17 Aug 4 TED Talks That Will Help Any Pastor Lead Teams Better

Did you know that 78% pastors say that they don’t feel equipped to lead their teams with confidence. 78%! I know for me Bible College didn’t really teach me anything about how to equip people for ministry.

Hopefully these 4 TED Talks will help you become a little more confident team leader.

Tom Wujec: Build a Tower, Build a Team

Tom Wujec is a Fellow at Autodesk and the author of Five-Star Mind: Games and Puzzles to Stimulate Your Creativity and Imagination. In this talk, Wujec presents the “marshmallow challenge.” This team-building exercise challenges groups to compete to build the tallest freestanding structure, using only dry spaghetti, one yard of tape, and a marshmallow. He believes this game can generate fresh ideas and build rapport.

Major take-aways

1. Allow your team to fail fast and often.
2. Success comes through small adjustments and feedback.
3. Great teams have shared experiences, common language and a someone who facilitates the process.

Charles Hazlewood: Trusting The Ensemble

Conductor Charles Hazlewood talks about the role of trust in musical leadership — then shows how it works, as he conducts the Scottish Ensemble onstage.

Major take-aways

1. Trust is the foundation of every great team, not trust in the leader but rather the leader trusting that the team will do the right thing.
2. Most importantly the leader needs to trust themselves. If you don’t trust yourself you’ll end up overcompensating in your areas of doubt.
3. A confident leader has an infectious ability to lead a team.
4. Where there is trust there is life.

Simon Sinek:  Why Good Leaders Make Us Feel Safe

What makes a great leader? Management theorist Simon Sinek suggests, it’s someone who makes their employees feel secure, who draws staffers into a circle of trust. But creating trust and safety — especially in an uneven economy — means taking on big responsibility.

Major take-aways

1. Creating a healthy team environment is what creates good leaders
2. Our teams feel fear and danger but they can feel safe inside your organization.
3. When team members feel safe they display more leadership quality.
4. If team members feel unsafe they try to protect themselves at the cost of other on the team.
5. Great leaders want to see their team members be more successful than they are.
6. Great leader will sacrifice personal success for their team member’s success.
7. Leadership is a choice not a rank.
8. Safety produces trust and cooperation.
9. Leaders go first. Leaders take risk first. Leaders eat last.

Yves Morieux: As Work Gets More Complex, 6 Rules to Simplify

Yves Morieux is a senior partner at BCG. In this speech, he explains why so many people are unhappy and disengaged in the workplace. To change that, Yves presents six simple rules that leaders should use to increase engagement.

The 6 Rules of Creating Organizational Simplicity

1. Make sure everyone has a basic understanding of what others do.
2. Reinforce managers with less rules and red tape.
3. Empower people with the power to take more action to solve problems.
4. Create feedback loops that expose people to the long term consequences of their actions (Good or Bad).
5. By making teams/departments less self-sufficient you actually increase cooperation and effectiveness.
6. Reward those that ask for help and those that offer help.

Do you need more leaders in your church?

Do you have a system for identifying, developing and deploying new leaders?

Want to learn How To Build A Healthy Leadership Pipeline For Your Church?

Check out “The Leadership Pipeline Workshop” and learn from Carey Nieuwhof, Clay Scroggins, Shawn Lovejoy, Brandon Cox, Jenni Catron and more!