Recruiting

It is everyone's job at CTK to deploy leaders. We are not in the church planting business. We are not in the church growth business. We are not in the multi-site business. We are in the leader deployment business. We identify, deploy, train and support leaders. How do we do this? The following except from The Leadership Engine gives us some tips:

[Service Master has a four-step methodology for teaching: (1) Prepare the learner. (2) Show the learner. (3) Have the learner show you. (4) Coach. It applies to values as well as skills. The leaders who thoroughly understand and believe in the values not only tell them to newcomers, but demonstrate them and quickly put the learners in real-life situations where they need to apply them. Then the teachers help the learners improve their performance. It’s a powerful teaching tool that helps assure that the values permeate the organization from top to bottom.

Phil Myers was working nights as a janitor in an operating room in Indianapolis when his meticulous work attracted the attention of his supervisor, Chris Kinman. Kinman, who worked for Service Master, although Myers did not, began to give Myers more responsibility. Then one night he gave Myers the Service Master manager’s manual and asked him to read it. Myers, who still seems hyperactive after twenty-one years at Service Master, wasn’t much of a reader, so he just skimmed it. Because he worked the night shift from 10:00 PM until 6:00 AM, Myers only saw Kinman and the other Service Master managers for one hour each day, before they went home at 11:00 PM, but Kinman sought him out and made the most of the limited time. “Chris and I got to know each other,” said Myers. He would ask things like, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Six or seven months after that, I had the opportunity to become an evening supervisor for him.” The opportunity frightened Myers because “I was a twenty-one-year-old kid about to step into a role of people who were old enough to be my parents if not my grandparents. I had no formal education. I had taken some classes and was going to college, but had no degree….I was scared to death. I had led some people my own age in the Air Force, but now I was going to lead twenty people.” But Kinman encouraged him. “I can remember that feeling [of fear]. But Chris put confidence in me. ‘You tell me that you want to succeed, I’ll see to it that you do not fail. Just keep trying, and you will not fail,’” Kinman told Myers.]



From the article above, what are the three most significant phrases that need to be underlined?

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At CTK our leadership development process is Identify, Deploy, Train and Support (IDTS). This is a different sequence than what is found in many churches (ITDS) where individuals are not deployed until they have received extensive training. Similar to Service Master, we deploy first, then train. Not only are we able to rapidly put leaders in the battle this way, but we find that the learner is more “teachable” when they are actually putting their knowledge to use in real time. Obviously there is a minimal amount of assessment and orientation that precedes deployment. But we certainly don’t think a leader needs to know all the answers before they get in the game. We just want them to be relationally connected to fellow-learners and mentors.