Family or Team? What do you want your leaders to be?
This week I was taking some time to look through some notes that I have from a leadership conference that I attended a while back. I don’t keep everything from every conference but this one was really different. It looked at the area of leadership development and how we often use the word “family” and “team” as the same in developing organizations, ministries, or businesses. But Alfred Ells the speaker and executive director of “Leaders that Last” gave some amazing insight that I want us to look at over the next couple of days. We are going to look at his comparison of the family concept versus the team concept for building leaders in an organization. There are six areas that we are going to look at and they are the following; mission, needs, loyalty, affiliation, rules, and affirmation. I will show the statements that go with family and team for each area from there I will challenge you to see if when it comes to developing your organization whether you want a family or a team.
Mission (Purpose)
Family:
· To propagate more of the same species.
· To take care of each other.
· To train, nurture, rear or civilize its members.
Team:
· To accomplish a stated goal, task, or mission
· To organize and utilize its members
After looking at the above statements what are you looking for when it comes to developing leadership in your organization? Are you able to have both? Over the next couple of days I ask you to evaluate what you want your organization, ministry, business, to look like and then think of if you want it to be a family or a team. This may be a fundamental area that is causing poor results or a confusion on how or who is leading.
