True Team Leadership

There are a few leaders out there today who have jumped on the plurality of leadership bandwagon just because they think it to be in vogue. They tout themselves as leading with a team, but they continue to revert back to old habits of leading from authority. When challenged, they may even resort to using fear and intimidation. They publish a list of team members, but the team is never given vision, purpose, nor structure (because the leader really doesn't intend to use them fully).

If you are serious about using team leadership, if you fully intend to use them, the team will need structure. Your ministry will not effectively meet the needs of others without it. Selecting the wrong structure will not only impact how you execute as a ministry, it often leads to dysfunction across the church.

Here are some measurements:

- Does your team have a well-defined structure (peer-based, team-based, or depth-based)?Without structure, your volunteers will not know where and when to go when they need help. They’ll feel helpless and give up.

- Is your team structure documented (organizational chart or outline)? Your team needs to know where to go when they need help, so make it easy on them by keeping a chart available and up-to-date.

- Does your team have job descriptions for each job role your team performs, including the duration required for new signups? How can your team do their job if they don’t know what their job is? Make short, easy to understand job descriptions that help everyone stay focused.

- Do you have a process for locating new managers and leaders to grow your team? Developing structure helps you to see where future managers and leaders are needed. Develop a simple process for locating these future team members.

[from Agile Ministry by James Higginbotham]