Clergy Wellbeing Down Under

Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts - Psychosocial Risks in Church Leadership with Katharine Moore

• Valerie Ling • Season 1 • Episode 7

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 Imagine an environment where safety and well-being are prioritized, where trust and transparency are key, and conflicts are handled in a constructive manner. These are the ingredients of psychological safety. Psychological safety refers to a work environment where individuals feel comfortable taking risks, expressing their thoughts, and making mistakes without fear of punishment or humiliation.  Psychosocial hazards are broader and pertain to all aspects of work design, organisational structures, and social dynamics that can lead to psychological or physical harm. This could include things like excessive workload, lack of role clarity, workplace bullying, and poor organisational culture. 

They are separate and intertwined.   Katharine Moore, an expert in workplace safety and health, joins me on the podcast to unwrap this very topic, based on findings from my clergy well-being and leadership survey.

From my survey, the following experiences of offensive behaviour experienced by clergy over the past 12 months were reported:

·      Sexual harassment: 6%

·      Threats of and actual violence: 8%

·      Bullying: 31%

·      Unpleasant teasing: 27%

·      Conflicts and quarrels: 78%

·      Gossip and slander: 53%

 

Clergy burnout was found to be related to the level of offensive behaviours experienced by clergy. 

 
Through our discussion, we tackle the physical and psychological burdens of various job roles, the crucial role of job design and task rotation, and the complexities of budgets, governance, and compliance.


Katharine has built a strong reputation for her excellence in Safety and Injury Management.  She believes in engaging & empowering workers to build a proactive safety culture in the workplace which will lead to greater levels of overall compliance.

She works at a Senior Leadership level in a multi-national corporate where she influences business decisions  to create a workplace that is:

• Safe from physical and psychological harm
• Promotes whole-person wellbeing
• Fully accessible & inclusive
• Empowers team to meet their full potential

Our conversation delves  into the heart of church conflict and consider how a lack of transparency may foster an environment ripe for bullying. By exploring the difference between psychosocial and psychological safety, we illuminate how churches can work alongside partner practices to foster a secure environment where team members feel safe providing feedback.



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Podcast Disclaimer:

Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and my guests, and do not represent the stance of any institution. This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!

Valerie Ling:

Hey, it's Valerie Ling. I'm a clinical psychologist and I'm your host for the clergy well-being Down Under podcast. I'm looking forward to interviewing an expert today to take you through my findings from my research where I asked 200 pastors down under how they were doing. Don't forget to subscribe, like and share. Buckle up, and here we go. Hello everybody, welcome to our next episode of the podcast. I have with me Katherine Moore. She's a personal friend, but also someone I think can provide us with some valuable insights into some of the dynamics that I've picked up in my clergy well-being and leadership survey. Welcome to you, katherine.

Katharine Moore:

Thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here.

Valerie Ling:

Katherine, you and I got a church together as well. We do. You are very familiar with church and Christian community and I'm so eager to hear you someone who's out in the commercial environment, very much leading and working in your organization in this space, and how you view some of the things that might have I've picked up in the survey and what's happening in churches. But first tell us a little bit about you and your role.

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, great, I started in safety about 15 years ago and I think over time it's kind of morphed a little bit from pure safety into health and well-being and now, definitely with the changes in legislation and changes in focus on how we manage psychosocial risk in the workplace, that's really become a fundamental part of the role and really important for how we shape how business responds and not just responds but identifies and prevents these types of things in the workplace. So yeah, I'm very lucky I currently work for a global organization. Within my remit I've got about 900 employees that I'm directly responsible for.

Katharine Moore:

But, then I also get to impact globally, so very lucky that Australia is actually leading the way here. So a lot of my counterparts look to what we're doing here in Australia and I get to help influence that at a high level as well, which is really cool.

Valerie Ling:

And your role has also been very interesting given the last few years. How have you seen that impact the leadership tiers in your business?

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, I think it's a real challenge for leadership. I think that a lot of people still have the I think, the back history of victimization that still comes up now right and leaders are very concerned about if we go too far here, if we open up, we'll have people in a victim mentality and we won't be able to bring them back out of that. So it's really about trying to create a very constructive environment where we can sit down and say what's really happening in the workplace, what are the real challenges and how do we empower people to, I guess, overcome those challenges. So it's not about saying work is too hard. We need to put more people in. It's about what are the challenges in your role and how do we redesign your role in a way that you're empowered and you can get done what needs to be done.

Valerie Ling:

But our organization, which is not 900 employees. We started to create our workplace wellbeing survey and I have to say, Catherine, that even when I got the first draft, as the leader of my business, I felt uncomfortable. Do you think that that's a human reaction, that you know anything that's going to investigate how things really are, that there's a human reaction that goes with that?

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, absolutely. It's a most short topic to write, and especially for leaders, and particularly if you own your business. Right, you've tried to create this really amazing workplace where people feel safe and we reflect that to psychological safety, right? Sometimes you know people think, oh, if they're putting up red flags around, psychosocial, it means I haven't got these great workplaces, I don't have psychological safety. I'd actually challenge that, say that's not true. If they're able to speak up and say I've got challenges, then that means you do have a psychologically safe workplace because they feel safe to speak up. So now it's about working in partnership with your work is to say what can we do better, what can we do a little bit different, or what can we improve.

Valerie Ling:

Brilliant. Let's start with definitions, shall we? Yeah, so let's start. You were saying to me that there's a broader category, if you like, to what you do, so let's start with there. So it's psychosocial safety is one part of it. What is the broader picture we're looking at?

Katharine Moore:

You've got two components here. So within HR traditional HR we look at things like job design, role load, relationship, conflict, bullying, harassment, things like that, even role clarity. These types of things are traditionally in HR and they generally dealt with in a reactive notion. So if we set things up, we think they're good, and then people put their hand up and let us know if that's gone wrong and we HR go and investigate Anyone who's been in that kind of environment before. Maybe there's been a bullying complaint, that type of thing.

Katharine Moore:

It's not a fun thing to go through, right, because we don't assume the complainer is right. We just hear there's something and we go and investigate I mean investigate that person as much as we investigate the person that they're claiming or lead. So it can be quite an emotional challenge. It can be quite overwhelming for the person that's been involved. So then we go into the state.

Katharine Moore:

So we've got this risk management framework which looks at going with a real unbiased view and looking at the workplace and identifying what had this exist, what controls we currently have in place to prevent them, and then what we can do better. And prevention is the key in this aspect. So really about can we eliminate this from ever happening again, or can we control it in some way that it doesn't cause harm? So what we're doing now is we're merging these two worlds together and we're saying HR have all the skills and experience in this world, but safety has the framework for how we can prevent it. So we're starting to work together in partnership, which is fun. I think in some businesses they're going to find it quite successful. Others may find it more challenging, as they bring these two worlds together and find a new way of looking at it.

Valerie Ling:

So let's look at the world of church leadership. When you think about it as a layperson in church and then with your professional roles and responsibilities, what do you think safety physical, emotional, psychological safety looks like for someone who's leading a church?

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, it's really interesting If we go back to the psych and social, we kind of sweat it into two areas Job demands. Some of the job demands might look at role overload, emotional demands, relationship conflicts, role ambiguity these things are ripe in a church, right, Like that finds things every day. And on the other side we've got job resources. So how much job control, trades and recognition, supervisor support, co-worker support, change consultation? Maybe we're not so great at that in church, right. So you've got things, clergy who are sitting here who want to lead their church and they've got all the challenges under the job demands, but maybe they're lacking some of the support that they need in the job resources.

Katharine Moore:

And I think there's a few factors to that. Like just observing as a layperson, I think there's a lot of misconceptions around what is the workload of a clergy person. It's really easy to say, oh, they just work on Sundays, right, they just do one sermon, maybe two summums a week, that's it. So then there's that kind of I guess not direct challenging of it, but just sort of oh, are they really under that much pressure, Is it really that hard?

Katharine Moore:

And there's a lack of transparency. A clergy person can't stand what's going on. There's a lot of privacy, a lot of confidentiality with how they support their congregation. So there's a lot of lack of transparency, lack of ability to reach out and ask for support for themselves. But I think the biggest thing that I see is probably a lack of training. They go through some level of leadership training I know you've looked at that and looked at the different types of leadership and particularly servant leadership and where that leads. But do they get training in safety? Do they get training in psychosocial hazards? Do they understand the well-being and even self-care tips? I think that's probably an opportunity that we could bring in to support them.

Valerie Ling:

So everything that you said just there, we're going to need to put it on some kind of workplace safety poster. There are probably aspects of clergy well-being that have been researched almost in isolation, catherine. So I'll give you an example and I'm curious to see what you think the jobs demands, jobs, resources, role and bevelance very commonly has been studied within and rightfully so within the burnout space. Now, one of the things I was trying to investigate was to what extent does leadership burnout then lead to other kinds of what I call destructive leadership practices, or really, in my framework, it was more it's inappropriate, it's forceful and it's unhealthy, unhelpful leadership. How does that fit within a psychosocial or a safety model?

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, well, that would be a red flag really for how they're going to impact the rest of their team. That type of behaviour definitely is just going to increase the emotional demands and the overall overload of the rest of their team. So what we'd look at and I've worked in other businesses that employ what they call constructive leadership, which really puts those sort of destructive behaviours aside and really aims for how you work in partnership and how you have that more open, healthy sort of leadership style, and that's what you're aiming for if you're going to prevent psychosocial Okay. Having said that, I also think it's probably a red flag to say that person is suffering from some psychosocial risks.

Valerie Ling:

Yeah, can you say a bit more about that?

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, I think we start to see symptoms from people. So when they're under distress, when they're under high levels of pressure, some of those symptoms come out to either be psychological or physical. So you may start to see things. Physical might be stomach aches and headaches and things like that muscle pain, but the psychological might start to be those early signs of depression or anxiety.

Katharine Moore:

So you might start to see a little bit of aggression, a little bit of anger, a little bit of snapping, because they're just not coping very well under the stress that they've currently got.

Valerie Ling:

Okay, let's go through in this time that we have, let's see what we can get out of your expertise, job demands, job design what are the key components in that, really?

Katharine Moore:

Oh, this is a tough one, right, because it's individual. So a piece of work I'm doing at the moment is actually combining psychologists and a physical therapist to come in and assess each job. So doing the job task analysis to understand what's the physical requirements of the task that's pretty traditional. Most businesses are pretty good at doing that but bringing in the psychological element as well to say what are the actual demands on it. So in this space I'm definitely a lay person. I definitely bring in specialists that help me with this to identify, you know, what's the level of concentration required, what's the level of interaction with other people. Those types of things have to be known. It has to be part of your job task analysis so that you can identify well what's the reasonable exposure to that in a shift, what kind of breaks you want to bring into that.

Katharine Moore:

You like manual handling. We know that for really heavy manual handling you want to have breaks in there and that might not be a go have coffee break. It may be task rotation and I think we need to start thinking the same. Well, from those psychological pressures and saying how do we rotate that task a little bit and are? You're very good at this? I've seen little hints of that. How you manage your diary and how you look at you know what types of pressure you have in a particular activity and how you break your day up, and I think that's what we need to start doing. When we think about job design, it's not just the physical aspects.

Valerie Ling:

I think it makes a really interesting points. Do you think and I don't know whether you, I know you've been doing some postgraduate studies so maybe you have looked into this but do you think the psychological and physical like just looking at those two components, psychological and economics and physical demands of roles have really shifted over the decades? That have been significant changes? Do you think?

Katharine Moore:

Absolutely, I think, particularly as we start to bring robotics and AI and things in, we start to remove all the really base level jobs from the person's task and we leave them with the more complex tasks that have to be done by humans, and I think that just increases their exposure to those more complex activities that require more focus, more concentration, more problem solving and it gives them left downtime when they're doing the really simple, mediocre kind of jobs.

Valerie Ling:

So one of the common things I hear when we discuss the well-being of pastors is that, oh, but you know, isn't that just part of the terrain? You know pastors are meant to deal with pastoral issues. There will always be conflict in the church and one of the things that I've observed when I talk to pastors is a lot of their role has got to do with complex budgets, complicated governance and compliance issues. You know the pastoral concerns. There's a lot of legislation around what you have to do mandatory reporting, getting yourself, you know, safe to be around children, those sorts of things. If you look at that in terms of job demands, do you think that those are considered demands or they just like oh, you know, that's pretty normal, ordinary. Everybody should be able to just sail through them.

Katharine Moore:

I think it's a little bit of both. I think they are complex, immense they are, and I think it's become ordinary. So we've we've changed our perception on what we think is normal and what we think is hard, but it doesn't change the fact that it requires more brain power. It requires more concentration. You've got less opportunity for error as well. I think we're moving more and more into a world where we don't have capacity to accept error. We really expect everyone to be excellent at what they do and get it right first time, and I think that just keeps adding the pressure. I think the risk that we have is that we've normalized that and we've forgotten how hard it is, and so we have less tolerance when people do have an error, or they just say you know what it's tough. I need a break like I'm feeling fatigued by this From your experience, even quantifying fatigue.

Valerie Ling:

I mean, that's one of the things that we've been looking at in our business, because we're well aware that the type of fatigue psychologists have is quite hard to quantify. How does one quantify fatigue, emotional fatigue even?

Katharine Moore:

I would love to know the answer to that. I've seen things a bit like you know, when you go to hospital and they've got the pain scale. I've seen fatigue scales like that. It's hard again because I think everybody's perception is different, everyone's experience is different and their tolerance level, fatigue is different. But we don't accept that as an answer. We really think that everybody is the same as us.

Katharine Moore:

I think that's the challenge for leaders, for leaders often they have a very high tolerance for being able to manage those complex tasks, for being able to manage fatigue, and they get to a position where they look at the rest of their team and they don't do it with any ill intent, but from their personal experience they look at it and say I don't understand when you're fatigued, I don't understand why you can't handle this level of tasks, because it's less than I'm handling and I'm fine, so why aren't you? But I think we need to move to a point where it's okay to have, you know, a fatigue scale, where people say, for me personally, that's where I'm sitting and this is what I need, to get back up the chain a little bit.

Valerie Ling:

So job design really needs to break down. You need to study what a person is doing during a day, during a week, and breaking it down into these various very specific components and I've heard what you said. There's elements of complexity, tolerance for error, task rotation, task duration. I don't know of any ministry context that has dealt quite into that detail?

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, I don't think I do and I think my understanding of it and obviously I haven't worked in it, but from what I observed it's a very reactive role, right? You don't always get to plan out your week, you don't always get to plan out your day. It's about what to end up on the desk and so you know, planning those opportunities for task rotation, planning those opportunities for breaks, becomes more of a challenge.

Valerie Ling:

So perhaps what I'm listening and reflecting on is that we as leaders can become a psychosocial or a safety risk to our team, not just for ourselves, when those factors are there and we don't even know how to identify them.

Katharine Moore:

Absolutely, yeah, definitely. I think the more pressure we're on as a leader and the more we're struggling, the more impact we're going to have on the people around us. Yeah, we have less ability to self reflect and put controls in place to protect others.

Valerie Ling:

I'd love to just pick up on what you said self reflect. Is that something that in your business you have a way of training or structuring or investigating in your leadership tier, or is it assumed that everybody will know how to do that? It's?

Katharine Moore:

assumed. I did work for a business I had mentioned before about that constructive leadership and that was really around 360 degrees and lots of coaching and lots of opportunities to self reflect and to hear feedback around the impact that you're having on others, because we often go out with intent and we view the world from our perspective of intent, but once we get that feedback of the impact we actually had it, it helps us then to self reflect and say, well, I went out with this intent, but this is how it landed. How do I change that? What do I need to do differently While I'm currently up? We don't have to in place at the moment, but it's definitely something I want to work towards.

Valerie Ling:

Catherine, how does someone get feedback on the impact?

Katharine Moore:

Through feedback surveys. So we were doing 360s, so that would be people above you, people next to you and people below you, and it was a validated survey, so it was very well structured, standardized questions that would be done on a set frequency so that you could start to see the change that you would have 360s have challenges.

Valerie Ling:

Isn't it about trust? Definitely yeah.

Katharine Moore:

It definitely doesn't work unless you've got the trust.

Valerie Ling:

It's only one of the challenges in a business of my size, for example, because you can 100% identify who gave you the feedback because you've got such a small team. Would you say that that is an issue? I think.

Katharine Moore:

It is and it goes back to psychological safety. So remember that they are different and it's really important that we see the difference. You may have psychosocial hands that are not well-controlled in your workplace, but if you have a psychologically safe workplace where everyone feels comfortable to speak up and talk about what the challenges are, it's going to really help your journey. It's going to help you get that true feedback and move forward.

Valerie Ling:

Yeah, I'll just put it out there. It's something that I've been really trying to work on in our business, because psychologists have very similar issues. The trust and confidentiality, because your peers can actually report you, you know if something, and it's the same with ministers. The conduct the complaints can go through. One of the things I'm working on is actually two things fostering a relationship with a partner practice. They can get our feedback and we can get their feedback and do averages of analysis and be able to support one another that way so that our team feels safe to see what they need to say, and it's an aligned partnership with another business that can help us.

Valerie Ling:

But for now, what we've actually done is we've actually hired an outsourced third party to collect all of our surveys and our information so that 100% nobody is identifiable when they give the feedback.

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, that's how we did the constructive leadership that was the party outsourced and all very well documented. So you knew who did the survey, because you'd select your 10 people but you didn't know who was paying for it.

Valerie Ling:

Yeah, okay. Now, one thing that churches have different to businesses is that they're pretty much full of volunteers. Yeah, so I just want to. I'm curious to hear the levels of conflict that have been reported by the survey. In the survey, I mean, we always say our eyes here, our church is full of we're not perfect people. Of course there's going to be conflict, but you know these were the same questions that were asked of Australian school principals. So you're getting people endorsing physical sexual harassment, teasing, bullying, constant conflict and quarrels, gossip and slander. I mean, what is your view as a professional in this space when you hear about that level of conflict?

Katharine Moore:

Look honestly, I think it comes down to lack of transparency. I think that if it was more open and it was more known. So I'll pick a different industry for a minute. If we look at retail, what we've done in the retail space is really vocalise and really start to share data around the level of conflict that customers are showing towards retail workers, and we're making it public and we're putting it out there to say, as a community, as a society, we don't accept this kind of behaviour.

Katharine Moore:

It's not okay, and by doing that it means that now other customers are feeling braver to confront inappropriate customer behaviours. They don't speak to that word. To that way we're making it really public and really really loud and say that this is not what we stand for. I think in the church there's probably an apprehension about doing that, because we need to create an image of Christians and what our values are and what our standards are, and we don't really want to publicly say behind the doors that things are going that well, that we're not necessarily leaving the values that we profess and that we value and that we believe in.

Katharine Moore:

But I think also the media takes quite a lot of joy in highlighting when Christians and churches don't follow the values that they stand by, and so I think there's probably some nervousness about being transparent about some of those behaviours. And the risk with that is that if bullies can bully behind closed doors, they'll keep doing it. You need to take those walls down and open those doors up.

Katharine Moore:

show the bullies the light so that others can stand up and say we don't allow that kind of behaviour, and I think that's always going to be the challenge for the churches, you know making sure that we do stand for the right values and that we are known for that in the community and that we're not getting taken advantage of by the media, but at the same time we don't want to close off and hide what's happening behind closed doors.

Valerie Ling:

One of the challenges I suspect in churches is that it does happen unseen. It's through the emails, it's through the Facebook and the SMS texts. There are no formal channels to communicate this sort of thing. I find that really interesting in that I used to say it's death by a thousand paper cuts. I think what people forget is that there's very often one pastor or even, let's say, three to five pastors.

Valerie Ling:

When you have three to five pastors, your congregation is usually at the size of maybe three, four hundred and upwards, because there are no two-way conversations in these sorts of setups, like in my team, it's a two-way conversation. There's one of me and there's 20 on the team, but there's always two-way conversations. I know your role. I know my role. If we're kind of stepping on one another's toes, let's have a conversation and let's review that role. Now, with pastors, you've got hundreds of people sending them emails, messages, discontent. It's often not really a two-way conversation. I have a problem with you. This is the problem. I expect that you will fix it. It's your job as the pastor of this church to fix it.

Katharine Moore:

I think that goes straight back to role clarity. Not only does the minister need to know what the clarity of their role is, but the congregation needs to know what the clarity is as well. They need to know what is their responsible for and what are they not responsible for. Because I think you're right, I think people have their own perception, their own idea of what is under their control.

Valerie Ling:

Do you think it's enough to go on a courtesy, care and love campaign? That's what Singapore did. Oh, they had a little lion, I think he was like the ambassador, I think, for courtesy. The little cartoon will come on TV and remind you what the values were and what the behaviors are. Have a little lion and interact with the public. Is that what we're looking at? Is it some kind of a campaign for church congregants?

Katharine Moore:

I think we could do that for the whole community. I think the whole community has become quite vocal, quite brave in speaking out on social media and via emails. We have a different world now. How many of these people would say those things face to face with a person? I just don't think they would.

Katharine Moore:

I don't think they would take the time and I don't think they would be brave enough to do it, whereas they've created this space at home and I think they could just jump on their keyboard and send out these messages without any real consequence. I think we're creating a community of people who maybe are speaking before they think.

Valerie Ling:

Let's say, in your workplace. How do you cultivate a culture of managing conflict well, being respectful and knowing your limits when you're interacting with someone else? How does that happen?

Katharine Moore:

I think it is easier in the workplace. You have stronger roles around role clarity, hierarchy values, respectful behaviour. But I think the key success I've always seen is having those conversations. If I've got a problem with you, I don't go to your manager. I don't go to my manager. I go to you and I sit down and have conversations. This is the impact that you're having on me. You can talk about your experience and what the intent was and we can have an open conversation about how that went and what would be better next time. Obviously, that type of work is escalation process, but that's all really well formulated. In a workplace as well, you've got your escalation process. You've got different support, people to help coach you, have those conversations or facilitate those conversations. I don't know that that exists as well in the church. I think from the congregation's perspective, they probably don't have as much clarity about the right ways to address their concerns.

Valerie Ling:

Now, this was an interesting one, because most pastors and, I think, most congregation, assume that the Bible, in terms of godly conduct, tells us how we are to behave as a church. What do you think is missing?

Katharine Moore:

Probably it's the interpretation of it, how people take the personal interpretation about how it impacts their behaviour. I think people are very good at using the Bible to say how you should behave, but not so good at looking at the Bible and saying how I should behave.

Valerie Ling:

Let's say you and I have the opportunity. One psychologist, one leadership, safety, health and wellbeing practitioner. We have the chance and someone hired us and said look, we're going to church plant. We want to set up some of the structures so that the leadership, wellbeing and transparency in the community that's all been set up. What would be some things that you would immediately say, yeah, okay, here's what we need.

Katharine Moore:

That's a good question. I think it would be great to sit down and online as a group and say what are the key values we're going to take out of the Bible that we want to say these are non-negotiables, these are the things that we want to see every day Because we accept that people are in fact, right. We accept that people are sinful and that they're not going to live to the 5% of their every day. But what are the key ones that just absolutely have to be there? And I think, by sitting down and talking through that and agreeing on that and then maybe even looking at it from, if we refer quite to the workplace, we have inductions, we have orientations. When we talk to people about what is our culture, what are our values. Do we do that in the church? We welcome people and we welcome them as they are, but when do we sit down and say this is what our church says and this is what is really important to us and what we want to see living in the people in our church?

Valerie Ling:

So if you had to chunk that down, do you mean like values into behaviors? Yeah, like as specific as this is how we interact in the car park. This is how we interact in the morning tea. Do you mean even really drilled down to that Potentially?

Katharine Moore:

Look, I think you know, if you look at things like car park in the morning tea, I'd probably go to that level if there were issues there and we had to say this is what it should look like. But I think look at the key things that are problems. So how is it we welcome new people? How is it we deal with conflict? How is it we raise concerns about leadership in the church, like those things that can be really challenging, that maybe people don't know exactly the right process, the right way to raise those concerns.

Valerie Ling:

Okay, and so we'd have a look and we'd align values, and I've often talked about a code of conduct within a church. Even so, in our business, I've actually recraft a job designed to include what I say, their character statements, behaviors that come from our values, that we all agree are important and non-negotiable, and we have permission to call one another, including myself, out on it. Now, you know, it's not been very like ingrained. It's a work in motion. But you know, I've seen some changes in our team. Instead of being afraid to say sorry I did the wrong thing, it's just become automatic just to go oh, I'm sorry, I missed the ball on that one, didn't I? Or you know it's like, yeah, that's one of the character virtues that we have.

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, I love that. I think that's exactly what I was sort of leaning towards, is exactly that kind of format and I've seen it done very well. So in the other business constructive leadership a strong part of that is immediate feedback. So when you're in a conversation, if you've seen behaviors that are not aligned to what we've agreed to, then just calling that out in a really constructive way. It doesn't have to be aggressive, it doesn't have to be. You know, you're bad first thing. You're doing the wrong thing. It's just, hey, I kind of see you leaning towards this way.

Valerie Ling:

This is the midpoint break for the podcast. If you want to put a pause and walk away and come back to it, make sure you do check out the description for all the various downloads that we have for you, including my full report, research and reflections. You might also want to remember to like, share and subscribe. So stop now or keep going.

Katharine Moore:

Let's try and go this way instead, and I find that really effective.

Valerie Ling:

All right. So let's go back to you and I. You know we get this amazing opportunity to take a whole year off to journey with a church planter, so that's what we do. Is there anything else that you think? How about the job design aspect? You know what you want to see in that.

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, I think the job design would be really interesting. Like I would love to actually bring someone in, like a Valerie, to actually do that job task analysis and really break it down, look at what is an actual component of that task and that job and then look at is there ways I don't know, I haven't worked in this field but is there ways that we can start to build some strategies in to help the clergy, to help the leadership, to do task rotation, to take little micro breaks or to take longer breaks at the right frequency so that they're avoiding that burnout stage? I think that would be really interesting to actually do it from that scientific level.

Valerie Ling:

Yeah, we once had a really interesting assignment that was given to us. It was such a compassionate request. It was from a church who was in the process of hiring an individual that had certain capacity issues. That's just put it that way. And at the time on staff we had a mental health occupational therapist. So that's exactly what they went and did. They went and investigate the ergonomics. They actually went to investigate the task, chunking down and made specific recommendations. Some of them were really creative actually, but I think what that did was it gave a conversation for the team to understand that when this person is making an adjustment, it's not them being precious yeah, this has actually been assessed for their sustainability. But how do you then share that, let's say, in this church planting context? Let's say you've now got also volunteers, people in the congregation. How do you build, how do you think we build that connection, that transparency, that empathy? If you could come in and make that happen, what would that look like?

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, that's something I've been working on recently. So as we, I guess, move more, and more to a world where we really want to create a workplace that is inclusive of all people. Different disabilities, different capacities and workplace adjustments become more and more part of the way we work.

Katharine Moore:

We really need to break down those misconceptions and those previous ideas that the general population have. So I think a lot of that is through training. A lot of that is just raising awareness, talking through the stories, sharing stories of real lived experiences, and it needs to happen before you have that individual in that role. So it has to be the general awareness, the general foundation for everyone that this is our culture, this is our values. We accept people as they are and we need to break down some of those systemic barriers that prevent people with different disabilities, whether they're physical, psychological, whether it's even not a disability of their own maybe there's other reasons, other care requirements that they have that they need those adjustments. I just create that as the new normal that people accept and people understand the purpose behind it, and that it's not about an individual needing preferential treatment or something like that. It's just about prevention of those barriers. I think once you get that concept out there, people become much more open minded and much more accommodating.

Valerie Ling:

Yeah, that's an interesting one. It's kind of looking at the whole body of Christ. There is spiritual maturity, there is growth and holiness and reaching out to people and introducing them to Jesus. At the same time, we need to make sure that our internal structures are safe and strong, don't we? Yeah, as we bring people into disaster zones, I've had the very unfortunate I'm not unfortunate, I've been curious, but it has been very sad. I've just been watching all the dockos out at the moment on the collapse of various mega-churches. It's almost like we need to get so many of our internal structures right.

Valerie Ling:

Why do we have this level of conflict happening? Why are so many ministers saying that they can't actually they're exhausted, they're lonely and they're worrying about their family? I mean, can you imagine that when I go to work as a psychologist and I don't worry about my family's safety because really, the board and the police protect me, I am not obliged to give any of my personal details? If a client was stalking me or harassing me, I have the right to go to the police and actually lodge a report. We live as psychologists. We live within the safety to know that we have the option to decline work if it puts our family and our kids in many people in ministry don't? They don't have that.

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, and I think even if they did, it's such a sacrificial role, it's such a put everything in kind of role.

Katharine Moore:

I think their own personal values really struggle with pulling back from the person. You know a person in need. I know I worked in a role several years ago that worked in community care and working particularly with homeless people, things like that homeless children, and some of the staff and some of the volunteers they really they put themselves at risk because they wanted to help these people and they thought that the need was bigger than the risk to themselves and that the purpose, that the mission, was bigger than themselves and they really didn't have the capacity to put protection around themselves and control them in a place they didn't really see the bigger picture that is there at risk today. They can't help people in the future either and it was really important about trying to, I think, give them that bigger picture, give them that sort of ability to put themselves first and that it doesn't cause harm to the people that they're trying to help if you put yourself first and if you put some protective features in place in your role so that you can keep helping in the user.

Valerie Ling:

This comes out a lot for us in our practice with our clients. So there are not necessarily just the pastors, but ministry workers who didn't think twice about walking into a domestic violence situation or walking into someone who was, you know, under the influence of alcohol or drugs because they got called to. You know, when you look at that very quickly like what are some ways that you even formulate what you're meant to do with that? How do you work with that?

Katharine Moore:

It's so tough, right? Because yeah, it's so tough on some of these values. It's about, you know, people who are sacrificial and so it's really hard for them to put themselves first. It's also they see this mission as so important, so critical and so time-freshed that they have to make their decision there. They have to do it there, and then I think the only way you can do it is really pulling people out of that position for a little bit, really bringing them back and helping them to see the big picture, the big purpose, to help them have that mindset that they're able to step back when they need to. But yeah, it's tough. Look, I haven't seen it done very well yet.

Katharine Moore:

When you've got someone who's really committed to that, that purpose. It's very, very tough.

Valerie Ling:

I think what you said earlier is also being able to identify all of these as safety risks, because, I mean, a psychologist wouldn't do that If we got a call to step into a domestic violence situation or we got a call to step into a drug and alcohol situation. We just wouldn't. We've been trained to identify what our role is, what the risks are and what sort of five steps we need to take in order to make a quality decision before we jump in. So I wonder, too, whether it's part of the job design. I think, catherine. Yeah.

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, definitely, and it comes down to the controls we put in place. Right, once we've got that job design, once we've identified the risks and this comes back to safety now, right, that risk framework, so you have the job design, understand what the risks are, then start putting the controls in place for how you're going to prevent or mitigate that risk. And I think a lot of workplaces don't have that, especially in this kind of industry, whether it's the church or whether it's community care, things like that. I think there are businesses that really don't have that framework at the moment.

Valerie Ling:

You've just given me an idea. If you and I were called to this wonderful opportunity to go and set up work with a church planning situation, that's probably one of the formative conversations to have. As a church community. We love our leadership team and our staff. Let's look at some of the risks and the controls together as a community. Let's meet more regularly. What came up in the last quarter we'd love to know. We'd love to actually work on how we can keep the leadership team well and safe. Other things that we need to adjust, because there'll be great ownership, I suspect, when there's more awareness on a regular basis for just some things that have come up and that the ministry team may just normalize as being. That's just part of serving God, Isn't that?

Katharine Moore:

Yeah exactly.

Valerie Ling:

So we're going to finish with the questions that I've asked everybody. There was a church, a pastor listening to our conversation right now, feeling burnt out, feeling like they failed even as a leader, because they're just not bearing under the weight of all of their ministry responsibilities. What's one thing you'd like them to walk away with and to actually either implement or think about?

Katharine Moore:

I think it's. I think I'll come back to that framework. Keep it simple. It doesn't have to be professionally written, but start looking at what are the activities that you do, what are the risks that are associated with that and what controls can you put in place. Start to reduce it, ok.

Valerie Ling:

And let's say, if a whole church is listening to us today going oh, we love our ministry team we're so sad to hear about the set of affairs with pastors and clergy. What's one thing you'd like a church to really be thinking and working on as a community.

Katharine Moore:

I think it's hard. I'd like to say this is what I'd like to say is ask, don't assume. Don't assume that your leadership team is OK, don't assume that the leadership role is really easy. Ask, ask how it's doing. I hesitate to say that, though, because I don't know that the leadership team can answer that openly and honestly. But even if you don't ask, just assume that their role is big, their role is really tough, and think about how you can be a servant, how you can add value to the church, how you can add value to your leadership team. See, maybe there's a simple task that you can take off there and say you can support them.

Valerie Ling:

Thank you. And finally, speaking more to policymakers now at the level of HR, the denomination, who are looking after pastors, what's one thing you'd like them to walk away with, in view of some of the things that we've talked about?

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, look, I really think they need to invest in this. I think that they need to go and talk to the experts, bring experts into the business, if they don't already have that, to consult with them and to help them to start to put together some of these frameworks. I think training is essential, building that awareness, both of the leadership team and for those around them, looking at how you support the especially new churches, that they start to grow and start to build up, how they set themselves up for success. And then, I think, implement. I really love the PDC and the Planned Education Act. So don't just say we're going to do something and go and do it Really. Plan it out, work in consultation, do it, but then check in, see what's working, see what's not working and what you need to change and implement from there.

Valerie Ling:

As long as I'm listening to you. I'm convicted myself because you and I go to the same church, so perhaps our ministry team is going to get a lot of love. But I'm convicted myself that I wonder, even within our context, if there's three or four of us that just make that part of our hearts to every quarter check in with our leadership team, take them out for coffee, investigate what is the level of safety and well-being at the moment. If we did that, I think that also fosters that trust and transparency. But it can be quite contagious, because if three of us know what the leadership team are dealing with and then another three come into that, as we're all circulating, we'll be able to actually provide a voice of compassion or perspective or reason that can actually spread through.

Katharine Moore:

Yeah, and I think that peer-to-peer sort of coaching, informal coaching, is really effective and I think it's a really great way to start yeah.

Valerie Ling:

Katherine, I knew that this would be such an amazing conversation and it has been. Thank you so much for your time, Thank you for your wisdom and your really clear thinking in this space. Thank you so much.

Katharine Moore:

Oh, thank you so much for inviting me. I love it. I love talking about this such thing, yay, looking forward to what we can do together.

Valerie Ling:

Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you liked what you heard and you think others should hear it too, don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Catch you later.

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