeah, there's no policy that says we can't do this. All the policies are we don't do this, right? Yeah. so it feels, so when you think about guest experience, mean, heck, even when you think about the volunteer experience you're creating, the goal is how many yeses can we say? And I feel like, I could be wrong, but I feel like values allow us to say yes more often. I think about a volunteer. So imagine a greeter. who a guest comes up, a greeter wants to help. And I know you're gonna say, it depends on the context. I get that, I get that. But let's say it's something general that is actually doable. And because some leaders lead with policy, because if I can keep it super, super tight, it'll demand they do it just right. It'll be perfect. It won't allow for any miscalculation, which is, it's not even true anyways, but let's just go with it. But let's say a greeter wants to help a guest, but the greeter says to the guest, well, I'm sorry, that's... That's our policy, that's what we do here. And what happens is the conversation ends there. Why? Because policy stopped at the problem, but had that volunteer maybe been guided with values or exposed to the values, they could have actually served the person differently. The response could have been different. I just think about, see these things happen more often. you say, somebody listening here, I think about my wife, she's more of a rules person. Me, I think of rules as suggestions. Rules are general ideas. Yeah, general idea. There's a joke in our family, ⁓ so you're above the law. It's like, no, but I will say it like this. The values don't remove rules, but I do think values humanize them. I would even say sometimes they do remove the rules. Okay. Whenever there's a conflict of values. And I think that's the problem. Okay. That's fair. And what I love, what I love about the Disney idea is that they have a hierarchy of their values. Yes. Because I think of, you know, one of the conversations I always have in my DMs are from, from childcare, childcare. I'm sorry. From kids ministry. You do not call it child care. ⁓ you are going to get, you're going to get messages. Kids ministry. The idea that, you know, because I'm again, I'm very much like, ⁓ rules are kind of like they're good guidelines, but they're not like we always break the rules. But they're like, especially whenever it comes to kids safety, where, you know, if you don't have the tag, you don't get the child, things like that. is a hierarchy of values, right? Because for kids ministry, safety should be the safety of our children should be the highest, right? The highest value, even above them learning about Jesus, which is That will also get me some messages, right? But like the idea that like that is the most important. So whenever ideas, you know, conflict. you know, one value might be be flexible and one might be be safety, right? So when be flexible conflicts with be safe, you go with be safe. So I'm sorry. know we, you know, I understand that you don't have the ticket and you need to get out of here, but we just really value the safety of our children. And you can go to the check-in counter and print another ticket, but we, we do not do this because safety is the most important value, right? Like that makes sense. But that's what's kind of scary is like, how do you think about all the potential cases, right? And like, so whenever it comes to safety, sometimes you do have a specific policy, but sometimes you, know, I'd say for most of the ministries in our church, safety is not the main thing, right? Like if you're on the security team and if you're on the kids ministry, safety is the main thing. Maybe if you're on the tech team, I guess, but. The idea is there's more to it that's a lot of decisions that happen, especially when you're talking about hospitality, which the book is about, and that's where we're mainly talking. How do we avoid restrictive policies that make the experience feel robotic or feel automatic or feel like this person is just, I think about one of the most frustrating things I have whenever I go to customer service is whenever I'm like, hey, my internet's not working, I restarted it. I checked the connection, I restarted my computer. I know all the things they're going to ask me to do, but because their policy is there's a script, right? I know they're still gonna say, okay, well, let's try to, thank you, sir. I understand you must be so frustrated that your internet is down. I'm like, please just get my internet back up. Stop with the policy. Have some flexibility to understand that this is a different scenario than what the script calls for. I think that's what we're talking about in this chapter, right? Yeah, yeah. mean, because policies do keep things running. They're kind of like in the background, but values are the things people feel that actually keep them coming back, hence the comeback effect. You said something that made me think about things this way. Policies feel static, values feel alive. And what I mean by that, policies don't adapt well. Yeah. Right? But what values do is they allow... the volunteer, the staffer, the person to use judgment in real time, you say, well, that might be part of the problem. I don't trust my staff. I don't trust my volunteers. So I have a policy because it's easier that way. And I think I would push back just a little bit to say, you know, maybe that's a problem in the training and development aspect of your team. Because if- Everything is policy driven. happens is volunteers freeze, people fear mistakes, they default to no, know, no versus if you are constantly talking about values. I remember, you know, when I was last church I worked at, we just talked about values every single service in our, in our huddle, our gathering before every single, because it allows the volunteer to say yes more often. It allows them to problem solve. Will it always be done just right? No. But values also let people act human. And what guests want to experience when they come in is a human because values will help your staff and volunteers help. It'll help them help guests make decisions when there's no script and the script is boxy. It's predictable. It's intended to end in a certain manner versus values having judgment. There's a store, there's a retail store and in their training, they don't really have a list of values. They do have some policies in the background, but that's not really what you're trained around. They train you around one phrase as an employee. And the phrase is something like this. You could Google it, but something like this. Use good judgment at all times. And you say, well, what if they don't? We tend to the negative, right? Again, the protective. So therefore we put a policy and what this particular brand is saying is we're gonna hire people. We're gonna train them in such a way. We're gonna empower them and we're gonna expect them to make, to use good judgment all time. Will they? No, they're human. However, when someone, imagine if your training was that versus 72 policies. You could just feel the difference between the two. between the two, bottom line, I would say this, when you have clear values, whatever they are, like for me, I shared my personal values. know, when I, in the comeback effect, I talk about what our values were at the last church I worked at. One of them was be flexible. And maybe the ranking, maybe that's really important, right? But clear values give your staff and volunteers permission, real permission to care. Exactly, because here's the thing. If you have a negative view toward volunteers, here's the one perspective shift that will change everything for you. Your volunteers want to make you happy. Like they want to feel like they're doing a good job. They want to feel approved of. They want to feel like they're doing something of value. And so if you can give them the value and then reward them when they make decisions that are aligned with that value, they're going to keep doing that. And yes, maybe it is. you know, maybe you'll have 10 missteps before you get to the one thing that like, that was amazing, right? But once you get that one thing that you praise them for, they're going to repeat that. It's funny, my four-year-old right now is in this phase of like, just when we compliment him, he goes above and beyond. like, you know, he got a yogurt for his younger brother to be careful. And we said, wow, man, you are such a thoughtful kid. We appreciate that. And then, I hear him running to get his little ladder and he's pushing it up ⁓ to the refrigerator to get a yogurt for my wife. And he's like, dad, where's a spoon? He's going above and beyond because he wants that dopamine of approval from us, which is like, you don't need to do all this, buddy. I'm trying to balance that, right? But the idea is we're hardwired for approval. We're hardwired for people to affirm us. whenever we do affirm that, we just always want to do more of that. We want more of that. that hit. And to your point, it's funny because you said this, this brand that you're talking about, they hire people that match that values. That's one of the best recruiting tools. Whenever you're talking to recruit and we talk about this in the volunteer effect, another book, but the idea that whenever you had to have a set of values and you see someone that matches that values, that set of values, approach them and say, ⁓ my gosh, you would kill it on our team. I can see who you are as a person. And whenever we choose people intentionally instead of just waiting for them to come to us, we get to create the culture of our values. So this person is not going to have a hard time figuring out what to do because they already think that way, right? Like the people this company hires, they're probably the type of people, their screening questions as they're hiring are probably like, does this person have sound judgment or whatever the term was, right? Like you gauge whether or not this person already matches the values and that makes it so. easy to do. And that can also explain maybe why, hey, I don't know if you're right for this team. You are obviously a talented person, but I think your values are more aligned with X team, right? Like, and that's okay. But we can, we can actually craft our teams a little bit better to match those values and, and, and see much better results. Yeah. Which probably is a whole other podcast episode. Cause I can imagine somebody saying, you mean I can say no to somebody. I mean, I we're a church and we have to volunteer, which that's a whole nother conversation. We won't go there. But let me ask you this question. imagine there's somebody watching and listening right now. They're a church staffer and they say, like, are there signs that I should be looking for whether we're leading more with policy versus values? ⁓ Is there anything I would notice that would guide me either way? If somebody were to ask you that question, like what do you think you'd tell them? I think the biggest indicator that you're leading with policies over values is when people are regularly checking with you on what they should do. To me, that shows that A, there's maybe not a policy for what is they're experiencing and they don't know what to do. Or B, there are so many policies that they don't remember the policy. There shouldn't have to be so many policies that you can't remember. If it's your 10th Sunday serving, you shouldn't be still like, what was that policy? That's a sign that there's too many, right? So that would probably be my indicator that they're regularly coming to you with questions and you're becoming A, the bottleneck and B, the ⁓ person who to make all the decisions, which is exhausting. That will burn you out pretty quickly when you're like, and even whenever they're. having to then enact a policy that they don't want to. And we talked in a previous episode about the usher that has to escort a family out that has a loud child, right? Like that's, ⁓ now I, the volunteer have to enact this policy that I don't necessarily agree with, right? Like that's a horrible feeling. So that would be my indicator. What would you say is probably the, maybe a sign. I really like that one. I think for me, it would be like gauging the temperature. How many yeses and nos and like problems are we solving and like the service we're providing. So mine might be a little bit more abstract or anecdotal. ⁓ Because I agree with yours. think that is a great, very real, you could almost measure that like, gosh, there's 10 people that asked me today versus two, right? So that's very measurable. You'll always get some questions, especially from new volunteers who like, I'm just trying to assimilate. I'm trying to make sure I don't ⁓ rock the boat too much. Yeah. Yeah. And I think what you said is absolutely right. The volunteer wants to do a great job, right? And so to do that, they may check on you, especially more so in the beginning. So for me, mine might be a little bit more of an abstract and anecdotal answer, which, know, maybe you're listening and you're thinking, sorry, I'm a verbal processor, so I'm working this in real time. This is our writing process right here. This is what it looks like. Yes, so you should feel bad for Jonathan, because it is real time thinking, like not editing as it comes out. But when I think about this conversation, it takes me back to how how do we onboard our volunteers? Typically, I've done this for over 25 years. Jonathan has many years. More times than not, the churches I've worked at and coached or consulted with, it's usually onboarding with like a ⁓ binder, you know, versus maybe like the values that we're talking about. Who remembers a binder? Here's the thing about it. You as the church staffer, You don't even remember the binder. That's why you have it. Right. It's like a reference. years that you will never notice until one day someone finally reads the binder. 100%. And so I think about onboarding, training and development. And you say, Jason, you've mentioned three particular things or those distinct, think they are onboarding is how people start. From the moment they say I'm interested to the first day they're on training their first 90 days development. post 90 days, right? And having a plan for each of those, not policy driven, values driven. And when that happens, your training is structured differently. You give them scenarios that they work out. You give them, know, stories maybe that you've collected and how do we apply it here? And so it's this real time thing. I'm not saying that you don't talk about policies because I think policy can explain a rule that might be necessary because it's system related. But I think values explain the response and more times than not, the volunteer, the staffer is going to be in a role that is response related. And I think that's when the values show up because value explains the response. If one of my values, which this is what I had at the last church worked at on our team, remain flexible. If that's a response, our posture is gonna be flexible. Our posture is not gonna be a hard no. Our posture is going to be, you know, kind of like, you know, I wanna be flexible with that or flexible with that or flexible with even, you know, if you lead volunteers, you'll get this. I wanna be in that, at that door or in that spot or in that room, you know? And it's like, so flexible is a value that says, hey, we're open-handed with our responses, with where we go and what we do versus policy being, the strict adherence ⁓ to this is the way we do it. Because the last thing I wanna say is this, this might be just Jason's opinion again, real-time processing. I think sometimes policies are in place for control. And I don't fully mean that negative. Control is not inherently a bad thing. No. Like your car being under control is a good thing. Absolutely. So yeah, don't hear me say that is a negative thing, but I'm going to juxtapose it with values because I think sometimes when we need policies for consistency, would say this values can create consistency without the feeling of control. And so, you know, you're like, well, I want consistency. Okay. Well, what do we typically do? Add a policy. Yeah. You know, we want compliance. But I think what values allow is we're not focused on compliance, we're focused on care. using values in the best possible way can create alignment with your team without micromanagement and policies can feel controlling and micromanagement related. So again, we're not trying for compliance here, we're trying for care because that's what the guest wants to feel. Think about where you've shopped. When people are giving you compliance related answers, that's frustrating. When it could be a care related response, even if it's backed by a policy, that's why values can influence a response. But again, there's some flexibility there and values can just be such a guide without the burden of micromanagement. Yeah, and you talked about your values at the last church, which was Buckhead Church. And I have them here. The four values that you led with were show care, have fun, remain flexible. and deliver wow. Those were the four that guided and I love those. But before we continue the conversation, I wanna give a shout out to our sponsor, firstimpressions.church. know, church hospitality, guest care, first impressions, the phrases that we as church leaders are familiar with. But sometimes through the grind of daily tasks and prepping for Sunday every week, we lose the heart of hospitality. Guest care becomes a checklist for the discipleship efforts. First Impressions is an organization committed to helping churches create meaningful connections with guests from the first visit to lifelong discipleship. Whether you're looking to sharpen your team skills, build a proven follow-up plan, or take your guest experience to the next level, they've got you covered. Through their First Impressions online conference, their live conference, their academy, or their executive coaching, they equip churches with strategies, systems, and support that you need to invite, welcome, and connect with your church guests. And you can learn more at First Impressions. But yeah, so we talk about values, right? So how do you come up with values? Like think that's the thing. You know, we have an outline in the book and maybe we can share that in the link on the site on churchstaffbookclub.com. But I think for me, the big thing is, what do you want the guest to regularly experience? Because when I think of consistency, I don't, you know. Apart from maybe food service, like I want Chick-fil-A to taste the same across the board, right? And I want Starbucks to taste the same across the board. But what I want instead is the, when we're talking about hospitality specifically, I want to know, ⁓ this is going to be a fun place. ⁓ You know, there's ⁓ this restaurant in town, it's a chain, but I think it's called Dick's Last Resort. And their whole schtick is that the waiters are just rude to you and cutting to you, right? It's a horrible experience, but people go there for the silliness of it, right? But that is one of those, like their value is just punish the guest, right? But they also have guidelines because the punishing is punish, but with a good feeling to give them a good feeling too, right? So you're giving them a guideline, but then what you do is you're relying on your team's creativity. to do that effectively. This is to the negative, right? We never want to do that at a church. Maybe there's some church in the US or in the world that's called to that. But what's wonderful about that restaurant that people love is the creativity that goes into it. Like, wow, I did not expect that to happen. But it was within the boundaries of what I was expecting, right? And so values can create the boundaries of what we're expecting. that then let people use their creativity to say, wow, that felt safe. Cause we're not trying to say to not make people feel safe, but we're trying to say you experience someone being completely themselves within the context of our safety and with the context of what we're trying to give you as a guest at our church. Yeah. Yeah. mean, if you were to look in this chapter, there's a little bit of a guide on how you could select values. mean, You could Google, there are so many different ways. Like we don't have like the way, right? There are a lot of different ways. Don't overcomplicate this. Literally when those four values, when I came up with those four values, ⁓ I did it through a filter. Again, when I go back to personal values, I looked at relationships. I looked at excellence, right? So those were two guiding values, even. coming up with our values for our team. But here is really a ⁓ guide for me. I wanted to make sure that our values were attainable for the volunteer and accessible for the guest. So attainable for the volunteer, meaning they could do it and accessible for the guests, they could feel it. So one of the great signs that you're doing this well is that a guest will say, wow, I had so much fun today or I felt so cared for today. You're like, ⁓ we did it right. That's right. That's right. So again, don't overcomplicate this. I literally, if I remember that, it's been years ago, came up with them, bounce it off the team. You know, is this attainable for our volunteers? Can they actually do this? How do we help them do this? Right. And is this accessible for the guests? Like, is this what a guest wants? Do they want care? Do they want to have a fun and enjoyable experience? Do they, what does it feel like when the environment is flexible for them? Right. And it's not bound with rigidity. when we think so flexible and then like, wow, right? So AKA excellence. I would add a third. Yeah. That is, does this reflect our leadership's values is a huge one. Cause I remember I was attending a church for a while and the church in general was about having fun. It was about like connection and just like community. was very like not shallow, but it was very like positive and like bright and uplifting, the worship team, the people that led worship were all about this intense emotional experience. They wanted people crying. And so there was almost this conflict between them of you felt it like the worship service started and it felt completely different than the rest of the service. And it was actually kind of a jarring experience in a weird way, right? Like eventually the leadership changed and someone who got the vision of what pastor was trying to do did that, right? does this match, because we're trying to create a cohesive experience. So I think that does matter. Would you agree? Yeah. Yeah. It does, because there are some things you and your role, you can't control. So you can control the values in your space, but there are going to be things outside of your control. And yeah, you want to make sure that you may have rockin' and rollin' values. And they're like, man, you can write a book about them. But if the guest experiences other things and they are opposed to, and they feel this, they may not have the language for it, but they feel this, right? Then there is a conflict. And we've talked about this before. think in our last episode, clarity is a huge determining factor that either brings people back or lack of clarity trips them up and maybe they don't come back. So this is one of those moments that is there a clarity amongst the values, right? So for me, landing on those four, I felt like they were in alignment. I want to ask you a question, and this is not the time to ask this question at the end of the podcast, but what do you do if there's another team at your church whose values wreck the values that you're trying to instill? So ours is have fun. And this one team is just creating a, ⁓ like, what's it called? ⁓ Like it's breaking the machine of this value in our organization. What would you do in that situation? Yeah. then this is not the time to ask this question. Try to get them all fired. No, I'm just kidding. Maybe simple answer. Simple answer is this before I launch values for my particular ministry area, I'm going to probably talk through them with people, especially if I already sense that there's going to be a breakdown between. There's going to be a breakdown. Yeah. And I, maybe that's not the one I go with. Maybe I choose a softer version of that, or maybe I'll work with that team through that, you know? So it's hard to give a black and white answer because what if the senior pastor and I matching values, but there's a team in between us that there's a mismatch of values. Like, so I would probably do my homework and some groundwork before I launch these things to prevent. you know, and there may have to be a compromise, right? So it's just one of those things. And if they're general enough, it's safe. For example, the four that you mentioned earlier, they're specific, but they're general enough. So again, they're not policies. doesn't have rigidity to them, but there's some play in there like care and have fun. Fun looks different. you are more, I would say this, you're more of a fun guy than me, right? So, This is where you can lean on your team to do some of those values. You're not gonna go write a book and say, man, Jason is like the funnest guy in the world. But you may say, what? I think you're fun. ⁓ well, thanks man. You're super nice. But there's probably other people that are, they're fun or they're funny or whatever, but I might be better at, let's say the wow part. And so it's using the team. You don't have to embody all of these and do them perfectly well, but it's like, again, what's attainable for the team, what's accessible for the guest, right? And then again, kind of that attitude match that we talked about internally. Maybe kind of as we wrap, I would say this. If you feel tension here, you're in good company because this is hard work. So don't feel like, man, I feel like I should have clarity. These guys have worked it out. I didn't work it out in a 30 minute whiteboard session. Do not let me mislead you. The church is not a machine. can't function like one. is people and it is messy. That's right. And, ⁓ you said that. Your values, I know this is a no brainer, but your values shouldn't mirror like Jesus and the Bible. So what, you you think about care, obviously, fun. I felt like Jesus, there was an aspect of fun that he was enjoyable to be around. He wasn't this rigid no guy, right? People were drawn to him. ⁓ I think about, you know, wanted to do things in a great way, ⁓ flexible. Like he kind of like, you know, wasn't like, this is how I do it. I felt like he had some flexibility there. And so when I think about values, think about it this way. When you choose values over policy, we're not saying abandoned policy, but when you choose values over policy, it doesn't mean it's going to be chaotic. It actually means you're giving clarity because when your staff, when your volunteers know what matters most, they'll actually make better decisions than any rule book or binder ever could. Yeah, because policies are the what and values are the why. So it gives a clear thing. Hey, we hope this episode was valuable for you. We're gonna do chapter 10 next week, but find us on social media, leave a comment below on YouTube or wherever you're listening or watching. We would love to make this podcast as useful as possible for you or your team or however you're consuming it. But we will see you next week.