Building a Strong Team

Whether it is your athletic team, your staff, your ministry or your business, you want to have the strongest team possible. The simple key to building a strong organization of any kind is to put the right people in the right place---build to your strengths. Too often we focus on where our team is weak, and we pound away trying to overcome that weakness. What we need to do instead, is play to our strength.

Let's assume you coach a basketball team. Your team is blessed with excellent height, but you only have one player who can handle the ball, and you have little to no team speed. This means your team is weak at running the fast break...so what do you do? Do you spend countless hours of practice time running the break to get better at it? No, you play to your strength. You run a structured offense designed to create opportunities to exploit your strength---your height and dominance inside, close to the basket. You build on your strengths and become excellent.

Within your organization, do you have workers who are being asked to do things totally outside their area of talent and comfort? How good do you expect them to be? How will that affect your organization? Are you trying to do it all yourself? Find the right people for the right job and you will strengthen your organization.

Don't call a plumber to paint your house. Let the plumber plumb, the painter paint. Let the teacher teach and the administrator administrate. Let the pitcher pitch and the rightfielder play rightfield.

Play to your strengths.