LeadershipConneXtions

Time Tested Wisdom

Miriam Phillips provides some practical insight on how teams can function in times of stress. 

 

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In my life, I've seen high potential teams engaged in meaningful missional ministry waste a great deal of their gifts, their time, their energy, and their material resources in not figuring out how to resolve differences.

 

Years ago, in a time of disagreement in a team, we were given advice that has served us well for many years. Everyone I’ve known for long has heard me quote this:

 

In a time of stress in a team:

 

1. Increase the quality and the frequency of the communication
2. Believe the best of each other's motives (a real challenge if emotions of hurt or disappointment are running high)

In talking with a colleague known for his good judgment, I heard him give this advice: 

 

1. Clarify who is responsible or making decisions in this situation
2. Have that decisionmaker or decisionmaking body ask the people most directly involved in a crisis about what they see as the one most essential problem
3. Solicit relevant ideas and win trust by asking each of these people what they would propose as a solution
4. Start any group conversation with with these 3 things on the table.
5. Bring clarity by not dealing with other issues at the same time.

I'm thinking that these tips to begin to bring clarity to complex situations will be ones I'll pass on for many years to come.

Miriam Phillips

What If Sessions

Every now and then we need to engage in what I call "What If Sessions."

A What If Session is a time when you:

• think outside the box,

• dream really big (with no limitations),

• do creative brainstorming to accumulate possibilities,

• imagine new scenarios, what they look like and how to get there.

You may need to do a  What If Session:

as an individual and about your life and its condition and its purpose,

as a team that feels things are in a rut and stalled out,

as a family system,

occasionally or regularly,

in a short 30 minute sprint or by setting aside an entire day.

What is most important is that you do it.

After all, God is doing new things all the time. Divine possibilities are springing up all around us. And What If Sessions are times when our eyes are open to see and join in with those possibilties.

Get one scheduled soon.

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

The Six "C's" of Finding the Right Person

I have attached a pdf that is a brief explanation of the importance of:

character

chemistry

competency

creed (belief)

core values

calling . . .

These six qualities enter into the decision making process of hiring the right person to be a part of the team.

Download getting_the_right_people_on_the_bus.pdf

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

The Individual and the Team

If you are not an NFL fan, then you may not be aware of the MAJOR conversation on all the sports talk shows.  It is, of course,  the Green Bay Packers - Brett Favre issue.

One thing that has been interesting for me is to realize that sometimes this conversation reveals the deep seated individualism in our culture. I have heard many times over that of course Favre deserves the shot at the position. He is Favre . . . he had a great season last season, broke all kinds of records . . . he is the star . . .

And then there are some comments that favor the team. The team made plans without him. The team organized around Favre being retired and so what that Brett changed his mind (by the way, I think this is the 3rd time he has come out of retirement), for the good of the team, they are staying the course they had planned and that is a course without Favre.  And the team offered him, what - $12 million to be a team player, but in a role that the team thinks is best.

That's not bad. Take one for the team. (Take $12 million just not to mess up the team.)

Just interesting listening to the values of our culture in this one.

And on another note:  Why is it that the superstar team of NBA players struggled so hard against the non-descript Australia (I think that is who they played) who hung tough and made the superstars look not so super?

Maybe our radical individualism mis-assumes that a team of superstar athletes make a good team. Maybe a pretty solid team without superstars (like Australia) has a good chance against a group of individual superstars?

Brian Rice

p.s.  I think they just should have the Boston Celtics go play in the Olympics. They are a team that is first a team and then a team that has superstars on it. But TEAM is the operative word.  Of course, I am highly biased about the Celtics.

p.p.s.  It is also interesting listening to the commentators talk about how both the Franchise and Favre have handled this and saying it may be, perhaps, the worst ever handling of this kind of situation.

Next and Level (Great Article in Leadership Journal)

I am being inundated (in a good way) with stuff on teams.

Not only is the Harvard Business OnPoint all about teams, but so is the latest quarterly issue of Leadership (or at least in part).

There is a REALLY GREAT article which is an interview with the four senior leaders of The Next Level church who gave up the traditional model of solo senior pastor and embraced a model of shared leadership. If you don't get the journal, you can go on line and read it at:

Next Level Article.

Very thought-provoking. Brian Newman knows these guys since their church is in Denver.

Enjoy.

Brian Rice

p.s.   Tomorrow's post will be a reflection on my time in Paraguay.

Leading High Performance Teams

My friend and LWCC colleague, Aaron Kunce, lent me his copy of Harvard Business Review OnPoint. This is a quarterly publication. It was on Leading High Performance Teams, and after skimming through his copy, I stopped by Borders on the way home and bought my own.  I recommend you do the same and spend $16.95 to get this issue.

And in the spirit of teams, I have some fun images on this post.  Be sure to scroll down to the end to see the last ones. The last one may be my favorite.

I think one person says it this way...too many chiefs and not enough Indians!

Anyway, about the HBR OnPoint issue . . .

The OnPoint is a collection of "best of articles" from previous issues of HBR. And in this case, there are ten good articles.  Here are a few of the articles:

The Tough Work of Turning Around a Team by Bill Parcells. The ironic thing is just this morning I listened to Mike and Mike in the morning speak very critically of some of Parcell's failures as a leader with the Miami Dolphins organization. They were getting at the same emotional intelligence issues that affected his tenure with the Cowboys.

The Discipline of Teams by Katzenbach and Smith (this is an oldie, first published in 1993...!...wow!)

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams (a recent article which was very good).

Building the Emotional intelligence of Groups (I am looking forward to reading this one).

Leading in Times of Trauma

Managing Multicultural Teams (this one should be very interesting).

Virtuoso Teams . . .

and several more as well.

You might enjoy surfing the internet and look for funny images of team work.

I just typed in team work and found about 100 of them that were fun.

Brian Rice

From Great Leaders to Great Teams

There are a number of very significant shifts taking place in the world of leadership. Some of this shift is due to the reality of massive culture changes. As culture changes, so do paradigms of leadership.

One such shift is moving away from looking at the GREAT LEADER and toward thinking about GREAT TEAMS.

Warren Bennis is just one of the leadership savants who is talking about this particular shift.

It is part of the American myth and "hero folklore" that we put so much emphasis on the superstar leader who saves the day.

The reality is that it is great teams that do the most for organizations and behind every great leader, there is most certainly a great team that is not getting too much credit but standing in the shadow of the leader.

I think it is kind of a sickness in our culture in general and it has its own expressions in the evangelical sub-culture as well.

The Level Five Leader that Jim Collins talks about (ironically a truly great leader) recognizes and values the contributions of others on the team and gives credit to the team for their accomplishments.

In the Bible, we think about great leaders, but sometimes fail to remember the great teams they had.

Moses had a great team (in part - Caleb, Joshua, Aaron, the 70 elders and more).

David had a great team - his mighty men, Nathan and more.

Nehemiah had a great team - those overseers who coordinated the work of rebuilding and the work of vigilant, armed resistance against their enemies.

The 2008 Giants had a great team this year.

And my favorite NBA team, the Celtics, once again have a great team that is reminiscent of the Larry Bird years (when Bird was the lead player on a team of truly great players). Yes I know I'm biased.

Take a few minutes and answer these questions:

• Who is on your team?
• Have you affirmed and encouraged them recently?
• What are you doing to give them opportunities for even more leadership influence?

One of the things I am excited about is that Leadership ConneXtions International is building a great team of international partners and U.S. based partners. I'm grateful.

Brian Rice

Teamwork and synergy

This past Sunday we had a great example of team work. We had a pretty complex Sunday morning service that involved a lot of creativity and a lot of people.

I was the teaching pastor for that morning, and yet, what I did would simply not have been possible without an entire team of people who gave a lot of creativity and energy to make that morning happen.

A worship team, a drama team, a video tech team (that was had to jump to higher levels of production), and the entire Creative Arts Department all contributed in vital ways. If you removed any one of them from the mix, the "product" would have been much less.

The result was a service that was far more than the sum of its parts. That is synergy. When the parts come together and through interaction produce something that is bigger and better than the simple sum of their contributions.

It is one of the things that makes teamwork exciting and rewarding.

If you are leading teams, spend some time reflecting on how well your team is working and on how well you are leading it.

One of the nicest (short and simple) books on teamwork is Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. If you need to "jumpstart" some better team functioning, this book will help you do that.

Brian Rice

Trust

I've been thinking about trust again.

I've been thinking about it because I am in a situation where trust levels between certain team members is not real high.

I've been thinking about it because when I taught on team building in India, BUILDING TRUST was one of the big items on the agenda and we had "vigorous"discussion about trust and the lack of trust.

I've been thinking about it because I just read some good words on trust from Max De Pree. Here are those words:

Earning trust is not easy, nor is it cheap, nor does it happen quickly. Earning trust is hard and demanding work.  Trust comes only with geunine effort . . . It's much more difficult to rebuild trust then to build it in the first place. Once we have built it, we should treasure it and protect it. Turst can be won only slowly; it can be lost in the twinkling of an eye.

If you are part of a team that is struggling - take another look at the levels of trust on your team.

If you are leading a team - be sure to constantly monitor the "trust dynamics" and to keep the trust issue on the front burner.

If you have lost the trust of some people - start to rebuild that trust. Get started by having an honest conversation with the person who doesn't trust you.  Go into that conversation with the words of Stephen Covey in mind:  Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Brian Rice

Team Building and Being a Team

I want to say thank you to my friend, Brian Newman, for his time and ministry at the Leadership Summit this weekend. Brian had an incredibly busy week last week at Lookout Mountain.

He then flew out on Friday to come to York for our Saturday Summit. He taught his workshop on Building and Leading Teams two times that day. The workshop had great attendance and wonderful feedback from those who participated.

We (along with Becky) spent time later that evening doing administrative stuff for LCI.

On Sunday morning we drove up to New York. Brian then worked with the GCF missions team Sunday evening while I met with a group in Syracuse.

On Monday we had appointments throughout the day and then worked together to present LCI to a group of about 25 special friends. We had a great time being with them at the Community Restaurant.

Then we left at 6:00 a.m. to come back to York so we could make an 11:00 meeting with the Bank.

We parted and Brian left for BWI airport to fly home, getting home kind of late.

It is great building Leadership ConneXtions International with Brian. A lot of synergy (please note, this is not the same as sin energy, which would deserve another post by itself) takes place when we can work together.

Thanks to all our friends and supporters who are encouraging us in the LCI endeavor and making this possible.

Brian Rice

p.s.  These two photos did manage to turn out okay.