High-Impact Teams: Where Healthy Meets High Performance

team.

You never accidentally become a great team. No group of individuals ever drifts into becoming a high-impact team. No high-achieving team haphazardly attains success. It takes focus and intentionality and tenacity. The best teams understand that team is not something you are on as much as it is something you do. It is active, not passive. On the best teams, every person on the team buys in and feels a deep sense of ownership.

1

Team As a Verb?

I always thought a team was something you were on, not something you did. I always operated as though team were a noun, not a verb. I thought team was an object, not an objective. I saw team as a social assignment, not a strategic achievement.

Maybe that’s because I’ve been part of some bad teams. I’ve been on teams where the only thing that made us a team was that we happened to wear the same uniform or work in the same organization.

One such team was my sophomore basketball team. I went to a large high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Albuquerque is known for its desert climate and green chile, but it is not known for producing outstanding basketball players. Because our school was large, we had not only a varsity team but also a JV and sophomore team. One hundred and thirty kids tried out for the team and only fourteen of us made the cut. That sounds way more impressive than it actually was. The fact that I made the team doesn’t say as much about my ability as it does about how stunted the basketball gene pool was at my high school.

Honestly, we were a group of misfits with a first-year coach from Abilene Christian University (not exactly a basketball mecca either). We were the petri dish in his laboratory of learning how to coach. He didn’t know what he was doing, we didn’t know how to function as a team, and we certainly didn’t know how to win.

This was evidenced by the fact that through the first half of the season we had a perfect record of 0–11. I think when our coach wasn’t sure what to do, he just had us run more line drills. He would also make us do handstand push-ups against the bleachers. And we had a stocky kid on the team who was just heavy enough that he couldn’t do a handstand push-up. And every time he couldn’t do a handstand push-up (which was every time he tried), we had to run an extra ten line drills. We may not have scored many points, but if we were ever in a marathon race with another team, we easily would have won.

Another thing you should know about Albuquerque during those days is that it was kind of rough and tumble. There were lots of fights, pushing, shoving, elbows thrown, and trash-talking. And that was just during warm-ups!

I remember one time when our game got delayed a couple of hours because of a bomb threat on the campus where we were playing. On another occasion, our driver pulled our team bus over to the shoulder of the road. He then advised us that once we entered the campus, he thought we would be safer if we got down and rode on the floor of the bus.

The games were so rough that our coach started training us in shadow boxing. Instead of practicing free throws, we practiced sparring with each other.

The sparring prepared us well for a game with one of our rivals, Del Norte High School. Surprisingly, we were hanging in there with them. They were playing dirty and taking cheap shots at our players when the refs weren’t looking.

Our coach kept complaining to the refs but with no results. Finally, in the third quarter, our coach walked down to the other team’s bench and told their coach that he needed to get his players to back off. They exchanged a few words that probably weren’t appropriate for someone from Abilene Christian University.

Our coach then called a time-out. When we huddled around him, he said, Okay, we’re not going to let these guys push us around. I don’t want you to start anything, but the next time someone takes a cheap shot, you deck him. Coach was so serious that he decided to put Mugsy in the game. I’m not sure how Mugsy got his nickname, but I’m sure he earned it. Mugsy rarely played, but he was very aggressive and had quite the temper.

After the time-out, I was bringing the ball up the court, and when I got past the half court line, I passed the ball. When I started to make my cut, the guy guarding me elbowed me hard in my rib cage. So, I followed my coach’s order and I decked him. I caught him off guard and he fell backward. But before I could jump on the guy, Mugsy was all over him.

Both benches immediately cleared. There was a lot of shoving and pushing, and the coaches almost got into a fistfight. When the refs finally separated the two teams, they ejected me and Mugsy. And then they made the decision to cancel the rest of the game. I may not have led our team in scoring, but I did have more technical fouls and ejections than anybody else on the team.

That night our coach took the entire team out to dinner and paid for everyone’s meals. We hadn’t won the game, but you would have thought we had. Even our coach celebrated that night like we had won.

We eventually did go on to win three or four games that season. It was certainly one of the more memorable and colorful team experiences I’ve had.

Over the last forty years since that infamous basketball season, I have been on a wide variety of teams. Sometimes I have been a team member, and at times I have been the team leader. I have been on some wonderful, life-giving teams, and I have served on some dysfunctional teams.

I have made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of hard lessons. I have definitely hurt some people on teams by my poor leadership. I have come to the conviction that team is way more of a verb than a noun. It is active. It takes finesse and dedication and skill. Team is something you do rather than a label you wear. Excellent teamwork requires hard work and focused intentionality. But the payoff is huge. If you have ever had the privilege of being on a healthy and high-performing team, you know it is incredibly fulfilling.

I have also come to realize that teamwork is more art than science. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for building great teams. But there are some universal principles and best practices that can help any team. In the chapters that follow, I want to share what I have been learning over the last forty years about doing team.

I remember seeing the following quote on a poster: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

That, my friend, is the potential power of a great team.

TEAM DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Other than your current team, describe an effective team that you were part of in the past. What one word would best describe that team?

What qualities did that team possess that made it effective?

In your opinion, what’s the single most important quality for a team to possess? Why?

What is one hope you have for your team as you go through this book?

2

Liquid Teams

Peanut butter and jelly

Cookies and milk

Chips and salsa

Apple pie and ice cream

Macaroni and cheese

Burgers and fries

Eggs and bacon

Chocolate and ANYTHING

Many foods are good by themselves, but when you combine them with just the right culinary item, the flavor goes to a whole new level. The result is exponential. There is synergy.

Synergy is the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.1 Synergy is what happens when teams are able to be both healthy and high performing.

Health by itself is good and helpful. High performance by itself is fruitful and productive. But bringing the two together creates exponential possibilities.

The best teams are both healthy and high performing. They get along well and they get stuff done. They have a life-giving culture and a result-producing outcome. They have minimal dysfunction and maximum production. They focus on relationship and results.

Water is a beautiful and descriptive symbol of a healthy and high performing team. Water is absolutely essential for our health and survival. It is literally life-giving. It refreshes, replenishes, and restores. At least 60 percent of the adult body is made of water, and every living cell in the body needs it to keep functioning. Water lubricates our joints, carries nutrients to our cells, regulates our body temperature, and helps flush toxins out of our system. The maximum time an individual can go without water is about a week. Drinking water is a daily discipline. You can’t drink a glass this month and hope it will last you until next month. You must consistently and intentionally infuse your body with water to stay healthy.

Water, when skillfully channeled in the right way, can also have unbelievable power. It is useful beyond sustaining life and health in the human body. Its potential uses are limitless. For example, it can move a massive aircraft carrier from one continent to another. Underground aquifers can turn a barren desert into a lush oasis. When put under enough pressure, water can cut through steel or rock.

But water can also become toxic and destructive.

In 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, was looking for ways to save money. One idea that surfaced was to switch the city’s water supply from Lake Huron (which they had to pay for) to the notorious and filthy Flint River. It was supposed to be a temporary solution to the city’s financial woes. But soon the water flowing out of people’s faucets started smelling, looking, and tasting bad. The Flint River is highly corrosive. In fact, it is nineteen times more corrosive than the water from Lake Huron. Because the corrosive water from the Flint River wasn’t treated properly, lead from the old pipes that carried the water began leaking into the water supply.

People were kept in the dark for eighteen months until Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha began seeing a huge increase of kids in her pediatric ward who were getting rashes and experiencing hair loss. As a result of testing toddlers, it was discovered that lead levels had doubled and tripled in some cases.2

Water that was supposed to be a source of life and health had become a source of disease and destruction. We are painfully aware that not all teams are healthy and high performing. Some team environments are toxic and dysfunctional, and the result is organizational disease and individual damage.

Focusing on team health will help minimize toxicity and dysfunction. But you can’t have a truly great team without both health and high performance. Therefore, you need to have a bifocal perspective. You must be focused on the health of the team as well as its performance and productivity. One without the other will lead to a distorted view of team and ultimately cause the team to have less impact.

It is likely that one part of the bifocal lens is more comfortable and easier for us than the other. For some of us, our dominant skill is building health. Our nature is to be loving and nurturing toward our teammates. We find it easy to care for our team, but we may find it hard to achieve our desired results. People who are wired this way don’t have any trouble having a caring conversation, but they avoid courageous conversations like the plague. For those of us wired on the health side of the equation, the key word is relationship.

For others of us, organizational leadership comes easily. We are usually driven and achievement-oriented. We love reading business books about leadership and naturally drive toward results, but we may find it challenging to provide personal care and development for those on our team. For those of us wired on the high-performance side of the equation, the key word is results.

No matter how we are wired or how big our organization or budget, each of us has a team we do ministry with and through, whether paid or volunteer. When our team is aligned and everyone is pulling in the same direction, we can make significant progress toward the vision God has given us.

If you have ever been part of a great team, you know it is something special. When the team has good chemistry, everyone is operating from their sweet spots, the objectives are clear, kingdom progress is being made, and working together is incredibly fulfilling and fun.

On the flip side, you are also acutely aware of what happens when dysfunction plagues a team:

Stress, tension, and frustration mount.

Turnover is high.

Rather than focusing on kingdom priorities, you spend your energy trying to manage the team’s dynamics and dysfunction.

You end up squandering opportunity, time, resources, and talent.

Bottom line: it’s not much fun for anybody, and it distracts the team from its mission.

Dysfunctional teams remind me of something I witnessed in a Major League Baseball game. It was a Sunday afternoon and the Washington Nationals were playing the Phillies near the end of the season. The Nationals were no longer in contention for a playoff spot. It was the eighth inning, and Bryce Harper hit a routine fly ball that was an easy catch for the outfielder. Harper didn’t hustle and run out the play until he knew the ball was caught; he slowly started to jog toward first base and then turned to go into the dugout.

Harper’s teammate Jonathan Papelbon got angry and spouted off at him, apparently for not hustling. They got into an argument and went to blows right there in their own dugout. It was not exactly an admirable team moment.

That incident was a poignant reminder to me that just because you’re wearing the same uniform doesn’t mean you are functioning as a team. Your staff or key volunteers might all be wearing the same uniform of ministry, but that doesn’t mean they are an effective team.

I love the words of Paul in Ephesians 4:16: He [God] makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love (NLT).

When you think about it, this verse is a beautiful portrait of a high-impact team:

Each part does its own special work. There is clarity about what people are supposed to do. Everybody knows their job, and they actually execute it. Each person does their special work. They get stuff done and make progress. And as each one does their own special work, they contribute to the success of the whole.

It helps the other parts grow. The team has synergy and partnership; there is not a silo mentality. On a great team, people are not solely focused on themselves and their job or department. They possess a collaborative and unselfish spirit, committed to the overall mission of the organization.

The whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. The end result is not just health. And it’s not just growth. The end result is health and growth in an environment marked by love. It is interesting to me that Paul doesn’t make any reference to the size of the church or organization. He doesn’t comment about the gifting of the organization’s leader. There’s no discussion about the organization’s location or budget or philosophy of ministry. He simply gives us timeless principles that transcend culture, geography, gifting, or finances.

I am excited to share this journey with you. In my early years of ministry, I was the only paid staff member at my church, and everyone on my team was a volunteer. In my years at Saddleback, I led a large team of paid staff. While the nuances of leading teams can vary depending on the size and environment, what I can tell you from experience is that the principles of building effective teams are universal and transferrable.

Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of building great teams, I want you to pause. Spend a few moments thinking about the kinds of teams you have been part of. Think of the best team you’ve ever been on or led. What qualities made it a wonderful team? What were some of the intangibles? And then think of the worst team you’ve ever been on or led. What made it unhealthy? Unproductive?

I don’t want you to linger too long over the past. Make note of the lessons you learned and then turn your eyes toward the future. Do a little blue-sky dreaming and ponder what could be. If you are part of an unhealthy team or organization, you might find it hard to even let your heart dream of what could be. With a sense of resignation, you might say, I don’t have any control over the health of our team. I’m too far down the food chain to have any influence.

I understand. I really do. But what you do control is how you function as a team member. And you do control how you influence the part of the organization you serve in.

Pull up from the day-to-day grind of what is and have a vision for what could be.

Use your sanctified imagination and complete the following statement:

I would love to be part of a team that . . .

I challenge you to write down some of your thoughts. Create a few bullet points of qualities that would flesh out the kind of team you might dream of.

Becoming a high-impact team is worthy of your best skill, effort, and leadership.

TEAM DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Are you more wired to focus on health or high performance?

How does your natural wiring help your team?

How can your natural wiring be a challenge in doing team?

What one thing have you seen or experienced that can create dysfunction in a team?

3

Leading the Most Difficult Person You Know

Who is the most difficult person you have ever had to lead? Was it a strong-willed child? Was it an employee who wasn’t teachable? Was it a volunteer in your church or organization? Whose face and name came to mind when you read that question?

When I first thought of that question, the name that immediately popped into my mind was Cecil. He was a member of the first church I ever pastored. He was a redheaded, overly opinionated, hot-blooded Irishman who loved to debate the finer points of Scripture. I became Cecil’s pastor at the age of twenty-three. I still can’t believe they turned me loose on a congregation at that age. I often feel that I should go back and apologize to my first flock. I was very zealous and passionate but lacked wisdom and experience. I was still in seminary at the time and didn’t know much about pastoring, but I thought I did.

After I had been there about six months, I was preaching on a Sunday morning to the sixty people in my congregation. All of a sudden I heard what sounded like something hitting the floor. I didn’t think much of it at the time and proceeded to finish my message. At the end of the service one of the men in my church shook my hand and said, You made it six months. That’s pretty impressive. I asked, What are you talking about? Then he explained. Didn’t you hear that Bible slam shut during your message? That was Brother Cecil letting the rest of us know that what you were teaching was wrong. He is our self-appointed theological watchdog. And it’s impressive that you made it six months before he slammed his Bible shut during one of your sermons.

It is an understatement to say that Cecil, who had the spiritual gift of criticism, was not easy to lead. He already had his mind made up about everything. I remember the first time Cecil invited me to his home for dinner. As I walked in the door, I felt as though I were in a chimney. Cecil, his wife, and his two grown kids were all chain-smokers. His first words to me that night were, If our smoking makes you mad, well, you can just get glad because we’re not going to change. Did I mention that Cecil was not easy to lead? However, over the years, I have become intimately acquainted with someone who is even harder to lead than Cecil. And that someone is me. Leading Cecil was a cakewalk compared to trying to lead myself for the last half century.

The most difficult, obstinate, flaky, rebellious person you will ever lead is yourself. Implicit in the idea of self-leadership is the notion that you are responsible for leading yourself.

Every one of us wants to play for a great team. But it is important to remember that great teams are made up of great individuals. The first step in creating such a team is for you to take full ownership of leading yourself and being an effective team member. When reading a book on teams, you might be tempted to focus on what others in the group need to hear. I challenge you to resist that temptation. Much of this book’s content will be directed at you as a team member or leader. That is intentional. How you lead yourself has far more impact on the health and performance of the team than any job description or org chart.

We live in a generation dominated by a victim mentality. We are quick to deflect responsibility and blame to others. We have become skilled at explaining away, rationalizing, and justifying. We are definitely the Teflon generation.

For example, a group of Idaho inmates is suing eight brewers for not warning them of the dangers of alcohol. And a thirty-two-year-old New Yorker is suing his parents for indifference to his problems. And a high school student from Somerdale, New Jersey, was kicked off the track team for multiple unexcused absences. His father filed a $40 million lawsuit claiming the dismissal will cost his son college scholarships.

When it comes to your life, you hold the position of CLO: chief life officer. That doesn’t mean you control everything in your world, but it does mean you are responsible for leading yourself.

I remember a season when I was not living well. I was an executive pastor at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. It was a rapid-change, fast-paced, high-demand kind of environment. Add to that my own tendencies toward workaholism and people pleasing and you had the perfect recipe for an unhealthy soul.

Everyone in my family was doing the best they could to make life work during those crazy days. But occasionally the stress would become too much, and my wife, Connie, and I would have one of those come to Jesus conversations. Connie is one of the most unpretentious people you will ever meet, and you never have to wonder what she’s thinking. She’s a lousy hypocrite. In fact, our family sometimes kiddingly says she’s never had a private thought in her life. In those moments of tense conversation, she would say, You’re never home. The kids don’t get the time they need with you, and I sure don’t get any quality time with you. And even when you’re home, you’re not really home. You’re always on the phone or on email.

At that point I would skillfully try to lay down my victim card. I would say, It’s just for a season. Translation: I am a victim of my circumstances. When we get through Easter it will be better. Or When we get through this campaign, things are going to slow down.

In moments of sheer frustration, Connie would interrupt me as I was playing my victim card and say, Just stop it. It never changes. There is always another season, some new opportunity or problem that keeps you from being with us.

In one of our more heated discussions, she took off the gloves and with more than a little hurt and frustration said, There is always a reason or a season why you can’t be who you are supposed to be. Her words stung. But she was absolutely right.

I was not a victim. No one was holding