Defining Team
There are plenty more, but let’s focus on seven keys to a dynamic team. First, however, it may be good to define “team.” Perhaps by team we mean your family. You are the mother and you have a husband and three kids. Or, maybe by team we mean your, um, team. You are the starting forward and you have four other starters and a handful of back-ups that are with you night and day for months on end. Maybe by team we mean the board of directors of which you are a part, or the group you have been assigned for the semester-long class project, or the committee you have to sit on that is supposed to report back to management about that sales initiative.
Or maybe it is the staff of which you’re a part. Let focus there, knowing the principles will be the same regardless of the make-up of the “team.” What are (at least) seven keys to a dynamic team?
Seven Keys to a Dynamic Team
Prayer
Of seven keys to a dynamic team, this must be number one, hands down! Of course, this assumes that you are a praying person, which might indeed be an entirely different discussion (start here to know more about how to be a praying man or woman). Assuming you are willing to pray, praying for your teammates, as well as the overall environment and mission of your team, is a tremendous starting point for optimal success.
One wonders how many missteps exist for any group of people simply because there is no genuine prayer taking place on behalf of such people. Pray for your teammates, that they would enjoy one another’s favor, would have peace, that God would grant them and their endeavors great success, there would be unity and joy and so forth. Take time to praise God for them, too. There is always something to affirm. Do so, and experience the remarkable difference within yourself while you watch prayers get answered (often in small ways) among your team.
Permission
This is huge. Give each team member permission to be herself or himself. Celebrate each one’s unique design, experience, background, giftedness, passion, talent, et cetera. This next line is very important: do not expect your team members to be like you! This is an exhausting problem with staffs and boards and families and athletes and unions and so forth.
If you are artistic but your teammate is not, please don’t dismiss him for being different. If you are an introvert but your teammate is an extrovert, please don’t decide she is silly or immature (I’m saying that as a strong introvert!). If you are organized but your teammate is like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown, please don’t look condescendingly upon him or her. Give the other permission to simply be the other and not you. And with that as a starting point determine those common places where you can work together.
Partnership
Which leads to the next key, and that is partnering together. Rather than see the differences as liabilities, see them as opportunities to complete one another. If that teammate is disorganized, yet is one of the best relational leaders on the whole team, then determine how to shore up his weak spots with the strengths you can bring to the table. Celebrate the chance to complement one another. Identify her strong points and leverage those for whatever cause is before you while you work to cover the bases on the weaker points. And expect your teammates to do the same for you, for you also have weak points that need covering.
Protection
Protect each other! Go to bat for one another! When someone criticizes your teammate redirect that critic so he or she can hear from you the ways that teammate is successful. Please don’t join in the critic-crowd, you know, with the common, “I know what you mean! You ought to work alongside of her!” I have found in my years that folks who play that game are also victimized by the very same thing, too naïve to know that people do that to them too. Rise above all of that, call out the greatness of your teammates, and be the force of change that foregoes the cheap and easy shots made toward those with whom you serve.
Promotion
Be willing to promote your teammate and your team. Be the champion for him and his area of responsibility. Don’t just always talk about your thing. Celebrate her thing too! Have a perspective that says, “Hey, can I tell you about what my teammate is doing over in sales?” or “Have I mentioned to you the selfless way our starting point guard manages herself?” or “You ought to see him in a board meeting—he is a wise man!” Promoting those around you and not just your own thing breaks down silos often limiting organizations, enables you to see what is going on around you, and creates greater potential for the aforementioned partnerships.
Praise
Don’t hold back on praising one another. Everyone has critics, but really, truly few are the genuine encouragers. You might be very aware of the way a teammate is not succeeding at something. Perhaps you even need to be the one to have an honest discussion with him or her about that reality. Whether that is so or not, be generous with your praise.
There is always something to celebrate. Tell her the ways you think she makes the whole team shine. Share with him some specific moment when he made your life easier, or pushed the cause forward several steps. Affirm your admiration for how he or she manages himself or herself, or the way in which that person represents the board or always gives his best effort or manifests a truly humble spirit, and so forth. The fact is, we just don’t do this enough.
Prayer
And, pray some more. It is simply that important.
A Practical Illustration
First Corinthians 12 finds the Apostle Paul talking about the unique makeup of the human body, and how this is illustrative of the way God has crafted the community called “church.” But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body (1 Cor. 12:18-20). The apostle goes on to say the following:
There are great values embedded here for any team, and particularly those teams that represent the Lord Jesus Christ. What a tremendous opportunity we have as teams—whether a family or a foundation or a board or a band or a staff or a group of students, or whatever—to offer a glimpse of the heart of the Living God, the very one who embodies and celebrates community at every turn. It is a vibrant testimony to a watching world, and it makes our lives easier as we live according to his best design!