Teamwork | Coaching Churches

Category Archive: Teamwork

There Are No Bad Teams, Just Bad Leaders

Posted by on October 1, 2019

I read the book Extreme Ownership that drives most of the content of this post. I agree with almost everything in the book about leaders casting blame instead of assuming responsibility. I also know in some situations, their can be great leadership from the top and the failure is driven by others who either will not or cannot do their jobs. So you be the judge and see what you think of what J.D. Greear has to say:

“When we are involved in a group endeavor and something goes wrong, our natural instinct is to point the blame. Navy SEALs Willink and Babin recognize this from years of military experience, but we could just as easily arrive there through theological reflection. What happened after Adam and Eve committed the very first sin of human history?”

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5 Keys To A Great Apology And Why Leaders Should Go First

Posted by on August 19, 2019

When I do executive coaching, I help leaders understand the minority offender response. This simply means in a situation with another person, even if you have the minority of the responsibility for the problem, leaders should always go first. Doing the right thing is far more important than being right. Carey Nieuwhof has another great post:

You probably have a love/hate relationship with apologies. You appreciate it deeply when others apologize to you.

But you find it difficult to apologize to others. And let me guess, when you do apologize, you’re tempted to explain, justify or defend your actions.

Which is not really an apology at all. Please hear this. Two of the most powerful words a leader can utter are simply “I apologize”.

One of the reasons those two words are so powerful is because we hear them so rarely from leaders.

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Ten Behaviors Sabotaging Your Leadership

Posted by on May 19, 2019

In this day of a major priority being placed on collaboration and empowerment, the question that still remains is how do great leaders stay engaged? Collaboration is not just group think and delegation is not abrogation. This Forbes post is a great read to help know where the lines are:

“Have you ever been in a situation at work where you felt like you lost your cool? Maybe not in that wildly out of control way, but enough to where you felt bad about what you said or did and wished you’d handled yourself differently?”

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How To Build Trust As A Leader

Posted by on May 9, 2019

There are some leadership principles that are contextual to leading churches but this is not one of them. As a matter of fact, failing in this area as a spiritual leader is magnified many times more than in corporate life. People potentially loosing trust in you is one thing, but in their faith is quite another. This Forbes post is excellent:

“A lack of trust often erodes teams and organizations to the point where people feel that their working environment has become toxic. The results of a toxic work environment — including unnecessary drama, fighting among employees, lack of communication and no clear protocol — can stifle productivity and results.”

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Don’t Be The Boss Who Talks Too Much

Posted by on May 4, 2019

There is a real tension between making sure everyone understands the vision and there is great alignment compared to the tendency as leaders to talk too much. This leadership skill is amplified when leading church staff or lay leaders because there is an even higher need for total buy-in moving forward. This HBR post is the type of leadership development pastors need:

“As head of a startup, I always want to make sure everyone on my team understands the vision for what we’re trying to achieve. I also want to make sure we’re hearing, considering, and incorporating everyone’s ideas, and acting quickly to iron out problems along the way. So we have a lot of group conversations. A lot.

We discuss our mission, goals, and the steps it will take to achieve them. Every time, I look for new ways to say things, in hopes of making the vision crystal clear and discovering even slight differences in how various team members understand our goals.”

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The Single Best Way To Motivate Your Team

Posted by on February 24, 2019

The classic leadership division for the last 50 years has been between leaders who can primarily drive results and those who have the ability to prioritize relationships. The first group would be in operations and the second in sales. Today unless you can do both and everything in between you will not be effective. This Carey Nieuwhof post is excellent:

“There are some kinds of leaders (often in churches and not-for-profits) who are wonderful with people, but whose organizations don’t produce great results. Often there’s little accountability, a general drift, poor metrics and just a lack of overall excellence. But the leader’s a really nice person.

There are other leaders (often in rapidly growing churches and businesses) who are not so great with people, but there’s tight accountability, laser-like focus, clear results and tremendous progress.”

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The Fundamentals Of Leadership Still Haven't Changed

Posted by on November 7, 2018

As a follow-up to the previous post, I want to acknowledge the results of this HBR post are solid. The context of today’s work environment do require that leaders develop more strategic skills to navigate beyond heads down organizational efficiency. The one thing that never changes is your greatest challenge will always be to lead yourself first:

“Recently the Chief HR Officer for a healthcare firm asked us to identify the best new framework for leadership that she could use to train and develop a cadre of high potentials. The challenge, she said, was that these managers were highly proficient in their own disciplines such as finance, marketing, research, clinical care, and insurance reimbursement — and had demonstrated that they could manage people in these areas — but she needed them to be “bigger” leaders. What, she asked us, did the newest thinking about leadership development say they needed to learn to lead multiple functions, or influence whole segments of the organization, particularly in the rapidly changing world of healthcare?”

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Build Self-Awareness With Help From Your Team

Posted by on September 26, 2018

The whole concept of self-awareness lends itself to the idea that it is something we should and can know about ourselves from within. I have recently began to understand that the other critical piece to this concept is the awareness and alignment with how others see us as well. This HBR post was excellent:

‘There are lots of compelling reasons to build a better team. Great teams deliver stronger results, faster. They’re more innovative. They challenge you to learn more quickly and to be at your best. And, let’s face it — they’re simply more fun to work with.

Recently, I found a new reason to build a better team — to address the fact that most of us are surprisingly lacking in self-awareness. Researcher and author Tasha Eurich uncovered this disturbing statistic through her multi-year study on the topic of self-awareness: 95% of us think we are quite self-aware, but only about 10-15% of us actually are.’

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How To Increase Emotional Intelligence On Your Team

Posted by on September 21, 2018

The subject of emotional intelligence is moving its way to near the top of the priority list for all great leaders to master. From my perspective it includes how clearly we see ourselves and does that awareness align with how other people see us as well. This post by Michele Markey was well worth the read:

“Companies place a lot of value on the abilities and skills employees bring to the workplace, but it’s important that we focus on being human as well. People naturally desire to connect and interact with other members of their teams, and successful businesses have figured out they must have employees who not only bring their intellect to the job, but also their emotional intelligence.”

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When Is Teamwork Really Necessary

Posted by on August 24, 2018

It has always amazed me that when we tend to correct a bad situation, we over react and go to the other extreme. The top down directive leadership of the 80″s gave way to today’s highly collaborative meetings that in many ways are even more ineffective. At least with positional leadership everyone knew what to do. Today we talk too much and actually work less. This HBR post is a must read:

“Most leaders assume that they need to foster teamwork among the people whom directly and indirectly report to them. Teaming is now seen as the workplace equivalent of motherhood and apple pie — invariably good. The problem is when leaders try to drive the wrong kind of collaboration on their particular teams. The result: wasted time and unnecessary frustration.”

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