Empowerment Leadership Model for Small Groups, Teams, & Families
Course 5, Lesson 30
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Developing Teams That Can Successfully Work
with Other Groups of People and Systems
That Affect Their Performance 
Copyright 2001 Dick Wulf
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The most successful teams utilize all resources that can help accomplish the team purpose and goals.  They also deal with other systems that inhibit progress.  It is the responsibility of the team leader to help the team accept these tasks as its own.

Using Helpful Resources

There are many resources outside of the team itself that can help the team succeed.  Usually, the team will think of these on its own.  However, it is too often the case that the team leader instructs the team to use this-and-that resource to get the team’s job done.  The problem with the team leader doing this is that it creates dependency.  The team will be less likely to search for additional resources and the team’s initiative will be squelched by seeing that it just has to passively carry out the team leader’s instructions.

It is much better that the team leader ask the team in a meeting what resources it thinks can help the team succeed.  After all ideas have been expressed, the team leader can then say, “The church would like you to also use the resources of this-and-that.”  In this way, the team does not develop a “sit-back-and-let management do all of the thinking” mentality.  

When the team leader later thinks of another possible resource, he or she can request that the team evaluate the usefulness of this new resource.  If the team rejects a useful resource, it is only a chance for the team leader to lead a team-changing discussion of why the resource was found to be unnecessary.  If there is some other resistance than the actual unhelpfulness of the resource, this will come out during the discussion.

Systems that Hinder Progress

There are many things inside the team itself that can hinder progress.  But, here we are addressing all of those things that can hinder team performance from outside of the team.  Examples of outside systems that can hinder the work of the team are church leadership and management, other efforts within the church, the heating and cooling system of the building, weather, family responsibilities, automobiles, doctrine, church members resistant to what the committee is doing, and a host of other things.

All of these systems must be dealt with by the team when they begin to hinder team progress.  For example, the team must figure out ways of operating when a team member must be gone for family emergencies.  The team might decide that a limited amount of cross training is necessary.  Similarly, the team will need to remedy problems of lack of faith.  And, a team can even brainstorm ways to impact church leadership for the better.

Next:  Developing Teams That Can Assess Their Own Performance and Take
Independent Action to Improve Their Team and its Performance

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Copyright 2012 Dick Wulf, Colorado, USA