The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP028 – How To Create High Performing Teams in Any Size Organization—An Interview with Warren Bird
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before. In your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. - Well, hey everybody, and welcome to episode 28 of the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff, and today you're gonna hear from one of the guys who I think knows more about the church in North America, and maybe the Western world than anybody, period. I just, he's a walking like encyclopedia of church knowledge. And literally, we could have worn on the podcast for probably 10 episodes in a row, and every single time he would talk about something different and very insightfully. He's a researcher, he's a thinker. He has written over 25 books. Like, I'm like, I hope I've read 25 books. I mean, he's that kind of guy. He's just, he's fantastic. And I'm so honored he'd be a guest today. And whether you know his name or not, and a lot of you probably do, because he's written so many books. He just understands the church. And today we're gonna talk about churches that build high-performing teams. So I hope that's really gonna help you and your team lead like never before. And I just wanna say thanks so much for tuning in. I really hope you have a great time on the podcast today. I hope this really does help you. And it's been kind of fun. I love interacting with people. A lot of you shoot me notes or emails, or you leave comments on the blog. And the show notes for this, by the way, will be at karaenuhoff.com/episode28. But a lot of you are like, I didn't know that the podcast went back this far. And if you scroll down on iTunes, like, you know, you can look at it at the blog, but it's kind of hard to access. It's always on the blog. But if you just go directly into iTunes or Stitcher or Tune in radio, you'll see that what we're trying to do is build a library. So even if you're a fairly new listener, you can go back and anytime it's convenient for you, just listen in on some of these conversations. We've talked already to Andy Stanley, to Cara Powell, to Casey Graham, Tony Morgan, John Acuff, Pete Wilson, who else have been guests? Rich Birch has been a guest on the podcast. We talked to Frank Bueller from Elevation Church recently, Jenny Katra in a couple of episodes ago, David Kineman, Will Mancini, all about why people aren't attending church. And I kind of see my vision for the podcast is to take these conversations and turn it into kind of a library. And just like a real library, anytime you need a book, you can just kind of pull it out, pull it off the shelf, give it a listen in this case, and hopefully it helps you. And then you can put it back on the shelf till you need it next. So we're releasing them once a week, but I totally understand why people get behind on episodes. But if you're at the gym or in the car or just listening while you're cooking dinner or doing yard work, which is where I listen to a ton of podcasts, I hope this is helping you. And thanks so much for tuning in. If you would be so kind, leave a rating or review on iTunes, Stitcher, or Tune in Radio really, really helps the podcast get out in front of other leaders or actually just share it directly. You can get those links right off of iTunes and certainly in the show notes. And I also wanna thank the great people at Orange who brought this podcast to you. The Orange Conference is just weeks away now. It starts April 29th in Atlanta, Georgia. If you have never been, you should go 'cause this is fantastic. We're doing a senior leader track. A lot of familiar faces on that track. Some of the speakers, it is a smaller track. Like there's 6,000 people at the conference, but the senior leaders track is just a couple hundred leaders and it's a great chance to interact with me and with the speakers. And if you're an executive pastor, campus pastor, senior leader, please come on by. We'd love to have you. Just go to the orangeconference.com/seniorleader and you can register today. Also in a couple of weeks after that, we've got the drive conference happening at North Point, which is gonna be incredible. And you can just go to driveconference.com. I will not be at the drive conference this year. And I'm kind of bummed about that. I mean, we're a North Point strategic partner. That's where I lead at Ken Exis Church, North of Toronto, Canada, but I can't make it 'cause we're actually moving into our new facility that month. So we've kind of put everything on hold and we will actually be moving in that we get the drive conference. So it's pretty exciting, but if you've never been to a drive conference, it's a fantastic leadership environment. You'll love what Andy Stanley and the team have to say. So those are a couple of conferences that are fun. And now we'll jump right into our interview. This is Warren Bird, all about how to build great teams. I am so incredibly excited to have Warren Bird on the podcast today. Warren, welcome. - Hey, thanks, Kerry. The joy is hanging out with you. - I tell the story, every opportunity we have to connect. But when I started in ministry in the '90s, I was young right out of seminary. I was gonna be a lawyer, not a pastor. I had no idea what I was doing. Still don't really know what I was doing. And one of the first books I picked up was actually your first book that you wrote with Carl George called "How to Break Church Growth Barriers," which I recommend over and over and over again. And it is one of the top ministry books I've ever read in two decades. So when we first got to meet, I think we met online and then we met in a speaker's lounge last year at Exponential in Orlando. And then we've connected a bit since then. So this is just a thrill. You just need to know that. - Well, thank you, but you're one of the people. I retweet more than most others because I really enjoy the stuff you write. It's fresh, practical, insightful, so keep at it. - Well, thank you, Warren. And Warren, I think, is a walking encyclopedia of the church. You've written a lot of books, you've surveyed. We were just talking before we started recording. You're gonna do this massive survey of Canadian churches, which is super exciting 'cause we don't have enough data on our churches here in Canada. And I don't know whether there's a whole lot of people who know an awful lot more about the workings of the North American church than you do. So it's a thrill to have you on the podcast. - Thanks much. - So tell us a little bit just a quick recap of your ministry 'cause you started out as a pastor and now what do you even call yourself? Are you a researcher, an author? You're always coming up with new surveys and new insights. So tell us about that. - Well, the joke is whenever I have to fill out something that says, what do I do? I always, to this day, pause to say, well, it's kind of like when you're in the barber shop or on an airplane, if someone, if you don't wanna talk to someone, you say, well, I run a research department in a private foundation. Well, that kills the conversation they don't wanna talk to me. If you do wanna talk to the person, then you pick something more lively, like I write books about exciting churches or something like that. And I have had the privilege of writing 27 books, but almost all co-authored. But the main hat is I oversee the research department for Leadership Network, which works under the radar with churches just like Kinexis. And my job is to spot people like Carrie Newhoff and not just introduce them to others like them, but to figure out what tools do you need to get around the next corner or get through the next wall that seems to be in front of you. And how can we either create or find or research them to put in your hands? - Well, that's a cool life's work, that really is. And if you don't know Warren, I mean Google him. He has written co-authored dozens of books and your stuff is just so practical. So I've lived off of it for two decades now. So thanks Warren, that's awesome. Now you have been working with, you say your current project is you're working on next level teams. So tell us a little bit about that and what you mean by that. 'Cause I think everybody listening would go, yeah, I'd love to have a team. Secondly, I'd love my team to be a next level team. But what does that actually mean? March 2015, teams that thrive, comes off the press with InterVarsity Press, lead author, Ryan Hartwick, who is a practical academic professor at Biola University. And here was kind of our take. Every church now says, oh yeah, we do teams. But nobody knows is my team any good. And how do I improve my team? And really the practical things of, well, what are best practices for my team? So we did this big survey specifically of church teams and where it was self-rated and helped and all. And then we picked the 10% that were at the top of the survey and we went, we visited them, we did interviews with them. And we said, what do we learn and how are they different? And now before I give you a little bit of what they said, let me just affirm, this is for every size church. This is the church of 5,500 and 5,000. You do it at different levels, but are you committed to doing ministry through teams? Like one guy we talked to, he said, I lead the team that leads the church. I don't lead the church myself, but I lead the team that leads the church. Well, that kind of mindset is so essential, whether you're at 5,500 or 5,000. - Hmm, that's a really interesting way of thinking it. And I think you're right, sometimes even 'cause I started out in a mainline context and started out as we were talking about, one of our churches had an average attendance of six. You don't have much of a team, but I had a team, it was two elders, right? And everybody has a team. So whether you're a small church, solo pastor, bivocation or whatever, this is important. And you kind of need a team to get you from here to there, don't you? - Well, yes, and see, you chose with those six people to have a team and you can have a pastor of 5,000 that still is the benevolent dictator or sometimes not so benevolent. And not work really with the team structure. Well, the verse that I've been memorizing this particular week is Second Timothy 2.2, which because I don't want to blow it, I'm going to read it. And notice that there are four generations in this verse. It's train others who train others who train others who train others and the things you've heard me say in the presence of many witnesses and trust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. Now, all four of those generations are plural. I grew up in an era of who's your Timothy, who's your Ruth, who are you discipling? And there's absolutely a role for that. But really, there are teams throughout the Bible, the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts falls on groups far more than individuals. There's just this whole idea of how are we reproducing ourselves through others? And that's all part of this team leadership idea. So we went over it really quickly, but let's just go back there. You said, so in this book, you're looking at, and I haven't had the opportunity to read it yet, but you're looking at the top performing teams. Is it the top 10% you said? How did you determine who had the best teams and what was your methodology in that? See, this is another cool thing about Warren. I have opinions, you have research, so that's great. So tell us about your research and how did you actually figure out, okay, these are the best teams. How'd you figure that out? - All right, we rated them on a number of standard things. How do you rate yourself in terms of the clarity of our vision as a team? And even who's on the team? One of the funny things is we would ask a seven person team in a church, how many people are on your team? And the answers were not seven universities. Now, in part, that speaks to the fluidity of teams today that, hey, we need somebody to help us with this next project. So they're gonna be on the leadership team briefly, and then off, and I understand that, but for an awful lot of churches, there was the name team, but there was not clarity of vision. That's another thing. If the team, we ask what the team purpose was, if the team's purpose is identical to the church's vision statement, then does that mean that they are doing all the ministry in the church? And what it means is they don't see how what they do is distinct from all the other teams and ministries in the church. We also ask about decision-making, is the team one, where they see themselves primarily as advisors to the lead person who then says, okay, I hear you, I'll go make my decision, or one that owns the decision-making and then carrying it further, one that then implements the decision-making as a team and the accountability and all. So we had about 20 different standards, and we did all kinds of sophisticated numbers, crunching, and we came up with these churches, and then when we visited them, it was just really exciting to see, wow, this is, no one is gonna say boring or be checking their, there was engagement at an amazing level. There was a sense of we're going somewhere, we're doing somewhere, this meeting matters. And there was a use of gifting and all that can't be said without affirming the role of the Holy Spirit, in decision-making, in how do you integrate, listening to God as part of your leadership team, and that was one of the components, because sadly too many leadership teams didn't evidence structured ways of regularly listening to God. - For sure, well, Warren, that's fascinating. So, was it a one-size-fits-all? Like once you did the research, you established the benchmarks. I mean, clearly there's probably three or four, five or six or seven characteristics of high-performing teams, but did they all look the same? Was it the same style of church? What were the commonalities that you saw in that? - Great question. No, the teams looked and felt differently, but they had many commonalities, such as clarity of purpose or the role of conflict. Now, your church may deal with conflict in a different way than others, but we've all been environments where it was not a safe place or it was not welcomed at all to, well, I have a different opinion or what have been, and actually, we found that the healthiest teams usually had at least one person on there who was kind of the yeah, but you know, well, what if this thing goes south? Not adversarial, but someone whose strength is to anticipate where it might go sideways or how it might unfold and raises that early on and that's appreciated and integrated. - Okay, so two things. I wanna camp there for a little bit. One is clarity, and I'm sure you've probably read Patrick Lancioni's "The Advantage." We work through it for almost a year with our team a couple of years ago at Kinexis. If you have not read that book, you should read it. It's very challenging, even if you've read a lot of Lancioni's other stuff. When you work through that book as a team, we thought we were crystal clear. We're a North Point partner. It's not hard to be clear when you're a North Point partner, but we realized, wow, there's gaps in our clarity. And so we got a lot more clear than we were, which really helps with scale and reproducibility, as you know, if you're gonna add more campuses, if you're gonna grow and, you know, we're trying to push through permanently the thousand barrier at our church, you need to be clear and the clearer you are, the easier it gets, but then I can see a lot, particularly if your church is small, conflict is a really big issue. I think it's a big issue no matter what. - Well, yeah, let me just jump in there for a minute, not in the book, but here's a research finding from a national survey of churches that the most strong correlation to lack of growth is presence of conflict in a church. - Okay, explain that. - Well, if you can imagine, when you've got conflict, the trust level, the momentum level, the focus of volunteer energies, all of that is distracted from where it should be. And so the more present conflict is, the less likely to be growing, flip it around. The more conflict is absent, the more likely a church is to be growing. And tying back into your Patrick Glencione comment, he's so good at building trust. And we quote him in the book in several places, one place we underscore something that he's often misunderstood on. You don't go out and build trust. You know, do a trust walk or something like that. And then think, okay, now we've got trust and now we're ready to take on task. You build your trust through the small wins or bigger wins of doing task together. And that's where that esprit de corps and learning how to work with each other all fits together. So while Glencione is vital in his insights about trust, don't see that as a separate, isolated step from, okay, we've got to build trust first and then we can get going as a church leadership team. No, it happens as you get going together. - So you're drawing some very interesting distinctions here that I think are worth drilling down on when it comes to teams and congregations and trust and conflict. So if I hear you right, Warren, what you're saying is conflict in the congregation or in the church or between leaders, like conflict is in a fight, is it kills church growth. You know, as I've talked about before, no unchurched person ever walked into a church going, I wanna really watch a good church fight, right? I mean, it's just, they run away when they see that stuff. So it's not having conflict in the church, but you said what was so interesting was that among your top performing teams, there's not disagreement, I'm looking for the right word, but there is conflict, there's not uniformity of opinion at the top level. Now, some people would see that and go, well, you're just being disloyal or the benevolent dictator that you talked about or not so benevolent dictator would say, you can't disagree with me because I said it should be. So how do you get conflict or disagreement at the top level but a unity in the church? That's kind of interesting. And I think I know where you're going, but that's not intuitive and it took me years to get there as a leader because you're onto something. - Some practical examples are not just the leader coming in and saying, here's the vision, here's where we're gonna go. Now, everybody's saluted and let's figure out what your parts are. But as a group saying, all right, but where could this be misunderstood or how could this be moving, are we moving at the right speed for this vision? Could it be cause some kind of pushback? Or what are the implications? If we do this, how is this ministry gonna feel because they're gonna feel like we're taking resources or heart emphasis away from what they're doing? But somebody that anticipates or more than one somebody and it's truly a discussion, not a laying down of, I've come down from Mount Sinai and here are the 10 Commandments and suck it in and this is where we're gonna go. Or even the step, just behind that of here's the vision, tell me what you think and then I'll go decide, if I should adjust it in any way. No, there needs to be the environment where you can talk and there needs to be the control of a rhythm of a group. Okay, we don't go down bunny trails. We don't beat something to death. We don't have side conversations while everybody else is twiddling their thumbs and thinking, you know, okay, well, when are these two gonna finish their argument? But truly, and these are all skills, which is why the book Teams That Thrive came out to give pastors and church boards, the skills they need for how to move from being good or pretty good or, okay, some of them are saying, hey, we're sucking air on ours. Yes, yes, there's good help for you too. But really, why couldn't you thrive? And if you do thrive, there's a ripple effect on the whole rest of the church because how you model the idea of a valuing leadership development and reproduction and all that. Well, everybody else in the church will benefit from seeing that and will begin to take on those characteristics as well. No, I think that's very true. And if I understand you correctly, Warren, what you're saying is that it's not really conflict at the top. It's a healthy discussion and a healthy debate that there can be a diversity of opinions. But I found for myself, and I just love your feedback on this as a leader. I realized, you know, first of all, if you're insecure, you don't do well with healthy debate. Side to get over my insecurity. Secondly, if you've got a team that is not aligned around a crystal clear mission, vision, and strategy, and direction, that kind of debate can be very derailing because it can, you know, are we a church about reaching people or about ministering to insiders? Well, that's really two churches, not one church debating. If you have those kinds of debates, that's really a vision, mission, strategy thing. And it's gonna be divisive and it's gonna be difficult. However, what I've discovered, this is maybe, I think, where you're going, is when you have leaders who are committed to a common mission, a common vision, and a common strategy, but who maybe see things a little bit differently, like, well, I think we should do this this year. Well, I'm not sure we should, or what if we did that? It's almost like having a healthy marriage. You can disagree, and every time you disagree, it doesn't mean there's a divorce impending, or that somebody's cheated, or it's just, oh, you see it this way, I see it that way. Hmm, okay, well, this is what we're gonna do in the end, and then everybody's okay when the meeting is over. Is it that kind of environment you're describing? Yes, yes, and there's that personal ownership. Just an example, yesterday, I was part of a large group that was on a task, and we broke up during lunch and different table groups, and we're just chatting, and one of the ladies there said, tell me why each of you have volunteered to be part of this. And as we kind of went around the circle, and we saw some of us really aligned with the vision of the kind of the task group that it gathered, and some were there for very different reasons, which is a vivid reminder that just because you have a great mission statement on your website, or even printed on the wall of your church, or maybe even in stone, it doesn't necessarily mean you understand why different people are aligned with it. And to come back to a comment, Kerry, you said just a minute ago about diversity and different. A lot of times, teams are built just by taking the org chart, and you circle the top three positions, and you say, well, that's the kitchen cabinet, or the pastor's advisory team, or whatever it is. And part of what we say in the book is, no, if all of you are all alike, let's say in age, or gender, or length in the church, you really need to intentionally bring on diversity. Someone who's relatively new to the church, someone who's a different age, different gender, different race, different, all kinds of variations, not to meet a quota, but to make sure that your group's composition truly draws on different strengths and perspectives that are gonna see the church from the amount of angles that you need to. - That's really good to see too, 'cause otherwise it just becomes the mutual affirmation society, or the leader gets patted on the back, and nobody really engaged. Now, this has been really helpful, because I think I've seen a lot of leaders warn, and you've probably seen the same thing. It's like, well, conflict's bad, so now we got rid of the conflict, but that means we can't have a difference of opinion anywhere. Well, that's just as damaging and just as stunting, because if you've got people who are aligned and who fundamentally agree, then one of the best things you can have is different opinions around the table. - Exactly. So that's really good. So you're talking about crystal clear vision. You're talking about teams that know how to engage to stop the bad kind of conflict, and encourage healthy debate and healthy discussion in a senior team. Any other findings that would help leaders as they seek to create high-performing teams? - Well, Kerry, one of the best pieces you represent, and that's how do you listen to God? In that, you know, you can read all this marketplace literature, which there is quite a bit of good research on in the corporate world, how do you have a healthy and good team? But one piece they don't have is the God of the universe. - Yes. - Who is the bride of the church to use another biblical teaching? Who wants this church, you know, that the gates of hell can't stand against it, but we got to be listening and attuned and walking with what the spirit wants to do. So let me turn that piece back to you. How do you with your team balance kind of the process, the structure idea with the piece of how do you make sure you're sensing and following God's promptings? - Yeah, you know, that's a great question, and I don't know whether there's a really easy answer to that. I've heard different answers. I mean, there are some models where, you know, well, I'm the lead pastor, that's actually my job. So, you know, I hear from God and I tell everybody the way it is. The older I get, the less I trust my own judgment. So I'm not really of that school. I mean, I think at the baseline. - Well, let me just unpack that. That's the assumption that the Holy Spirit speaks only through the leader. And if you really press someone on that, any leader will say, well, you know, maybe because of my position, you know, I'm to follow the Holy Spirit's promptings or, you know, the buck stops here or whatever. But I've never bumped in anybody that says, I'm the only organ through which part of the body, through which the Holy Spirit is speaking and prompt. - I agree. And I just, I think that's not true. That's just patently not true. I'm not the only person that God speaks through. I think I have a responsibility and a stewardship as a leader, but God speaks in far more diverse ways than I do. And fortunately for us, you know, we have scripture. And so one of our filters is, is there anything in scripture that is telling us clearly in this moment what we should do or what we should not do? And mostly you deal with principles, right? Like financial stewardship principles, leadership principles, diversity principles, the thrust of the gospel, which is outward, not inward. I mean, there's lots of scripture and hopefully your senior leaders are wise in scripture and they meet the qualifications for elders and for staff and small group leaders. And so we pay a lot of attention to scripture, but obviously that's not going to tell you, should we close on this deal or should we not close on this deal? And what we do for that is, you know, once in a while you get a sign from God, I've had maybe 10 in my life. And so if I'm waiting for that to happen next, I might wait a long time. We do pray about it and we listen in the midst of prayer, but then I would say it's wise counsel. And we try to find people who have, you know, the biblical qualifications for eldership, who are wise, who conduct their own personal lives well. And we talk about it and we debate and we say, well, what's prudent, what's wise, what's risky? And what's not? And so as we pray about it, we usually come to a consensus. Sometimes there's not a consensus and then it's sort of my call. And the other thing we've done, like in sort of directional stuff, I always go to the elders, I always go with our leadership team and senior leadership team and try to work through that. But for the most part, when it comes to day-to-day decision-making, and I'd be interested what you found in other high-performing teams, but we found that the bigger we got and the more staff we had, I mean, we started Kinexis seven years ago, there were like six staff and I mean, you have a leadership team meeting, you could have it in your car, it's not that complicated. But now, you know, we have 15 on staff, we have a bigger church, we've got elders, we've got campuses, it's more confusing. And so we were finding our leadership team was becoming a decision-making bottleneck. And, you know, while I was out of town, so we didn't meet or somebody was sick, so we didn't meet and then it's a month until you could actually get together. And so a couple of years ago, we switched to push-down decision-making. Okay, Warren, we put you in charge of all small groups or we put you in charge of all of student ministry. You have a budget, you've got parameters, we've been clear about those. Whatever decision you wanna make within the parameters of the approved budget and the approved strategy, you just make, you don't need permission. And that really freed things up and it really empowers people. And similarly, staff are empowering volunteers. Here's your money, here's your mission. You just do whatever you think is best. And if they make enough bad decisions, you probably don't have the right staff person or the right volunteer. But we found that to be tremendously liberating. And again, we're trusting that they're praying, consulting wise counsel. And that's really helped us go further faster, as Andy Stanley would say. So that's sort of our approach. And we believe that if we are relying on God in our lives and we are paying attention to scripture and we're praying and you have the right wise voices around the table that generally you're gonna land where hopefully the Holy Spirit wants you to go. It's a little bit more practical than what you might call spiritual, but it has resulted, I think, over time, looking in the rear view mirror in some pretty godly decisions, I hope, and responsible decisions. And yet, risky decisions, which I think is where you wanna be. - Yeah, it really does. Let me make just a couple responses. One you talked about, you know, the group was at one time small enough, you could do decision-making in the car. One thing we found about healthy teams is they don't limit their meeting time to, you know, it's Tuesday mornings at 10 o'clock, but there is forever, you know, shooting a text to the different ones, you know, "Hey, I'm sensing this, you know, I'm gonna go this direction, what do you think?" Or catching someone in the hall or, you know, "Hey, let's do lunch." When we were doing lunch, something else came up so that we found that meeting out of the group, just as much task besides the relational help, was happening as formal group meetings, which then, for multi-site churches, adds a bit of a challenge because you're not gonna bump into them for lunch or down the hallway or whatever, very easily, and they can be left out, and that's where the gifting of different people administratively to know, "Hey, we should tell this to the Barry campus," or whatever, so make sure everybody's on the same page. Another thing you alluded to is this idea of empowerment, and this is what I'm about to say is not in our teams that Thrive book, but it's a very helpful construct. Let me just give you six quick levels of delegation. One is, take care of it, I don't even need to know what happened, right under that is, take care of it, but let me know what happened, right under that is, tell me what you're gonna do, and then proceed, right under that is, tell me what you think I ought to do, and then we'll do it together, and you can imagine a staircase down, so often, misunderstandings happen, because it's not, oh, I thought you just wanted me to take care of it, and not say anything else to you, but you were thinking a different level of, take care of it, but let me know, or tell me what you would do, and then take care of it after I give you some feedback. So understanding your level of empowerment is part of the rhythm of not only a healthy team, but all kinds of delegated ministry, so that people know, no, the buck stops here at this level, or this is my level of empowerment, and I need to check in when it comes to this kind of decision. - That's a really good clarification, and we've had to work on that over the years, because sometimes people can't read my mind as a leader, and they can't read each other's mind. Also very fascinating, and I think you're right, the bigger you get if you're relying on, and particularly for small churches, this was, and you wrote about that in the book we already talked about, but when the board makes every decision about are we gonna buy a clean Xbox, or are we not gonna buy a clean Xbox, you're just never gonna grow, because if you have to wait every month to make a decision, or every week to make a decision, you just can't respond and be lean enough to be able to make the kind of calls in the moment that you need to make as a team. Okay, so we talked about some healthy practices. What are some unhealthy ones you discovered along the way? - Well, unfortunately, there are ways that anything can go south, and we've actually alluded to a huge amount of them on the call already, but let me just talk about kind of some of the team sabotage, or more positively, ways to avoid sabotaging, and actually we have, the reason I use sabotaging is we have a whole chapter in the book. We actually land on it to say, how can we avoid sabotaging what we do? Change is scary for everyone. - Yes it is. - So, a culture that embraces and wants to perpetuate the status quo is probably gonna lead to unhealthy team decisions, and that relates back to what is our vision, and is the vision so big that it requires us to move somewhere, you know, we're here, we need to be there, that's why we're gonna preach them here, we're gonna structure to get there, we're gonna lead, we're gonna frame a language to get there. So, the unhealthy, first unhealthy piece of a team is if it has the myoptic vision of, we are just here to, okay, we've got the annual, whatever coming up, who's gonna do what, and all we're doing is filling slots. We're not really leading, we're just riding along. A second is, you know, the other extreme, the culture that adopts the latest fad, and is all over, and again, is not purpose-focused, vision-focused, and unified-focused. - That's a good point. Fad-focused versus vision-focused. - A culture that reinforces the ultimate authority of the leader, organizations are getting much flatter today, and that calls for a different kind of leadership, it's not so positional as, okay, I'm the pastor, and because I said so, that's what we're gonna do. - Well, okay, under God, there is a certain structure, and God does have a way of structuring his church, but the healthiest churches have leaders that want to take as many people along as they go, and when you have that dictator benevolent or not, or someone who is not playing as a team member, but is the soloist that just expects others to, you know, like I talked with one senior team, and they're like, well, you know, pastor, you know, comes in town from his latest, greatest, wherever he's spoken, or talking to him, he's got all these ideas, we sit down, we write the ideas, I'm the administrator, I'm the this person, I'm this, and we make the ideas happen, you know, and he usually tells us on Friday, and so we're scrambling till Sunday morning. That is not a team. That is not even a healthy way to endure, and yes, that church has a high step turnover because that's unfair even for paid people. You need minions then, you don't really need people. - Yeah, go ahead, do you have more there? Warren, that's good, that's a lot. - Sam Chan wrote a book called about cracking your church's culture code, and one of his points is that culture will eat vision for lunch, meaning that you need to have a clear, even if you have the most clear vision, if you don't know how to translate that to the culture of the church, the culture will swallow up where you're trying to go. So often, if the team, the leadership team does not meaningfully interact with the culture of the church, where are we, is God calling us, how do we get from there there? What is the leadership team's role? You end up having a lot of frustration on the team level, and that probably implies you don't have the right players on the team. - I can see that, it made an interesting point too. We're all scared of becoming the dictatorial leader and that kind of thing, but it's the solo leader too, and you see that in a lot of very small churches where it's basically, well, I don't really have a staff, and I might be bivocational or that sort of thing, but you're at the point where you are just struggling because you don't have anybody around you. - And so often, that doesn't have to be, that mindset is an inaccurate mindset. You take, what do you do during the course of the week? Okay, I'm gonna go do hospital visitation. Who did you take with you on that hospital visitation? I'm gonna do this. Who can you take with you? If you just have somebody with you at each step, shadowing, training, I mean, Jesus methodology can be boiled down very simply to, I do, you watch, I do, you help, you do, I help, you do, I watch, and then the fifth and final, now you go repeat this process with someone else. You find that modeling throughout scripture from the Elijah, Elisha, to Jesus, to different Paul and Barnabas versus Barnabas and Paul, the earlier flip-flop, so the mentality that says, I'm always about reproduction, and if I am, then that shapes who's on the team and what the team does, and that can be done at any size of church with volunteers or with staff. Nah, it's a really good point. Why do you think team is such a big issue for so many churches, just in the broadest sense? Why do you think so many people struggle with it? I think they haven't seen good role models of how to do it. We are far more influenced by how we've done something in the past or how we've seen another church do it. And while you can go to conferences and learn about, okay, here's how we structure our small groups or here's how we do preaching, to really get underneath and see, well, how do we do team at our church? It takes help to look at. So most of us just haven't seen it done and are kind of making it up as they go. And that's why we wrote the book, Teams that Thrive to say, okay, you're on the right path. You're trying to do team. Let us give you tools to figure out how to accelerate your health and impact as a team. - Well, and certainly in a traditional seminary, I mean, my seminary education goes back a little while now, but I mean, we were not prepared for team at all. It was basically it's you and the congregation and you just go out and you do it. And so yeah, I can see that for sure. Couple of questions 'cause we're almost at the end of our time together as you can believe it. What is the first step, do you think, for someone who realizes they have to make some progress on Teams? They've heard this interview, they've already ordered your book and they're like, oh man, I'm in trouble. What's something that they can do this week or this month that would make an impact more? - Well, reading the book as a team or as a potential team, but really it's a commitment. And we actually did a whole chapter on the book on Teams in the Bible. If you are, I mean, if you're convinced that people need Jesus to get to heaven, that's gonna influence everything you do. And if you're convinced that the way the body of Christ works is through Teams and the way that the ministry is designed is through Teams, then that's gonna affect everything that you do. So the first is for you, really, I mean, yes, go back to my example of going to the hospital. It is much easier for me to go down to the hospital myself and do the prayer and that's great. But if I see that as robbing someone else from an opportunity in ministry, if I see that as really not doing my job, number one job at Ephesians 4.11 is to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry, which then leads in, according to that Ephesians 4 passage, to the maturity of the church, that among other activities. So if we really are convinced that we've got to change from solo leadership to reproducing ourselves through others, then that will impel our behavior and that will cause us not to say, okay, yeah, I did Teams in 2015, now in 2016, I'm gonna do something else. But that it's becomes part of your DNA. - I love what you said too, and I hope people don't miss it. Read it as a team. 'Cause I know there were a couple changes I had to make over the course of my leadership where I read the book and it's like, oh, you feel all alone. And I've discovered as you read as a team and we always have a book we're working on a leadership team, I've got a book I'm teeing up with our elders in the next month that we're gonna read together. And when you read as a team, the elephant's out of the room. And all of a sudden, it's not that you failed as a leader, you know, your paradigm is wrong, it's like, let's just talk about this together and let's try to figure out how to make this better together and what do you see and what do you see? And you know, I think it can be so much better. Well, Warren, there are gonna be people who want to read the book and we'll have that in the show notes, but just real quick, where can they find out more about it and where can they follow you? The book, Teams That Thrive by Ryan Hartwick and Warren Bird, the subtitle, which may wet your app title a little bit more, is Five Disciplines of Collaborative Church Leadership Published Intervarsity March 2015. You can get that at any bookstore, Amazon or anything. To find me, I'm on Twitter @WarrenBird at W-A-R-R-E-N-B-I-R-D or you'll find gobs of stuff most of it free at leadershipnetworkswebsite, which is leadnet.org. So for example, Carrie, you mentioned a large church salary report that we've done, leadnet.org/salary or for larger churches that want to know about succession, leadnet.org/ succession, leadnet.org/multisite, leadnet.org/megachurch for our different research project. So, or just go to the homepage and search the site. But there's a huge amount of free resources that it is our delight to put into the hands of people like Pastor Carrie Newhoff. - Hey, I love that. And you have helped so much. Warren, I know you helped an awful lot of leaders today too. So thanks so much for being with us on the podcast. We're gonna have you back, that's for sure. - Great, joy to be with you, Carrie. - Thanks, Warren. Well, Warren sure knows a lot. And I know I referenced it in the interview, but really seriously, if you have not read his very first book, How to Break Church Growth Barriers, there's a handful of books I recommend over and over again. One of them would be The Seven Practices of Effective Ministry with Reggie Joyner, Andy Stanley, Lane Jones. Another one I recommend all the time fairly recent is The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. But Warren's book is always in that list. And I have so many pastors or church leaders say to me, you know, what do we need to do when we get to 200 or 300? And I'm like, you just need to read this book. And seriously, you just need to read the book. The links are in the show notes. It's carrynewhough.com/episode28. And it's all about what you need to do to help your church structure itself for growth. And it was just revolutionary for me. So I just gotta put one more plug in for that book. Thanks to everybody who leaves ratings and reviews. If you want the show notes, just go to carrynewhough.com/episode28. You can access all this stuff from Warren, including all the links. Hey, I'll just give you a little preview on what's coming up over in the next few episodes. Next week on episode 29, we're gonna hear from a guy who is the youngest mega church pastor in America. He's in his early 30s. His name is John Stickle. He's got a fascinating story about how God's led him, how he thinks millennials are listening for God and what they're looking for in a church large or small. It's gonna be great. We've also got coming up. Carl Vaders from newsmallchurch.com, Daniel Decker, Joseph Barkley, really cool guy, planting a church in Hollywood, California. Mark Batterson and Tom Rayner are coming up in future episodes. So plus we got the whole back library. So you can just go back anytime, just head on over to iTunes, Stitcher or TuneInRadio and you can listen in there on one of the 27 other episodes that are in the can so far as they say. So thanks so much for listening. Thanks for, by the way, dropping by the blog, carrynewhough.com and leaving comments and just interacting and being so awesome. I hope you have a great week and I really do hope that this has helped you lead like never before. And if you subscribe, you will not miss next Tuesday. We'll talk to you then. (upbeat music) - You've been listening to the Carry New Hough Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)