Successful teams and why they don't always happen

To have a successful team the following elements are required:

1. A clear sense of direction – vision and purpose
2. The right people in place – a ‘dream team’
3. Sound finances – resources are essential

If one of these is missing it will be hard to achieve the desired result.

Reasons why people don’t build teams:

Control – the leader can’t let go. Such control doesn’t have to be by force of personality – it can be a quiet individual who has to have everything flow through them. This will become a limiting factor – the lead guy has to initiate a transition if the church is to grow beyond 200.

It’s quicker to do things yourself! – The leader sees that something needs doing and knows that he can do it quickly. If he is going to delegate the task he will have to recruit, train and monitor that person and they aren’t going to do it as well – at least initially! The half-done and wrongly-done elements of the task will keep coming back to him and will give him extra work, not less!

Past failures – if the leader has been let down by a previous team member who hasn’t delivered on supposed promise or who has received training and personal investment from the leader and has then decided to move on and go somewhere else.

In this context inertia takes over - in a growth context the immediate takes over from the strategic.