5 Dysfunctions of a Ministry Team

A great recent article from Leadership.net:

Ministry Team Diagnostics - How to avoid the 5 most common dysfunctions of a ministry team.

Here are the five, with some pull quotes:

• Absence of Trust

When a leader admits to his or her weaknesses, they are inviting others to participate in leadership to fill the gap of what the leader cannot do. No one can do everything, and this kind of vulnerability allows for everyone on a team to contribute in meaningful ways.

I have worked for leaders who led from a façade of omni-competence and the best I could hope for was to be an implementer of their vision and their decisions. I have also worked for leaders who, because of their appropriate admission of weakness, have invited me to participate as a peer and really lead. I'll take the latter any day.

• Fear of Conflict

Les and Leslie Parrot, Christian psychologists who work primarily in the area of marriage, insist, "Conflict is the only way to intimacy." That startling claim has enormous implications for teams as well as marriages.

Avoiding conflict almost guarantees that we will fail to build relationally deep teams, and that we will be unable to make the best decisions for the organization. When teams don't engage in healthy, passionate, unfiltered debate around the most important issues, they inject more politics into the organization and make mediocre decisions that will deliver mediocre results.

• Inability to Make a Commitment

Different decisions require different amounts of time to debate before commitment. Great leaders help their teams calibrate the importance and time needed and then move the discussions toward that end. Once a decision has been given an appropriate amount of time, research, discussion, and input, great teams make commitments based on what emerges as the best decision possible.

Then, there is consistent execution based on that decision, rather than continual debate, second-guessing, or sabotaging the original decision. Doing the hard work before the decision allows you to release your full energies toward implementing the decision.

• Avoidance of Accountability

Holding people accountable is hard work, and it's not usually fun. In fact, I worry a bit about people who enjoy it too much. But we need it. And you don't have community or leadership without it.

In fact, most of us who have been leading for very long will have memories of a time when a leader we respected held us accountable. What might have been an awkward and embarrassing conversation, in retrospect, was a turning point in our development. Everyone needs that, and community is obligated to do that.

• Inattention to Results

Great leaders perform autopsies on poor results. They are constant learners and listen to God, as best they can, and relentlessly pursue doing things better and more effectively. They are passionate about results, because results affect people. Sometimes results are people.

What could we have done differently? What did we learn from this, for future decisions? Has this ministry been allowed to go past its prime, and is there, perhaps, a new and better way? These are the questions of a team that build great ministries that deeply impact people for Christ.