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Leading Teams with Care - Lesson 14

Five Essential Factors: Team Leadership

By completing this lesson, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of how to be a Christ-centered leader who cares for their team. You will learn about the biblical and theological foundations for leading with care, how to understand yourself and your team, and how to create a culture of care that includes communicating care, addressing conflict, building trust, leading through change, and sustaining care for yourself and your team.

Rick Sessoms
Leading Teams with Care
Lesson 14
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Five Essential Factors: Team Leadership

Lesson on Christ-Centered Leadership: Leading Teams with Care

Outline:

I. Biblical and Theological Foundations for Leading with Care

II. Understanding Ourselves and Our Teams

A. Self-awareness

B. Understanding team dynamics

III. Creating a Culture of Care

A. Communicating care

B. Addressing conflict and difficult conversations

C. Building trust

IV. Leading Through Change with Care

A. Navigating change and uncertainty

B. Supporting team members through change

V. Sustaining Care for Ourselves and Our Teams

A. Preventing burnout

B. Prioritizing self-care


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  • Learn about Christ-centered leadership, including leading with care and compassion, building and leading effective teams, and the example of Christ.
  • Learn about the importance of caring for your team, trusting God with your team's vision, people, and resources, and cultivating Christ-Centered teams.
  • Learn how to lead teams with care, build trust, and communicate effectively through this lesson on Christ-Centered Leadership.
  • This lesson on Christ-centered leadership covers the dynamics of teams, the importance and benefits of Christ-centered leadership, leading with purpose and vision, and creating a culture of care.
  • This lesson teaches you the importance of leading with care, how to develop a culture of care in leadership, and practical steps for leading with care.
  • Learn how to care for team members and create a culture of caring as a Christ-centered leader, and discover the benefits of doing so, including increased team member engagement and productivity, higher job satisfaction, and improved communication and collaboration.
  • This lesson on Christ-Centered Leadership covers leading teams with care, leading with vision, and leading with wisdom, providing knowledge and insight on building a healthy team culture, communicating a compelling vision, understanding the nature of wisdom, and applying biblical wisdom to leadership decisions.
  • By completing this lesson on Christ-Centered Leadership, you will gain insight into team building, leading with care, creating a culture of care, and balancing results and care.
  • Learn how to lead your team with care by understanding the importance of caring for your team members, effective communication, and setting clear expectations.
  • In this lesson, you will learn how to lead with care by understanding the importance of caring for your team, the qualities of a caring leader, and practical strategies for creating a safe environment, building relationships, providing support, and offering encouragement and recognition.
  • In this lesson on Christ-Centered Leadership, you will learn the importance of leading teams with care, how to practice it practically, the role of emotions in leadership, and effective communication methods.
  • Learn how to lead and develop a caring team, overcome obstacles to team sustainability, and gain insights into the characteristics of a leader who cares and a caring team.
  • This lesson on Christ-Centered Leadership will teach you how to lead teams with care, lead through change, and lead with humility.
  • Learn how to be a Christ-centered leader who cares for your team by understanding the biblical foundations, creating a culture of care, leading through change, and sustaining care for yourself and your team.
  • This lesson on Christ-Centered Leadership provides knowledge and insight into creating a safe and secure environment, promoting individual growth and development, building a cohesive team, developing a culture of care, and practical tips for leading teams with care.

Teamwork is the will of God for the people of God.

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Dr. Rick Sessoms Leading Teams with Care MC611-14 Five Essential Factors Team Leadership Lesson Transcript [00:00:00] The fourth factor. We've talked about three factors thus far the factor of purpose clear, common and compelling, the factor of roles, both positional roles and dimensions. So thirdly, we've talked about process. And fourthly, we're going to talk about the factor of team leadership. Every team needs competent and respected leaders to motivate the team members toward higher levels of initiative, creativity and productivity. How does that happen? How in the world does that happen? Well. This is this is what we've worked out. And I borrowed this from a guy named Pat McMillan, who's worked through some of this and done a very good job with it. He has compared the traditional leader with a team leader. And whereas a traditional leader tends to tell a team leader's specialty is listening. A traditional leader directs. A team leader specializes in asking questions. A traditional leader convinces. The team leader discusses. The traditional leader decides and provides answers. Team leader facilitates. The traditional leader controls. The team leader coaches. The traditional leaders supervisors. The team leader releases initiative and creativity in others. Now. This is, in my opinion, not an either or scenario. But I think what you'd find is if you could create some dots in between those, it's really a continuum. Because the reality is there are certainly times, for example, in which where the leader on a team needs to convince needs to have a role of convincing or of deciding and providing answers, ultimately in a in a formal context where if it's in a work situation, there would need to be a supervisory role, perhaps, maybe not with volunteers, but certainly in other contexts. So this is more a continuum rather than an either or. But I think you get the point. A team leader's role is is very different than a traditional leader. [00:02:41] And this is the kind of leader that's going to make a team go. What do you think about that? Agree, disagree. So you don't think that you can have just a team leader now, so you can kind of have a bit of the traditional leaders characteristics? All I'm saying is that it depends and it's going to depend upon the context. But I would say that there's a continuum. It it's more like a well, I don't know. It's a continuum and these are not strict and columns that you can't move back and forth. But generally speaking that I think those approaches would be, would be accurate of a team approach to leadership because a traditional is what I'm more familiar with. Yes. But the team is what I'm hearing you. Yes. All right. So when we talk about team, this is a kind of an approach with team that tends to be more effective there. There's some traditional aspects that they can actually further team efforts, such as a team leader saying, okay, for the next 15 or 20 minutes, let's write this and that's a directing role or we're going to adjourn at 9:00 as opposed to let's talk about who would like to finish up there. There's different ways depending upon where the where the team is, what the particulars are. Now so as to confuse you just a bit more now that we've talked about approach, I want to talk about style. Because in a team, what style is appropriate? On a team. And this can get controversial. But I'll share with you what I've come to believe. Is it a directing style that is more appropriate? Is it an advising style? Is it a supporting style? Is it a delegating style? And the answer is yes. [00:05:04] It depends. They taught us to answer that way if we don't know the answer. It depends. But very seriously, it does depend on the task maturity. Now we try to unpack this a little bit. There was a there is a leadership specialist. His name is Ken Blanchard, and Ken Blanchard has done some great stuff. You may have seen his book, Who Move My Cheese. He has written other more other tech, more textbook oriented kinds of things. But one of the processes that he developed a number of years ago was called situational leadership theory. And Blanchard's research would suggest that leadership, effective team leadership, depends upon the task maturity. In other words, a person's maturity with the task at hand. Now, what do we mean by task? Maturity. Task maturity involves two things. It involves competence, a person's competence, in other words, ability to accomplish the task. And the person's commitment. The resolve or the confidence. To accomplish the task. Those two components make up what we call task maturity. And test maturity. Determines leadership style. Now, what this this implies is that the style of leadership by a leader on a team may differ from one person to another on the team. Did you hear that? The approach, the style that a leader uses in a team may differ from one person to another on the team. Depending on the individual's task maturity. Now, let me be clear. This is not about the individual's maturity. It's not about the person's maturity. Give me an example. When we talk about task, we talk about a specific task. Let's say that a person that you're working with on a team. Has a role to say. I'm trying to think of an example. [00:07:47] The role is to, is to come up with a new program for children in the church, and the team is, is, is tasked to do that. Um, there may be people on your team that that have vast experience in other areas of ministry. There may be somebody on your team that has been doing worship ministry for years and years. And so their maturity, both as a believer as well as their maturity in another task, is very mature. You follow me, but in this particular task is the issue. So that's why we call it task maturity. And we're going to look and see what those levels are. But leadership style depends upon task maturity. And we the effective team leader adjust their leadership style. So it is appropriate for the person's task material. That's why it's called situational leadership. Now, do you need me to repeat that? Does that make sense so far? We're going to get into the depths of this in just a few moments. Is that clear? Yes. No. Clear as mud. Clear. Okay. So how does this work out then? Let's talk about task maturity. There's there are four different levels of task maturity. The first level is what we call D1. Now again, these are these. This is put together in terms of boxes. And there are more continuum than there's more of a continuum than there are rigid boxes. But for sake of understanding and identifying, here they are. D1 is the enthusiastic beginner. Sometimes when a person is new to a task, they are incredibly enthusiastic. But the reality is they don't know what they don't know. So there's a lot of that enthusiasm and being inspired, Boy, this is going to be fun. [00:10:01] We're going to tackle this. We're going to get this dial. Take us 15 minutes and we'll be done, you know, kind of thing. It's that enthusiastic beginner that jumps to the task and is ready to go. But the reality is they've never been part of this. So they frankly don't know what they don't know. So that's the enthusiastic beginner. Is that clear? D2 then is the disillusioned learner. After they begin to learn what they don't know, they begin to say, Wow, this job is a whole lot bigger and a whole lot harder than I thought it might be. They become what we call the disillusioned learner. Now this is related to task. Keep that in mind. It's not really necessary to the person, but to the task at hand. So the beginning begins with the enthusiastic beginner and then it moves into the lives of the learner. There's some confidence they're starting to grow and their understanding of the task, their ability. But there's really low commitment, there's really low resolve low confidence there. They're going to, at this point want to quit. And so many times on a team that makes sense. Okay. D3 is the cautious performer. This person has increased in their competence. But their confidence and their commitment to the task just kind of goes back and forth. They're not sure from one day to another day. They remember getting stung back there under the disillusioned learner stage. And so they're just not quite sure to stick their foot in the deep, you know, jump into the deep water. And so they're what they call the cautious performer. Then finally, it's what we call the D4 or the self-reliant achiever. This is where the competence and confidence come together at a high level. [00:12:00] Where a person is both confident and competent with the task at hand. So those are the four basic. Maturity levels. Task maturity levels. Again, this is not about the person, it's about the task at hand, the task maturity. So these are the four levels of task maturity. Okay. So here we go. So what do we do when we've got people all over the page on our team? There have these different levels of terrorist maturity because that's what happens, right? It's what happens on a team. Well, Blanchard and others would tell us that we need to use what we call a situational leadership style. Style the approach. We talked about the two columns, the traditional approach, the team approach. But now we're talking about style. All right. Here we go. To the point that you see along the bottom, the further to the right. In other words, the ones in the right column need a more directive style. In order to be effective and to be successful on a team. The leader needs to use a more directive style. With these people. And as it moves up, the people at the top need a more supportive style. So conversely, the people on the left column, the two left columns in a less directive style. And the few people in the bottom column, bottom row need a less supportive style. So. Let's go one step further, then Let's look and see specifically what this might look like. The enthusiastic beginner needs to be directed. They need specific instructions. Remember that this is a person that doesn't know what he or she doesn't know. And so a directive style. That's why I said to you before that this continuum is important. When we compare the traditional in a team leader, but in this context, a directive style is important. [00:14:38] If you get a newbie on your team, don't just turn them loose and expect them to make it. They will need a directive style and you'll need to stay close to that person and give them specific instructions in order for them to be effective and make it through the process. Okay. Secondly, the disillusioned learner, remember, this person has low confidence, increasing confidence. So the style with this person would be an advising style. Leave them some space, but make sure and be there for them. Nowadays you need to be present with a person like that, provide a lot of personal support. But increasingly give them space to make decisions. The third cautious performer is a support role. In that role, it's almost completely support. You allow that you're allowing them to make decisions. You're allowing them to move forward. But you're providing the kind of personal support that they need because, again, they are not quite sure of themselves. Now, let me just say that that that ideally over time, people would. We want people to move through this process. We want people to move from day one, to day two, day three, to day four. And to be real honest, there's a lot of people who get stuck in D3. They get stuck as being cautious performers and never progressed to for. And sometimes it's going to take some nudging for that to happen if you're part of a team, if you're leading a team. Self-reliant Achiever needs delegation. There needs to be delegation. And that's where our delegation, of course, is. You certainly encourage the person to maintain accountability and so forth. But this person needs neither a high degree of personal support nor a high degree of direction. So it's a delegation role with that person now. [00:16:51] Why is this so important? It's important because the research shows that leaders on teams typically use only one style. To lead people. And imagine if you have a D1 on your team and ad4 on your team, a D1 that doesn't know what they don't know and D for. That's for all intents and purposes, a professional at this. One style will not work with both of those kinds of people. Now I'm using extreme examples here. The second reason is because if you use a D, if you use a style that should be working with a surfer, let me say it this way. If you direct a self-reliant achiever, what happens? If you if you provide if you try to micromanage and provide direction, specific direction to a server line achiever, what will happen on your team? That's, of course. Of course. What happens if you delegate to a person who doesn't know what he doesn't know? Enthusiastically fail, of course. Now, see, this is common sense, isn't it? This is not rocket science that we're talking about here. But again, the research shows that when people lead teams. Invariably. They use one leadership style to lead everyone. And it can become either incredibly frustrating to some who tend to be higher up or further along in this process or terribly debilitating to others because they just don't get it and they can't get there on their own. And so this is why it's so important to begin to catch this. Some of the largest companies, I believe PepsiCo, use this for a while, that they learn this system so well that when a person would come in to their supervisors office, the first thing they would say when they were talking about a specific issue is the person would walk up to the supervisor and put a card on their desk that says D2 no words. [00:19:21] They wanted the supervisor. No, I want to be I want to be advised in this context because I see myself as a disillusioned learner at this point or in another case later on that afternoon. They come in. It's a day for. So it's not about the person, it's about the task. So that's why it's so important to keep these differentiate. And I've said it several times because that's a critical thing. Sometimes we can say, Well, this person is a D3, not true. We're talking about task maturity. And so as you think about the people that you work with on the team, it's very important to talk enough with them, learn who they are through relationship, to be able to identify where do they fit in this, and the appropriate leadership style is going to really maximize the effectiveness of your team.
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