In 2025, I dealt with a staff member at one of our eight Grace Church campuses who violated our conflict resolution process by triangulating—going around their direct supervisor to complain to board members. 

I had allowed informal communication channels to blur because “we’re all family here,” but that openness created chaos when real issues surfaced.

The fallout took six weeks to untangle. 

Three other team members got pulled into the drama, productivity dropped, and I spent hours in damage-control meetings that should’ve been avoided. 

We lost focus on actual ministry while managing the mess.

For 2026, I created a written escalation path that every staff member signs during onboarding. 

It’s simple: talk to your direct supervisor first, then their supervisor, then HR, then me. No skipping steps. 

We also added a clause in our employee handbook about confidentiality and proper channels—it’s not about being cold, it’s about protecting everyone involved.

I learned that clear boundaries aren’t anti-relational. 

In a 150-person team across multiple states, structure protects culture. 

When people know the rules, they feel safer, not more restricted.

We lost some good curators last year because our career paths weren’t clear, and it really slowed us down.

After talking with my team, I started pairing new hires with veterans and writing out what their next few years could look like.

That approach kept people engaged better than anything we’d tried before.

Show people they have a future with you, don’t just give them a desk.

Even the most seasoned HR teams have blind spots—and in 2025, ours surfaced around internal communication during a period of rapid growth.

As our team expanded across multiple locations and time zones, we underestimated the importance of structured updates and context-sharing.

We assumed that because we had Slack channels and monthly all-hands, everyone felt informed and aligned.

But as subtle signs of misalignment emerged—conflicting priorities, duplicated work, employee frustrations—we realized that information access and emotional clarity were not the same thing.

The slip became clear when we rolled out a mid-year performance framework update.

Though the policy was designed to support fairness and flexibility, it landed poorly.

Many employees didn’t understand why the change was made, or how it tied to our evolving values. Some even feared it was a precursor to downsizing.

What we saw as proactive transparency, others experienced as vague and top-down.

Morale took a temporary dip, and trust wobbled.

Instead of pushing forward, we paused.

We held listening sessions, re-opened the feedback loop, and brought in an external facilitator to audit our communication approach.

One insight that stuck: updates that are clear to us aren’t necessarily clear to others.

People need not just the “what” but the “why,” the “how it impacts me,” and the space to process change.

For 2026, we’ve implemented a full communication reset.

Every policy or strategy shift now comes with a “Story of Change” brief—explaining the rationale, goals, and expected impact from the employee’s perspective.

Managers are equipped with conversation guides to help their teams personalize the message.

We’ve also introduced quarterly micro-feedback rounds to catch small disconnects before they grow into larger ones.

According to Gallup, 74% of employees feel they’re missing out on company information and news—and poor communication is one of the top drivers of disengagement.

We learned that the real failure wasn’t in the policy change itself—it was in assuming people felt informed, valued, and heard along the way.

2025 reminded us that HR is more than compliance and planning—it’s emotional architecture.

In 2026, we’re designing communication to be as thoughtful and human-centered as every other part of the employee experience.

The HR mistake I had to endure in 2025 was one of my own making.

I’ll defend myself by saying that it was borne only of high expectations: I’d long assumed that my highest performers were unstoppable.

They certainly seemed that way. But a chaotic year of growth, with new client segments plus AI experimentation left my team burned out.

By Q3, I had two top recruiters ask for reduced workloads, not because they wanted more balance, but because they were exhausted and starting to resent the pace. That hit me.

I realized I’d built a system where excellence was rewarded with… more work. It was a classic mistake.

So for 2026, I’ve rebuilt the scaffolding around them.

We created a capacity ceiling, along with a rotation model that forces downtime between heavy cycles.

We also rebalanced comp to reward quality and pipeline durability, not just volume. And because I know my own tendencies, I added quarterly workload audits where someone other than me reviews how evenly the work is distributed.

The early signs are promising. People are pacing themselves better, quality hasn’t dipped, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson about nurturing top talent to ensure long-term and sustainable momentum.