Staying Calm Amongst the Risks

Keeping Calm to Reduce Risks

When we were building our current house, we wanted to be on-site as much as possible, part of the process of construction. The builder was a friend of ours and told me that we could come as long as we got “the white card.”  This is a certificate that identifies you onsite, to be highly visible to others, and therefore, less likely to be injured. It’s a way to be extra aware to protect the business, employees and clients.

Identifying a Potential Crises

In my experience, this is something that pastors and leaders need to pay attention to as well. We need to be able to evaluate our circumstances and assess risk in order to reduce threats. While the threats are often different from those in construction work— less risk of physical injury, for instance— we still need to be aware of the mental and emotional needs of our staff. Often, we prepare ourselves and our teams for the wrong potential crises.

Recognising the Signs of Burnout

When I became a pastor, I thought the biggest dangers were things like being caught up in pride or money or immoral relationships, so I did what I could to reduce risks of these dangers. However, I did not consider burnout, and I did not see it coming. Burnout is actually far more common for most professions than any of the dangers I was concerned about.

How to Avoid Burnout?

How can we avoid the unpredictable and the unseen dangers? Look and plan ahead. Speak to others more experienced in our field and to well-being coaches. Build good communication within our team to create risk alerts (think of modern cars, with noises and lights that alert us of all sort of dangers; unfastened seat belts, unclosed doors, sometimes even our vehicle getting too close to an object) and then, when the risk does arise, a good leader will approach with calm and confident leadership.

Questions to reduce risks:

• Where are the danger zones in your world?
• How can you prepare or prevent these dangers?
• What is your typical response to dangers when they arise? How could you improve?