How to Strengthen Your Church’s Senior Leadership Team

Posted on 2/10/2012 by Warren Bird in the Learnings Blog

                                                                                             

 

 

 

Free Assessment to Strengthen Your Church's Senior Leadership Team

A Research Project from

Dr. Warren Bird at the Leadership Network and Dr. Ryan T. Hartwig at Azusa Pacific University

 

An Invitation to Protestant Churches Worldwide

Most churches today have moved to a senior leadership team model but few know how to help their team work better, healthier, or more effectively. How do you set team goals or measure its performance? What best increases trust, tears down silos, and motivates team members to work more collaboratively? What’s the optimal size for a maximum-impact team? Why are some teams more innovative than others?

Today’s era is full of personal coaches and personal development plans. Why couldn’t similar coaching resources be applied not only to the individuals on the team, but to the team in how it functions as a group?

 

What You Receive

Thanks to a grant, generous funding, and special arrangements from a Harvard-based project, your church’s senior leadership team can receive a FREE, limited-time assessment that will provide you with the following three reports at NO COST:

1. Team Assessment Report. You’ll receive a report rating your team on the 3 essential and 3 enabling conditions of leadership team effectiveness, as explained in the book, Senior Leadership Teams: What It Takes to Make them Great. This assessment is based on the Team Diagnostic Survey developed by Harvard Researchers and Hay Group consultants, normally only offered to corporate senior leadership teams through a consulting arrangement with the Hay Group. Click here to see a sample report.

2. Customized Action Steps Report. Practical, actionable tips you can implement with your team right away to enhance your team’s effectiveness, based on the team assessment and comparison to other senior leadership teams at similar sized and typed churches.

3. National Profile Report. A descriptive comparison report of church leadership team membership, communication practices, and effectiveness ratings, which will allow you to compare your team to others in similar sized and typed churches.

 

How Do I Sign Up?

If you need more details, please check out our FAQs below.

• When ready go to this registration page.
• Tell your colleagues and friends about the study.

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. When did this assessments opportunity launch?

March 16, 2012.

 

2. What does participation in the study entail? What will my team need to do?

After registration, each of your senior leadership team members will receive an email with instructions. Each person will need to invest about 30 minutes.

After each team member has completed the assessment, you’ll receive the Team Assessment Report, and about two weeks later, you’ll receive the Customized Action Steps Report. Then after a sufficient number of churches have taken the study, you will receive the National Profile Report.

 

3. How can this assessment be offered totally for free?

The research team has received special arrangement from Dr. Ruth Wageman of the Hay Group and Dr. J. Richard Hackman of Harvard University to offer their proprietary team diagnostic tool to the participants of this study. This offer is for a limited time only. Act now!

 

4. Who is the research team?

Dr. Ryan T. Hartwig is a collaborative, practical academic who helps leaders to Think Deeply, Act Wisely, and Work Better Together. He teaches Group, Organizational, and Leadership Communication courses as Assistant Professor of Communication at Azusa Pacific University in California, researches and writes about teamwork, collaboration, and leadership in nonprofit organizations, and coaches and consults with churches and ministries regarding leadership and ministry teams, discipleship processes, organizational dynamics, and small groups.

He earned graduate degrees in Communication (Ph.D.) from the University of Colorado at Boulder and Higher Education Administration from Purdue University (M.S.Ed.) after earning 2 Bachelor’s degrees from Colorado Christian University. His scholarship has been published in Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal, and presented at the annual meetings of the National Communication Association and the Rocky Mountain Communication Association. Learn more about Dr. Hartwig.

Dr. Warren Bird is the Research Director at Leadership Network (http://www.leadnet.org), a public charity founded by Bob Buford in 1984 that helps high-influence churches connect with each other in ways that help them move from ideas to implementation to impact. He is co-author of 24 books for church leaders, several of them best sellers and award winners. He has also published over 200 magazine articles and major online reports. He served for 11 years as a lead pastor and associate pastor, and has been an adjunct professor at Alliance Theological Seminary for 17 years. He was trained at Wheaton College (B.A., M.A.), Alliance Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and Fordham University (Ph.D.). Learn more about Dr. Bird at www.leadnet.org/warrenbird.

Advisors include statistical consultants Marc Glassman (Ph.D. Columbia University), Scott Thumma (Ph.D., Emory University) and Alexandre Probst (Ph.D. Candidate, Colorado School of Mines).

 

5. Our church's team certainly is not great, but we’re doing OK. Why should I invest in making my team better?

Great senior leadership teams have the potential to bolster a church’s health and growth while taking pressure off the senior pastor and spreading leadership functions among several staff members. When these teams work great, they facilitate:

• Vision alignment
• Quality decision-making
• Increased innovation
• Leadership development
• Team members who feel involved, valued, committed, and joyful
• Enhanced opportunity and productivity
• Tearing down silos among ministry departments, units, and campuses
• Personal and numerical growth

However, when they don’t, these teams often experience great frustration because decision making takes longer, unresolved conflicts degenerate into long-lasting feuds, meetings are inefficient, etc.

 

Have more questions? Please contact leadteamstudy@apu.edu.