12 Steps To How To Build A Team

Building teams is an art.  Rarely will you meet someone who has a natural ability to build great teams.  It takes time and practice.  How one is able to build teams is often a reflection of their leadership.  You cannot be an effective leader and not be able to build teams.  Therefore, if you are unable to build an effective team, then you are a leader with just a title.  A good leader always has people following him or her.

The question you need to ask yourself is: are you good at building teams?  You need to be honest with yourself in order for you to properly develop into a good team builder.

Over the years, I have learned a few things about building teams.  Now, I’m not an expert on this topic,  but I have learned some important principles that I think will help you to build strong and effective teams.

1. Respect

• Be Vulnerable
• How are you leading yourself? (Spiritually, physically, and emotionally).  Do you have healthy rhythms for self care?  How you take care of yourself will determine how much you respect yourself.  If you cannot respect yourself, then people will not respect you.
• Hate the status quo

2. Care for People

• Does your team feel like you care for them, or do they feel used?
• Connect immediately when you sense something is off with a team member
• Pray for your team

3. Share an inspiring Vision

• No vision no direction.  If it is unclear to you it is a fog to your people.
• Come up with a concise(one word or a short phrase) vision that is easily memorable.
• Share the vision over and over

4. Teach them where the “win” is and celebrate

• Define and clarify the win for your team.  No one likes to lose.
• If you give people clear goals they will work to get there.
• But if the goal is unclear, they’re forced to guess or, worse, decide for themselves what a win really is.

5. Listen

• Listen to your team.  How are you listening to their suggestions?
• Most people care more about being heard, rather than you implementing what they are suggesting.
• Does your team feel like you are listening to them?  Ask them this question.  If not, then you are not teachable.

6.  Create Community

• Create an environment where your team is having fun with each other.  Laughter is key!
• Create an environment where your team is caring for each other.  Prayer is key!
• Create an environment where your team is being spiritually stimulated/challenged.  Spiritual leadership is key.

7. Create openness for constant feedback

• Regularly schedule time where your team can give you feedback on: are we winning? how is the morale of the team?  what do we need to change, or improve on?  Is your team growing?
• Allow them to give you feedback and suggestions on your leadership.
• Welcoming feedback will bring your team together because they feel like they are contributing.

8.  Extinguish conflicts right away

• Conflicts are normal and a good sign of health for your team.
• Do not run away from confrontation
• As soon as a conflict arise, address it immediately.

9.  Do not play favorites

• Favoritism de-motivates a team.
• As a leader you have to fight hard the temptation to play favorites.  It is easy to show partiality to your star player, but you must resist this temptation, otherwise you will hurt and lose members of your team.
• Ask yourself who are you spending more time with on your team?  Is your time with that person justified, or do you just like the person or people more?

10. Develop new talent

• Identify people that might have potential leadership gifts and invite them to be a part of your team.
• Meet up once a month for discipleship in three areas:  spiritual, physical, and emotional.
• Make sure you care more about their development personally, rather than how they can benefit your team or ministry.

11.  Replace yourself: Learn to hand off what you do

• You have a choice to make: You can either desperately hold on to your job until someone inevitably replaces you, or you can prepare someone to do what you do and strategically replace yourself.
• Watch first then lead
  √   Allow your disciple to watch how you lead first before you ask them to lead.
  √   When they lead, make sure you give them feedback on how the led.  Start with the negatives and end with the positives.
• Teach your disciple everything you know.

12. Make good decisions

• Never make a decision in haste, wait even to the last minute when making a decision.  The general rule of thumb, the longer you wait the better the chances are that you will make the best decision.
• Don’t form an opinion about an important matter until you’ve heard all the relevant facts and arguments, or until circumstances force you to form an opinion without recourse to all the facts.  The reason for this is that when a leader forms an opinion too soon, then what happens is that he or she will become close minded to facts and arguments that may subsequently come to his or her attention later.
• Once you have decided, be bold with your decision.