How do you build a better team around yourself?
If you work for the Catholic Church, you are probably one member of a team of people. Your team members may be full-time, part-time, or volunteers. No matter the specific dynamics of your crew, it’s important that you all work as a one. Here are two suggestions to build a better team around yourself.
Get crystal clear on your vision statement.
A clear vision statement makes it easy to align initiatives and conversations in a way that keeps the whole team moving in the same direction. It also makes it easier to move past topics and ideas that are not ordered toward the success of the mission.
Keep it concise, mission focused, and ordered toward the accomplishment of a specific goal.
Here’s how it’s done in the secular world:
Oxfam: "A just world without poverty."
SpaceX: "To enable human life on Mars."
TED: "Spread ideas."
Google: "To provide access to the world's information in one click."
Amazon: "To be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online."
Invest time to learn the skills of your team members.
It’s important to know the actual skills of the people on your team so that you can implement them in the most effective way possible for building the Kingdom. While this might fit into the rhythm of your normal daily work, it might be more valuable as a half or full-day off site meeting.
There are bunch of different “strengths finder” style test that you can take. Here are 3 of my favorites.
6 Types of working Genius
Strengths finder
Myers-Briggs
It doesn’t matter so much which one to start with. The important thing is to use these tools as an opportunity to have conversations with your team about their gifts and talents, the parts of their work that give them energy and life. As you do this, you are going to get a lot of insight into how your team functions. You’ll have opportunities to directly address some of the normal issues and bottlenecks that your workflows encounter.
I recommend having this meeting every year. Don’t just do one test and make it the end-all-be-all answer on your teams strengths. The more of these exercises you do with your team, the more well-rounded your understanding of the individuals and their particular gifts will become. Knowing the people you work with and appreciating their unique pecadillos and communication styles is one of the best ways to avoid parish drama and build the Kingdom effectively.
