MANAGING YOUR MINISTRY LIFE: DIRECT REPORTS (1 of 3)

Recently, I got this e-mail:

Brian, 

I saw that your role seems similar to the one I am serving in.  I'm wondering if I could ask you three questions: 

1.  What are you doing to develop your direct reports?
2.  How do you budget your time, or what does the average week look like for you?
3.  Whats your strategy to keep up with email?

So, incase you and I both share similar worlds or maybe you're just morbidly curious what I said, here's my answers to his questions.  I initially had this all in one post, but it was getting to long so I decided to go ahead and break it into three, but I posted them all today.

By no means do I have this all figured out, but here's what I do.  Hopefully one of them is somewhat helpful to you.  Feel free to share what you do in the comments.

First up:

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO DEVELOP YOUR DIRECT REPORTS? 

Meet directly:  On a personal level, I do my best to encourage them, ask how they are doing, be available, and speak into them as the need arises. Specifically, I meet with my high school paid staff weekly, my direct report team leaders twice a month, and the rest on a monthly level since they are "direct reports" to someone else on my team primarily.  Then in addition to that, about 2x a year we get together for a 1/2 day of team building and dreaming as a "Generation Team".

Local ministry training:  In terms of specific training and development, from time to time I take my team to local ministry training events.  We don't have the budget or funds to send our team across the country to tons of conferences, but we do try and seize the local opportunities that come our way.  Whenever we can get together as a team and go to a training that fits our budget, schedule, and aligns with our ministry, I try and make it happen.

As a church, we send all our paid staff and many from our congregation to the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit annually in August since we host that as well.