Church Staff Book Club

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

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 5 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell and get surprisingly personal doing it. Jason opens up about navigating a genuinely heavy season in real time. Jonathan reflects on what getting fired, building a business, and supporting his wife through her darkest season all happening simultaneously actually produced in him. And both of them wrestle with the question every church leader eventually has to answer: are you running from God, or running to Him?

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why your brain is literally wired to avoid difficult, and how to work against that instinct
• The dangerous trap of praying for growth while avoiding the very process that produces it
• How playing it safe as a leader doesn't just limit you, it limits everyone on your team
• Why the leader who pursues hard builds capacity that comfort simply cannot produce
• What Netflix, Blockbuster, and COVID all have to say about ministry resilience
• How to lead from underneath a difficult boss in a way that pays dividends for years
• The difference between being Job and being Jonah

Plus, Jonathan and Jason make the case that the hard season you're tempted to escape right now might be the one that defines your leadership forever.

Every leader fails. The question isn't whether it'll happen. It's what you do in the moments after. Do you get bitter, or do you get better?

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 4 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell, unpacking how failure can become one of the most powerful tools in your leadership development... if you know how to use it. Jason gets refreshingly honest about a leadership experience that went sideways just days before recording, and Jonathan reflects on why the pressure to perform actually grows the more successful you become.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why your response to failure says more about you than the failure itself
• How to ask the right questions after a setback so you actually grow from it
• Why the same failure that hardens some leaders softens others and how to make sure you're in the right camp
• The trap of posturing at conferences (and why the most desperate people in the room often learn the most)
• How building resilience through failure actually makes you irreplaceable over time
• Why pain and failure by themselves don't produce growth and what actually does
• How to shift from being the person doing the cool things to being the person equipping the people doing the cool things

Plus a surprisingly rich detour through Pharaoh's hardened heart, Erasmus, and what clay and wax have to do with your next leadership setback.

Failure is hard enough on its own. But when ego gets involved, it can take a setback and turn it into a full identity crisis. This chapter is about getting out of your own way.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 3 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell: "Get Over Failure by Getting Over Yourself." Because sometimes the hardest thing to recover from isn't the failure itself. It's the story you tell yourself about it.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why ego makes failure more damaging than it needs to be
• The subtle difference between "I failed" and "I am a failure" and why it matters
• Jonathan's simple prayer before speaking that changed everything
• Five filtering questions for deciding whose criticism is actually worth listening to
• Why defensiveness is where growth ends
• How to become comfortable with rejection (even if you hate it)
• Why most "rejections" aren't actually about you at all
• The role of humor in recovering from mistakes and what it reveals about security
• Why ministry leaders are exhausted from protecting an image that may not even exist
• Progress over perfection: why your 40s, 50s, and 60s may be your best years yet

📖 We're Reading: How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell Follow along chapter by chapter with us!

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:

"When you're 20, you care about what everyone thinks. When you're 60, you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place."

"The sooner you stop fearing rejection, the sooner you can become unstoppable."

"You can't be a leader and focus on yourself."

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Subscribe so you never miss a chapter

Grab How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell and read along with us

We talk a lot about learning from failure. But what about success? It might be quietly doing more damage than you think.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 2 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell. The big idea: success and failure don't belong in isolation, and when we treat them that way, both become dangerous.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why success can deceive you just as much as failure can discourage you
• The danger of "I am a success" vs. "I am a failure" and why both are wrong
• Why the most successful people are sometimes the worst ones to write the book
• How repeated success quietly causes you to misalign your values and your why
• Why churches struggle to define success and how failure helps realign it
• The importance of doing an autopsy on your wins, not just your losses
• Jonathan's story: the tuxedo skit that nobody learned anything from
• Jason's honest confession: falling into the identity trap with book reviews
• Two practical tools to evaluate success and failure: Five Whys and Kaizen
• The quarterly journal idea for tracking your team's progress like a scoreboard

📖 We're Reading: How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell Follow along chapter by chapter with us!

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:
"I am a success is just as dangerous as I am a failure."
"Success can inflate your ego. Failure attacks it. How do you live inside both?"
A bad day doesn't make you a bad leader."

🛠 Free Tools Coming: Jonathan and Jason are building individual and team debriefing tools based on this conversation. Download them at churchstaffbookclub.com

🔗 Connect & Subscribe:

Follow us on social media and join the conversation
Subscribe so you never miss a chapter
Grab How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell and read along with us