Arrogance makes leadership about the leader. Humility makes leadership big enough for other people. And the difference between the two might be the thing your team is waiting for you to figure out.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 7 of Likable Leader, reframing what humility actually means for leaders and why it has nothing to do with downplaying yourself or deflecting every compliment. From false humility that argues with people trying to encourage you, to ego quietly becoming part of your organization's operating system, this conversation goes places most leadership books won't.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why humility and insecurity are not the same thing and how confusing them is quietly shrinking your organization
• The real test of humility: not whether you can admit you're good at something, but what happens inside when someone tells you that you are
• How to know if your ego has become part of your church's operating system (hint: if nothing can happen without your approval, it has)
• Why letting a 60% idea win is sometimes better for your organization than making sure your best idea always gets through
• What happens in the room when a leader admits "I got that wrong" and why the exhale you'll hear is one of the most powerful moments in team culture
• Why shrinking the vision to match yourself is actually a form of arrogance, not humility
• The parenting analogy that perfectly captures what long-term humble leadership looks like

Plus Jonathan reflects on what it cost his team when he spent years fighting to make sure his ideas won, and Jason calls out the soundtrack many leaders play on repeat: "if I'm leading, I need to have the answer."

You don't have to have all the answers. You just have to know the next step and have the courage to say it out loud.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 6 of Likable Leader, making the case that clarity isn't just a communication skill; it's one of the most profound acts of care a leader can offer their team. Because ambiguity doesn't just slow people down. It exhausts them, puts them in survival mode, and quietly chips away at everything you've built together.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why unclear leaders – even kind, charismatic, encouraging ones – are perceived as exhausting to work for
• How clarity creates psychological safety and actually lightens your team's mental load
• Why a clear mistake is often better than unclear leadership and how humility makes that work
• The difference between leadership clarity with control and leadership clarity without control (and why Andy Stanley's volunteer story is the perfect example)
• What imprecise spiritual language is actually costing your church and why we use it when we're trying to be liked
• How moving faster than your organization can sustain destroys clarity and why stopping temporarily might be the wisest leadership move you make all year
• Why leaders raised in unstable environments often become crisis leaders and what it costs their teams when they stay there

Plus Jason gets honest about a resource he rushed to print that came out with missing page numbers, Jonathan reflects on what it felt like to panic on the basketball court when no one knew which basket to shoot for, and both of them make the case that the genius is usually already in the room... your job is to define the problem clearly enough to let it out.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 5 of Likable Leader, unpacking what it actually means to support and invest in the people you lead. Jason shares the story of implementing a scheduling change that caused 210 volunteers to quit overnight and what his pastoral team said to him in that moment that changed everything. Jonathan reflects on the difference between leaders who show up to inspect and leaders who show up to encourage, and why your team can feel the difference immediately.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the most overlooked form of support isn't resources... it's your visible presence at the right moment
• How to identify what actually motivates each person on your team (growth, community, autonomy, or purpose) and why you can't just ask them
• Why the leaders who get promoted are often the worst candidates for leadership and how to navigate that shift yourself
• How to show your team real movement toward vision, not just activity that looks like progress
• Why acknowledging lost yardage is just as important as celebrating wins and what happens when you don't
• The "blow it up" exercise that helps you reset your vision when you've been running on autopilot
• Why over-relying on your most committed volunteers is a quiet form of lazy leadership

Plus Jason makes the case that celebration through the lens of vision (not the lens of the leader) is one of the most powerful fuels a team can have, and Jonathan shares why sometimes the most supportive thing you can do is just show up.

Every church says they have a vision. Very few have one their team can actually act on. And when vision is vague, people don't just drift... they fill in the gaps with their own.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 4 of Likable Leader, unpacking what makes a vision compelling enough that people actually want to give their lives to it, not just show up and do their jobs. From ego-driven vision that quietly uses people to build a platform, to fake work that simulates progress without actually moving anything forward, this episode gets honest about why so many church leaders struggle to cast vision that sticks.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why vague mission statements like "love God, love people" leave your team filling in the gaps with their own vision and why that's a leadership problem, not a people problem
• The subtle but destructive difference between a vision for the church and a vision about the leader
• Why staff don't resent a leader's success... they resent feeling used to create it
• How uncertainty around vision is one of the most overlooked accelerators of church staff burnout
• What "fake work" is, why it's everywhere in church world, and how to stop creating it
• Why you don't have to pioneer the church's overall vision but you do have to be a participant in it
• The case for margin: why giving your team white space isn't laziness, it's one of the greatest gifts a leader can give

Plus Jonathan reflects on what it looks like when a church's support staff and senior pastor are clearly operating from two completely different visions, and Jason makes the case that vision leaks... and so does meaning.

Most leaders think they're good listeners. Most of them are wrong. And the gap between what you intend to communicate and what your team actually hears might be quietly costing you more followership than you realize.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 3 of Likable Leader, unpacking why the most likable leaders aren't necessarily the best speakers... they're the best listeners. From the airport PA system trick to the noise that's already drowning out your message, this one gets refreshingly practical about what great communication actually looks like in a church context.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why leaders often have a communication problem, not a people problem and how to tell the difference
• The listening statistics that should humble every church leader (only 8% of mid-level leaders are rated as good listeners by their teams)
• Six practical ways to actively listen that go way beyond just being quiet while someone else talks
• How "noise" – organizational chaos, staff transitions, conflict, emotional departures – distorts everything you say and how to navigate it
• Why your casual comments and facial expressions communicate just as loudly as your words
• The three-announcement rule from airport PA systems and why it applies directly to how you lead change
• Why slow leaders can actually calm an anxious team and how to know when to adjust your speed limit

Plus Jonathan gets honest about how he's had to learn to repeat back what his wife says just to realize he misunderstood her, and Jason reflects on what changed in his leadership when he stopped rushing to judgment and started assuming people are doing the best they can with what they're carrying.

Your team isn't afraid of your feedback. They're afraid of not knowing which version of you is going to show up today.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 2 of Likable Leader and reframe what integrity actually means for leaders. Forget the moral definition for a moment. The kind of integrity that builds followership is about consistency. Predictability. Being the same person on a hard Tuesday as you are on a great Sunday. And it turns out, that kind of integrity might be the greatest gift you can give your team.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "predictable" is actually one of the highest compliments a leader can receive
• How unpredictability, not workload, is one of the biggest hidden accelerators of team burnout
• The difference between being predictably likable and predictably unlikable and the false beliefs that drive each
• Why larger organizations and growing churches are especially vulnerable to leaders becoming callous without realizing it
• How your values create a filter for every decision you make and why the hierarchy matters more than the list
• Four questions to ask yourself before making any leadership decision
• Why your employees, not your mentor or spouse, are actually the least likely to tell you who you really are

Plus Jason gets candid about some of the most arrogant leaders he's encountered in 28 years of church work, Jonathan reflects on what it looks like when churches use "their reward is in heaven" as an excuse not to show appreciation, and both of them make the case that the closer you get to the center of a church, the kinder it should feel... not the opposite.

Nobody wants to admit they want to be liked. But what if likability isn't about feeding your ego... What if it's about whether people actually want to follow you?

Welcome to Season 4 of the Church Staff Book Club. Jonathan Malm and Jason Young are diving into their own book, Likable Leader, and right out of the gate they're wrestling with the title itself. Because "likable" sounds like something a people-pleaser cares about, not a serious leader. Except the research says otherwise. And so does every volunteer who ever quietly stopped showing up.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why likability has nothing to do with personality type and everything to do with consistent behavior
• The critical difference between being nice and being kind as well as why confusing them is quietly killing your team culture
• How the strongest leaders use kindness while holding people accountable
• Why the banking metaphor is the most honest picture of how trust actually works in leadership
• What "honor culture" gets wrong and why you shouldn't have to manufacture what should happen naturally
• Why people stay with leaders not because of competence but because of how they're consistently treated
• 7 simple questions to take inventory of your own likability right now

Plus Jonathan shares what it was like watching his brother lead a worship team with zero sugarcoating and total loyalty from everyone on it, why the sandwich feedback method is eroding trust faster than you think, and why being a chameleon leader is the fastest way to lose your kids.

After seven chapters on personal failure, John Maxwell finally turns the lens outward, and the implications for church leaders are significant. Because here's the thing: your team members probably aren't afraid of failing. They're afraid of you when they do.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 8 of How to Get a Return on Failure, exploring what it actually looks like to lead a team through failure, not just survive it yourself. Jonathan opens up about teaching his five-year-old to lose at chess, a team member who nervously brought him honest feedback, and why the phrase "they need to pay their dues" is one of the most insecurity-revealing things a leader can say. Jason reflects on what it was like to work for leaders who only ever talked about their wins and what that quietly communicated to everyone around them.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why higher-level leaders are often more okay with failure than lower-level ones
• How to create psychological safety before a failure happens, not after
• Why sharing only your wins quietly tells your team they're the only ones struggling
• The power of sharing the messy middle, not just the transformation story
• Why failure is an event, not a person and how to lead your team to actually believe that
• How closing the learning curve gap for others is one of the most powerful things a leader can do
• Why the relay race metaphor exposes what's wrong with most generational leadership in churches

Plus an honest conversation about why churches preach "no perfect people allowed" but rarely show anyone mid-struggle, and what that does to the people on your staff.

📥 Download the free Failure Debrief Tool at churchstaffbookclub.com

Not all failures are created equal. The question isn't just did it fail, it's whether it was a good miss or a bad miss. And knowing the difference might be the most important leadership skill you're not practicing.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 7 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell, unpacking how to evaluate whether a failure was worth attempting in the first place and what to do about it either way. From Saturday night services that never quite took off, to putting the wrong people in the wrong roles, to the tension between cutting your losses and staying faithful to a long-term vision... this one gets practical fast.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The 7 criteria Maxwell uses to determine if a failure was a good miss or a bad miss
• Why evaluating only the outcome of a failure misses the most important part of the picture
• The hole-in-the-street story and what it reveals about leaders who keep failing the same way
• Why good doers don't automatically make good leaders (and how misplacing people quietly kills ministries)
• How to know when to cut your losses versus when to stay the course and why there's no magic dividing line
• The danger of building a codependent ministry where "if they're okay, I'm okay"
• Why trying to do everything for everyone is quietly eclipsing the things your church actually does well

Plus Jonathan makes a sharp observation about churches holding on to people out of competition rather than calling, and Jason unpacks why the decisions you make before you launch something matter just as much as what happens after.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young unpack Chapter 6 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell, walking through Maxwell's practical "cycle of improvement" and making the case that it's not failure itself that makes you better, it's what you do with it. Jonathan opens up about his current season of experimenting with AI coding (including building a video game with Claude Code and a live display system for his coworking space). Jason gets honest about the temptation to make too many improvements all at once and why small, compounding tweaks almost always beat sweeping overhauls.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The 6-step cycle of improvement: test, fail, evaluate, learn, improve, and re-enter and where most leaders get stuck
• Why "evaluated experience" is a better teacher than experience alone
• The dangerous gap between learning a lesson and actually incorporating it
• How to know if you're operating with a fixed mindset or a growth mindset and why it determines everything
• Why the best churches don't chase growth. They pursue excellence until growth is demanded
• What Chick-fil-A's Truett Cathy has to say to every church obsessed with getting bigger
• Why re-entering after failure takes more courage than the original attempt and why it's non-negotiable

Plus Jonathan reflects on what it means to unlearn the wrong lessons from failure, and Jason drops a free tool (the Failure Debrief Loop) you can use with yourself and your team.

Download the free Failure Debrief Loop at churchstaffbookclub.com