It’s funny really. Despite for so long preferring my own company, I have always been fascinated by relationships, groups and teams. Indeed my biggest love was about a sport played by a team. How the team is formed and how it performs has been something I enjoyed studying and eventually began practicing in one aspect or another. Church at its best is not just an expression of family, it’s also a brilliant expression of team.
So in all that here are some ingredients of what makes a team function effectively, in my humble opinion. These are in no particular order.
1. Mutual Humility
The key to effective communication is understanding. Great teams are built on effective communication. For that to take place understanding literally requires an ability to be standing under the other. That humility to each other regardless of role and title makes a team work well.
2. Healthy Space For Internal Conflict
If iron sharpens iron that must call for some degree of friction. Harmony and good collaboration is not about the lack of disagreement. Sometimes the passion of two equally committed and opposed sides is the sort of climate where growth can take place. Whilst not condoning anything divisive, seeing conflict as opportunity to learn and grow, create new space to place that disagreement whilst maintaining progress makes teams successful.
3. Flexible Leadership
Great teams are not about anything and anyone fixed. At any given time the way to go can emerge from any individual or group of individuals. Appreciating that means there’s less pressure on fixed people and fixed labels and there’s a greater capacity for people to grow into their own leadership style and knowing how to submit to the leadership of another.
4. Shared Desires and Values
Groups and teams are different because of that which unifies. That glue that helps the team stick together is often that which they all share. The team won’t split up because they share the same desire, the same goal, the same outcome and the same means with which these are to be realised. As time goes by the glue can strengthen and team performance duly improves in quality and consistency.
5. Acknowledging Individual Expertise
Appreciating the beauty of the individual contribution can do wonders for that contribution. This acknowledgement says that no one can do what that particular person can do. Precisely because they are a unique member of the human race, when their personal expertise can come to the fore and their personal value can be celebrated everyone benefits.
6. Refusal To Accept What Has Been Achieved
The biggest killer to effective teams is often success. That success can lead to members in the team getting complacent. The thought of reaching the top of the hill suggests that there’s only one way to go from there. Thus there’s no room or time to rest on laurels. There is an implicit agreement that there is no such thing as the top of the mountain, there is only another step achieved in the upward direction.
7. Innovative Problem Solving
As individuals and their contributions are celebrated, it provides the right environment for people to see problems as opportunities. There it’s no longer an issue of how the problem will be solved. It is now a case of how can brilliance emerge from this situation. Experimenting, doing something a little different and unorthodox is given the green light because of those shared values and shared desires.
8. Evolving Capacity For Development
As there is a hunger to go to the next step, so there is an understanding that people will have to grow and people’s ability to take on things must continually be assessed even as successes are celebrated. As these are stretched and people grow so the insights change and the way we see things grow and widens. Recognising this and ensuring this is maintained is pivotal to a team’s ongoing success.
9. Refreshing Approach To Humour
Having a laugh is in itself nothing to be laughed at. Here is the ability to relax and make people open. Open to recognising their own faults and failings. Open to recognise it in others. Open also to suggestions on how to progress. That can take place while people are having a laugh. A fun environment to work in, is the team oil that keeps the organic machinery prospering.
10. Profound Ability To Trust
I know she will be there for me. I know without a shadow of a doubt he won’t let me down. If I do that, I know this will happen. To get that the best way is to do this. These processes and thoughts go on unspoken and are responded to equally non-spoken because of the depth of relationship developed. That such trust doesn’t describe and define relationships around the world is a sadness. It stands though as an enduring testimony that this level of trust can be achieved.
(Photo by Kevin Butz on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. J. Dryden
Life With CD 