I love organizational leadership and I am happy to serve on a healthy team. It’s amazing how many church leaders I know that say their team is not healthy. Recently I started wondering why it is that I claim our team is healthy and it led me to this post. Here, in my opinion, are 10 elements of a healthy organization:
Not everyone will agree with you and/or even like you. If you lead anything, someone will disagree with your decisions and you will divide people into different opinions. (There has never been a president with 100% approval ratings.) Leaders must be prepared to lead towards the vision of the organization, even when it means losing approval ratings.
I was helping someone think strategically recently. We were looking at this person’s ministry, trying to design a system, which would allow for continual growth and improvement. The ministry has grown rapidly and the leader barely feels she can keep up with the current demands. She recognizes the need to delegate, grow new leaders, and spread out responsibility and ownership, but she can’t seem to get past the current demands of details to develop a plan to do so.
Have you ever been there?
I was talking with someone the other day about my experience with church planting. As I told my personal story, I kept using words such as “our” and “we”. Towards the middle of the conversation the person stopped me and asked, “Who’s ‘we’?” I was talking about me the whole time, but I confused him with my verbiage. I wasn’t trying to be confusing. It’s just a habit I’ve formed. I love teams and team-building and I’ve learned that developing a team vocabulary is a large part of encouraging healthy teams.
I cringe when I hear leaders use the words “I”, “me, and “my” when referring to their team, their church or organization. To me it always sounds so controlling, prideful, and arrogant. As an example, Ben Reed is our small groups pastor at Grace Community Church. He’s an amazing leader. I would give anything to have been where he is at his age when I was that same age. When I refer to him, I don’t say “He’s my small groups guy”. He’s not! He’s our small groups guy. I don’t want to portray to him or others that I control him. I would be limiting his potential if I refer to him in a possessive sense.
I understand it’s just semantics, but to me it’s an important one for leaders to think through. If we truly want to create a team environment, then we must have team vocabularies.
There are a few times when I use the personal words, such as:
Leaders create capacity so others can grow…
That’s what leaders do…
Great leaders:
Paint the void – Allow others to see what could be accomplished…
Empower the team – Give the tools, resources and power to accomplish the task…
Release – Let go of the control so others can lead…
Repeat – As often as possible…
If you are always the doer and never the enabler then you are not a leader. More than likely you are simply an obstacle of all your team could accomplish if you got out of the way.
Any questions?
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Leadership development begins with an understanding that the success of any organization depends greatly on the leader’s willingness to delegate responsibility to others in the organization. The more a leader tries to control, the less likely others will be to help him or her accomplish the vision. Without people willing to follow a leader, there is no leadership development.
