Lesson 5/13

Empowerment Leadership Model for Small Groups, Teams, & Families
Course 5, Lesson 13

Developing Your Team So That it Stays Focused
on the Team’s Purpose in Such a Way
That Individual and Team Motivation Is Not Lost
Copyright 2001 Dick Wulf
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The most successful teams have a purpose to guide individual and cooperative effort. The purpose must be carefully chosen, presented so that team members buy fully into the purpose. It is this purpose that determines functional and dysfunctional team and individual behavior. And it is this critical purpose that provides team members with personal payoff that motivates.

Every team, no matter how boring the nature of its work, can adopt a purpose that melds what the church wants and what individual team members can commit themselves to. When this is done, the framework is set for accomplishing the church's needs while giving team members more benefits than just duty.

You want to understand the realities, thoughts and feelings of church members so you can devise a team purpose that gives them something they believe in and want to do. And they also want job satisfaction, a sense of teamwork, friends on the team, help in becoming even more skillful and productive at what they do on the team, etc.

So, spend some quality time thinking about the people on the team you lead. Write down the various personal situations they face. For each situation, brainstorm thoughts and feelings about what is going on. For example, if your team members are often facing family problems, then the purpose, carefully stated and discussed, can promise peaceful relationships at work because you will help the team become one that solves problems rather than getting after people.

Note the marriage of something for the church and something for the team member. This should be easy if the team purpose centers around what God wants, as that should be the same for the church and the church members.

Next: Developing Teams in Such a Way That Dysfunctional, Non-productive
Behavior Is Minimized or Eliminated

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