00;00;00;00 - 00;00;02;02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Six months into leading this 00;00;02;02 - 00;00;04;00 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry team, I realized 00;00;04;02 - 00;00;05;22 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry something uncomfortable. 00;00;05;25 - 00;00;11;29 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry You can be good at ministry, but that is not automatically mean you're good at leading people. 00;00;12;03 - 00;00;15;27 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry In this video, I want to share with you the mistakes I've made in my first 00;00;15;29 - 00;00;23;21 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry six months in leadership, in the new position that I have and some things that I would definitely be doing differently. 00;00;23;23 - 00;00;27;04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Welcome, everybody, to the hybrid ministry show. 00;00;27;07 - 00;00;43;19 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Well hey everyone, welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. If you and I have had a chance to meet you. My name is Nick Clason and in this podcast exists primarily to talk about digital ministry and making discipleship online a little bit easier. But in this episode, I want to talk about a major shift that's actually happened in my life. 00;00;43;19 - 00;01;10;27 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And this might actually be one of the more emotional or even like real episodes because, I moved here three years ago to work for a guy who one of my great friends, his name is Darren, and he was an amazing boss, best boss I ever had. Now, listen, let's be honest. There's always times where I felt like I could do something better or different, but I had really learned to love and kind of settle into my role, getting things done and being a worker, for him. 00;01;10;27 - 00;01;26;25 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And, the one of the things I loved about Darren, too, is that he believed in me and he trusted me, and he gave me a lot of leash to make major student ministry decisions. And so I didn't feel like I was just his right. Him or his minion. But I really felt like I got a good opportunity at leadership. 00;01;26;27 - 00;01;51;06 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Fast forward to about six months ago. He chose to step away and move to a different church. And in that transition, church very like, honorably and lovingly came to me and said, you're our number one choice. You're our guy. You want his job. And it was like a no brainer. I was like, absolutely. And in the time, you know, you got to understand, he had been doing a second job at our church, as the pastor of staff development. 00;01;51;06 - 00;02;07;12 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so during that season, I assumed and took on quite a bit of leadership opportunities. And so I figured this wouldn't be that big a deal. All that was really going to happen was I was going to move to his old office. And then I was just going to keep kind of doing what I was doing. But man, oh man, was I wrong. 00;02;07;12 - 00;02;30;03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Man was there. So, so many changes and so many differences. Assuming that new leadership hat and that new leadership seat. And in this episode, I want to talk through three things that I've learned. What I thought, what happened, what I did, and what the actual, learning is out of that. So let's dive in to the first leadership mistake. 00;02;30;05 - 00;02;53;27 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So mistake number one is that the time battle was lost. But in a lot of cases for me, the time battle was lost by someone else. Here's what I thought. I thought I'm the boss. I'm the supervisor. I'm the manager. Now I get to not only make the decisions, but I get to help oversee people and point them in the right direction and in some cases, in the ugliest parts of my heart, I get to tell them what to do. 00;02;53;29 - 00;03;14;11 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But here's what happened is that I was expecting to still do all of the same work that I was doing before, or all of the same work that was at least desired by me to do before. For example, continuing on this Side Hustle podcast that I don't get a lot of revenue or money from. But, you know, one way that you could really help hit that like or subscribe button down below that would really make a huge difference. 00;03;14;11 - 00;03;39;26 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But well, then adding in anywhere from 5 to 8 new meetings per month. Let me just give you an example. Last week, I was expected to sit down with a future potential residency candidate. I had done that before. That wasn't that big a deal. Darren gave me a lot of opportunities to do stuff like that, and I was getting ready to leave town that day and so my day was mapped out. 00;03;39;26 - 00;04;01;25 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I was doing some podcast stuff. I was doing some, social media stuff for our, our ministry. And I had a couple meetings to kind of in my day at like one, 1 to 2 and then 2 to 3. And then, someone said, hey, we have to have a recap meeting for this big winter retreat event that you just had. 00;04;01;28 - 00;04;18;02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry We had already had a meeting. Me and the person in the meeting had already discussed it, but like, well, no, we have to have it in this way with these people. And so I was like, well, if we want to have it before I leave town, we got to do it now. So another meeting gets stacked on to the end of my day. 00;04;18;02 - 00;04;38;15 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And I'm not a big meeting guy like I don't, I don't mind them, but they don't bring me a lot of energy. I would rather do the work decided in the meeting, then have a meeting where we sit down and think and talk about work. And so what I've learned is that the promotion often just means that more people have certain demands on my time. 00;04;38;17 - 00;05;03;03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so the advice I would give if you've never checked it out, check out Time boss. It was created by a guy named Andrew, and Andrew actually used to be on staff over at Download Youth Ministry, but now he stepped away from do. I am to go work on time boss full time? And I'm not joking when I tell you that when I implement and institute the principles that I've learned from time boss, I am an absolute master of my time. 00;05;03;03 - 00;05;30;02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Especially when you're in a situation like I'm in now, where other people are dictating my calendar and other people are telling me meetings that I have to go to, that I don't get to say to, avoid or not be part of. And so if you choose to manage your time, then when other people step in and give you, give you required meetings, you can either let them manage your time or you can manage your time before they come to you. 00;05;30;02 - 00;05;55;12 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry The choice is yours. But that's one of the things I've had to become a master and a boss of my time. Mistake number two is that you can't communicate without communicating. I feel like my wife right in this new season of life, because what I thought was that when I communicated something, people understood the full picture of what I was saying. 00;05;55;15 - 00;06;20;05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But what I've learned is that people can't actually read my mind. I can communicate, but just because I've said words doesn't mean that they're understanding it. The exact same way that I'm thinking that they're understanding it. And so people did, in fact, not read my mind. Like, let me give you an example. I delegated a task where I required us to get three clips out of opus AI, which is an amazing tool for your social media. 00;06;20;05 - 00;06;45;09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry You can check out the link down below if you're interested in that. It literally saves me and our team hundreds of hours a week, but, I would save three opus clips per week out of each of our messages. Well, when I ask someone to do opus clips, they started saving two instead of three. Small miscommunication, but one that I then had a decision to make when I went and I noticed that there weren't enough. 00;06;45;11 - 00;07;04;03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Do I say something or do I let it go right? Or hey, this is the what the expected, word count needs to be when you get in front of a camera and when they come in and there's more words than what were expected, I had to say, well, here's why the word count matters from time standpoint on YouTube and all these types of things. 00;07;04;06 - 00;07;24;13 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Or when I said, hey, I like all of these events to be planned during the day and I come back. And my team had made one event planned to be happening at night in the evening. Again, not a big deal, but we just had to come around and I had said something and they didn't think it was that big of a deal, or they didn't listen to it, or they chose to override it or whatever the reason might be. 00;07;24;15 - 00;07;42;10 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Or when I said, hey, let's get some hot chocolate for this event. And I go to the back and I see, my resident, my intern making hot chocolate, using the hot water from a small tea kettle, trying to fill up in a five gallon, water jug, bucket. Like, that's just not going to cut it. It's not fast enough. 00;07;42;10 - 00;08;07;15 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And there's a million other ways to get to it. But so when I said make hot chocolate, I thought this was the assumed path to make hot chocolate in our youth ministry, at our church, in our space, they heard make hot chocolate. And to their credit, they were resourceful to figure out a way to do it. But to their disadvantage, they were using some of those incredibly slow and the event had already started and they were stuck in the back, still making hot chocolate because the tea kettle wasn't keeping up. 00;08;07;21 - 00;08;28;07 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry What I've learned is that I have to over communicate, and when I think I've communicated 100% of it, I've maybe only effectively communicated 60% of it. I was talking to a friend of mine. He's, youth volunteer for me. He owns his own business. And I was talking to him about this, and he said, this happens to me all the time. 00;08;28;07 - 00;08;44;01 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so it made me really frustrated, to be completely honest, because I would say things, I would communicate things. I'd write them down and put them in tasks. And only a certain percentage of the task was getting completed or adhered to or listened to. And he just said, this is a very normal thing with people who are working for you. 00;08;44;01 - 00;09;06;09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So my advice, especially to myself and to you, I'm a perfectionist. I'm an Enneagram one. Don't expect perfection. Be able to roll with the punches and continue to circle back and Overcommunicate and overcommunicate. Mistake number three and this one might be the toughest one, honestly, is that I feel like I lost some of my passion for youth ministry. 00;09;06;09 - 00;09;21;13 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And here's what I thought. I thought, I'm going to step into this new role, and I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. And while I'm doing what I'm doing, and now I get to be in charge, how great is that? What happened was I shifted from more of a doer of the ministry to more of a manager. 00;09;21;13 - 00;09;44;05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So last fall, for example, I had fully handed off programing to one of my associates who's in charge of all programing, like service orders, all that type of stuff. And then another, couple people on our team were in charge of a Friendsgiving for, the community like, outreach event drive, like a canned food drive kind of thing that we're, pulling together in our student ministry. 00;09;44;05 - 00;10;11;04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And then one person was in charge of the Friendsgiving event that we had, and they had two of them collaborate and work together. And then two other people were in charge of our costume party. And so I remember stepping back and thinking to myself, the only thing I'm doing here is managing these people. They're the ones that are like fully running, planning, executing and making these events all have traction getting off the ground. 00;10;11;07 - 00;10;31;06 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And you know, everything that needed to happen in these event spaces. And I found myself like a little bit sitting around kind of like twiddling my thumbs, like, what am I supposed to do? Well, I learned is I and I already knew this about myself, but what I learned was I found myself in my working frustration. As Patrick Clancy only talks about it. 00;10;31;06 - 00;11;06;20 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry He has a working widget with six different wheels, and I determined and discovered that my strength was invention and tenacity, and I knew that my frustration was enablement and galvanizing. So kind of rah rah and cheerleading. The team and helping make them, like, get excited around an idea. And so I had shifted out of my strength invention one like creating something out of wonder and tenacity, bringing that invention across the finish line, and then handing that over to my team and trying to encourage them to bring it across the finish line. 00;11;06;26 - 00;11;28;05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And when they're having a tough time getting across the finish line, they're having a tough time articulating their ideas. I was also having an equally tough time because I couldn't. I was feeling like I wasn't successfully getting those things accomplished and across the finish line. So the advice I took something back that I loved. I took back programing. 00;11;28;08 - 00;11;46;15 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I was like, I need to do something in this job where I get to invent and I get to take it across the finish line, because if not, I'm just going to sit here and I'm just going to watch all of you guys do it. Part of my job is development, and I don't mind it, but it does shift me away from a passion point into something that I don't get to do as much. 00;11;46;15 - 00;12;02;21 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And I felt really bad and I felt really guilty for doing it. But, I mean, here's the thing. Like, I love programing and I love creating something. In fact, I love it so much. I have a podcast dedicated to creative programing. It's a weekly bonus podcast, and I just walk you through what our youth ministry does every single week. 00;12;02;21 - 00;12;22;18 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I'd love for you to take a look at it. There's a seven day free trial link down below. It's called Hybrid Heroes. It's part of Patreon membership tier and you get a weekly bonus podcast every single Monday morning that details, recaps, and outlines our last week of social media and our last week of creative programing. In addition to that, everything I put on my store, that costs money. 00;12;22;20 - 00;12;40;17 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry It costs money to other people, but it's free to hybrid here. So $4 a month is less than the cost of a cup of coffee. It's $48 per year. If you have like a professional, or personal development budget line. Like you can charge to that if you don't feel comfortable doing that. I don't have enough money for that. 00;12;40;19 - 00;13;00;11 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Get one cup of coffee from your office, from home, and then skip Starbucks for just one time, and it will cover the cost of that. But that's what I did. And I'm just going to be completely honest for you. This last season has been a really hard season for me. I was confused by it because I thought I knew what I was doing. 00;13;00;11 - 00;13;20;18 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I've been in youth ministry for a long time already. But growth doesn't happen when you're coasting, right? And no matter what you're doing and no matter what area you're growing in and learning in, whether it's growing in management skills like I am or whether it's trying to grow in areas like social media, when you put yourself in uncomfortable situations, it can feel difficult, right? 00;13;20;18 - 00;13;32;04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But the only way to get to the other side, the only way to truly experience growth, is to go through it. So stick with it. Rooting you on, encouraging you. Don't forget my friends and as always, stay hybrid.