How to Prepare Your Leadership Team for Final Four Ministry
The top five comments (and I sanitized these) during the Final Four Tournament could very well have been:
- You have got to be kidding!
- What the ___?
- I never saw that coming.
- The refs were terrible.
- My bracket is busted!
According to CBSSports.com, only 0.02% of the 2019 NCAA Final Four Brackets actually picked a perfect Final Four. ESPNStatsInfo reported 7,928 of the 17.2 million Tournament entries correctly predicted Virginia, Michigan St., Texas Tech and Auburn would be the 2019 Final Four teams.
You may like or dislike these teams but it is obvious they did something right. Some of the “super teams” we expected to see still standing on the final weekend were watching the games with us. They were not bad teams but, in some cases, they lost focus and forgot the basics.
Other teams were good one day but inconsistent the next. There is something to be said for consistency. During the games I saw demonstrations of lack of teamwork, poor coaching and players who could not go the distance due to either lack of heart or training.
In light of watching this tournament, I made some comparisons with developing a leadership team. Your specific area of leadership focus does not matter as much as your commitment to basic leadership principles. There are basic principles of a leadership team which must be embraced and lived out with consistency if we want to be effective and efficient.
Many of you are responsible for developing leadership teams. Here are ten ways to motivate your Leadership Team to be consistent! Teach your leaders to:
- Stick to the basics. Coach John Wooden of UCLA is famous for many things such as winning 10 NCAA National Championships in 12 years and his Pyramid of Success. He once began practice with, “This is a basketball.”
- Work hard and give it your best.
- Trust in one another, working for the good of the team.
- Keep the big picture: If you want to play in public, you have to practice in private.
- Realize the value of teamwork. Everyone has a role to play on the team. The Apostle Paul speaks to this in Ephesians 4 concerning the body of Christ. We in general leadership can learn from this.
- Acknowledge that every team has a leader; however, every person is still responsible to step up and lead at some time. Knowing when is vital!
- Believe what the team is doing is making a difference.
- Embrace adjustments to the game plan. It is necessary for teams to adjust their game plans at halftime and the same is often true for us in leadership.
- Learn from losses and failures, maintaining your integrity and dignity.
- Maintain a proper perspective when you win; victory is not a destination but a goalpost. Build on success and keep moving.
Coaching a leadership team comes with a plethora of emotions and complexities. It can be demanding, draining, invigorating, and encouraging, while at the same time being the most incredible experience of your life! If God wired you to be a leader, then investing in the lives of other people is the epitome of why you do what you do.
If you are going to develop leadership teams, then help them with the basics. Teach them how to be consistent when everyone else is losing focus and disregarding the principles.
