“People collaborate precisely because they don’t know how to—or can’t—deal effectively with the challenges that face them as individuals.”– Etienne Wenger in Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity(1998)
As people made in Imago Dei, we are not designed to live, grow, or work alone. God designed us, like Him, to be in relationship,
But, if you haven’t yet began to use teams in your organization, or if you just followed the trend without understanding exactly why teams are so beneficial, here’s my Top Ten List* to justify the use of teams for all organizations, but especially for church and ministry organizations:
For these reasons and more, team experts/consultants Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith argued in their seminal text, The Wisdom of Teams, that teams:
“should [emphasis added] be the basic unit of performance for most organizations, regardless of size . . . [because] in any situation requiring the real-time combination of multiple skills, experiences, and judgments, a team inevitably gets better results than a collection of individuals operating within confined job roles and responsibilities.”
If you haven't yet given teams a try, I encourage you to give them a shot. And if you have, my guess is that you are not realizing all of the benefits listed above. But if you stay at it and work to develop your teams over time, you can achieve great things through your teams.
Which of the Top Ten Lists of Reasons for Teams have you not yet experienced in teams in your organization?
*These insights are not my own. They are derived from a rich literature investigating teams and collaboration, including, but not limited to, the books, chapters, and articles listed here.
Photo Credit: Pratt Institute
Reprinted with permission from www.ryanhartwig.com
Dr. Ryan T. Hartwig serves as chair and associate professor in the Department of Communication Studiesat Azusa Pacific University. He has taught courses in group, organizational and leadership communication for over a decade, and he has led, trained and developed teams for more than fifteen years in universities and churches.