The Background
For most of my twelve years at my current church, I’ve worked with relatively loose oversight in a mid-sized congregation of about 150 people, supported by two full-time and five part-time staff. We lacked official policies, HR, and often clear job descriptions.
Over the past twelve years, we’ve partnered with Church Renewal (CR). If you’re unfamiliar, it’s not a traditional church growth strategy, though we’ve experienced numeric growth. It focuses on helping pastors and leaders abide in Christ faithfully and teach renewal practices to their congregations. This isn’t a pitch for CR, just context. During this time, we also moved to a larger facility and have grown to approximately 600 attendees on Sundays with an expanded staff, including four full-time and ten part-time members.
With this growth, leaders are now focusing on policies, procedures, and HR needs. Staff have updated job descriptions and clarified responsibilities. Recently, we discussed which events are mandatory for staff, pastoral staff, encouraged, or optional.
The Lesson
Before diving into the background, the main lesson I’ve learned is that advocating for yourself—especially as an introverted leader—is critical for thriving over the long haul. Don’t stay quiet and simply adapt; learning to voice your needs shapes a healthier work environment for everyone.
Why?
We don’t like confrontation and are often the lone dissenting voice in meetings, so we usually keep it to ourselves. We prefer to think out our responses, so if a topic arises unexpectedly, we haven’t had time to process. We want to analyze: Is making events mandatory reasonable? What will it cost personally?
The Answer
My doctoral research revealed that one of the key indicators of remaining healthy in leadership over the long haul is having an advocate, and often that means you need to advocate for yourself.
During that meeting, I held back my words while I processed my thoughts. I shared a little: like the fact that some of us do not work office hours, but are in the building already 3 nights, so that’s worth considering when we make events mandatory. It’s also different for employees with young children than it is for those who are empty-nesters.
After the meeting, I followed up with our senior pastor; actually, he followed up with me. And I had some time to reflect further on it. In the safety of a closed discussion with my pastor, I was able to better advocate for myself and others on staff who have different hours and home situations.
Why it works
There’s no audience to jump in and interrupt me or devalue my perspective. I’m sure that other staffers don’t mean to devalue my input, but when they quickly cut me off or tell me outright it’s not valid, it teaches me to speak less.
I’ve also had time to sort out my emotions so that I can share my thoughts free from the emotions that are negatively tied back to a past position. In my previous position, I was expected to put in over sixty hours every week as a minimum. They justified it by saying everyone volunteers, so pastors ought to give their forty paid hours and then volunteer above and beyond. I agree with this, but not to the tune of 20-30 hours a week.
Can you think of a time that you felt steamrolled in a meeting and frustrated? There are strategies to slow down meetings or, as in this instance, circle back later one-on-one to freely give thoughtful input.
The truth is, introverts are often more thoughtful and slower to respond, which means our feedback is often worth listening to. If you are an introvert, consider discussing with your leadership the possibility of slowing down meetings. Help them to understand your need for space in the meeting to process before sharing. Help them pay attention to not only the quantity of words shared at meetings, but also the quality. Request an agenda in advance so you can prepare your thoughts before the meeting. Ask for follow up meetings; they don’t have to be long, but just take the opportunity to debrief quickly when necessary.
If you are an extroverted leader, intentionally create space for introverts to share by inviting their input, encouraging reflection, and following up for their feedback. Actively choose to foster a culture where all voices are valued.
The Introverted Pastor 