Growing health and effectiveness

A blog centered around The Addington Method, leadership, culture, organizational clarity, faith issues, teams, Emotional Intelligence, personal growth, dysfunctional and healthy leaders, boards and governance, church boards, organizational and congregational cultures, staff alignment, intentional results and missions.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Four skill sets every good team and board can profit from

The best teams and boards (boards are teams) are deliberately created and they can profit from having a mix of wiring and skills. There are four key roles that people can play, depending on how they are wired that can bring strength to a team.

Initiators. These are the people who come up with new ideas and initiate needed action. They are creative, action oriented, and suffer from very little fear. They see what can be and want to push the boundaries for productive results. 

Supporters. These are individuals who come along to support ideas and initiatives. While they are not often the initiators, they help make thing happen and become agents of support with others. No good ideas get put into play without supporters.

Challengers. The gift of a challenger is to turn over the rocks of ideas and initiatives and look underneath and ask the hard questions. They are often misunderstood because they are willing to ask the hard questions. Not because they want to be cantankerous but because they want to probe, look for unintended consequences and in the process help get to a better solution.

Processors. These folks can irritate initiators because they want to process everything. The truth is that without processors, the ideas and initiatives often don't proceed well. Processors think process: A to B to C to D as well as how people will respond to ideas proposed. They are key people to bring an idea to reality.

Think about which role you normally play - and the other members of your team or board. When working well together these four skill sets make a great combination.

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