Setting SMART Goals - Lesson 3

Hello and welcome back to our Smart Plans. Now, I've shared with you an example of how to do this personally, but in any ministry, as it grows, you're going to be bringing new people in, and those new people need to feel like they are being integrated into the team. And in doing that, you have to make sure that they understand how what they bring to the table is actually going to benefit the ministry.

So if you will look in your study guide, you're going to see an example template that allows each member to go through that template and put their scores in. So in that template, if you've got five team members, you are going to have five scores in the little box below the dominance, influence, steadiness, theoretical, utilitarian, aesthetic, social, individualistic, and traditional. Now, let's talk about how we're actually going to measure this new team that you're going to be integrated into.

In the boxes below the D, I, S, and C in your mindsets, you're going to find an empty space. If there is three team members on your team, you're going to add three scores in there. And with the cheat sheet that I gave you a little bit earlier, there is a division of scores for high, medium, and low.

And when you write the scores into each one of the boxes below, you will see high, situational, and low scores. So under dominant, if you have a person who is above 66, you're going to give them a plus one. If they're in the middle, from 34 to 65, you will add a zero.

If they are below 35 or so, you will give them a minus one. So, in that empty box, you are going to have an addition. Let's say you have three people that are very situational.

You're going to have a zero score there. If you have one dominant, one situational, and one influence, you're going to have a zero there. But if you have two dominant and one situational, you're going to have a plus two score.

And I want you to continue that through each one of the D, I, S, and C in each one of the mindsets. Now, what is that going to tell us? Well, it's going to give the personality of the team. In your study guide, you will see an example of a group of board of directors.

We see the dominant score is what? It's a plus one. The influence, a plus five. The steadiness, a plus one.

And a compliance, a plus three. So, what do we know about the personality or the way that communication is going to happen in this group? Well, there's going to be a lot of talking going on because there's a plus five in that influence. And there are going to be a lot of questions that are going to evoke that discussion because of the high compliance.

So, with this board, the biggest problem they are going to have is how do we stay on the agenda? How do we get things done in a limited amount of time? Because we're going to want to talk. And yeah, there's a little bit of dominance that wants to hurry this thing along. And there's a little bit of steadiness.

But we know that the conversation is going to be rich and the questions are going to continue. So, we are going to have to make sure that there is a schedule and maybe even a timer in the room to make sure that we do not elongate a meeting that was intended for two hours to five hours. Because with this group, it's very well bound to happen.

Now, let's move on to the mindsets. What are they going to talk about? What is it they're wanting to discuss? And what is it that they are actually going to be talking about? Well, first of all, we see their theoretical is a plus six. So, oh my gosh, we're going to want to discuss policies, procedures, we're going to want to make sure everything's done right.

And what do we see about the utilitarian? Plus two. So, there's some desire to be efficient going on. But the scary thing here is that the aesthetic is minus two.

That means they are not going to be paying attention to some of the circumstances that are going on around them. Even though they do care about people with the plus two, and they do have that high individualistic plus two, and their traditional and structure is plus two, what we see is that this board is going to be talking so much about theory and the way things need to be done that they may leave influencing factors that are going to impact, directly impact the success of this particular ministry. So, every team has a personality.

Every team can be measured as far as that personality so that when we go into these meetings, we know what the challenges are and how they're actually going to exist. So, just remember this, when we decide to make team goals, especially SMART goals, because that's what a board would do in this particular set of circumstances, we got to remember that it's made up of members and the most important part of a team, as far as you are concerned, is you. We cannot control other people, but we can learn about ourselves and use that knowledge to grow.

So, we know that these teams are made up of special people based on their desire to get a specific project done, and this means that certain behaviors or mindsets may be very well represented where others are underrepresented, as we have just seen in this particular board. Now, this is okay. It can even be great, because it gives your team a baseline set of strengths to draw on, and then some diversity to help augment its weak spots.

So, now it's time for you to put these team characteristics into action by comparing how your behaviors and mindsets relate to those of each team member individually and collectively. If you and your team are a perfect match in terms of personality, then your role as a team member may be very different from someone whose personality is likely to add a different perspective to your work. Most teams are diverse due to the variety of tasks needed to complete an assigned plan or a project.

So, your next step will be to provide and develop the type of balance necessary to ensure the team achieves its purpose. As you enter a new team, bring on new employees or staff members, and you build the new unit from scratch. There's a well-studied process of forming, storming, norming, and performing in which the team and its personalities need to engage in a constructive struggle.

So, you're going to continue to develop your team and its objectives. You're also going to have to maneuver the challenges that you face as you work towards project completion. We highlight what kind of changes are likely to trip up our team based on the personalities that make it up and how you can play a vital role in helping your team adapt and thrive.

So, here's what I want us to remember. As you work through those individual and team actionable plans, you're going to be able to build alignment and congruence based on the purpose both individually and as a group. Remember, the mindsets are the key for us going in that same direction.

The personalities, while they may be different, are going to need to adapt a little bit and they will as long as the focus is the same. So, that as you build your team, you can focus on the team's strengths and weaknesses to bring clarity to your direction. However, you cannot forget the individual SMART goals for each team member as it relates to where the team is going.

Each member is going to need specific directions for their unique tasks, even though we know the team is going in one direction. You should engage each of them and ensure that their plans align so there is minimal dissonance with other team members and a clear path to success. So, let me explain.

We just looked at a graphic for a board of directors. We saw that there's going to be a lot of conversation about policies and procedures and the way things should be done without a lot of attention to outside influences that may be impacting them. So, perhaps the person who does have some of that high aesthetic needs to be the keeper of those information.

This is why we need to care about not just the team's personality, but the individual personalities in the role. Because while the team has a SMART goal, so should each individual. Because the admonition is to know thyself and that goes beyond the individual level.

For us personally, when we know ourselves better, then we develop a sense of the situation that might challenge us or in which we are likely to succeed. Then we can select into more of the latter while seeking the help of others and putting extra effort into the task that we find are a bit more difficult. Those same principles apply to the team.

When we know about our team's personality, we can get a sense of what its strengths are and what might challenge us. We can identify opportunities to apply our strengths to our work and demonstrate our value to the ministry as a whole. We can also anticipate tasks that are harder and identify each individual team member who may be best positioned to help us through them.

This is not just a concern for people managing the process. Each team member ought to have a sense of the team's dominant characteristics and how their own personality aligns or differs with the team's objective. If only the manager is privy to this information, then the entire team relies on one person to identify new opportunities and recognize the areas of development.

However, if everyone on the team has a sense of its dominant traits, then the team has many more chances to improve and we can help remind each other of that. Now, in building a team, there are six key elements that are extremely critical to making sure that we are headed in the right direction. And in our next lesson, we will cover that.

Do you have any questions? As each person understands their role in the team, is it helpful along with the chairman to identify how they can best research and present information on topics or ministries that come up? That's an excellent question because when the team understands what the team weakness is, we have to have one person on the team that's going to yank us back to reality from time to time. And so what we do is we look for the person who has the specific behaviors or mindsets that need to be that chain that yanks everybody back. And so going into any particular meeting, what you want to do is have that one person that can say, time out, folks.

We're focusing much more on policies and procedures rather than the market that we're trying to approach and deal with. Let's take a minute and let me share some recent statistics with you to bring us into focus because, yes, having these policies and procedures are great, but guess what? If we don't consider this, that, and this group of people, our ministry is not going to grow. Excellent insight.

Is it also helpful to think about how information is going to be communicated so that different people on the team can understand better what the issues are and what the options are? For instance, using graphs or using words or using videos or even presenting information to people ahead of time to get them up to speed about what the issues are so they come to a meeting already understanding what the important ideas are and what considerations need to be discussed. This is extremely good insight because the reason a board is put together is to bring insight, wisdom, and guidance to the organization more as the visionary than the staff members who are actually executing. So when you have people with those different insights, they should be bringing their own information to make specific points to the board meetings.

And obviously, in this particular case, if we go back and look at the example of the board that we talked about, the aesthetics were very bad. They weren't low. In other words, they will work with concepts, but they don't have the details.

So what do we do? We go to the one person that has that high C and it does have some aesthetics, and it would be their role to bring in those graphic representations. It would be their role to bring in the research. It would be their role to say, hey, guys and gals, let's stop for just a minute.

One thing you're not considering is this data. Here, look at these graphs because what that does is it slows the process down and makes it much more meaningful.