Almost nothing has a higher impact on team culture, health, and effectiveness as much as who you recruit to the team. A good team member will be a joy to the team and the leader, and be a strong contributor to the ministry. An unhealthy, underprepared, or poorly fit team member can cause conflict, distraction, and even result in a team fracturing or leaving the field.

But how do you determine who you should invite to the team?

Our first post on recruiting was about broadly networking and casting vision to invite a pool of potential recruits to the process of evaluation. The second post was about the filtering process of gathering information and discerning the team fit of potential teammates. In that process, we recommend that you host them on a vision trip to allow them to hear from the Lord on location as well as you and the team getting to know them in person.

After you’ve done all the work of networking, casting vision, evaluating, and hosting them on a vision trip, you need to discern whether to give them an invitation to join the team or not. In our experience of recruiting and evaluating 30+ units for our teams in Thailand, we’ve had very few obvious green-light people to invite, and only some very clear red-light rejections. Most potential recruits fall into some kind of a yellow-light area. 

In this post, we’ll provide a recruiting evaluation grid that helps you measure a potential new recruit’s health and role fit versus the impact on your team and your degree of investment as a leader.

Difficult Decisions

Before we launched to Thailand, we went through our first season of recruiting teammates (including the ones from the soup terrine story). At the time, I was leading a missional community with other people that had a similar vision of wanting to serve overseas. We also took a vision trip to Thailand together a couple years before we launched.

I always highly valued loyalty, and just assumed that those in our group that had the vision to go overseas would eventually serve on the same team together. We did life together, prayed together, did ministry together, dreamed about the future together.

About a year out from our projected launch date, it was time to quit our jobs and go through the formal process of applying to an organization, going through evaluations, and officially forming the team. I knew each person would have development areas, but it didn’t even cross my mind that someone would not be considered qualified to go.

As I debriefed the evaluation process for my teammates with my supervisor, he mentioned that there were some red flags that came up with one teammate. He recommended that we at least give them a yellow-light and have them go through a 6-12 month season of development before having them re-apply.

I was surprised and distressed. This news would be devastating for this person.

Sure, there were some instances of difficulty that we had encountered. And yes, I wasn’t totally sure if that person would be willing to follow my leadership. And yes, we kind of knew they had some family of origin challenges that were unresolved. But telling them not to join the team? They had oriented everything in their lives towards this. What would the team think? What would happen to our relationship with this person?

But thankfully, my supervisor in his wisdom projected out how those things would play out on the field. If those things were a 3 out of 10 in concern and intensity in the States, they would quickly become 9 out of 10s and have the potential to fracture our team.

After prayer, discussion, and discernment, we made the decision to give this person a yellow light. Someone suggested that one of the evaluators from the organization give the bad news. But my mentor, also in his wisdom, said that I needed to be the one to take the responsibility for this decision and deliver the news, out of respect to this person and for my own development.

In a very difficult 2+ hour conversation, we told this person that there were some concerns and that they would need to go through a 6-12 month development process before re-applying.

It did not go well.

Eventually, this person broke off all contact with our team and levied accusations against me to other mutual friends.

We tried to pursue some conflict resolution through a counselor but that still didn’t go well. Ultimately, their response confirmed that this was the right decision, even though it was one of the most challenging team and leadership situations I had gone through to that point.

Our first year on the field was filled with conflicts, culture-shock, and challenges to the max with the team we did lead overseas, and I’m not sure we would’ve survived if we had added this person and their challenges. Even though it was painful and burdensome at the time, I’m thankful for wise mentors that helped a new team leader make a hard decision that I otherwise would not have had the courage to make.

Over the next decade on the field of evaluating and inviting several units to our teams, we’ve learned some of the key lessons in deciding who to invite and who to say “no” or “not yet” to. The stakes for teams and ministry among the unreached are incredibly high, and team leaders need to be thorough, wise, discerning, and prayerful in their evaluation and selection of potential teammates.

Recruiting Evaluation Grid

Hopefully your sending organization or church is assisting with recruiting, assessing, and developing potential new candidates for your team. There is a minimum baseline in the first category of the recruit’s character, health, and spiritual maturity that most agencies will be able to assess and either move them to the next step, put them on a development plan to later re-apply, or tell the applicant they’re not ready. Those baselines will vary for each agency, but some standards include freedom from addictions, health in singleness or marriage, consistent pattern of growing relationship with Jesus, and basic levels of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. 

What they aren’t taking into account, and you as a team leader must measure, is you and your team’s own readiness to receive that specific person in this season of your ministry and team. The final decision needs to be made by the team leader, not the sending entity, as the TL will be the one taking responsibility for that teammate. 

Keep in mind that you won’t know everything perfectly unless you’ve had significant life-on-life experience with them, so a lot of this is doing your best to assess well and solicit feedback from people that do know these candidates. Also, you’re evaluating the readiness of this teammate to join your team at this point in time. For example, a more challenging candidate might not be good to add to a newly forming team, but in 6-12 months, with more team stability and more personal development, they might be a great fit! 

Remember, your goal is to recruit teammates that will eventually thrive and be able to contribute well to your team and ministry. Every new person transitioning to the field will likely have their cross-cultural stressors and struggles, but if the teammate’s foundations and the team’s environment are solid, they will be able to overcome those difficulties and become strong team members.

We would assess the potential recruit in these 5 areas – character/health/maturity, calling to missions, gifting and role in ministry, impact on team, and leader investment in development. Evaluate the potential candidate on this scale from 1 to 10 to help you have more of an objective grid for whether or not you should approve this teammate at this time.

1. Character, Health, and Spiritual Maturity
   Main question: Is this teammate healthy and spiritually mature enough to thrive on the field?
   (1 – unhealthy and immature; 10 – strong health and maturity)
   1. Freedom from addictions
   2. Strong and growing personal walk with Lord
   3. Self starter and flexible
   4. Good interpersonal skills and communication 
   5. Emotional awareness and health
   6. Health in singleness / marriage / family
      
2. Calling to Missions
   Main question: Is this potential teammate’s calling rooted in solid foundations that can persevere through challenges?
   (1 – weak foundation of calling; 10 – strong foundation of calling)
   1. Scriptural basis
   2. Prayer
   3. Pattern of affirmation
   4. Community 
   5. Personal experiences 
      
3. Gifting and Role in Ministry
   Main question: Are this potential teammate’s gifts, skills, and experience able to contribute to the ministry?
   (1 – gifts and skills are underdeveloped OR don’t align with the primary ministry work; 10 – demonstrated competency in gifts and skills that would contribute well to the ministry)
   1. Awareness, development, and practice of spiritual gifts
   2. Skills and competencies
   3. Ability to do main ministry activities 
   4. General ministry experience
   5. Strong learner and self developer 
   6. Leadership experience and potential to be a leader
      
4. Impact on Team
   Main Question: would receiving this potential teammate generally strengthen or disrupt / burden the team overall
   (1 – would be disruptive/burdening to receive, significant adjustment to help transition; 10 – gifts and personality are strong benefits to team and has strong chemistry with team)
   1. Has gifts that can serve the team (hospitality, shepherding, worship/prayer, etc.)
   2. Generally easy to get along with v. draining/challenging personality
   3. Demographics that match what the team needs (ex: single girl needing another single gal to co-labor with)
   4. Good relational chemistry / team player
   5. Stage of Team Development (forming, storming, norming, performing) – consider how much storming there currently is and if that’s the right time to introduce a teammate 
      
5. Leader Investment in Their Development
   Main Question: What level of personal investment and development by the leader would it take to get them to a point of thriving and contribution to the team and ministry? 
   (1 – high investment of time and energy by leader; difficult to lead; 10 – lower investment by leader, generally easy / joyful to lead)
   1. Submission to your leadership
   2. Fit with your leadership style and giftings
   3. Amount of time and energy investment by leader to help them thrive and become a solid contributor based off your capacity
   4. if teammates can help carry the burden of investment vs. solely on the leaders

If you don’t know the answer to some of these categories, try to get feedback from the candidate, the agency, or those that know them well. Ask for them to be as brutally honest and direct as possible. Many times, references will want to give the best version of feedback since they want to help those they’re connected with. But it’s important for a TL to draw out the realities of a potential teammate since there is such a significant impact on them and on the team.

Making a Decision

After you’ve assigned a 1-10 score to each major category, figure out what the average score is across all 5 categories.

If you have an average of 8+, you should have a pretty solid candidate and situation to invite them to the team.

If you have an average of 4 or below, there likely needs to be some significant development for the candidate or on your own team before you can reconsider, likely after at least 6 months.

If any individual category is at a 2 or below, they are probably not at the standard to pass for that category and you shouldn’t invite them to the team.

The challenging situations are when you have someone in the 5-7 range. Discuss with other team stakeholders (teammates, mentors, supervisors), and weigh the pros/cons of inviting this person to the team. Understand that if you invite someone in the 5-7 range, it will likely take significant investment to help them thrive and begin to contribute to the ministry.

Regardless of how they grade out, it’s essential to bring the decision to the Lord in prayer. It’s always a step of faith to invite someone to your team, and you as a team leader are making a substantial commitment by inviting someone to your team, to love, serve, and shepherd them through the challenges on the field.

Some Cautions and Guidelines

This evaluation grid is trying to help quantify some important categories so that team leaders can make wise decision about inviting team members. But you can be very thorough in the evaluation process and still be surprised how someone reacts to the field. Some great candidates that we invited really struggled on the field when things didn’t go their way. Some riskier candidates ended up thriving and doing really well in field environments. But by doing the work of evaluating and praying, you can have eyes open for each teammate’s potential pitfalls and weaknesses.

A caution for newer team leaders: team leaders at the beginning of launching a team are at the highest urgency to add teammates. If you find yourself convincing yourself that they should be on the team, but you know in your heart that they aren’t a good fit, don’t invite them. The team is at its newest and most fragile at the beginning, and recruiting even one person that is unprepared and challenging can be very costly to the leader and the team.

Take risks for potential leaders. Younger, more immature leaders may rock the boat and be somewhat difficult to lead at the beginning. But if you’re able to win trust and develop them well, they can multiply your impact and be worth the investment.

Understand your own giftings and tendencies as a leader: If you are shepherd-gifted, you may have a higher tolerance / capacity to take the time of investing in someone to get them to the point of thriving and contributing. If you are more of an apostolic/evangelist-type leader, know that when you invite someone to the team you are committing to shepherding them. Also know that you might get impatient or frustrated if someone takes too much of your time and focus because your tendency will be to focus on the external ministry.

Knit to the Soul

We’ve gone through some of the biggest ups and downs of our adult lives with our teammates. We were together making awkward noises in language school, joyful team Christmases away from home, celebrating new churches planted, and experiencing the first new babies born on the field. They’ve been with us through crises, cancer, and burnout.

It’s hard to imagine facing the realities of the field with anyone else.

It’s the generous gift of the Lord to bring significant people around us for the calling and work He has prepared for us. They are simultaneously brothers and sisters, friends, co-workers, confidantes, and caretakers. It’s worth giving time and focus to find people who are the right fit.

And, the Lord already knows who He has chosen to be on our teams. We can have faith that if we are prayerful and discerning, He will bring the right people.

As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

1 Samuel 18:1

Part 1 – Leadership Foundations Overview

Part 2 – Why are leaders needed?

Part 3 – How do I discern if I’m a leader?

Part 4 – How do I develop as a leader?

In Part 4, we talked about different ways that you can develop on your pathway towards becoming a team leader. One of the most important aspects of that is forming a personal development plan, or PDP. It’s critical for your own development as a leader, and it’s also important that leaders know how to develop other people.

Develop Towards Maturity

We’ve come back to Ephesians 4:11 a few times in this blog, and we think it also speaks to personal development.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ… we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Ephesians 4:11-16

One of the main goals that Christ has in giving leadership giftings to the church in verse 11 is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, which will lead to the building up of the body of Christ. But in addition to that, there’s a goal for each of us to grow towards maturity and fullness and to grow up in every way into Christ. Leaders equip, not just for the sake of the ministry, but to develop those they lead into being more like Jesus.

One quick note on the difference between learning and developing. Leaders should be constantly learning and gathering knowledge and wisdom that will help them to lead well. But development happens when you actually have progression in who you are as a person and as a leader – whether in character, giftings, or competencies. I might learn a fact or an idea from a book I read, but until I can apply it, until I can internalize it, use it, and it actually affects how I live and lead in Christ-like maturity, it’s a fact that I learn and not something that I’ve developed in.

How to Form a PDP

In this post, we’ll walk through how to form a personal development plan, either for yourself or with someone you lead. In order to form a development plan that’s effective, we do a personal evaluation on different areas of our lives, ministry, and leadership. This is the personal evaluation form that we use on our team annually, and from this evaluation we can form a PDP.

As we’ve noted in other posts, we believe the inner spiritual life and character components hold more importance than skills or even giftings. When forming a personal development plan, we try to focus on one character / abiding aspect and one competency / skill / gifting. Any more than 1-2 things and you end up not really progressing in anything – it’s a principle of focus, in development and pretty much everything else.

Many people tend to think you need to develop primarily in weaknesses, and it’s true that sometimes addressing a weakness is important because it’s a core character issue or competency that you need to have. But development plans can be really great to help you grow in your strengths and giftings as well.

Personal Evaluation

We made this personal evaluation form during our first term in Thailand and have tweaked it over time. It’s split into 4 sections:

1) Abiding, Spiritual Walk, Character, and Attitude
2) Cross-Cultural Adaptation
3) Personal Time and Work Management
4) Ministry Skills

There’s an additional leadership evaluation for those in leadership positions on our team. To create this evaluation, we looked at various biblical frameworks like 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, as well as personal review and evaluation processes from churches, ministries, and professional development sources. Lastly, the ministry skills section would depend on your team’s ministry approach, so ours reflects a ‘Be Barnabas’ CPM focus.

In each section, you’ll evaluate yourself in the various aspects. Then, at the end of each section, you’ll give open-ended responses to what in the section was a primary area(s) of strength, primary area(s) of weakness, primary area of growth + development, and other comments. This allows the person doing the self-evaluation to draw out the important points in each section. At the end, you’ll take all the information together and form a PDP.

Below, we’ll have screenshots of the evaluative categories for each section and I’ll provide a few comments about it. The entire PDF form of the self-evaluation is attached at the end.

Abiding, Spiritual Walk, Character, and Attitude

In our experience, pretty much all of these things are critically important to either an individual goer’s health on the field or how they affect the team. If we were to highlight perhaps the top risk 5 areas that, if unresolved, could send your people home from the field, we would emphasize: abiding, humility, freedom from bondages, health in singleness / marriage, and living out of identity. Each of these is a huge topic, and there are a variety of resources that exist to help a goer develop in health and freedom before and during their time on the field. If there’s any of these areas (or any of the following sections) that you have specific questions about how to address, please let us know at contact@missionsleaders.com. We’d be happy to help consult!

Cross-Cultural Adaptation

These are aspects of cross cultural adaptation that are particularly important in the first 1-2 terms. For your first term of 2-3 years, the first two sections – abiding and health, language and culture – are the main goal. We had a very experienced missions leader give us great expectations and advice before launching that has remained true and that we’ve also set as an expectation for teammates that we transition onto the field. He told us, it can take up to 7 years on the field on average for goers to even begin doing the right things to pursue CPMs. If at the end of your first term of 2-3 years, you are loving Jesus, healthy in your marriage or singleness, have learned some language, and have even a few local relationships – that is great success.

It reframed success in the first few years for us, because with all of our passion and urgency and emphasis on seeing multiplying movements among the unreached, we can sometimes be a little over-enthusiastic in starting the ministry and not setting good foundations of health, language, and cultural adaptation.

After the early season of focusing on language and culture, when you start getting more into the ministry, the ministry skills and spiritual gifts will probably begin to take precedence over the cross cultural parts.

Personal Time + Work Management

For us, this section tends to be the least prioritized compared to the other sections, unless there’s a glaring weakness in a person’s reliability as a teammate and co-worker. Many of these are what would be called ‘permission to play’ type of requirements – good teammates need to embody these basic aspects in order to be effective contributors to the team and the ministry, and healthy in their own rhythms. Sometimes, missions teams can recruit people right out of college who haven’t been in a working environment before. This can lead to some misunderstanding or entitlement to think that support raising or being in ministry means you don’t have to come to meetings prepared and on time, communicate in a timely manner, or report to your supervisor. So this section helps us as leaders and them as teammates know that these things are expected.

Ministry Skills

As explained in the screenshot, this section is a bit different from the previous 3. Because we believe that there are a variety of giftings and skills within each teammate, we aren’t necessarily claiming that every teammate needs to be excellent at every ministry skill. Instead, we have a scale from basic awareness to expert, defined above in the screenshot.

There should be basic competency in some of the areas that every teammate needs to engage in ministry. For example, since our team focuses on training local partners to make disciples, every teammate is expected to be able to give the basic training, as it is the bread and butter of what we do. But some teammates are more proficient or gifted at training and they might get more opportunities to exercise those giftings, whereas some other teammates may be less proficient, and get to specialize in some other areas. How much you specialize depends on how your team is built and what stage of ministry you’re in, among other things. Generally, in the first 2 years of ministry, everyone on the team tries their hand at doing everything so that they can all obtain some basic competency in each area and explore where God has gifted them. Every year, we’ll continue to do personal evaluations and PDPs, and ask the question – where do you feel the Holy Spirit is asking you to focus your giftings and contribution? We’ll also do this in conjunction with a ‘SHAPE’ retreat (Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Aptitudes, Personality, Experience) where we look at the different giftings and skills on a team to allow people to specialize and synergize as a team.

We’ll have a future post on how to do a SHAPE retreat and one on spiritual gifts. But as it pertains to personal development, spiritual gifts are a critical aspect! They are gifts that Jesus himself gave to you through the Holy Spirit to edify the body and expand the Kingdom. As leaders, identifying, developing, and using those gifts personally and on our team results in Spirit empowered ministry!

Leadership Evaluation

The last section would be only for those in a leadership position on our team – team leaders or sub-team leaders. Our definition of a leader is a man or woman who receives vision from God to influence the people of God towards the purposes of God, and we tried to help our leaders evaluate those aspects in this self-evaluation.

_______

When filling out a personal evaluation, people tend to fall into one of two pitfalls – either greatly overestimate themselves and pretend that they’re good to perfect in every area, or to underestimate themselves with either a low view of themselves or fake humility. Although it’s important for leaders to be able to give feedback into a teammate’s development, personal development has to be personal. Our belief is that a PDP formed through honest self evaluation and personal buy-in will be much more effective than leader directive PDPs. So this evaluation allows each teammate to be honest with themselves about where they are strong and weak, where they can grow, and how they can develop. And, it allows leaders an opportunity to give feedback and come alongside those they’re trying to help to develop.

Here is the link to the full evaluation:

Creating a PDP

Now that we’ve done the hard work of personal evaluation and trying to draw some highlights out of each section, we can go ahead and form the personal development plan from what we’ve learned in the evaluation. Forming a PDP is much more of an art than a skill, so below we’ve provided a basic guideline for how to form one. But again, there has to be personal buy-in for your PDP. If the topic you choose or the plan you create isn’t something that you’re personally invested in and driven to pursue, it’s an unhelpful PDP. Create a plan that you want to jump into!

1. Analyze your results. Take a step back and analyze the results of the personal evaluation as a whole. Overall, where are you strong and weak? What surprised you about your answers? Did anything upset you or make you anxious? Your emotions, positive or negative, or feelings of anxiety could be revealing that there’s a deeper heart issue surrounding that topic and that you might need to give it some attention.

2. Self-examine to try and get to the heart of the issue. This applies mainly for character and heart issues. For a development plan to really work, you need to target the aspect you want to work on as directly as you can. That means not just fixing an external behavior that is weak, but also understanding the root of our issues. Otherwise, all we are doing is behavior modification. For skills and competency issues, there may be an underlying insecurity that is at the heart of it (e.g. I’m poor at training because I’m insecure about what people think about me), but for the most part, skills just need to be developed through learning and practice. But for many character / heart issues, we want to ask some questions. What is at the root? Why is this a recurring issue? What keeps me from growing in this? 
   
   For example, if I marked myself as weak in “submissive to leadership”, I could just make a development plan that says “do what my leader tells me to do.” But that’s behavior management and my heart isn’t really impacted. I have to look at the root. Why is submission difficult for me? Maybe I don’t really respect my leader and think I know better than them. Maybe I think I’m a better leader than they are and the actual issue I need to work on is pride. Whatever the root reason is, that’s what you want to create a plan around.

3. Pray and ask God what He wants you to work on and how. Even with our PDP results, we still are going to have a biased view of ourselves. The only one who truly knows where we need to grow is Jesus, so ask Him to search your heart and reveal areas that need to be developed. Pray and ask God, where do you want me to focus on? How do you want me to grow? Who or what have you put into my life to help me develop? 

4. Form the development plan. 
   
   Again, pick no more than 1 character / heart issue and 1 skill / gifting / competency for your PDP. Any more and we tend to lose focus. Just picking 1, preferably the character / heart issue, is totally fine!
   
   Once you know what area to focus on, think of some resources, mentors / coaches, or opportunities that you could use that would help you grow. It could be a book, article, podcast, class, or person who is strong in this area that you would spend time and learn from – whatever way helps you to learn best. One of the most effective development plans is simply to do a word or topical study over the area that you’re wanting to grow in – Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, humility, etc.
   
   Consider a head / heart / hands grid: head knowledge helps you understand what you’re trying to develop in. But head knowledge alone isn’t enough to help a person change and develop. Heart development gives you the why and an emotional connection. Hands helps you to apply the things you’ve learned.
   
   Continuing with the submission to leadership example, I might do a Bible study on Biblical submission and how Jesus exhibits this. For heart, I might set aside some time to consistently pray for greater humility – and to repent of my pride. For hands, I might consistently pray for my leader, or in my one-on-one meetings with them, ask them how I’ve been doing in the area of submission and if there’s anything I can do to improve.
   
5. Set a consistent and achievable rhythm for which you can be kept accountable over a 6-12 month time period. Try to think of an end point that answers – how will you know you’ve achieved your goals? What do you want to see happen? How can you break down your plan in month-long objectives or pieces?
   
   The above PDP put into consistent rhythms might look like:
   
   – First 3 months: topical Bible study on Biblical submission
   – Monthly: during Day of Prayer, set aside time to self-evaluate my heart and pray for humility; set aside time to pray for my leader.
   – Monthly: check in with my leader and ask them how I’m doing in this area and how to improve
   
6. Get feedback on your PDP from your leader. In our team process, our teammates will be notified at the end of the year that it’s time for the annual personal evaluation, PDP formation, and review with their leader. They’ll be given 2 weeks to fill out the personal evaluation and send it to their leader, and then take a first stab at forming their PDP, knowing that their review meeting with their leader might change that PDP.
   
   Be humble to receive feedback from your leader and be willing to tweak it. Many times, our leaders might have insight into blind spots that we have, things that we aren’t aware of that are negatively affecting the ministry, our team, or even ourselves. In our experience of leading people through PDP formation, either we agree pretty heavily on the topic and might just give some feedback on the elements of the PDP, or if there’s an area that we bring up that our teammate hasn’t considered, we’ll find a middle ground and make both those topics (ours and theirs) the 2 aspects of their PDP.
   
   Since we’ve done this process for several years with 12+ teammates and coached our leaders in how to lead their people through this process, we’ve been able to walk through a multitude of topics for personal development, including humility, perfectionism, anger and unforgiveness, executive presence, training and coaching, communication, self-awareness, leadership, among other things. We’re working on gathering all those development plans that can be used as example PDPs, and when we’re done we’ll post it here!
   
7. Work your plan and have accountability towards working on your plan. If you have a regular one-on-one with a leader or mentor (preferably on a monthly rhythm), that’s a great time for them to check in and make sure you’re accountable to your development plan and give you feedback in that area. It can be as simple as them asking, ‘how did you do with your PDP goals last month, and what are your PDP goals for this upcoming month?’

Walking Others through Forming a PDP

Lastly, we’ll just provide a few tips for current TLs who might be walking their teammates through this process and how to give constructive feedback well. Sometimes, this personal evaluation and review process can be a good opportunity to give feedback into a topic that can be challenging to talk about.

Pray and prepare beforehand. As much as we might want to control people’s development, only God can grow his sheep. Ask God how he wants to develop this person and for him to give you encouraging and truthful words that can spur them on. Make sure you’re surrendering any of your own bias or selfish motivations that you might have for bringing an issue up – is it truly what the Lord wants for their good and their development or just so that I can have an easier time leading? Think through and have concrete examples of areas you have seen this person in their strengths and in their weaknesses. Have bible verses that speak to the standards that you want to exhort your teammate towards.

Start by asking questions. It’s best if they’re able to self-evaluate these issues as opposed to hearing critical feedback right out the gate. What did you think about your self-assessment? Did you see any trends? Did anything surprise / encourage / discourage you? Ideally, they will self-identify. If they don’t bring up the topic that you are wanting to discuss, ask some more probing questions around the topic. Did you have any thoughts specifically about this topic? How would you rate yourself on this?

Seek to encourage as much as possible, but also don’t hesitate to speak truthfully. A basic tenet for difficult feedback is an ‘encouragement sandwich’ – encourage, give feedback, and end by encouraging again. Remind them that you are truly for their good and desire to see them grow and enjoy more of Jesus. We may want to spare someone’s feelings by avoiding hard topics, but your goal is to help them identify blind spots in areas they may need to grow in. If they’re not able to self-identify what the issue is, then give feedback as kindly but as clearly as possible, with clear examples of what is expected (even biblically), what has happened (with concrete examples), and where you’d like them to grow and develop. As leaders, we want to spur our people on and encourage them to mature into becoming more like Jesus and to operate in the ways God has created them.

A PDP can be one of the most effective tools that leaders can have for their own development and to help others grow as well. Many times, with the huge backlog of responsibilities and spinning plates that a leader has, personal development can be left to the side. But without proactive development, we’ll find ourselves perpetually at a deficit of having the knowledge or skills for how to lead, or worse and more likely, not dealing with the heart issues and obstacles that keep us from living out the fullness of who Jesus has created us to be. It takes time investment, hard conversations, and hard work, but seeing yourself and your teammates grow into maturity and fullness of Christ will be one of the most rewarding and impactful things that you will do as a leader!

If there’s any specific questions or need for consultation on how to form a PDP for yourself or a teammate, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at contact@missionsleaders.com. We’d love to help you!