Book Summary: Teams That Thrive -- Ryan T. Harwig and Warren Bird

Teams That Thrive

Five Discipline’s of Collaborative Church Leadership

By Ryan T. Harwig and Warren Bird

Part One: Why Read a Book About Leadership Teams?

Chapter 1: Myths We Believe: How Many of These Do You Think Are True?  

Myth: Great teams are primarily advisers to the top person, who makes the decisions.            

Reality: The best teams make decisions as a group.                  

Myth: Meetings are places not to make decisions but to work through decisions already made.            

Reality: The best teams both make decisions and “own” the implementation.                  

Myth: Teams first build trust, and then they learn to work together.            

Reality: Trust is built in the trenches as the team works together, especially on major initiatives and tough, controversial decisions.                  

Myth: Senior teams are created by drawing a circle around the top positions on your organizational chart.

Reality: The best leadership teams draw from a diversity of roles and positions.                  

Myth: Bigger teams are better, drawing from eight to twelve people.            

Reality: The optimal size is four to five in most cases, and sometimes three.                  

Myth: Shorter meetings are better than longer meetings.            

Reality: Long meetings can be highly productive, if they are carefully structured to accomplish clear objectives and fully engage everyone’s strengths.                  

Myth: Team leaders can’t really be accountable to their group if they’re the lead pastor.            

Reality: The best teams have an amazing level of mutual accountability and genuine camaraderie.     Myth: The senior pastor or person who’s been there longest is the best team leader.            

Reality: The best teams rotate aspects of providing leadership to the team.                  

Myth: Most team improvement is haphazard, largely based on each member’s growth outside of team meetings.            

Reality: The best teams continually work together on improvement as a team.

     

Chapter 2:  Your Vantage Point: How Is Your Church Being Led Right Now

Thriving churches are led by thriving leaders. Not one leader but many leaders. And not just by a group but by a team— there’s a big difference between the two.

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      Describe various types of leadership formations
• ·      Unpack the importance of a church’s senior leadership group
• ·      Help you identify who is, or might be, on your senior leadership team
• ·      Identify how to maximize your own role in terms of how you’ll be reading and applying this book

Quotes:

Great teams are unwilling to sacrifice effectiveness on the altar of efficiency.

For good or bad, leadership teams shape the culture, direct the mission, establish the vision and model the values of your church.

If that group is haphazard, unfocused, imbalanced or dysfunctional, the ripple effect will show up at every level of your church. By contrast, if your team is thriving, there’s a good likelihood that the rest of the church will as well.

When leadership teams fail to reach their potential, their churches follow suit.

Part Two: Why Do Leadership Teams Make Sense?

   

Chapter 3: The Bible Speaks: Scriptural Foundations for Senior Leadership Teams

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      suggests that the Trinity demonstrates a certain “team” quality about God
• ·      shows how the body of Christ metaphor undergirds the idea of teams in the church
• ·      applies New Testament principles for church leadership to leadership teams
• ·      affirms that collaborative leadership can work in your particular ecclesial context

Quotes:

Christianity is unique among major religions in presenting one God who eternally exists and functions as a divine team.

In the church as a body, diversity and unity combine seamlessly.

A team without diversity is no better than a single individual. But a team without unity will fracture from fighting and disparate visions.

The practice of multiple leadership— or teams— existed from the church’s birth.

Chapter 4: Passing Fad or Here to Stay: Ten Practical Reasons for Senior Leadership Teams          

Purpose of the Chapter:

·      explains the practical benefits of senior leadership teams for church leadership

·      offers a diagnostic to help church leaders distinguish whether their leadership group is more of a working group or team

Quotes:

Teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice— and a strategic one. That means leaders who choose to operate as a real team willingly accept the work and the sacrifices that are necessary for any group that wants to reap the benefits of true teamwork.  -- Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage

The Benefits and Power of Shared Leadership:

• Greater Productivity
• Less stress and pressure on the lead pastor
• Greater leadership development
• More creativity and innovation
• Better decision making
•  More safety and accountability
• Less loneliness
• Greater joy and satisfaction among team members
• Greater trust among the congregation
• Provide better organizational leadership

Part Three: How Well Is Our Team Thriving?

Chapter 5: Reality Check: Eight Common Reasons Teams Fail

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      take an honest assessment of your team
• ·      identify some of the most common reasons that teams fail to thrive
• ·      learn to think differently about the impact of your team’s communication practices

Quotes:

•   Everything is a priority, so nothing is.
• Lack of team leadership skill and understanding.
• No inspiration or model for becoming a great team
• Undisciplined efforts
•  Absence of Godly character among the team
• Confusion over the teams purpose
• Over-reliance on the lead pastor
• Dysfunctional team communication practices

In fact, our research showed that the greatest predictor of leadership team performance was the amount of stress the team members experienced related to dysfunctional communication practices.

When we asked team members what made their team great, the responses almost always pointed to their communication practices.

Chapter 6: Our Survey Says: The Collaborative Disciplines of Teams That Thrive

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      present the five disciplines of teams that thrive as a pathway to bring out the best in your team
• ·      detail the research process behind our model
• ·      highlight the major findings from our research study

Quotes:

The Five Disciplines of Teams That Thrive

Discipline 1: Focus on purpose, the invisible leader of your team.

Discipline 2: Leverage differences in team membership.

Discipline 3: Rely on inspiration more than control to lead.

Discipline 4: Intentionally structure your decision-making process.

Discipline 5: Build a culture of continuous collaboration.

Part Four: What are the Collaborative Disciplines of Teams That Thrive?

Chapter 7: Discipline 1: Focus on Purpose, the Invisible Leader of Your Team          

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      discuss problems related to purpose that senior leadership teams frequently face according to our research
• ·      explain how to get team purpose right by focusing on what we define as the 5Cs of purpose
• ·      discuss the benefits of a 5C purpose
• ·      explore the most important purposes for church leadership teams
• ·      offer a framework you can use to craft your team’s unique purpose

Quotes:

Six Benefits of a 5C Purpose:

1. Narrows Your Teams Scope
2. Creates space for staff and volunteers to contribute at a high level
3. Compel People to contribute their best to the team
4. Inspires and energizes the team.
5. Distinguishes the leadership team’s unique contribution at the church
6. Cultivates trust and relationships among team members.

Leadership teams that thrive make key decisions as a team. Furthermore, top-performing senior leadership teams told us that the team made decisions 64 percent of time, while underperforming teams made decisions 43 percent of the time. Lead pastors in top teams made decisions 25 percent of time, but in underperforming teams, they made them 37 percent of the time. Finally, others outside of the team, such as board members or other staff members, made decisions 13 percent of time for top teams, where as they made 24 percent of the decisions for underperforming teams. This data, illustrated in figure 7.3, points to the fact that thriving leadership teams collaboratively make decisions rather than advising or waiting for others to give the team its marching orders.

More interestingly, though, the biggest gaps between the top and underperforming teams showed up in decisions made around finances and strategic planning, perhaps because these constitute the crucial issues.

Leadership teams that thrive structure their meetings to make decisions. The best teams don’t leave accomplishing their purpose to chance.

Chapter 8 Discipline 2: Leverage Differences in Team Membership

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      explains the optimal size for leadership teams
• ·      lists the characteristics of the right people to serve on a leadership team
• 
  
• ·      guides leaders on balancing team responsibilities with individual, departmental duties
• ·      offers practical tips to implement those principles in regard to:

·      finding the right people

·      gracefully narrowing a team’s membership

·      creating space for the leadership team’s work

·      managing compensation issues among the team

·      dealing with the loss (and replacement) of a team member

Quotes:

Teams with seven members must manage twice the communication channels as those with five members, as figure 8.2 illustrates.

Motivated leaders are typically high-performers, people who have done good work and often expect to be given space to continue to do good work, who have been rewarded for independent achievement, who thrive on challenging, meaty tasks and who eschew micro-management. That means your team likely will regularly experience fireworks. Resist the urge to tame that energy too much; if you squelch it, you will likely lose your motivated leaders.

Andy Stanley underscored this principle: “One of the most important things you can do is surround yourself with smarter people.” 8 Are the members of your team smarter than you? Are they both willing and encouraged to vehemently disagree (in a Christlike way) with all the members of your team, including the leader?

As pastor Larry Osborne notes, “Sooner or later the leadership table gets too crowded. Communication suffers, meetings run long, low-level conflict increases, and nothing much gets done anymore.” 11 If your team is populated with a person who constantly shuts down your progress, we’d like to offer suggestions for the confrontation that needs to happen.

The main senior leadership team doesn’t have to do all the leading.

The best teams are evaluated as a team, not only as individuals.

Chapter 9: Discipline 3: Rely on Inspiration More Than Control to Lead

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      explains the leadership behaviors of those who lead thriving teams
• ·      highlights the kinds of relationships that team members report with team leaders
• ·      discusses how leaders build trust within teams— and how that’s different than often thought
• ·      explores various approaches to “first among equals” on teams
• ·      identifies ten essential team leadership practices
• ·      shows leaders how they can cultivate greater shared leadership in their teams

Quotes:

The first step that effective leaders need to take is not to ask “What can I do?” Rather they should ask “Am I needed at all? Will my actions, or even my presence, do more harm than good?” The best leaders know when and how to get out of the way.

The best leaders exhibit transformational, inspirational and visionary leadership behaviors.

Behaviors of Those Who Lead Teams That Thrive

• ·      They are biblical
• ·      They are transformational and motivational
• ·      They cast vision and see the big picture
• ·      They are not hands-off
• ·      They are not autocratic
• ·      They prioritize relationships
•      Trust is a byproduct of a team’s focus and pursuit of a common purpose.

Less than 20 percent of leadership team leaders have received special training in how to lead teams.

Ten Practices of Great Team Leaders

1.  Structure the team for success
2. Establish with your team a 5C purpose (clear, compelling, challenging, calling oriented and consequential).
3.  Get the right people on the team.
4.    Facilitate goal setting in pursuit of the team’s vision.
5. Set priorities and focus on achieving team goals.
6.   Ensure a collaborative climate among the group
7.   Unleash talent by allowing others to do real work.
8.   Do real work themselves.
9. Employ thoughtful, careful procedures for solving problems, making decisions and innovating
10.   Manage performance.

Chapter 10: Discipline 4: Intentionally Structure Your Decision-Making Process Part 1: Collaborating While Seeking God’s Voice

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      discuss the particular problems senior leadership teams face when making decisions
• ·      explore typical hang-ups and problems with group decision making
• ·      offer a diagnostic to help you identify challenges with your team’s decision-making processes
• ·      present a solution to those problems: structured interaction that invites God to speak to the group

Quotes:

Maybe one of the reasons our ministries are so ineffective is because we don’t make room for God’s power, since we are so enamored with our own.

This parallels what group communication literature has suggested for many years: groups that conduct their business in a free-flowing, unstructured, haphazard manner tend to flounder, whereas those that intentionally structure and regulate their interaction generally perform at a much higher level. 7 Though sticking to a discussion plan or meeting agenda sometimes feels unnatural and awkward, it’s clear that doing so supports team effectiveness.

. What James warns us about is that our freedom to make plans is not a license to live free from God. To come to that conclusion would be arrogant. The phrase, ‘If it is the Lord’s will,’ ought to infect our thinking. It ought to be a standard part of our vocabulary.”

Chapter 11: Discipline 4: Intentionally Structure Your Decision-Making Process

Part 2: Collaborating in the Midst of Conflict  

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      discusses the communication practices that make a difference for team decision-making performance, specifically dealing with conflict
• ·      lays out a process you can use (and tweak) to help your team make better decisions

Quotes:

In one of the most representative studies ever conducted of US churches, involving over ten thousand congregations across every denomination and tradition, one factor rose to the top as the greatest predictor of whether a church is growing or non-growing. It is the presence or absence of lingering destructive conflict.

They fear artificial agreement more than offending a teammate.

“Conflict doesn’t destroy strong teams because strong teams focus on results,”

They are committed first to being members of the leadership team and secondarily to leading their respective ministry area (youth, kids, worship, etc.).

One way to train team members to take a churchwide perspective is to ask them to think like another team member, such as the executive pastor or children’s pastor when viewing a decision.

In fact, great teams tend to spend three and a half hours a week in team meetings, and another three talking informally with members of the team.

Chapter 12: Discipline 5: Build a Culture of Continuous Collaboration      

Purpose of the Chapter:

• ·      discusses the typical problems with meetings
• ·      identifies best meeting practices that made a difference for thriving teams
• ·      explores the relationship between getting work done and building community among team members
• ·      offers simple strategies to effectively structure meetings with sample agendas and meeting practices
• ·      provides advice for collaborating effectively and sharing information with people outside of the leadership team

    

Quotes:

The Problems with Meetings

• ·      They’re usually about words and abstract concepts, not real things.
• ·      They usually convey an abysmally small amount of information per minute.
• ·      They drift off-subject easier than a Chicago cab in heavy snow.
• ·      They require thorough preparation that people rarely do anyway.
• ·      They frequently have agendas so vague nobody is really sure of the goal.
• ·      They often contain at least one moron who inevitably gets his turn to waste everyone’s time with nonsense.
• ·      Meetings procreate. One meeting leads to another meeting leads to another.

Meeting Practices of Top Teams:

• ·      Teams do more than formally “meet” together. They collaborate continuously.
• ·      Meeting agendas are distributed to all team members, preferably at least one day in advance.
• ·      Meeting agendas are not solely developed by the lead pastor.
• ·      Agendas clearly delineate the work for the meeting.
• ·      Minutes are taken and distributed to relevant staff.

Part Five: What’s Your Best Next Step?

Chapter 13: Six Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Team

Purpose of the Chapter:

In this chapter, we discuss six headwinds that can radically affect your ability to succeed as a leadership team.

Quotes:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. -- Aristotle

“culture— not vision or strategy— is the most powerful factor in any organization.”

Six Headwinds:

• 1.     Culture that embraces the status quo
• 2.     A Culture that Adopts the Latest Fad Advice Then Goes Back to Normal Operations
• 3.     A Culture of Spontaneity that Limits Planning and Structure
• 4.     A Culture that Reinforces the Ultimate Authority of the Lead Pastor
• 5.     A Culture That Undermines the Leadership Team’s Important Contribution
• 6.     A Culture That Ignores Biblical Accountability

Chapter 14: Catalyze Your Team’s Growth              

     

Quotes:

1. Make sure your team is really leading.

2. Ensure that your team is effective.

3. Keep evaluating.

4. Invest in your team’s development.