Podcast, Season 2, Episode 6: Lessons On Leadership From the Life and Times of Ezra (part 6 – There is No “I” in “Team”)

In my thirty years of life and experience in leadership roles in Christian organizations, there are leadership lessons that I learned (and continue to learn) from the life of ministry to which God called me.  Over that time, He taught me lessons based on stories, principles, and truths from the Bible that have been translated into personal application.  This particular series of articles focuses on a set of those lessons drawn from the book of Ezra in the Old Testament, the same lessons that I have published in my latest book. This week, in part 6, we are taking a minute to step away from our discussion of your individual leadership and talking about the idea of Team Leadership. If we carry the “running a race” analogy forward from the last few weeks, this would be a little like a relay race, in which you are dependent on others for combined success. Here is the transcript of the podcast.

In this series we are diving deeper into principles and practices that connect biblical truth with wisdom and applying them to the practice of leadership. The purpose of the series, and of the website as a whole, is to connect faith, wisdom, and leadership in a way that will help you grow in your leadership and make an impact. That starts with realizing that God has a plan and purpose that can be trusted, whether or not we can visibly see His hand in it, and He has a part for us in this purpose.

We just finished a 3-week subset in this series in which I laid the groundwork for effective leadership. I used the analogy of the starting blocks in a race, when all the runners line up and get into position, and the starter yells, “On your mark, get set, go!” (I know that the starter actually fires a starter’s pistol, and doesn’t yell “go!”, but you get the idea.) Those three commands capture the ideas I discussed:

• “On Your Mark” – that’s all about getting to the starting line and in the right place. As a leader, that means getting yourself into the right frame of mind and equipping yourself for what is coming. It involves aligning yourself with truth by seeking and knowing God and knowing where He has placed you, and by establishing your foundational beliefs and values, and this is where your capability comes from.
• “Get Set” – that’s all about getting into position in the right form, so that you are best prepared to start well. As a leader, that means performing the actions that set you up to be followed and trusted. It involves living your life so that your actions and behaviors reflect those beliefs, which is another way of describing a life characterized by integrity, and this is where your credibility comes from.
• “Go” – that’s when the starter’s pistol goes off and you start running. As a leader, that’s when the work begins as you start leading your people and your organization toward your mission, vision, or change. It involves stepping out and doing the work of leadership. It’s hard work and therefore requires someone who is both capable and credible, and that’s why this step must follow the other two.

In one of my early experiences in school leadership, I was the head of a school that had been struggling, and the enrollment was very low. As a result, the school was operating with minimal staff, which meant that along with the teaching faculty, I had an administrative assistant and a one of the teachers who also served as the athletic director. Often, when I would walk back into the office area after spending time observing classrooms and interacting with students and teachers, I would comment to my administrative assistant that I was going to my office to have a administrative team meeting with myself. Although I was joking about it, the reality is that I did not have a team, and so there was little I could delegate and little opportunity for discussion with fellow administrators.

However, in another school experience years later, I was blessed to have a full team of administrators serving with me. When we did skill assessments, they revealed that we had a well-balanced and complementary set of skills and personalities, and the combination filled in all the gaps for the needs of the job. We intentionally cultivated excellent interpersonal relationships as well, and the result was a high functioning team that worked well together.

What a difference a good team made! Sometimes, you have limited access to other people, and you have to do everything yourself, but when you can have a team, it can be a tremendous asset. I say “can be,” because it’s not a guarantee. Teams are very capable of being dysfunctional, and I’ve been part of my share of those. For a team to work well, there needs to be the right combination of gifts and abilities, and a willingness to be collaborative. Without those, there will either be a lot of conflict and dysfunction, or there will be poor performance due to deficiencies. That was the blessing of the team I had – when you looked at the typical four quadrants of abilities that are categorized on profiles, our combination filled in every quadrant. In addition, we respected each other’s roles (such that no one wanted any of the other persons’ jobs) and built a positive and supportive relationship with each other. We had disagreements, but because of our attitudes and relationship, we were able to work through those and come out better.

The point for you is to recognize the value of team for your leadership, but only if it is the right kind of team.  In the Leadership Ezra website article that corresponds to this podcast episode, I talked about three types of people: those with leadership ability, those with wisdom, and those who are humble spiritual leaders. In addition to that, you also need to gather a team that fills out different abilities: at the very least, you need a visionary, a people-person, a detail planner, and a jump-in-and-serve person, and then whatever other skills are needed for your group or your task.

You may not always have the privilege of putting together and working with a good team, but if you do, you should take it.  Be intentional about it, and seek the right people, including the ones that every team should have as well as the ones uniquely needed for your team. Then cultivate the relationships between and among the team members. When you can do this, the end result is that what you have will be greater than the sum of the parts, a team that in combination with each other that is greater than the individual members.