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Principles of Effective Leadership - Lesson 13

The Value of Teams

In this lesson, you will gain valuable insights into the importance of teamwork in leadership and how effective teams contribute to the success of an organization. You will learn the key characteristics of high-performing teams, such as clear goals and objectives, open communication, trust and accountability, and complementary skills and abilities. Additionally, the lesson will guide you through the process of building and developing effective teams, including identifying team roles, establishing team norms, resolving conflicts, and monitoring team progress and performance. Finally, you will learn how to lead your teams towards success by empowering team members, fostering collaboration, and encouraging continuous improvement.

John  Johnson
Principles of Effective Leadership
Lesson 13
Watching Now
The Value of Teams

I. Introduction to Teamwork in Leadership

A. Importance of Teams

B. Benefits of Effective Teamwork

II. Characteristics of High-Performing Teams

A. Clear Goals and Objectives

B. Open Communication

C. Trust and Accountability

D. Complementary Skills and Abilities

III. Building and Developing Effective Teams

A. Identifying Team Roles

B. Establishing Team Norms

C. Conflict Resolution

D. Monitoring Team Progress and Performance

IV. Leading Teams Towards Success

A. Empowering Team Members

B. Fostering Team Collaboration

C. Encouraging Continuous Improvement


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Transcript
  • In this lesson, you'll learn about the critical role of leadership in ministry, covering key aspects like core values, vision strategy, decision making, team building, conflict resolution, and biblical theology of leadership to enhance your effectiveness as a leader.
  • This lesson offers a comprehensive exploration of the complexities and challenges in defining leadership, highlighting its context-dependent nature, the influence of culture, and the variety of styles, personalities, and traits associated with leaders; it ultimately identifies three essential components of leadership: having followers, influencing others, and setting direction.
  • In this lesson, you explore the importance of leadership, vision, and planning, and learn about key qualities of a good leader, such as global thinking, flexibility, and empathy. You will also understand the three components of leadership and the delicate balance between leadership and influence.
  • This lesson delves into the importance of leadership, illustrating how it is critical to success in the political, corporate, and religious sectors, with personal experiences and expert opinions reinforcing the need for strong leaders to guide and shape organizations.
  • In the lesson, you gain insights into the nature of leadership, its key components, and the need for leaders in various contexts. You also explore the debate on whether leaders are born with innate abilities or if leadership can be acquired and developed over time. Additionally, the concept of leadership as a summoning, where individuals are called to lead during specific situations, is introduced.
  • Focus on your strengths and improve your leadership skills through Marcus Buckingham's guide, which debunks myths about personal growth, identifies strengths, and emphasizes the value of team members volunteering their strengths while balancing service with strengths-based contributions.
  • This lesson equips you with an understanding of the context of leadership, various leadership styles, and practical applications to effectively lead in different situations.
  • When you are identifying the social context of a group, it is important to recognize the structural, human resource, political and symbolic aspects of the group.

  • In this lesson, you gain insights on situational context in leadership, focusing on the leader, followers, organization, and environment, enabling you to adapt and foster growth.
  • Gain insights into core values and axioms in leadership, the power of language and word pictures, the leader's responsibility for casting a vision, and overcoming the fear of asking for help in order to rally support for a great vision.
  • By studying humility as a core value for leaders, you gain insight into the importance of humility in avoiding temptations of pride and power and discover the characteristics that define humble leaders. Additionally, you explore other core values, such as compassion, courage, and diligence, and learn how to build and maintain these values in your life through experience, self-assessment, and reflection and how it is essential in avoiding the temptations of pride and power.
  • This lesson teaches the significance of core values and skills in effective leadership, covering aspects such as integrity, justice, authenticity, competence, discernment, and intuitive leadership, all of which contribute to becoming a well-rounded and impactful leader.
  • By exploring this lesson, you learn the importance of teamwork in leadership, the characteristics of high-performing teams, and how to build, develop, and lead successful teams in your organization.
  • Learn the principles of effective leadership, explore key leader characteristics, and discover how to build strong teams, develop leadership skills, and measure success.
  • Through this lesson, you gain insights into the critical role of leaders in setting direction, the importance of teamwork, and the need to establish a clear mission and purpose for organizations. Understanding these concepts enables you to be a more effective leader who can inspire and guide teams towards shared goals.
  • A Mission is a philosophic statement that answers the question, “Why are we here?” Vision is a strategic statement that answers the question, “Where are we going?”

  • This lesson teaches the importance of long term thinking in visionary leadership, emphasizing the value of learning from history, engaging present realities, and exploring future possibilities through scenario thinking and adapting to technology and trends.
  • This lesson explores strategic thinking, SWOT analysis, and trend analysis to help develop a clear vision and mission and adapt to an ever-changing environment in education and ministry.
  • Identifying objectives is the process of moving from vision to reality. Objectives are the tactics employed to carry out the strategies, the action plan of what needs to happen now. Decisiveness is an important quality of a good leader.

  • By studying this lesson on leadership and change, you will learn to effectively manage change in leadership, overcome resistance, implement and communicate change vision, and sustain long-lasting organizational transformation.
  • This lesson equips you with the knowledge and skills to navigate leadership challenges and transitions, fostering personal growth and organizational success.

This is a core leadership course designed for those who intend to be future leaders in ministry. This course will move from definitions to the core values of a leader; how to take a ministry through a vision process; engage in strategic planning, decision-making, and implementation; build great teams; work through conflict and change; delegate tasks; and effectively mentor the next generation of leaders. Models from the corporate, political, and military worlds will be compared and contrasted with biblical definitions and illustrations of leadership.

You may download the complete set of Dr. Johnson’s notes as a pdf. Since this class was presented during a condensed time frame, Dr. Johnson does not comment on all the points in his notes. We have provided the full text of the notes for your benefit. Click on the Class Outline link under Downloads.

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Downloads

Dr. John Johnson
Principles of Effective Leadership
PC506-13
The Value of Teams
Lesson Transcript

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:00] McDonald wrote this some time back, talking about his own pilgrimage and learning more and more how to tap into it and the importance of that in leadership as a skill. I think what I want to point you to is towards the back page five or so, where says developing your own intuition wholly on the. You see that couple of things he notes here. Years ago, I came to see that I needed to develop the intuitive in me. To the extent that I accomplished this, it came in this fashion. So he starts, first of all, by going to his wife, Gail, to see what she could teach him, largely because women are so much better at this than men. Secondly, as he puts it, they're not top of the next page. I tried to identify the most intuitive people in whatever group I was part of. At every opportunity, coffee breaks, lunch aside, ask them questions. What are you seeing here in Cincy? Where do you sense things are going in this discussion? I learned a lot with those questions. Third, it began to discipline myself to stop talking so much and start listening. Not easy for a natural talker. I wanted to see if I could figure out how people were feeling, What were their attitudes, their motives, their hopes and dreams? How did they signal disappointment or joy? You ever come into somebody and you're just really wrestling through something and you need to bounce something off? So you share a little bit and then the person goes off and shares for a long time. And what you realized later on is it was less that you needed to receive something. You needed to just process something out. And sometimes part of what McDonald here is talking about is, you know, discerning when you're in situations that and that's what people are doing and you need to just let that process happen. It's harder for leaders because leaders may be more of us by nature. Temperament tend to to lead and talk. Fourth, I tried to monitor my own gut reactions in the course of the day rather than ignore, even just extinguish my emotions in those interacts of the spirit. I tried to understand what they might be saying and then finally down there says, I've learned to pray for intuitive capabilities. Interesting. He refers to that book. You familiar with Malcolm Gladwell? Anybody read the book Blink? One of my favorite books by Gladwell is Outliers. Anyone read that one in What Outliers is about?

Speaker 2 [00:02:57] Is it about children to grow up to be really, really gifted?

Dr. John Johnson [00:03:00] You know what? He probably put a little bit differently. He wanted to figure out what makes people who are highly successful successful. So he tried to see if he could find common threads and he discovered things like we would expect, like intense focus, not easily distracted. They know what they want. They stay focused on it. Highly successful people really work hard at it. Sort of like the Larry Bird who who was this amazing basketball player in the NBA but would stay after practice when everybody went home and would just hit shots for hours, like the Beatles, who became amazingly successful because they played in nightclubs to two in the morning for years, and they just refined their craft. But he also discovered in that book that there's some other things that actually, more than leaders realize. It was the he discovered. It was things like when you're born like hockey players in Canada, the very successful ones almost all have in common, born within this range of, let's say, February to March. And so that really caused them to go. Why is that so? And he discovered. Anybody want to guess? It's kind of hard to know right off. Right.

Speaker 2 [00:04:29] But only children or something. Not the birth order.

Dr. John Johnson [00:04:34] And it wasn't about birth order. It was that typically when kids are are born towards the tail end of when they're going to start school. So, you know how some kids are kind of born on that border. So they're just right there to start with. They had been born a little bit later. They'd have to wait a year to start school. So the best hockey player. Players tended to start towards the tail end of that year. So in other words, say in a sense, we're a year further out, you know, especially when you start with small kids in terms of their physical abilities, etc.. And then it starts a sequence of things like you get noticed more, the coach notices you more because you have more skills than this guy over here. So then they start to get the better coaching. Well, you see, then it starts this whole cycle of things. That's what makes Gladwell very interesting. He finds these little data points that you just wouldn't think of. So it's a very fascinating book. Blink is another one. MacDonald comments on in the middle of page two. He says in his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell takes on the challenge of describing this intuitive side of life and speaks of the, quote, content and origin of these instantaneous impressions and conclusions that spontaneously arise whenever we meet a new person or confront a complex situation or have to make a decision under conditions of stress. What would happen? Gladwell asks if we took our instincts seriously. I was raised in a world where propositional truth was everything. Feelings. Gut reactions. Instincts were considered suspicious and unreliable unless they aligned with the truth. I went to school here at Western in the Rudd marker era, and Dr. Rudd marker was highly suspicious of feelings. A part of that probably because he's very cerebral, kind of thinking kind of guy, but also because probably coming out of a Pentecostal upbringing which, you know, are tendencies, the pendulum swing, right? He'd even get reactive to the song. I remember this. You ask me how I know he'll hear that song. He lives what with in my heart, right? Micro would go, That's not how you know he lives. He lives because it says right here in the Word of God he lives. And we'd all go, okay, I'll never sing that song again. I mean, to this day, that song is ruined for me. You know, I'll be in this very worshipful tradition of service, you know, And everybody comes to that rapturous moment. You ask me how I know he lives, you know, And I've said, my brain goes, That's not why. In fact, to show you how twisted I got. I remember I was asked to be one of the, you know, at the end and graduation you get up and you have a few graduates to get up to share their story. So I was at one of the graduates asked and I was sharing some moment in my similar experience. I'd seen this guy downtown and Rod Marcus sitting down there, and I said these fateful words. And I said, and I had this feeling. And right there, it's like everything said.

Speaker 3 [00:08:25] You just blew it.

Dr. John Johnson [00:08:28] You know? I mean.

Speaker 4 [00:08:29] I was going, Oh, I.

Dr. John Johnson [00:08:30] Shouldn't have said that word feeling. He wanted the seminar. He wanted us to build our faith. And to a certain extent, he was right. He wanted us to go out with the strong conviction of propositional truth that we fixed our lives on the Word of God. And he was great about that. But he would look at a blank or an article like this and go, Come on. But McDonald also, sort of, as he's talking about, grew up sort of that same you know what? No, wait, wait a minute. There is there is something to our gut we must listen to. But it's tricky, isn't it? But I mean, as leaders at times, we will have as leaders these gut reactions. And you'll ask yourself the question, what do I do with these? Is God maybe saying something? I mean, could this be a God moment or should I ignore it? That's the tension. Anyway, back to government, all of it. I've kind of talked about this first hour. Part of it is kind of knowing, knowing how to read. Government is a book one of these days. You really should read it because part of it is teaching you how to intuit, how to read these things and pick up a book like Blink. And read that and assess that because probably in that he's telling stories at times were great leaders. Everything turned on that link, that moment they and they ran with it. The struggle is probably for every story that turns out in a great way. It's probably another story that turned out in a really bad way. You know, you ever went with your gut and then you went kind. That was stupid. Or sometimes you did. You just said something in my gut says to do this, it doesn't make sense, but I'm going to do it. And it turns out to be, Oh, that was a great move. But sometimes you can also find yourself going, I should have listened to my brain. It's all part of the skill, the skills of leading, knowing what to do with gut. Maybe it's a good way to put it. Okay. Any last thoughts before we move on to connection? Tell us what you're going to say, Marcia, right now.

Speaker 4 [00:11:08] With this story. Because I love writing. I feel that my calling is that you had that moment where there's a climax, this exciting development, your character development. So anyhow, I was studying for Carolyn's class and she's about to study and I chose the book route. And in chapter three, I think, and how that one you're thinking one day, and that's where the singing there's like four scenes. It's like, it's, it's like a drama. There's that idea that there is one moment, one day Naomi tells you to go to the to gave her a to the and that was called threatening. So just the idea that it was that one moment it turned history. I mean, it turned the whole I mean you think about Ruth and that story for the Gentiles and just what that meant God's heart and I think 49 you know, that's two small thing that the gospel and to the Jews. And then Boaz but he was the son of I think it was right with just the idea that one day and that was the one day for all of us in the leadership. And I think it's true. Just yeah, I felt like I don't feel called to worship. I feel called to more creative areas and maybe music directing. But I do feel even as a Christian, just being discerning as the Holy Spirit guides us for those moments where it's just it's right crossroads.

Dr. John Johnson [00:12:43] And yeah, and the challenge is when you're trying to discern if it is the Holy Spirit, huh? Or something else. Yeah. Erwin McManus has a wonderful book, Seizing Your Moment. It's a great, great book in which he talks a lot about knowing when that moment comes, knowing how to read, that it's all part of intuiting. Part of this is really real for me because I had a situation on my staff where I had one of my staff that just could not agree with the decision that we had to make, and he was not processing that very well at all. In fact, quite terribly came to a point where Friday, Friday was one of the hardest days. I think in my recent ministry I've ever experienced in my life. And I came to a point where I said I'm going to put him on administrative leave with a view to probably releasing him if things don't turn around. So I already released two staff and I had two directors who had resigned recently just because their lives had moved in other directions and one back to China and one just couldn't handle the pressure anymore of another job. So here I'd already lost four staff in two weeks and now was on the verge of releasing a fifth. I knew I had to take this action anyway. I let him know that this was the course we were going to go on, painful as it was, because I really loved this guy and I just said, You are not welcome on this campus until some things change in your life and administrative leave is what I'm going to move to put you on a with the view that if things don't change, I'm going to release you. I went to bed Friday night just feeling awful. But of course it's just sometimes the awfulness of leadership. Sometimes you have to make really hard decisions. But I was swimming Saturday morning. I started thinking again, how much? Just I really like this guy. So I had this gut feeling inside, you know, I'm just going to call him and. Tell them that. That I love him to see where that goes. I love always triumphs. Right. And I began to discern in a broader way that, you know, I felt like, you know, the adversary is going to really try to run. He's always trying to run things, and I'm just not going to let him have the advantage here. And yet I was right about procedurally what I was doing, but I had this gut feeling. Part of my brain driving home was, well, what do you think my brain was saying on the other side? Any guesses?

Speaker 2 [00:15:34] You know, I'm going to call her. Mm hmm. Don't tell me.

Dr. John Johnson [00:15:37] Yeah.

Speaker 3 [00:15:38] Because you make the wrong idea that you are kind of taking back your decision.

Dr. John Johnson [00:15:45] Yeah. That actually, this kind of behavior is okay. What else.

Speaker 2 [00:15:52] Is going to be the enemy.

Dr. John Johnson [00:15:54] Might not be receptive, or you might put yourself in a real vulnerable situation. You know, sometimes you have to make those hard decisions and you want to go back and. But, you know, God sometimes has to let us. He has to do painful things and he has to let us go through it. And maybe I would be enabling him, not helping him process what he needs to all these things. So a lot of my judgment was thinking, maybe I shouldn't do this, but a lot of my gut was saying, and maybe God's doing something bigger here than I can see. Mm hmm. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not just teaching theory here. This is the real life stuff you deal with. And and part of leadership, part of the skill is making good judgments, but also that intuitive side. And there's to often create a really interesting tension in the middle. Okay, so leadership team building, you ready to move on? So before I talk about this here, let me ask you guys a question. Tell me about one of the best teams or one of the worst teams you've ever been on. All of us in this room have been on a team from time to time. Have anybody never been on a team, athletic team, employee team somewhere? We've been on a team for something. Anyone have etched in a memory, a great team or this was just a terrible experience, worst team. And what were some of the dynamics behind that?

Speaker 4 [00:17:45] I was in a band and we wanted to make it a state.

Dr. John Johnson [00:17:48] Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 4 [00:17:51] So that was. Or eighth. I think you would have thought with that first place we were so thrilled because we had worked together really hard. We made our band proud. There is a culture.

Dr. John Johnson [00:18:07] And what made that team work as you look back?

Speaker 4 [00:18:11] Well, we knew what our goals were the best. That, of course, was up to win. But there wasn't just when. It just said, Just play fast. And we prepared. So we knew we did the best we could.

Dr. John Johnson [00:18:27] Yeah. So you had a common goal, and you all agreed to set yourself on a course to excel and go beyond your abilities? Kind of. Right. Just say, let's not just be an average. Let's go for it all. See where we land. Yeah. So that was our really motivated. Everybody. Yeah. Good. Someone else.

Speaker 3 [00:18:56] When I was in high school just running for the offices as a student body. I remember I kept running against the same girl for three years, beat her every single time, and I felt horrible about it. It just so happened women now who were running for the same office or the end of our junior year student body and her best friends were running for president, vice president, treasurer and secretary, and the other three got in and I beat her out.

Dr. John Johnson [00:19:29] And so all her friends were part of your cabinet.

Speaker 3 [00:19:35] And because of that, it was awkward the whole year because those three were so close. And then me and two other guys, one that all seemed funny, were really close and it was just awkward trying to work together. I knew that they wanted their friends to be there instead of me. And so it was always.

Dr. John Johnson [00:19:51] That's tough. Yeah.

Speaker 2 [00:19:54] That's tough and wish it bottom. There was no which was a blues band that played on once in a while, still play with each other. And when we play together, it just goes really well because number one, everyone in the band is very competent and knows their craft. Number two, there's this. There's this high level of intuition between us because we, the various members, like one guy I've known since I was a junior in high school, and that was like, you know, back before the records and stuff. So. So I've known for a long time and we play music for a long time. And the other guys just really feels a drummer. This is unusual for drummers. He really feels what's coming down on the needs of justice automatically. So it's just always a great experience where we go play some more because we're all kind of like that. But on a more feeling level where we're feeling what each other's can do, that's really what we practice very much at way.

Dr. John Johnson [00:20:54] You know, when I watch really good bands, I sense that what really good bands, they all are very intuitive about listening to one another. They kind of know where each is going, and I think that's a great illustration of team. I've been on lots of different teams, but I remember my senior year cross country team we took first in Southern California. It was really quite an amazing accomplishment. Seven of us ran and I look back, I think what made that such a great team, First of all, we had a great coach who is just phenomenal and what made him great part of what made him great was that he ran with us every day. He didn't say, okay, so here's the course I want you to run today. He'd take us with him and he challenged us. We used to have we all belong to the 100 mile a week club. We'd run 100 mile at least 100 miles a week. So and he'd click this thing, you know, and we all carried these cards in our pocket. But it gave us a sort of a an esprit de corps. We were part of something big. But I think there were two of the things that made us really a team. First of all, cross-country was and probably still is not very popular. In other words, we would kind of kid I remember when we came back from like the state championship and we were kiddingly saying as we got out of the van, okay, make way, please. Can you please get out? We need to, of course, because nobody was there. Nobody cared about the cross-country team. And the other thing was that the nature of cross-country is that it's adding up the scores of your first through fifth runners. So all it takes is one your last guy to be, you know, 43rd to screw up the first guys. He did like one three, you know, six and eight. I mean it doesn't matter how great your So we had to really challenge each all of us together because we were only as strong as our weakest link kind of thing that really forged us into a team. Yeah. What? Any other illustration of team Adam? You got one?

Speaker 3 [00:23:07] No one's really brought up the field, I guess.

Dr. John Johnson [00:23:10] Yeah. Give us a failed team.

Speaker 3 [00:23:12] And this is personal.

Dr. John Johnson [00:23:13] Well, and sort of. Yeah. You know, Tom and.

Speaker 3 [00:23:16] I ran cross-country high school as well. It's not the popular thing to do at all. And being the weak link, you know, it does. Only one person then makes everything up. It was my junior year and I was about fourth or fifth runner on the team and I forgot my numbers at State. So you're supposed to pin your numbers on a jersey. So I don't know if they got disqualified.

Dr. John Johnson [00:23:40] Or because you weren't you didn't have your number on.

Speaker 3 [00:23:42] My numbers. Oh, no. Kids in Alaska, it's really cold. So you have all your sweats on until you get to the line. Once you get to the line, you set everything and then the gun goes off and you go. And I took it off and I walked down the aisle to go get my. My numbers weren't there, and our sixth runner was like a freshman. Maybe because I'm a small school and he plays like maybe 100th or something like that. And so we had.

Dr. John Johnson [00:24:08] And that became your fifth runner?

Speaker 3 [00:24:10] Yeah, that became our fifth runner. So.

Dr. John Johnson [00:24:12] And what did you come in? Remember?

Speaker 3 [00:24:14] Well, I came in probably 40 something. Yeah. I mean, I stayed. Yeah. So I got murdered by my team. I got beat up after they were so ticked off. Yeah. And it was just my. Yeah. Like, oh, I could around there.

Dr. John Johnson [00:24:33] So it's a great illustration of the fact that you know who's on the team, you know, and we'll talk about this in a moment. It's really critical. The first thing we need to establish at the beginning here in terms of team is that you've got to decide as a leader if you value and respect team. And this is not automatic because there are some leaders that don't really like they'll put up. Okay, I have to do this. But they just to not work with the team because they like to get it done themselves. Sometimes teams slow down the process and maybe you got to spread some of the glory. I don't know. There could be a lot of different reasons. Some of us still believe in the myth of the great leader, the heroic leader. The first thing that has to be said about team building is you have to respect the value of working with teams. So good leaders, as I put here, understand the key to leadership survival is the development of a great team. Peter Drucker, who writes so much, says The leaders who work most effectively never say I, not because they have been trained this way. They don't think this way. They understand their role is to make the team function. They don't sidestep responsibility. But we get the credit, you know, believing again that even when you look scripturally, God is not called any of us to solo leadership. And when we try to fly solo, we usually fail. Now, for just a moment, I don't know if I've listed it there in your notes there that there are four kinds, different kinds of teams that if I listed those, it's good that before we get too far in this, we're starting to establish the importance of not going solo. But it's good that as we talk about teams, it's important that we understand that there are different kinds of teams in organizations. And most of us, let's say that work in a ministry will have four different kind of teams and we need to understand the difference. And here they are. The first one is informational. Sometimes you work with an informational team and their purpose is to simply keep us informed or aligned. They might be put there to go out and get information for us, do some data research. The second kind of team is a consultative team, so they come to discuss and advise, but they don't have authority to make decisions. Let me give you an example. Every now and then I'll put together, we'll call it a consultative team. I'll gather some people together and I'll say, I really need some advice here. I'm trying to answer a question. I don't know how to answer it. So for example, recently I put together, for lack of a better term, my apostolic team. So the apostolic team are apostolic types in the church by apostolic types, people who tend to think outside of the box tend to always be looking out there in a visionary way, the kind of people that actually the church does, and maybe I've talked about this already a little bit, but the church doesn't tend to tap into very well. And these are often people that run off to pair church and other ministries because they can't find a role in the church that's too bureaucratic or they're too threatening. So I've watched this for years and I've seen some of our very best entrepreneurial kind of leaders tend to not be able to find a place. They've probably come out of high powered leadership in their own personal lives. Most of the time. That's true. They've led a corporation or they've led some venture over here. And the mistake we can sometimes make as a church is to say, Oh, gosh, great to have you here. Could you pass out bulletins on Sunday morning? It's not that they're too good for that or above that. It's just that we're not tapping into who they are. Recently, I called these people together and I said, I want you to tell me how we can make better use of you, because I'm not sure we know how to do that. Well, we had a great discussion, and next Monday night will be our fourth. Worth meeting. This thing is evolving and it's exciting where it's going. But now here's the thing. I've told them right upfront they have no authority. It's not like they're going to make a decision and then we're going to do it. And this is where it gets tricky. I have to make sure those who do have authority are working alongside so that they don't feel like their authority got eclipsed. See what I'm saying? But sometimes people really find it freeing when you tell them they don't have any authority. They'd love to be in a consulting relationship. There's informational teams, search consultative teams. There's coordinating teams who coordinate an activity. Let's say you're going to run a capital campaign and you look out there and you go, Coach this person, this group, this team would be great at running this capital campaign to generate money in the organization. Okay. So that's another kind of team. But then there's the decision making team. For lack of a better term here, they make the critical decision. So who are they? Well, they're the board or they're the staff. And the point I want to make here is that of these four teams. Which team requires your greatest attention? Obviously be the fourth one. Right. And that's very critical. It doesn't necessarily naturally happen. When I first became associate pastor, I worked with this pastor who sat on the board on this decision making team, and it was the major decision making team. He would do something like this. He'd come in with a book he was reading and he go, So guys, I'm here. I brought some work to do. If you need anything, I'm here. Board meeting would start just in a read. I think he thought to himself. What I'm saying is remember, sort of like as for I don't need to hold your hand. I don't need to cheerlead you guys. I don't need to tell you what to do. I trust you completely as leaders. I'm just here if you need me. What happened is he started spending a lot of his time with a young set of guys that he was developing as his future leaders. So he poured a lot of energy into them. Actually, he poured more energy into them than his existing leaders. And I think in his mind he was thinking, well, I'm doing the right thing. I'm looking out there into the future, preparing the next leaders. But these actually became the guys that he developed a far greater bond with. These were handpicked guys that he could pour himself into. And eventually this board and him went this way. It was really kind of sad to see. But as I look back, there was a failure of him as we talk about here, given his past attention, this should have been the guys he said, you know, of anybody in the church, here's who I invest in. I'm investing in you guys. Doesn't mean he had to dominate the meeting, but he had to he had to invest himself in it. So these are going to be four teams. You'll typically work with that you've got to give leadership to. But don't make the mistake of not giving your best leadership to the last one part of it, first of all, begins with understanding the importance of teams. What kind of teams are understanding? The teams are necessary. I give some scripture that underscores that teams are critical from Moses, which is a classic example, right? Who had to be? And it took his father in law, Jethro, to say, Hey, you can't do this alone, too. I think Nehemiah said, Great motto, who? The first thing he does when he gets to Jerusalem is he builds a team to Jesus, who's the classic example of building a team. To Paul, it seems that everywhere he went there were a team around him. Good leaders underscored the value of teamwork. The reality is that competitive loner leaders are not really helpful. You're forcing the organization just to rely on you and you're not that good. Okay, Can we all say that together? We are not that good. And for those of you that might think about pastoral work, you're learning curve. It's going to come if you tend to start, which a lot of pastors start out in small works. So you tend to get used to sort of flying solo. You're the only pastor or maybe you have some. Nobody else. You have a very small board. As I put here, we can end up as task or the task as all that matters. Everything else is peripheral. But it's a huge mistake. I've found that pastors who have spent years in small ministries and largely solo pastoring have a really difficult time working with teams. They don't know how to do that. And what I'd recommend is, no matter how big or small your ministry that you determine, you're going to be a team guy right from the start and you form, even if you can only form maybe three or four guys that you say to them, look at, we're going to do this together. I'm not just giving you fiduciary responsibilities and I'll be the shepherd over here. That's a huge mistake. So good leaders understand that top down pyramid pyramidal hierarchies are yesterday's leadership model. For, as I put here, any leader who limits his organization or her organization to the talents and time of the leader seriously handicaps the group. First thing I want to underscore is that good leaders invest in teams. You know, it's about sharing a sense of destiny together. I like to tell team members, here's the deal. We fly together. We crash together. We're on top of the mountain together. We're on the flat plateau together. We're in the deep valley together. It's all going to be together. So if there's credit to be given, we all get the credit. If there's criticism to be received, we all have a piece of it. And by the way, that's a very liberating thing to say because it takes you off the hook of carrying it all yourself. Effective leaders develop collaborative frameworks as they put their on the next page. Let me stop here for a moment. The value of team, you know, we all get that belief that buy into it. So any theory of great man leadership here remnants? I don't think so, because you guys were all born after that. There would have been a time in what I've just taught that there would have been real resistance. Yeah.

Speaker 4 [00:36:21] I thought of the scripture and sort of thinking. And they need all those cards and talks about how each person for a different person, I think they're more important than that. They're all important. And you need that team concept of diversity, unity without uniformity kind of thing. So we're wrong for the collective effort. I'm starting to realize maybe a music director is a leader, not you. Yeah. Of instrumentalists, vocalists. And maybe because I've been working in the schools, I've been working with children, and I've always seen myself as a more of a teacher than a leader. And I don't know if you perceive that because of certain traits or your things.

Dr. John Johnson [00:37:16] Yeah. My wife's a school teacher. Today's her last day of work. 31 years. Today's last day.

Speaker 4 [00:37:26] Heather.

Dr. John Johnson [00:37:26] Heather. Yeah. Pretty significant day. Eleanor. Yeah. Sixth grade schoolteacher. Heather wouldn't say she wouldn't necessarily see herself as a leader, but in a way, she really is. And I would think you really are just by the very back the definition because the teacher is a huge influence or I would think a teacher has to have followers. They have to follow your lead, follow your rules. I think your kids are always following and the teacher certainly has a destination. You're taking all of those kids somewhere and not just randomly meeting and saying, Hey, you know, where we all end up is up to you, but let's have a great time together. You're saying, Hey, you know, I'm taking you just like Heather was telling me on the way. She said, you know, one of the hardest kids I've had this year, a kid named Nate. Now we have a son named Nate. So she kind of tends to be partial to Nate's. She says he's very gifted, very bright, but totally irresponsible. So she's been pretty tough on him, and Nate doesn't think she likes him. You know, this is kind of what happens with, you know, all of that, she said. I sat down with Nate yesterday and I said, Nate, you have incredible ability. You can really go far. And I pushed you hard this year because I won't accept the fact that you can't really go far. But if you don't get your arms around your irresponsibility, it doesn't matter how much capacity you have, you won't get anywhere. Now, that's leadership, isn't it? Hopefully one day Nate will really be something and maybe he'll say, my sixth grade teacher as much as maybe I didn't like her at times. She turned it all around for me. She was the first one that forced me to think hard about it. I think leaders, Marcia, teachers are some of the great leaders, don't you think, when you think of the very definition?

Speaker 4 [00:39:38] Because I was a teacher, you're all on your own. You are kind of like that. So yeah.

Dr. John Johnson [00:39:44] Especially when you're just sort of brought in to this to do this. And yeah, that adds another dimension, doesn't it? But when you're leading that music group, you're leading a team aren't you. Because they're all parts.

Speaker 4 [00:39:58] And teams team. I put on large productions, so teams of parents with set design and costume design. And so I have worked with adults in the past.

Dr. John Johnson [00:40:12] And I would think for a music leader or a music teacher, there's got to be someplace, if a person isn't exercising leadership, that someone would say, Just lead us, right? I mean, somebody's got to get up there and bring all those pieces together in a harmonizing way. Okay, let's take a ten minute break. We'll come back and talk about building with the best.