The Care and Feeding of Monkeys
Tim Massengale

Weekly Tag-in Benefits
Weekly tag-in helps overcome procrastination
When you meet with your leaders at your Monthly Planning Council, you are discussing upcoming church plans and activities
You are inevitably giving assignments and asking leaders to follow-through on things  
Volunteer leaders will often put these assignments off until the last minute and then they are done poorly or not done at all
They will come back with some kind of excuse and usually ask for your help

Encourage Faithfulness
Your weekly tag-in gives you the opportunity to encourage your leaders to be faithful to their assignments and keeps them on target
Procrastination is normally kept to a minimum 
Improves the quality of work performed
Work, when done in a hurry and rushed through at the last minute, is rarely done well
The tag-in helps them start early and do the job right

The Tag-in Also Helps Your Monthly Planning Council Attendance
When they have all their tasks done, they look forward to being there 
Perhaps the most important benefit of the weekly tag-in is to give you a chance to solve problems and answer questions
The tag-in gives them easy access to you to ask for help
This way everyone does not have to stand around listening to the two of you work through a problem

Benefits Of Meetings
It utilizes your time most effectively
You don’t have to track leaders down one-by-one to check on their progress  
Encourage them
Pray with them, and keep them motivated and faithful to assignments
By the time the next monthly planning session rolls around, everything is done
You are then ready to move on to your next month’s plan
	
The Care And Feeding Of Monkeys
Every leader has monkeys or problems 
It’s how you deal with your monkeys that separate good leaders from bad ones  
When a leader has a problem, they carry their monkey to you for you to examine 
Monkeys do not care whose back they ride on - They just like to ride
After a time, you have dozens of monkeys hanging off of you and you are ready to collapse under the load of problems you carry
However, this is the wrong approach

What Should I Do?
Take the monkey, examine it, and then had it back to the leader with a few suggestions on what they can do to help the monkey
You have enough of your own monkeys without accepting everyone else’s problems as well
Poor managers too often accumulate monkeys and then let them starve to death 
The problem is the need was never addressed
Dead monkeys stink - They often become an even greater problem dead than alive 
Ignoring problems is definitely not the answer

How Do I Get Rid Of A Monkey?
The manager, meaning the pastor, can also shoot the monkey 
You may decide to remove the responsibility from leader altogether  
Be on guard for leaders who try to shoot monkeys themselves because that is not their place to make those kind of decisions

Your Choice
When leaders come to the weekly tag-in with monkeys (problems), you have three choices:  starve ‘em, shoot ‘em, or feed ‘em
Never let problems accumulate and starve
Shoot them if you must
Usually the best solution is to feed it – offer suggestions and ideas on how to solve the problem – and then hand it back to your leader and let them fix the problem

One Final Monkey
Get the weekly tag-ins going again and learn to deal properly with problems when they come up
Ignoring a monkey won’t work