Sticky Teams: Keeping Your Leadership Team and Staff on the Same Page

Enjoyed this look at improving relationships with the board, the staff and the congregation. Some of my favorite quotes include:"I've found twelve members to be the absolute maximum we can handle on our board and still have full, honest, and vulnerable conversations... As I write this, we have eleven on our board, counting me and three staff elders."Six Things Every Leadership Team Needs to Know: Axioms to Lead By, The six urban legends of leadership1. Ignore your weaknesses - Why most of your weaknesses don't matter2. Surveys are a waste of time - Why surveys are a waste of time3. Seek permission, not buy-in - The myth of buy-in and why it kills innovation4. Let squeaky wheels squeak - The truth about squeaky wheels and why you don't want to oil them5. Let dying programs die - When it's time for a nice Christian burial6. Plan in pencil - Fuzzy budgets and flexible policies, why you need them and why control freaks can't stand them"Church harmony is inversely related to the amount of time spent oiling squeaky wheels""Without a commitment and willingness to cease funding and staffing the programs that no longer work, we'll never have enough money and energy to create the future.""Overly restrictive constitutions and bylaws reveal a profound lack of trust...it took three years and a major rewrite of the constitution and bylaws to free up Sunday nights and Wednesday nights so that the church could launch a large-scale small group ministry.""At this point, it was obvious that we needed to redefine the role of our elder board in ways I'd not foreseen. First, we had to redefine our spiritual role. There were simply too many people for us to know or spiritually care for. We had to find a way to push our role as spiritual shepherds out to the front lines. In our case, that meant making sure that our small groups offered the same kind of spiritual oversight and care that we'd always seen ourselves as responsible for.""at North Coast Church, our small groups are the hub of our ministry and the primary vehicle for relationships, discipleship, and church health... That's why our children's ministry is not allowed to have a midweek program, no matter how great it might be for the kids and their ministry. We've found that most people will only give us two time slots per week (including the weekend worship service). If we had a midweek children's program, the volunteer staffing needs would cut into our ability to get parents into small groups. And for the sake of the entire ministry, we believe a growing mom and dad is far more important than an awesome children's program.""Real ministry takes place in small groups. A crowd is not a church. It's impossible for the biblical `one another's' to be lived out in a large group setting dominated by casual acquaintances. Therefore, the success of our ministry will be determined by the number of people we have in small groups, not the number of people who attend our weekend services.""I believe the best way to reach non-Christians and disciple them to maturity is to make everything we do believer targeted and seeker friendly.""North Coast's mission statement is, Making disciples in a healthy church environment. Everything we do is geared toward reaching that goal. That means we judge our success by two questions.1 How well are we moving people along the continuum of non-Christian to fully obedient Christian? In other words, are we fulfilling both halves of the Great Commission?2 How healthy is our church environment? Something we measure by looking at our five Ws (word, worship, witness, works, and warmth).""'Churches are a lot like horses. They don't like to be startled or surprised. It causes deviant behavior.'"He was right. The fiercest battles are seldom fought over theology. They're fought over change, especially any change that comes as a surprise, alters a comfortable tradition, or represents a symbolic changing of the guard."Four Step Change Process"I started to follow a four-step change process that I still use today when introducing any significant change or innovation to our board, staff, or congregation."1. Test the Waters2. Listen and Respond to Resisters3. Sell Your Idea to Individuals before Groups4. Lead Boldly"at the five-year mark of our ministry, we wanted to make home fellowships the axis of our ministry. That meant cancelling most other programs and putting all of our stock into what was at the time an unknown quantity. And soon afterward, we moved further into uncharted waters with sermon-based small groups, a lecture-lab model that takes the weekend message and digs unto it more deeply.""Our resisters told us that lots of people feared being stuck in geographic groupings in which they would have little in common with others except their neighborhood. They worried about studies that would be no more than sharing of ignorance or a regurgitation of the sermon. They fretted over being asked to share too deeply too quickly. And they absolutely hated the idea of being asked to divide their group after they'd started to bond. In short, they set an agenda of things for us to work on.""Our listening and responding to their concerns didn't win everyone over. Some folks still dug in their heels. But listening and responding did help us put together a far better small group ministry, one that has thrived for decades.""Over the years, North Coast Church has gone through some huge changes. I often tell people that in terms of style and corporate culture, we've been three completely different churches during my tenure. Not that our message has ever changed; it hasn't. And not that we've turned over or lost lots of people with a revolving-door ministry; fact is, our back door has remained relatively small.""Nonetheless, we've changed a lot. I've gone from suits with monogrammed shirts, to Dockers, to flip-flops and jeans. We've morphed from searching for excellence to thriving in an atmosphere of laid-back authenticity. Our outreach methods have changed from special "bring-your-friends-to-church" events to massive service projects that send our people out to minister in the community. And we've gone from being a small everybody-knows-everybody-church to being one with multiple campuses and worship venues that feature everything from gray hair and hymns to body art and giant subwoofers."

One of the things I chose to do a few years back was broaden my reading from just theological works to those involving business, leadership, church ministry, history, and an occasional fictional work. I kicked off 2012 with a casually paced read through this book. I intentionally wanted to take the read slow...so I could absorb the details and apply them along the way.Osborne gives an amazingly unfiltered treatment of the subject of pastoral or ministerial leadership. Workings within the confines of the corporate structure of a business are far more predictable than those of the church. Business principles can INFORM a person on how to lead effectively, but they do not apply perfectly.Everything in the book discusses the leader's responsibility to develop a team that lasts. This often involves inheriting a team and transforming it. The principles...and the direct instructions that Osborne shares, specifically address the lessons he learned in transforming a team.Some of the crossovers from this book to the traditional business structure relate to how a leader directs his executive team in a company. Whether working with a Board of Directors or motivating teams of senior managers, the principles are applicable.The two biggest takeaways for me in the book relates to unity of the team and expectations of the team. First, "Unity that insists on uniformity is not unity at all" (p.29). A healthy team environment cultivates conflict to work through situations and develop the best outcomes. Unity is a commitment to the values and the goals of the organization that provide the framework and impetus that guide the conflict to excellence. Second is the leader's willingness to PUSH his team on to excellence. Osborne asserts that a leader who will not push his team to get better demonstrates a lack of confidence in the team. The highest compliment a leader can give a team member is to expect more from them.This book will not be read once and then set aside. It will be a reference throughout my career. For me, as a church leader, it is directly applicable; however, I think it is useful to any leader who is required to work in a team environment to accomplish a task. I can easily envision this as a required staff read or a "board" read for the discerning executive. There is much to be gained.Thanks Larry for such a powerful tool!

The first few chapters were great. I enjoyed his writing style and occasional humor. I highlighted considerable ideas and statutes. Later on in the book the author was transitioning his church into a major (mega) church and changes still had to be made. That is when I noticed he sounded cynical. I think it was a mistake in his writing to make him sound that way. He was still trying to be the best pastor he could be but his writing didn't really portray this. Like I said I thought it wasn't portraying who he really was. Great team unity building book