Toxic Culture Doesn't Mean Bad People — It Means Nobody's Watering the Garden — Phil EuBank, Menlo Church

Yeah, I put out a thing on our staff chat just to say like, hey, what are the parts of culture that you're most resonating with? And what are the parts of culture that you still see as needing some improvement? And if you don't feel comfortable sending these to like everybody, feel free to send them to me.

And I think one of the things that somebody flagged that I think is really valuable is really this underlying idea of fixed versus growth mindset.

And I think a lot of that starts with either a leader, senior pastor or a lead team.

I think if the idea is you have a fixed mindset and what a culture assessment is designed to do is just figure out, can we add another sticker of like, you know, best Christian certified or whatever.

hey, this is a thing we do and we're better because of it.

If that's the goal, your culture is basically going to stay where it is.

You might be able to add different words to it.

You might be able to put a checkbox to say we did a thing, but it's not going to change significantly.

I think if you walk into it with a growth mindset and say, hey, even if we're a good culture now, we could be a great culture.

And no culture is static.

Your culture is either improving or regressing.

And no culture is improving without a leader who thinks about it, right? Somebody early on in ministry challenged me to think about my job.

as a senior leader, as chief culture officer, that I may not necessarily be in every meeting, but that idea of fixed versus growth mindset, it really is, does my calendar look like that? Does my time look like that? You know, one of the lines, like kind of pastoral lines that I think is really valuable is do for one what you wish you could do for all.

And I think that the idea of how you show up as a leader with staff, that really reflects that.

Are you hard to get a hold of? Are you hard for people to say hello to? Do people see you around a campus or in our case around Menlo? And I think that if you as a leader think this is somebody else on my staff's problem to solve, you're probably not going to solve it.

If you think, I bet we're 98%, it'd be really great if we were 99 next year.

You're probably not going to solve it.

But the goal for us is I want Menlo Church to be the best place that anyone on our team has ever worked at.

I want it to be the one that sets the bar for them, that when they work at their next church or they take on a church or they help plant one or they go to the marketplace, they go, man, I remember a place where we... pray together to start meetings.

I remember a place where we helped that staff member and their family move.

I remember a place that when we were in a difficult situation financially, my employer who didn't have to help helped anyway.

I remember a place that when I wasn't sure what was going on, I knew where to go look for the right information.

I knew what the strategy was.

I knew what the update was.

And so all that stuff, I mean, you're spinning plates like none of that just keeps going on itself.