Right Person, Wrong Seat

Some of the most confusing leadership moments often come from working with very, very good people. They're faithful, they're committed, they've got strong character. They're trying really, really hard. But sometimes with these good people, the results just aren't there. And sometimes you don't know why. And oftentimes it's not a people problem, it's not a motivation problem. What you have is a placement problem. You have the right person, but sometimes the right person is in the wrong seat.

Now, what makes this challenging is that they're the right person, in other words, they're like a good person, they're very, very capable and perhaps they were great at their previous role. And so it's confusing as to why they're struggling in their current role. They're smart, they're talented, they're dedicated, but they can't seem to get traction or momentum. And so you look on and you care for them and you're trying to figure it out because they're talented and they love the mission. But you have to remember, someone can be all-in and still struggle in the role.

So some of you, as we get into this, you might be thinking, "Okay, but like I don't have a big staff." What I wanna do is be clear. You will face this problem. It applies to small teams, it applies to volunteers. It could even be working with a board or your contractors. And if I can just be really direct, sometimes it even applies to yourself. Right person, wrong seat. And there are two common mistakes that we're gonna start with. Then we're gonna dive in really, really deep. The two common mistakes is we confuse loyalty with fit. And we assume effort will fix misalignment. Let's talk about that for a moment. We confuse loyalty with fit. Because they're loyal people and we like them, we tend to think that they've gotta fit in the role. Or we assume if we all just try harder, I coach them better, they give a little more effort, that effort will fix misalignment. Unfortunately, these things generally aren't true. And because we care about someone that might be the right person in the wrong seat, we tend to give them more time, more coaching, hoping that the coaching will help them get better. But we have to remember, better coaching won't solve a bad fit.

So if you think you might have this going on with a volunteer or with your assistant or such, what I want you to do is just assess the situation and we're gonna start with the big qualities. And you're gonna ask, is this a person of character? Are they capable? Do they have a good attitude? Do they care? Are they engaged? Do they have a a solid work ethic? And hopefully yes on all those or they probably shouldn't be on your team. So if the answer is yes, you have the qualities that should make a good team member. Remember, it's really hard to replace good people. So your goal is not just to get rid of that person if they're not succeeding, your goal is to help them win, help them succeed and help them thrive either where they are or maybe you need to change some scenarios to help them be successful.

So you've got a good person but not a great outcome. What's the problem? Let's talk about four distinct possibilities and we're gonna dive into each one specifically. The first one is maybe you have the right person, but they're in the wrong seat. Another possibility is you have the right person, but the wrong pairing. And I'll go into detail about what that means. A third possibility is you have the right person, but they're under the wrong boss or under the wrong leader. A fourth situation could be you have the right person but the wrong season. Let's talk about these.

Let's start with the the right person and wrong seat. Gotta take a drink because this could get hot. Okay? It could be a volunteer that's leading people, but they're not really personal and warm. They should be overseeing systems. Or it could be someone who's an administrative-type leader, but you've got them doing creative work or you got a visionary stuck managing the details. Right person, wrong seat. If you recognize someone's in the wrong seat, the first instinct is usually move the person, move the person, move the person immediately. And you may not have an organization big enough to move people around at this point. And so I would suggest before you move the person, consider redesigning the seat. If you've got the right person but the wrong seat, maybe you can redesign the seat to help that person be more successful. It's not always possible and not always wise, but you want to ask the question: would a different mix of responsibilities from this seat unlock their strength? Let me ask it again. Would a different mix of responsibilities, maybe more clarity, maybe more focus, maybe more direction, would a different mix of responsibilities from this seat unlock their strength? So before you move them, can you redesign the seat? And you would consider three things: adjust responsibilities, add support, remove friction. Adjust responsibilities. You might narrow the focus or you might be more clear on the outcome. Or you might say, "This is what you have to do by a certain period of time." You're gonna adjust the responsibilities. Then you may add support. They may, if they had an assistant, that might be a big difference. If they had a different piece of software, it might be helpful. Ask yourself, can I add something that helps them be more effective? Three is remove friction. There might be some policy that's slowing things down. There might be some complication that you don't know about that's really prohibiting them from being successful. And so consider redesigning the seat. Adjust responsibilities, add support, remove friction. If you can possibly redesign the seat and help them be successful there, give it a shot. If you look at it and say, "I can't do it," then maybe you have another dynamic to consider.

The second issue might be you have the wrong person and the wrong pairing. This is so important and I don't hear a lot of people talking about this. You have a strong team player, but the team dynamic is unbalanced. And this is a common challenge in leadership. You take a great leader and you put a similar type of leader next to him or her, and so maybe you've got an organized systematic leader and she hires someone to work with her who's just like her. Or maybe you have someone who's more slow and deliberate and methodical in their approach and he hires someone else who's thoughtful and cautious, very similar like him. Here's what you need to recognize that strength paired with the same strength isn't always strength multiplied. Let me say it again. Strength paired with the same strength isn't always strength squared or strength multiplied. And I'll give you three specific examples. And if you think about all of your time in different organizations, you might have seen something like this. Let's say you've got a relational leader with a relational leader. What happens? It's a pairing. Relational plus relational equals warmth, but generally weak execution, right? We're just all feel-good, but we don't always drive to get things done. You might have a visionary person plus a visionary leader and you've got all sorts of ideas, but limited follow-through. Or you might have an organizer plus an organizer. And that tends to equal structure with little inspiration. So if you've got a leader that's not quite succeeding, look at the pairing that could be an issue. You don't just pair for chemistry, you pair for complementing gifts. Not similar gifts, but complementing gifts. And I see this all the time. I am a pastor who leads 45 different church locations and we've got really different personality types and gifts mix of our pastors. For example, if I have a very organized planning and strategic pastor, we wanna pair that pastor with someone that's very warm, very relational, and very caring. Or we might have some visionary charismatic person who's really good talking on the weekend in front of people, but they're weak on follow-through. So we're gonna pair that pastor with someone who knows how to get things done. It might not just be the wrong seat, but it might be the right person with the wrong pairing. So if you know that you have a good leader that's struggling, first look at the seat. Secondly, look at the pairing.

Another scenario is this, you might have the right person and the wrong boss. Right person, but they're under the wrong type of leader. Now this can be tricky and complicated 'cause what do you do with the wrong leader? It depends. It could be a lot of different things. But sometimes you have a good player and that player's personality doesn't operate well under a certain type of leader, for example, you might have a creative person under a micromanaging boss, and that's probably not gonna work well. Or you might have a very strategic thinker under a more free-flowing boss, and that can be complementary. Or sometimes if the boss doesn't recognize the value of the strategic thinker, that they can butt heads. So what you can do is several things. One thing, and I'm gonna try to explain this clearly, it's a little complicated, but you might consider adjusting the reporting structure. You might use instead of a firm line down from boss down to employee, you might use a dotted line to someone else in the organization. For example, you could have one team member who works daily on one team, kind of under a leader, but then maybe reports formally to a leader on another team or in another department. Now, you cannot do this all the time everywhere, or you'll have an organizational mess. But every now and then, if you've got a great player that just doesn't function well with a direct report to the person they work with regularly, you might just do a little dotted line and have that person get reviewed by and report to someone else somewhere in the organization. Another thing you can do is this. You've got a good player, but they're not functioning well under the boss. You can actually coach the boss on how to lead that type of person. And sometimes this can make all the difference in the world. When we are new in leadership, we often don't know how to lead different personality types or people with different gift mixes. For example, I had a leader that was very organized, very punctual, and he was working with a creative leader that had totally different work rhythms. And so the organized leader told the creative guy, "You need to be here from 8:00 to 5:00." And to be honest, the creative guy was barely awake by noon. You know, he would work all weird hours at night. And he produced great work, but he did it at really, really odd hours. And so I suggested to the boss, why don't you just try, you know, for a month, give him the freedom of workflow. Just it doesn't matter when he does it, just does he get it done. And what happened is the creative guy totally and completely crushed it. And so the outcome became better and it also helped the leader learn how to lead different people differently. Super, super important.

So what do we have? Well, we may have a right person in the wrong seat. We may have the right person with the wrong pairing. We may have the right person with the wrong boss. And sometimes a fourth issue is we may have the right person in the wrong season. The right person could be in the wrong season and the the role actually fits the person, but for some reason the timing doesn't. And it could be personal or it could be organizational. It could be personal like you're in a season of life where you got a great person and their spouse has cancer and it's just not the right time for this person to drive hard. Or you got a strong leader with four kids under four years of age. And that leader might be a little bit torn. Do I want to be more focused at home or do I want to bring it all at work? Great person, but it could be the wrong season. An example is my current assistant is completely world-class, the best of the best. And she worked with me, I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago when she had young kids at home. And because of the extreme demands of that role, it actually didn't fit her family season. And so she did another role for a while, and then a few years later when her kids were mostly grown, she's back in her role and it's great for everyone, including her family. It's same person, but much more effective in a different season.

So you also wanna think about not just personal season, but organizational seasons. And this is really, really, really, really important. And I'm surprised at how we don't talk about this enough. Some leaders are just better at some things, for example, not just tasks, but they're better in certain seasons. Some are great at launching something, others are great at maintaining. You don't wanna put a maintainer over a new product launch. That's just a bad mix. Don't put an entrepreneurial leader over something with no room to grow. And once you start to grow and work with people long enough, you're gonna start to see that people don't just specialize in gifts and skills and tasks, but they're actually specialists in certain seasons. And I'll explain. With 45 campuses, we've got a few pastors that they're just entrepreneurial, like apostles, spiritual leaders, they're great at launching things. I mean, like, can start it, I call 'em scrappers. They just get it done. But then they're actually really bad when things are stable. They're so high energy, so high driven that they just create all this unnecessary movement and cannot lead consistently when things are stable. They're starters. Other people, they're not entrepreneurial. They're very good pastors, but they're not starters. They couldn't start a car on a cold day, but they can correct a bad culture almost overnight. So if I've got a campus that's culturally off and not doing the things that we consider most important, you can put that kind of correction specialist in and they just have an amazing ability to come in and lead people to the right thoughts, the right values, and the right outcome. Both are great leaders, both are great pastors, but they're great in different seasons. Some don't know how to scale. They just really, really don't. But you put them in an established church, they can love on people and care on them better than you could ever imagine. So what you wanna do is make sure you put the right people in the right seat with the right boss in the right season.

Now let's say you wake up and you realize something's not right, whatever it is, we're not getting the outcomes that we want and everybody's frustrated and we need to make a change. This is where so many leaders hesitate and we think, "This is gonna be so hard, it's gonna be so hard," and it can be really hard because you do care for people. But think of it this way, and I apologize for too many sports analogies, but it just fits. If you've got a football team that can't move the ball, can't get first downs, can't score, what do you do? Well, you make a quarterback change. It may be that the quarterback is still really good, but he just can't move the ball against this type of defense. Or it's late in the season and he's fighting an injury. So what do you do if the offense can't move the ball? You make a quarterback change. You may take a passing quarterback out and put a running quarterback in. It's not a reflection of the quality of the quarterback, it's just the type of the quarterback you need in the moment. And so that's what you do. You do the same thing in business and the same thing in ministry. It's not emotional, it's not critical, it's just wisdom. If you find that you got the right person and they're in the wrong seat or the wrong pairing or whatever it is, you tell yourself three things and I'm gonna drive these in, I'm gonna tell 'em to you that we're gonna talk about 'em. You're gonna tell yourself clarity is kindness. You're gonna tell yourself delay compounds the damage. And you're gonna tell yourself placement is stewardship. Let's talk about it.

Clarity is kindness. You will never lead anything great when you don't tell the truth quickly. It is not unkind to tell someone, "You're in the wrong seat." What's unkind is to protect their feelings and allow them to be frustrated and continue to underperform. Clarity is kindness. Tell them the truth. Second thing is delay compounds the problem. You think, and I know you think this 'cause I thought all the time, you think, "If I just wait a little longer, it's gonna get better." But more time never makes a wrong placement right. Don't hesitate. What I do is I put hard deadlines on myself or other leaders. If we've been working for over a year with a person, I'll say, "Hey, look, you got by February to get this fixed. And if you don't, I'm gonna be talking to you." Or I even do the same thing with myself. I'll say, "If I don't have this, if I don't have them succeeding by February, then I need to make a change." And so you have to put deadlines on it or your emotions will allow you to continue to carry someone. And it's not right for them, it's not right for you, it's not right for your organization, it's not right for the other people to suffer because you got a player that can't get it done. So delay compounds the problem. And then finally, placement is stewardship. And you have to see it's that way. This is what you do as a leader. Moving people isn't easy, it's not comfortable, but the goal of leadership isn't to make people comfortable. It's to position people to win. It's to position them where they can make the biggest difference in your organization. And this is what leaders do. If you don't wanna do the hard thing, don't sign up for leadership. This is a hard thing, but it's an important thing. It's one of the most important things you're gonna do because this is stewardship. Stewarding the gifts of the people trusted under your care.

Now two more thoughts. If you move a person multiple times and they still don't succeed, you need to be honest and recognize the pattern. You may have a very quality person, but they're not a fit for your organization. If you try someone in one seat, then another seat, and another seat, and they continue to struggle, there is something common there and it's most likely you don't have the right person. And so it's up to you to fix that. And if you have someone that continues to underperform and you continue to tolerate it, eventually, I just need to say it directly, that person is not the problem. If they continue to underperform and the whole team suffers and you don't address it, they're not the problem, you are the problem. What you have to do is you have to remember, people don't flourish whenever we all try harder, they flourish when we place them better. You have to be honest about it.

Now, final thought, and this is where it kind of gets personal, is you might say, "Well, what if it's me? What if I'm the right person, but I'm in the wrong place?" And I promise you, over a three or four decades of leadership, that's going to happen to you. You might be the founder and you're still trying to do everything. Maybe you are great at sales and you're promoted to be a sales manager and you don't know how to manage people. Maybe you're a youth pastor and you were great for 10 years, but now you're 42 and you're losing your passion for student ministry. And so if you start to wonder, "Am I in the right seat?" Lemme just tell you very forthrightly is that does not mean you're failing. It means you're self-aware. And it's wise to ask that. Because if you're in the wrong spot, you're gonna eventually become frustrated, you're gonna lose confidence and nobody's gonna be happy. So what do you do? Well, I cannot tell you exactly what to do. I'll give you some thoughts. If you think you might be in the wrong seat and you're in a really good culture, then you might consider having an open conversation with a supervisor and saying, "Do you think this is the right gift mix for me?" And a loving supervisor in a good culture may say, "Maybe not, let's talk about it." If you're in a more challenging culture and you ask that, they might say no, and you no longer have a job. So I don't want to tell you what to do. But what I do tell you to do is if if you feel like you're in the wrong seat and it feels scary to you, then have the faith to believe if you're in the wrong seat, there is something better. And if you're a person of faith like I am, you can pray, ask God for wisdom, "Show me." And there have been times where I ask God, "Give me the faith to move or the peace to stay. Give the faith to take a step and move or the peace to stay." And I would say just remember that wherever you are, this is just one chapter in your life. If you're not massively successful here, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that you don't have the tools and the gifts to be massively successful. Sometimes you actually have to lose the job in one place to find a better job in another place. So don't panic, don't feel bad about yourself. Recognize that God cares about you and will help bring you to the place where you can use your gifts to make the bigger difference. And I would just say, really have faith. "God gimme the faith to move or gimme the peace to stay."

(uplifting music)

So let's wrap it up. Some of the hardest leadership decisions that you're gonna have to make don't involve the bad people, it involves the good people who might be in the wrong place. And so you wanna really work to remember that your job isn't to keep people comfortable, but to position them to win, to position them to make a bigger difference. And when you're prayerful, when you're wise, when you look at them and when you really want to put them in a place where they're most fulfilled and they're most successful, and then you place them well, what happens? Well, teams get healthier and the mission moves faster and the business makes more money and the ministries make a bigger difference. And guess what? They get better. You get better. I get better. We get better and we all get better. And what do we know? We know that everyone wins when the leader gets better. So if you want to position your team member to win, instead of just working harder, we've got a whole playlist on empowering leadership that will help you unlock potential in the people that you love and lead. Tap to start watching now.