Team Lift

Every time I have begun leading a new team, I have spent a lot of time learning about the people I would lead. In some cases, I have inherited an existing leadership team, but in most new positions I have had the opportunity to choose the team that I led.

On one occasion my job was to lead 500+ workers scattered across thirty-five countries from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula. I chose our leadership team, and we scheduled a retreat in the UK for team leaders and their spouses. This was going to be our first meeting with these team leaders who led workers engaged in frontline strategies. I had never met any of the team leaders as I was asked to transfer to this part of the world from leading workers in Eastern Europe.

I was nervous about encountering the team leaders as they all knew that I had almost zero exposure to their region. I had been chosen, I was told, not for my experience in the Arab world, but for my leadership skills in other parts of the world.

Several weeks before the meeting, I started learning everything I could about the families of each team leader, and then I started praying for each member of their family by name. I had photos of the workers, but none of their children. The first night we convened at the retreat center north of London, and I led our first session. First, I introduced myself, telling them about my family—not just names, but I gave them some details and asked them to pray specifically for each of our family.

Next, I started at the end of the back row, and I did not ask them for their names, but I called out their name, then stated the name of their spouse and their field of assignment. I then called the name of each of their children and told them I had been praying for them.

It was a stressful situation because once I started calling the names of the spouses and children, I had to do this for all forty team leaders. I made it through, and the group gave a spontaneous round of applause. I did not do it for accolades, but I did it to personalize a relationship with each team leader from the very beginning.

The leadership team and I had been nervous about this first meeting to cast the vision for this part of the world, but after that first meeting, the ice was broken, and a positive “esprit de corps” had already been established.

At break time in the afternoon session on the next day, one of the team leaders asked me if he could make an announcement. As the meeting began, he came to the front of the meeting room, but it was not an announcement that he wanted to make. He told me that he was representing all the team leaders, and he kindly asked me to lie down on the floor. He instructed me to trust the team leaders who began to gather around me as I lay there on my back. Each one of them only put one finger under my body. All at once they pushed my body upward with dozens of index fingers and lifted me four feet off the floor. 

It was an incredible feeling for my 180 pounds to seemingly be floating in the air as the team leaders kept me suspended in the air for what seemed to be two minutes as someone prayed for me and my family. This was one of the best expressions of love and care from a team that I have ever felt in forty years of leading people.

My favorite scripture on team building is I Peter 4:8-10 which states, “Above all, love each other deeply because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

If you have had a similar experience with a team of which you were a member or the leader and would like to share it with me, please send it to me at this email address: lcox@coxnichols.com.