I used to play varsity basketball when I was in high school.
I was pretty good at it, but as the only sophomore on a team of juniors and seniors, I ran into my own set of problems. I didn’t always gel with everyone on the team.
Especially Mark. Well, I’m calling him Mark. Mark was a real hothead and a pretty big jerk. If you weren’t playing very well, he would let you know it. As you were running up the court, he’d yell all sorts of insults at you for messing up.
Mark did not play well with others. You see, Mark is what you might call…a turd, so you could say he and I had a bit of a chemistry problem.
Any good team has to have good chemistry. It’s one of four areas I coach church communicators on so that they can enjoy being on their respective teams and be as successful as possible.
Every good teammate needs good chemistry, solid character, the capacity to handle the workload, and the competency to do good work.
Chemistry, character, capacity, and competency. The four C’s.
Chemistry: Do you play well with others?
Every teammate needs the will to get along with their team. This is not a magical X-factor or some weird intangible quality. It’s an act of will. A decision. And some people refuse to get along. Simply possessing a strength that happens to be a coworkers’ weakness is not chemistry.
Character: Who are you when no one is looking?
Being the same in public as you are in private is an exercise in trust-building. This takes time and no title earns the trust of your character. Whether you’re a boss or a subordinate, you must build trust with each other and that requires numerous deposits in the column marked “character.”
Capacity: How much can you handle?
Every team has a different level of play. In my basketball days, we had Varsity, Junior Varsity, Freshman, and Freshman B-team. We were a small school, so that was about as deep as it went. There was a level of speed, quick-thinking, problem-solving, and sometimes sheer height required to be a positive contributor on the Varsity team. There were many players on the JV that were great at the other three areas, but simply could not match the level of play on the Varsity because of their capacity. This is often linked to maturity, discipline, and organization.
Competency: Are you good at what you do?
Not only are you good at what you do for the team, but are you getting better? If you are solid in all three other areas but can’t score points for the team or do something that contributes to the team’s win, you become the team’s issue. Sometimes we just need training or space to explore before we figure out how to be good at our role.
Deeper Dive
Over the next several weeks, we’re going to dive into each of the four areas in a much more detailed way. I’ll show you what it looks like to grow in these areas and how to coach yourself into becoming a great church communications teammate!
However, if you want direct help, there’s nothing better than investing in yourself by investing in a coach. Check out my coaching page to set up a discovery call with me. I’d love to help you grow as a leader and teammate!
Seth has been in ministry for over 20 years, recently serving as Communications Director at a thriving church in North Dallas. He is also the host of The Seminary of Hard Knocks podcast, blogs at sethmuse.com, and has his Masters of Arts in Media and Communications from Dallas Theological Seminary. Seth specializes in helping church communicators use social media and content marketing to find common ground with their audience to empower them for spiritual growth.