Teamwork

Imagine a football team. In its ideal condition each player does his part to support the whole, under the direction of special team’s coaches, who in turn support the assistant coaches, who likewise support the head coach.

In this idyllic world, the Offensive Coach focuses on offense in full trust that the Defensive Coach is working on defense, and vice versa. Each one knows his best contribution to the team is two-fold: do his job and trust the others to do theirs.

In team sports there are three things which will bring the team concept to its knees:

1. Coaches who second guess other coaches: each coach is chosen for his expertise in some area. It is destructive to the team (and very silly) for the Offensive Coach to believe he would have made a better decision than the Defensive Coach made in some situation. This presumes that the one had all of the same information and expertise as the other, which is always untrue. We cannot possibly know what we would do in a situation until we sit in the seat of the decider. We must trust the other coach and focus on our own area, or the team fails.
2. Players who second guess other players: a good coach will never allow players to undermine team morale by negative assertions about other coaches or other players. Effective coaches will redirect a disgruntled player to the team goals and specifically, to his own contribution to team play. If the coach listens without redirecting, team morale will fracture and the team will fragment into isolation and competing interests. Our own personal disappointment must be set aside for the good of the team.
3. Murmuring to others about someone else: nothing is more destructive inside a team than this. It is the thread that connects items 1 & 2 above. Expressing negativity about others, instead of to them, is like pouring acid on the team; it eats away the foundation upon which teamwork is built: Trust! To foster trust we must all agree to two abiding principles: 1) believe that others are doing their best, and 2) never speak negatively about them; only to them.

We at WSRM are a team, assigned to the most important ministry in the universe. We are most effective as we work as a team. This work is too important not to. We are a part of something bigger than ourselves.

- Aaron Eggers, Men’s Ministries