How do I get my team to respond to communication?

Alex |

Hey, Alexand here from worship ministry training. And part of the Worship Ministry Training Academy is live weekly coaching calls, where students in the academy get to spend an hour and a half on a vehicle with me every week asking questions as they pertain to their specific ministry. And so the episode you’re about to hear is a snippet from one of our recent weekly coaching calls. And if you’d like to join the coaching calls and join the academy, you can try the entire academy. Not just the coaching calls, but also all the courses and all the resources and the live monthly workshops for just $1 for the first 15 days, you can go to worship ministry training.com, and I’d love to see you on our next coaching call. If not, that’s okay. Enjoy this free podcast episode, and I’ll talk to you at the end.

Kenei |

The biggest trouble I have is, I guess for so long, we haven’t really had a consistent communication style. And so my issue is people, like, not responding in a timely fashion or ignore the emails. We use band group, and I post pretty much on there, and I see people get the notifications. They just don’t respond. Yeah, so I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that, of how I can have good communication with my team.

Alex |

Yes, I’ll be real with you, man. It is the bane of our day. I mean, my team and people I communicate with. I think everybody is so inundated with notifications and distractions that they can’t keep track and they can’t reply. I wish there was a lawn we could wave and make people responsive. But from COVID on, it’s like, everybody became irresponsible. I’m not even kidding. Like, everybody just became more irresponsible after COVID and less responsive, more overwhelmed, more distracted. And I really think that there’s so much on here that things and pings. I was on the plane getting off the plane from Chicago, and I was watching the people. Like, we were standing, waiting to get out, and I’m watching people use their phones, and one guy was, like, faster than I’ve ever seen anyone jumping between four or five different text message threads. Another guy was bouncing between four or five different apps, like checked Instagram, check Snapchat, check this. And then, like, this other lady was, like, going through email and just delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, like, super fast. Just deleting, like, so many emails from her inbox. And then I’m just looking at all the emails in her inbox, and it was all just, like, spam.

Alex |

And I’m like, this is what we have to try to get people’s attention through. No wonder nobody’s responding anymore. And so I guess my encouragement would be, don’t feel discouraged because it’s kind of, like, happening to all of us. But the other encouragement would be, just do the next right thing, which is, hey, guys, I know you guys see the messages because it shows me that you read it, but if I ask for a response, could you please try to respond within 24 hours and just set that expectation? You know, one of the onboarding documents that I have in the academy that you guys can have, like, it’s part of the onboarding template is like a good team member, like what’s expected of you. And one of them is communication. Like they’re all C’s, right? Character, craft, whatever. I can’t commitment, I can’t remember them all. And one of them is communication. And it’s like being part of this team means you need to respond when I ask you to. Now if you’re not asking them to, then they’re probably just like, well, he didn’t say I need to respond, but if you’re like, hey, and I’ll actually put in the email subject line or wherever, I’ll be like, please read and respond by end of day or whatever.

Alex |

And then you just like, make the rule if it says that I need you guys to do that and then follow up with them afterwards if they didn’t. Hey, remember we talked about that, please. It really helps this team run smoothly and always give the why for the what. Like, I’m asking you to do this because it helps the team run smoothly and we all have more fun at rehearsal because we’re not stressed out. Right, so those will be my thoughts on that.

Kenei |

Okay.

Alex |

But I’m open to any other pushback.

Kenei |

I think part of it is they’re stuck with the old way where it was more ragtag and I find myself when they aren’t responding, I would just message them directly and that probably isn’t helping because then they just expect me to do that from now on.

Alex |

Right? Yes. I actually have a group communication course in the academy. It’s only three lessons, so if you have time, watch it at two X speed and just get through it in 40 minutes. Maybe you’ve already watched it.

Kenei |

It’s probably one of the first ones I watched. I should probably watch it again.

Alex |

Yeah, but exactly what you said is right. If you always make it easy for them to ignore the primary message, then they will do that because they’re like, oh, Kenny is just going to send me a private text anyway to tell me what he needed to tell me. Right, so you want to train them to go to the that’s why I haven’t been sending emails in the platform about the platform. Even though people read their emails and then they come to the platform, I’m trying to just post the Monday morning updates in the platform so they get used to going to the platform. But tomorrow I’m probably going to email them to tell them, by the way, every Monday night we have coaching calls because I haven’t sent an email about it, but I’m trying to make the platform the primary place where they go. But sometimes I’ll kick around an email to push them back to the primary place where they need to go. So anyway, it’s hard, dude. It’s hard. I mean, building the platform is pretty much like building a team. So we’re all doing this together, right? So, yeah, I would just try to push them.

Alex |

Here’s what you could do too, Kenny. You could post your thing in band and then whoever doesn’t read it, just be like, hey, I’m not going to do this forever, but I just wanted you to know that there’s a message in the platform. Don’t tell them what the message is in the text. Tell them to go to the platform. So you’re training them to use where you want them to be and also tell them, I’m not going to do this forever with you about telling you to go read it, but I’m just trying to nudge you in the right direction just so that you get used to doing this. So I don’t know. Those are some thoughts. Okay, great question. That one was podcast worthy. Cool.

Kenei |

Very relatable.

Alex |

Yes. And we’re all in it with you, man. I don’t know. Derek, do you feel that way? Like, people aren’t responding?

Derek |

Oh, yeah. So we’re having this team meeting. I created a registration. I sent an email saying with the link, go to this. If you can’t make it, just let me know. Or you can reply to it. You can reply to the email, click the link. I’ve tried to create, like, multiple ways. I had ten of the 30 possible people reply. So then today I sent another email. I did get some people, actually. Oh, yeah, I meant it. So people do not respond even in planning center when we use that. My goodness. It’s like, I’ll have a bass player on Saturday night, say, available now for Sunday. And if it happens to me, I don’t care. I’ll go with my acoustic call by myself. It doesn’t bother me. But if I set a more junior worship leader up, I’m trying to give them the best tools and the better team, and that person letting them down, that’s where it bugs me. It’s an ongoing battle. I haven’t figured it out yet. I thought bigger stick, but that’s not the answer. I haven’t tried it, but I thought about it.

Alex |

It really has gotten worse since COVID I’m just being real. Yeah. We actually stopped using our primary communication platform because people were so over it. Like, during COVID they just got screened out. And then our primary communication platform became sort of like the bane of their existence and they were like, really not wanting to use it. So we actually just cut it completely. It was banned, the banned app. We cut it completely because we were like, they hate it so much that we need to figure out a different way to communicate with them. So we went to texting because texts have like a 97% open rate emails only have a 20% open rate on average. So texts, we use Planning Center now to text people the information if they’re on a team or we’ll add them all to a team, or you can select your whole team and send a message. So we’ve been doing text because it does get more response, but it has gotten harder. So I just don’t want you to be too discouraged with yourself. But like anything in life, just keep doing the right thing, right? And recently when did we talk about this?

Alex |

Was this last week’s coaching call? But I don’t know when I talked about this with somebody. But there’s basically like an inner core circle that you want to focus on. And then there’s a lot of people who will always be kind of like further rungs out from the center and they’re going to be less compliant and do less of what you want them to do than the people closer to the inner orbit of the circle. And my encouragement is always focus on the inner orbit of the circle, the people who are actually showing up, the people who are actually doing things that you want and make that really strong and try to build that and grow that because that is your cultural core. And then from there, you have the outer rungs of people, and then the outer runs of people will hopefully kind of get more sucked into the center orbit with time as the mass of the center gets bigger. I’m getting too astrophysical here, but yeah, I just think that focus on those people are doing the right thing for your team. Talking about telling them what they need to do, keep reminding them, keep loving them, keep telling them what you’re expecting of them and lovingly have those conversations on the side with them.

Alex |

And just keep doing that, because eventually you’ll get the core. And the core will get they’ll get it. They’ll get what you want. And then the people on the outer runs will get swept into the center a little bit more easily. So anyway, those are just some thoughts, but basically keep at it. All right? Hope this episode helped you, encouraged you, spurred you on in your ministry. If it did, please help us by forwarding it on to a friend. It’s no secret that podcasts grow when people share it by word of mouth. So just take a minute, text it to someone, or do a screenshot and share it on your social media. If this podcast is helping you, we would love for you to also, if you want to join us inside of the academy and join these live weekly coaching calls, you can try out the entire academy for just $1 by going Towershipinistrytraining.com. All right, I hope to see you inside the academy. Otherwise, I’ll see you at the next episode.