Team Building
Lesson 2: Skills
Personal current reality or strategies
Lesson Objectives:
- Learn how to build trust and comradery on a team
- Building a diverse team
- Compare local and distance teams
- Determine when a team is ready to multiply
How to Build Trusting Relationships on a Team
Building trust and strong relationships within a team is essential for creating a positive and productive work environment. Here are some key strategies and reflections for fostering trust and relationship building:
- Embrace Diversity: Recognize and appreciate the diverse backgrounds, cultures, and personalities within your team. Understand that everyone brings unique perspectives and strengths to the table, which can enrich the team's dynamics and decision-making processes. More on this in the next section.
- Value Each Individual: View team members as valuable individuals, not just based on the outcomes they deliver. Show genuine respect and appreciation for their contributions, regardless of their performance or background.
- Effective Communication: Foster open, honest, and respectful communication within the team. Encourage active listening and create opportunities for team members to express themselves, share ideas, and address concerns.
- Provide Support and Encouragement: Offer words of encouragement and appreciation to your team members. Recognize their efforts and achievements, and provide support and guidance when needed. This helps to build confidence and morale within the team.
- Be Patient and Understanding: Exercise patience and understanding, especially when dealing with challenging situations or difficult personalities. Remember that everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, and it's important to be empathetic and supportive.
- Lead by Example: Lead by example and demonstrate the values and behaviors you want to promote within the team. Show compassion, integrity, and humility in your interactions with others, and strive to create a positive and inclusive team culture.
- Empower and Develop Others: Empower team members by providing opportunities for growth, learning, and development. Encourage them to take on new challenges, learn from their mistakes, and grow professionally and personally.
- Maintain Confidentiality: Respect the privacy and confidentiality of your team members. Keep personal information and sensitive issues confidential, and avoid gossip or sharing private matters with others.
- Build a Supportive Community: Create a supportive and nurturing environment where team members feel safe, valued, and respected. Foster a sense of belonging and camaraderie within the team, and encourage collaboration and mutual support. By implementing these strategies and reflecting on the importance of trust and relationship building, you can create a cohesive and high-performing team that is united in achieving common goals and making a positive impact.
- Building Diverse Teams: One of the hallmarks of the kingdom of God is diversity. Healthy teams not only recognize the presence of diversity but also intentionally pursue it. But although beautiful, diversity also has its challenges. These challenges can affect team chemistry, cause fragmentation, and eventually lead to team breakdown. It is important for team leaders to be able to navigate these contours of building a diverse team.
- A couple of questions will help as we consider how to lead and form diverse teams:
-What different voices, backgrounds, and experiences are present in our team?
-What is beautiful about each of these elements? How can we learn from them and grow?
-How does the diverse composition of our team make us better?
-What are some challenges we should be aware of as a team?
-What other types of voices, backgrounds, and experiences would we aspire to have on our team?
Identifying these components within our team can spark discovery and learning while bringing awareness to our internal dynamics.
A Story from Pratt Butler in Mexico:
A few years ago in México, our core leadership team did the Enneagram study together. We discovered that nobody on our team had the same Enneagram profile. As we began to dive more into what this meant, some of the challenges we had been facing in our team dynamics were quickly explained, while questions also came up about our future compatibility as a team. It was evident that the Enneagram study wasn't just for each individual but for us as a team. But as we began to process more our concern actually transformed into a point of celebration. And while our team dynamics aren't always as fluid as we would hope they would be, we consistently go back to this important understanding for us that underlines a small glimpse of our diversity as a team - and an invitation to know and follow the Lord in a deeper way together.
Team chemistry is built around joy. While diversity brings with it challenges, joy helps us enter into the "unknown", misunderstandings and conflict, and the uncomfortability that learning and growth can sometimes bring. Joy fills us with a perspective that is "higher and greater", a spirit of hope, togetherness, and assurance that our coming together with our differences highlights the kingdom of God. A leader who engages in diversity with a joyful outlook toward that which is greater will thrive.
From Pratt Butler:
One of my favorite courses in college was on Global Perspectives. It is a course that continues to play into my everyday life - challenging me to think outside of my own experiences. From our local teams with adults in the community and kids from all types of backgrounds, to our regional teams that bring together multinational thinking and experiences, to teams like our i100 group we are surrounded by diversity and perspective that invites us into a more robust posture of the kingdom of God.
Being a part of teams and diversity are two of the building blocks of life. Present from creation, they are something to be celebrated and intentionally pursued. Seeing our participation in the movement and integration of diversity around the world in the spirit of the Lord could be one of the most beautiful things we will ever witness.
Pause and Reflect
- Consider the elements of building trust on a team.
-Which do you think you lead your teams well in?
-Which do you struggle with? - What would it look like to celebrate and pursue diversity in your team in a joyful way?
- Reflect on the questions previously mentioned above:
-What different voices, backgrounds, and experiences are present in our team?
-What is beautiful about each of these elements? How can we learn from them and grow?
-How does the diverse composition of our team make us better?
-What are some challenges we should be aware of as a team?
-What other types of voices, backgrounds, and experiences would we aspire to have on our team?
Local vs. Distant TEams
As you grow in your leadership capacity, the teams that you lead will not always be geographically close to you. Some of your teams will be local but some of your teams will be far apart and at a distance from you. Distance impacts how you lead these teams.
Leading a team from a distance uses the same skills as leading a local team, but requires more intentionality to feel like and function as a team. The first question to ask yourself is whether a group of people is actually a team or just a group of people who report to the same person or hold a similar position. All Area Directors in a country are not necessarily a team, they might just be colleagues. A Regional Leadership Team, however, needs to be a team. To be a team, they need to be working towards at least one common, central goal that both builds on and supersedes their other job responsibilities. If they don’t know what that goal is, they will never act like a team.
What is Zoom good for?
On distant teams, it can be difficult to have the right balance between building relationships and getting things done. The need feels stronger to work on relationships when you don’t see each other very often, but team members will be frustrated if they don’t see progress happening as a team, or if meetings feel unproductive. Focus relationship building primarily on in-person time so that Zoom meetings can be more productive. Zoom does not lend itself to relationship building anyway, and it often feels forced on that platform.
From Emily Sandefur: One trick on Zoom is to make a rule that no one is allowed to mute themself or turn camera off. (This works for up to 8 people or so, with the expectation that everyone will be in a quiet place.) People are far more likely to jump in and add to discussions and stay engaged if they’re not muted. It feels more natural. You actually hear people laugh. You hear more of people’s snarky comments or friendly jabs at each other, which lightens the mood and feels less like robots on a screen.
This trick doesn’t work for everyone as it is dependent on internet strength and everyone being in a quiet space. But finding out what works best for you and your team to encourage engagement is key! Here are some questions to consider to create better engagement.
- What kind of call is this?
- How will we invite interaction?
- What will help people stay engaged?
- Are people aware they’ll need to talk and respond?
- How can we create small group conversations if it is a big call?
Considerable effort is needed on the part of the leader to keep Zoom meetings from becoming rote. If you require your team to be in front of their computer on a Zoom call, make it worth their while! Ask yourself, is the time we’re going to spend on the computer more important than these staff people being out in the community or hanging out with a teenager?
Pause and Reflect
- Consider the teams you lead - locally and at a distance. Compare how you lead these kinds of teams differently.
- What, if any, changes do you want to take in leading any distant teams?
Multiplying a Team
As Young Life leaders, we dream about reaching the next kid, the next neighborhood, the next city, and so on. So we know that to reach the next place we need to the teams we lead to multiply. We prepare to multiply and prepare a team to be sustainable beyond our time on a team. But do we know when is the best time to multiply? Oleksandr Utkin from Urkaine, share some thoughts with us on multiplying teams:
Congratulations, Dear Young Life Leader!!
I have a very business question for you - When is a team ready to reproduce?
To answer it specifically for you (after all, every region, country, and place has its own culture), you need to understand where and how you are moving.
The first question is Where? Do you use a MAP and do you have an understanding of where exactly strategically and geographically the next team should be located and why exactly there?
The next question is How? One of the methods is the multiplication (or dividing) of an existing team.
When can this happen?
- If there is a team leader (captain) and with them several leaders who have been trained in the basics of YOUNG LIFE
- Have worked for more than one season in the team and ministry
- They have seen a good example of ministry
- They are good examples themselves
- They realize the importance of multiplication to reach the next kid
- After the division, the team will not suffer significant losses.
To understand when it is best for the team to split up, you can use the theory called "Tuckman's Stages." According to this theory, there are 5 stages of team development, and the author believes that the most ideal conditions will be when the team is in the implementation stage. This is the level when the team has achieved the greatest synergy, everyone knows what to do and shows maximum efficiency.
Blessings in reaching every teenager and spreading the ministry of YOUNG LIFE.
In lesson three you will do a case study on multiplying teams.
Action Steps:
- Consider the teams you lead. From your reflection on the diversity and different voices on your team, what is your next step in making any changes that came apparent from your reflection?
- What, if any, changes do you want to take in leading any distant teams?
