Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
Henry Ford
It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be the prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up… From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Ephesians 4:11-12,16
Getting work done in a church relies on more than just the pastor, board chair, or deacons, to make things happen, it depends on a team working together to carry out the given task, function or program.
It takes an effective leader to create a functional team. If the team is not working as a unit, it remains a group. A group, at best, delivers the same results as if its members were working individually, and at worst, they could work against each other, reducing effectiveness and creating a toxic work atmosphere. The approach of the Christian leader is to cultivate an enabling environment for their team to reach its full potential by developing a Christ-centered servant leadership style. Jesus modeled the way to lead teams with his disciples.
Even the most outstanding leaders cannot accomplish significant tasks apart from the capable effort of others. The greatest leaders in history recognized their dependence on others. You don’t become a successful leader without realizing that your value is not based on what you can do, but rather on what you can do through others. The leader has no greater resource than the people he leads.
How to Build Superior Leadership Teams
Leaders who build superior leadership teams need to:
- Develop a dynamic culture
Developing a dynamic, problem-solving, creative, and hardworking team begins by hiring the right people. Leaders develop superior teams by intentionally hiring or enlisting the best people possible for their organizations. Challenging missions require carefully chosen teams (Judges 7; 2 Samuel 23:8-39).
The greatest liability for many organizations is careless recruitment. Simply hiring the best person available is not always wise. It may be more prudent to delay filling a position until the right person is discovered.
Leaders must go to great lengths if necessary to enlist the right people for their team. They may have to be aggressive in the salary package or working conditions they offer. They will need to provide a cause worth investing in as well as jobs that challenge and reward team members. Leaders may also have to overcome their own bias or preconceived methodology to enlist people with a fresh, creative approach. The best leaders are always on the lookout for exceptional talent they can add to their ranks. - Maximize diversity
To thrive in a complex and diverse world, teams must have a wide spectrum of perspective and skills at their disposal. Diversity may be exhibited in the following areas:- Diversity of perspective: A winning team intentionally assembled to include men and women as well as various personality types, ethnic groups, and education levels will result in diversity of perspective.
- Diversity of skills: Effective teams must have a wide array of abilities at their disposal. Astute leaders fully develop and use the skills and talents of their team members.
- Diversity in knowledge: Modern leaders must lead knowledgeable workers. It is imperative, therefore, to create a culture which attracts outstanding knowledge workers and gives them the opportunity to thrive.
- Love their people
People entrust their hopes, dreams, self-worth, and skills into their leader’s hands. Employees who are neglected or exploited will never achieve the creative breakthroughs that emerge in a caring, stimulating, and supportive environment. Great leaders go to enormous lengths to care for their people. Effective leaders create an environment of trust and concern for those they work with (John 10:11). - Maintain focus
Teams produce their best work when their mission is clear and their efforts are focused. Teams struggle when they lose sight of their goal. It is the leader’s responsibility to keep the team centered on its mission. Every team member has an opinion about what the organization’s priorities should be. But effective teams stay riveted to their mandate. They relentlessly protect their priorities. Leaders keep their team focused and regularly delineate its objectives. - Foster healthy communication
For leaders to accomplish dynamic, creative, problem-solving work, they must have fast, reliable, and crucial information and the leader’s role is to ensure they do. Modern leaders who are serious about providing real time information to team members have three primary tools available to them: technology, architecture, and meetings.- Technology: Computer networks make information available to staff even if they are dispersed globally. Videoconferencing and numerous other communications technologies allow people to hold strategic meetings with people around the world.
- Architecture: The physical layout of an organization can do much to enhance or impede team effectiveness.
- Meetings: Technology has reduced the necessity for the number of meetings required by organizations, but face-toface encounters with staff continue to be needed. Leaders make use of a variety of settings to ensure their people are kept abreast of the goings on.
- Help their people grow
Most people want to believe their life makes a difference in their world. People want to do more than merely earn a living through their work. Wise leaders assign challenging tasks to their staff so they remain invigorated, and grow personally and professionally. If your people do not grow under your leadership; you are not investing in them properly.
Leaders can initiate personal growth all by themselves. But to change and grow organizations, leaders depend on other people. To launch a movement, leaders must interface with numerous people. Great leaders multiply their efforts by developing teams. A skilled team can accomplish far more than a talented individual. The key to success in today’s complex, rapidly changing world is developing a diverse, skilled, flexible and creative team with the freedom to grow, and fail, in pursuit of its mission. This must be one of a leader’s top priorities.
PAUSE
Which of the above guidelines on leading teams do you find hard to implement in your leadership area and why?
Team Building Principles
George Barna points out several principles to consider, when building a team:
1) A team must have a gifted and committed leader.
Leaders serve the vision of an organization. Some leaders are visionaries who have very little administrative skill, and others are well balanced and have the ability to work administratively well. A team, however, will do well to assist the leader in as many administrative areas as possible so that he can continue to be tip of the arrow, forging the future as others develop the present.
2) A team must bring together a holy “band of men, [and women] whose hearts God touched” (1 Samuel 10:26, KJV).
Because a ministry team needs people through whom the Holy Spirit can easily flow, it is vital that each person works diligently to maintain his own personal walk with Christ through Bible study, Scripture memory, prayer, and service to others. Whatever the vision, team members must all play some vital part in the actual ministry, never becoming aloof and only managing others or purely doing administration.
3) A team is a group who are united under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
As Paul has said, we are “slaves of Christ” (Ephesians 6:6). The owner does not give us options; He gives us a calling; a commissioning.
4) A team has a focus that is so easily discernible that the devil, who is the author of confusion, can never interrupt the direction of ministry.
Recognizing the adversary is essential to the team. Ministry teams are engaged in spiritual warfare. Certainly, people can create confusion. But if Christ is the center of all things, everything will fall into place (Colossians 1:17). If not, confusion, distrust and disunity will occur. “Focus on Christ” must be the theme of every ministry team for that team to be successful. The team must be very conscious of the role of the adversary.
In the midst of the “me” generation, the “we” generation must be fashioned. Christ’s model moves us from self-centeredness to selflessness.
5) Gifted people on the team are chosen to get specific jobs done.
The placement of each person in a team is vital. As the Body of Christ, no member of the team is more or less important than another. People are gifted for specific kinds of service and usually grow through experience in ability, discernment, and wisdom for future and greater levels of service.
6) A team needs people who have “Nike [ just do it] hearts”.
A good team operates with adequate and accurate communication, constantly feeding the team leader necessary information so that he will be sufficiently informed for decision-making. Each team member, on the other hand, should know his respective area better than the team leader. Sometimes people get so focused on planning that they never get around to doing. Teams that function best are those that devise strategic plans and
quickly turn them into tactical plans they implement. A plan not implemented is of limited, if any, value.
7) A gifted team strategically trains its people, but most of the time, these capable and godly people are trained on the job.
Ability is less important than availability, but ideally, both qualities should be in place. Ephesians 3:20 states that our God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, because it is His power that works in us. This is true when people obediently follow. As we look at the great servant-leaders of the church today, most of them have not come from positions of power and authority within their family or academic structures, but God has promoted them according to their obedience.
8) Great teams use “participative management”.
Participative management is synergism at its best. The people involved realize that it is not a pure democracy. They know that they are expected to communicate at various levels within the team structure to accomplish the desired end. They keep in mind that those in authority above them must be clearly shown the picture as it develops, and that each one must receive approval at every point of development.
9) Service is more important than position.
But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all (Mark 10:43-44, KJV).
10) Team members must show respect for the leader and for other team members.
A great team is usually an organization made up of as many (or more) followers as there are leaders. Within an excellent team are also several people who are capable of stepping into the slot of the leader if unfortunate circumstances remove him. Each person must have complete loyalty to the leader. In this way, the harmony in the team is consistent regardless of the challenges or sacrifices.
Though personalities will vary within the team, from the most relaxed to the most impulsive, everyone’s strengths should complement the others’ weaknesses. Anyone’s strengths however, can become his weaknesses if undisciplined. Therefore, the team members must respect each other enough to confront in love. Wise confrontation is always a growth process for everyone within the team. Not every team is perfect. Even Jesus Christ had Judas.
11) A team is only as strong as it is disciplined.
An effective ministry team exhibits discipline on three planes: spiritual, physical, and mental. Discipline also operates on two organizational levels: personal and corporate. Discipline is vital. A physically unkempt team is normally undisciplined in other ways. Physical discipline, however, is secondary to spiritual. It is mandatory that every person in the team be responsible for scriptural intake, communion with God, and his own personal intimacy with Christ and others.
12) Effective teams realize that failure may be a step toward success.
Great teams do not view failures as terminal outcomes, nor as paralyzing defeat, but as part of God’s plan to facilitate a better future performance by the team. You would be hard pressed to find any successful team that has not suffered serious setbacks along its path to success and influence.
13) Teams must achieve significant comfort levels within the familiar organization scheme.
When it comes to handling change and addressing opportunities, family units are poised to move quickly; bureaucracies are legendary for their inability to respond in a timely fashion. For a family to fully exploit its options, however, every member of the family must be comfortable with the intimacy of that close-knit relationship. In this way, each person will be able to confide, exhort, encourage, and apply themselves for spiritual production.
14) Communication is crucial.
In an era of significant change such as ours, there is no substitute for effective communication within the team. An effective team is well organized and well informed. Without the cohesiveness that comes from complete trust and clear communication, the buckshot will be headed in the same direction toward the target, but in the spaces in between, the adversary can work and cause division and disharmony.
15) Great teams respond to change by remaining flexible.
A team must never be so locked into a plan that it cannot be flexible to the realities of the situation—and those realities change!
16) Team leaders delegate; they do not abdicate.
A team leader must recognize the spiritual gifts of those within his/her team and delegate the team’s tasks accordingly. Of course, each team member’s ability to persist, attitude toward the job, and work performance, in addition to personal spiritual gifts, determines who is given which task. The leader must then allow the team members and/or the team as a whole to complete the task without unnecessary interference. Each team operates differently, and people within a team may use different approaches to accomplish their task. Effective leaders allow for personal creativity and individuality in accomplishing assignments.
Allow your team to grow. Give team members tasks that are within their giftings and abilities, but beyond their previous experience. Stretch them, but be available to assist. Encourage, exhort, challenge or correct as needed. The leader must, however, remember that even if they have delegated, ultimately the buck stops with them.
17) Attitude matters. Great teams exhibit sincerity, transparency, and vulnerability.
Maintaining and modeling these qualities is difficult for leaders, and it is made more difficult by public scrutiny. A vulnerable leader is one who is wounded not only in combat, but one who has also had his pride punctured by colleagues who love the leader enough to offer constructive challenge or correction.
18) Within familial organizations, there is recourse.
In an effective team, as in a functional family setting, everyone has access to all people in the unit, regardless of the levels of responsibility held by each. This access is a privilege and must be used wisely, demonstrating respect for those being challenged or critiqued.
19) Unity drives impact.
It is vital for a team to be focused in direction. God’s teams must not give Satan any opportunity to invade their territory and wreak havoc. Ministry teams must unite to become a darkness piercing arrow, eliminating all the spiritual space or gaps between members. A house divided against itself cannot stand. The hearts, will, and energy of team members must be knit together with common purpose and direction.
20) Each person within the team is a coach and a player.
The leader of any team can fall, die or be removed at any time. Therefore, each person in the team must be developing as a leader. Though particular people may never rise to become the primary leader of the team, the team itself can only progress if each member’s personal growth is constant. For this to occur, each person must not only be actively involved in the game, but he must also be vulnerable with others and consciously building up others through encouragement or exhortation.
21) Non-participatory team members could and should be removed.
Process is vital in developing a team; knowing, communicating, supporting, encouraging, and exhorting one another is necessary. Product is vital too. If the team has as its goal evangelism, that should be the ultimate return on investment. If the team has as its goal social concern, the number of mouths fed, bodies clothed, and nights of sleep prepared is the product. If a person is not producing, he is “treading water.” One cannot do this in ministry. The adversarial currents are too strong to allow team members to be treading water. That person is going backward and pulling the team in the wrong direction. Some steps to be involved in redirecting the efforts of unproductive or non-participatory team members include:
- The person must be confronted in love by the person who sees the flaw.
- If no change occurs, that person must be lovingly exhorted by a couple of members of the team.
- If still no evidence of satisfactory progress is shown, the team must implement an established procedure for either adherence or removal of the person.
22) Stay focused on the goal; accept nothing less.
Relationships are important to accomplish a team’s ultimate goal. Great relationships, however, are not the ultimate purpose or goal of the team’s efforts. Such relationships are vessels through which God the Holy Spirit works to accomplish his task in individual lives and community.
Great teamwork is described as the visible illustration of a people who are united with the same purpose. Ultimately, that is what your organization should be seeking to build—a culture of many people who are united in working for the same cause.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
- How are you developing your team?
- Describe a situation where working as a team produced better results than “going it alone”.
EVALUATION AND ACTION
- What are some of the challenges you are facing as you develop your team as a leader?
- How will you use your newfound knowledge to develop a dynamic, effective team?
- What lessons on team leadership can you learn from Jesus’ interaction with The Twelve?
- Read Hebrews 10:24-25 and 1 Corinthians 12:17-20. What lessons on teams can we learn from these Scriptures?