7 Keys To Finishing Well At Your Current Job
Our church family is doing a brand new teaching series called T.G.I.M (Thank God It's Monday.) We're talking all about navigating life at work. Ultimately our work is worship and we really don't work for "them", we work for "Him." A few years ago, I read Axiom by Bill Hybels and learned a great deal about not just expecting your staff to transition well, but actually training them to transition well.
Here are a few thoughts I gleaned from Bill and the Willow Creek Community Church Team and passed along to our core staff members.
Each of us must embrace the fact that our lives must be lived out in seasons.
Tony Morgan, an effective leadership coach in the Body of Christ says, “If the change is easy, you’re probably not changing enough. Change, even the best kind of change, will always generate some measure of fear and danger and sadness. Organizations that don’t change die.”
The same is true of people.
When we're through changing, we're simply through.
Here is what I read to our staff that morning in the conference room,
"Let’s resolve in our hearts to cultivate a common value that understands it is not a matter of “if” each of us will at some point transition on to new seasons in life but a matter of “how” we will make those transitions." (Bill Hybels)
7 Keys to Finishing Well:
- Finishing well means telling your direct report when you sense restlessness creeping in. Choose vulnerability and trust over isolation and fear.
- Finishing well means having honest “tunnel of chaos” conversations with your supervisor when you are feeling frustrated. Let your frustrations travel “up”, not “down” or “sideways”.
- Finishing well means that if you secure employment arrangements with another organization, you stick with this ministry family until it is appropriate to go.
- Finishing well means engaging with your direct report in crafting a reasonable transition plan so you don’t leave a gaping hole during a very critical season.
- Finishing well means that you help explain to your teams and those closely connected to you why you’re leaving in a constructive way so as to avoid sowing confusion or hurt that can only reap conjecture, false stories, or wounding for the rest of the team to clean up afterwards. (this one is HUGE!)
- Finishing well means that you allow your team members to honor you well as you prepare to cross your personal “finish line.” (this one is also really BIG! Letting people honor you is just as much for THEM as it is for you!)
- Finishing well means you work diligently until the final sixty seconds of your employment.
Finishing well means you do everything you can do to leave a positive, life-giving example so that your legacy is a God-glorying one. Whether you work in the business sector, or for a non profit or own your own company, the way we finish is even more important than the way we started!
If possible, don't leave ANY residue of resentment. Do to your employer what you would want someone to do for you.
It's never "just a job."
We are working for far more than a just a future referral. Our goal is not just to leave without flipping out on people and having a youtube video of us blowing a gasket in the office go viral:)
Our reputation is up for grabs. And for many of us that means so is God's!
Jesus taught, "Let your light shine before men so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:16)
When it's my time I want to finish well. I want you to finish well. It's not a matter of IF we'll someday transition out of our current job but HOW we'll transition out.
Which of the 7 Keys have you struggled most with in previous job transitions?
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