Creative Bites

Jobs in the creative industry tend to be pretty high stress. They involve complicated work, tight deadlines, and high pressure clients looking for results. As you spend time in the industry, you develop skills to handle the stress, learn tactics to help get work done, and gain perspective that every emergency isn’t yours. As you excel in the execution, there is a good chance you’ll be given the opportunity to lead people.

People stress is different. All the tricks you learned to navigate projects and deadlines simply don’t apply. I’ve spent plenty of time stewing over behavioral decisions made by those that report to me. If they miss the mark, I stress about it. How can I help them improve? How do I challenge them well? Did this have a negative impact on the organization? Will I be on the hook for this?

Acknowledging that the stress is different is key to you being able to respond well to it. You can start identifying this even if you aren’t leading people.

This may seem like a silly realization, but for many years I thought of myself as the communication expert for the organization. I was hired into the communications role, therefore I was supposed to be the final authority on all things communication.

The problem, however, is that nearly everyone on a church staff is a communicator. Every department is broadcasting a message. It varies wildly, but emails are sent, volunteers are called, messages are preached, announcements are shared. There is an unfathomable amount of communication that happens. And it doesn’t all belong to you. In fact, I would argue that there is more communication happening outside of the Communications role than inside.

Once I realized this, my countenance changed dramatically. Rather than having to be the answer man that needed to do everything myself, I could shift my focus toward empowering and equipping others to grow in their ability to communicate. Now they could leverage something I didn’t haver in their communication - passion. I went from the sole communications person to one of many! What a refreshing change! 

You are surrounded by people that are much more similar than you think.

The communications role is uniquely positioned to see the little areas where those in your ministry lose sight of what they believe. They announce confidently that God is in charge, but they get frustrated when your promotional strategy isn't yielding the results they want.

Obviously we need to be doing our due diligence in our trade, but we also need to be modeling faith even in these little things.

Beware of how much you are willing to do to get people's attention. While major campaigns aren't always a bad thing, they can create an unsustainable pace. When you stop, people leave - often citing completely different reasons. 

There are times in ministry where you are the target audience for a product. While its great that companies are building products for ministry, the sales pitch rarely includes all the factors you need to consider when making a decision. Don't let the bells and whistles keep from looking at the bigger picture!

It doesn’t really matter how you feel about technology and innovation. It’s coming regardless of our opinion. But that doesn’t mean we should adopt every change that happens into our ministries. In fact, those that find themselves on the bleeding edge of adoption tend to spend a lot of money and time on things that ultimately don’t stick long term.

I’ve been through my fair share of battles around adopting specific innovation tools and I’ve learned that none of them are critical right out of the gate. The example of the race of our faith being a marathon versus a sprint is very important here.

Now, there isn’t anything wrong with integrating innovation quickly into your ministry, but there is something wrong with the communications leader (or any leader for that matter) sewing division over it. Regardless of where you stand on whatever the latest innovation is, it’s adoption needs to be filtered through the mission of the church. 

This is one of the areas where I see a lot of leadership opportunities for church communications leaders. Many innovations have the potential to be good or bad depending on how we understand them. I wrote Hashtag Wisdom in 2013 for this reason. I wanted to address the behavior that one could choose to exhibit on social media. You can represent Christ in that space if you choose to. You can also choose to sew division and hatred. The choice is yours. This is true with every innovation.

As the communications leader in your church, you have the opportunity to help your pastoral leadership see where culture is driving in these areas. Ultimately it’s up to your leadership to decide how to lead the congregation through whatever comes, but you have an opportunity to help shed light on how innovation can be used for kingdom work. The way you do that is by connecting the dots between innovation and purpose.

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​​For years I fought last minute projects. I asked for projects to be submitted two weeks early. Then three weeks. At one point I think I tried one month. Nothing was working and I was frustrated. Inadvertently, the only thing I was doing by asking for more time was making each request seem even later than it already was. 

I had created a doom loop of sorts. The only way the ministry teams could win with me is if they planned further out. But you know what my rules weren’t doing? Actually changing anything.

One day I walked into the office and I thought, “what if I designed a system that took reality into consideration”. That’s when everything changed.

Let’s just say you work in an environment where things don’t get to your desk until the last minute. Theoretically, of course. Rather than implementing rules that are trying to change the behavior of the entire staff in order to work with how you’d like to work, what if you accept that the team around you will be last minute? Would you build your system differently?

When I began considering other people's timelines as a constant rather than a variable, so much of the emotion and tension in my job shifted. I was no longer defensive when people came to me last minute. Instead, because my new process accounted for this sort of thing happening, I could lean in and problem solve. The relationships of me and my team improved dramatically, and we were more helpful to the ministry teams we were hired to serve.

Subscribe to the podcast: https://www.mcurtis.co/podcast
Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL53TW6HOlOFAxqem-bc8fETwjWcEjcMZ5

Effective communication moves people in a good direction for them, and it does so with integrity.

When you evaluate the effectiveness of your work, look closely at if people are moving. If they aren't, why not? Remember that you are not responsible for changing people's hearts and that you can't force movement.

Subscribe to the podcast: https://www.mcurtis.co/podcast
Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL53TW6HOlOFAxqem-bc8fETwjWcEjcMZ5

Join me this season on the Communicate on Purpose Podcast as I share lessons I've learned over the years serving in the communications role in the Church. 

Now that I've stepped out of a communications role in my career, I feel like I need to close the book on that chapter somehow. I began writing what may eventually turn into a book, but it doesn't feel like the right time to build that yet. First I want to work through the ideas with you. Welcome to season 3!

In this episode:
Curse of Knowledge article: https://hbr.org/2006/12/the-curse-of-knowledge

Subscribe to the podcast: https://www.mcurtis.co/podcast
Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL53TW6HOlOFAxqem-bc8fETwjWcEjcMZ5

This week I want to talk about how to handle other people’s problems.

As our world has been turned upside-down nearly over night, a lot of people are struggling. In a lot of ways we are experiencing an exaggerated response to change that has happened too quickly.

As we walk through this pandemic, we can learn a lot about how people respond to change. 

We can’t know all the different ways people respond to change. There are simply too many variables. But we can hone our ability to be compassionate. If you are going to lead effectively at any point, you’ll need to develop the ability to listen before you feel. 

A lot of people are being thrown in to tech.

• for a season, ministry is happening through tech
• facetime calls, zoom meetings, services streaming on weekends
• high discomfort for some
• learning new things is scary
• sometimes we can’t grasp it
• now the tool is the prohibitive element in our ability to minister meaningfully

For some, they feel that their ability to grasp tech will impact their ability to be safe.

• online shopping
• food delivery via apps

This is my native space. I see a million opportunities in this season. But that means I need to be extra sensitive to those who are scared.

This is like a water polo player jumping into a pool and feeling prepared to tread water for hours, while someone else in the pool doesn’t know how to swim.

Spend some time in your conversations focusing specifically on helping those who are afraid. Listen instead of judge. Be kind. 

If you can learn to listen to the people you serve with before you make a judgement as to why they are having a hard time, you will be the kind of leader people want to follow.