True Life Youth Ministries didn’t know why their internal communication was falling flat. So they asked me to help.

The Balancing Act Between Old Legacies & New Inventions

Thousands of kids have walked through the doors of True Life Youth Ministries in the 70 years since the small nonprofit ministry was founded. As Paul took over as executive director, he was faced with the daunting task of keeping that legacy alive.

Paul wanted to develop a new business framework to grow their youth programs while honoring the established practices of the program staff who had been serving there for years. When the program director said implementing new strategies was like building the plane while they were in the air, Paul knew the plan had to be user friendly and easy to understand.

To help build smoother relationships between team members, Paul asked me to evaluate their internal communication methods. I looked at the various job descriptions, internal messaging, social media, website, various publications, and digital and print advertisements. I also spent time observing staff members and listening to what they had to say about the new programming plans.

The findings were intriguing. Program staff were resistant to the new plans, but there were some simple solutions that could be easily implemented to produce greater unity among team members.

The first solution was to increase the frequency of staff meetings. Currently, the staff were only meeting every two weeks, which was not enough time for the program staff to process the changes and ask clarifying questions. Instead, they were relying on the program director to act as the go-between and key information was getting lost.

With more frequent meetings well underway and staff beginning to see the benefits of the new programs, it was time to implement another solution. Many staff were also struggling with unclear work expectations that were resulting from poorly written job descriptions. Based on the staff’s feedback, we rewrote the current job descriptions so the current staff and the employees they still needed to hire would all better understand their roles.

Now Paul was well equipped to preserve the legacy of True Life Youth Ministries while also expanding the services offered to include his new ideas. It was exciting to see Paul’s ideas come to life and True Life staff by the right people.