One Key Feature of Healthy Ministry Teams

This story happened 19 years ago. Names have been changed – apart from mine!

It was an offhand comment halfway through a post youth group leaders’ debrief. I’d meant it as a joke (albeit with a kernel of truth at the centre). What happened next was not what I had planned.

James was a great youth leader – full of enthusiasm and creativity. He was also loud and enjoyed loud games. Earlier in the night, he had been chasing some of the year 9 girls around the church hall with a pool noodle, loudly whacking the ground near them (but never them – he was careful in his shenanigans). I noticed some of the girls looking scared, but on the whole they seemed to be having a good time. The whole thing lasted a few minutes at the end of the night before supper.

But, as a joke when it came to the meeting later, I said, “James should be banned from scaring the year 9 girls.”

It was a joke. I didn’t want to ban him.

Unfortunately, our team leader didn’t think it was funny.

What followed was a 20 minute discussion about James’ leadership style that left James feeling shattered and like he wasn’t fit for youth ministry.

And all because I made a thoughtless joke.

Have you been on teams like this – where the dynamics just don’t work? My humour didn’t help the team to grow. James’ loud and brash style of fun wasn’t appreciated by everyone. Our team leader turned an off-hand joke into a serious discussion at James’ expense rather than taking James aside and discussing it with him one-on-one.

What can we do when our ministry teams aren’t functioning like a healthy body, when the parts aren’t working in harmony but are at odds with each other? I want to suggest one key feature of a team that is running well. This isn’t the only thing that contributes to team health, of course, but one I wish I was aware of all those years ago:

Psychological Safety

Charles Duhigg writes about psychological safety in his book Smarter, Faster, Better. Psychological safety is a

"sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up... It describes a team climate characterised by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.”

My youth team did not have psychological safety. I was making a joke at James’ expense. The discussion that followed was underpinned by the fact our team leader had a completely different personality to James. The result of the discussion was that James felt uncomfortable being himself, and stepped back from Youth leading at the end of that year because of it.

Duhigg uses an example of a team that by all rights should have been a disaster, but worked together perfectly:  the comedians and writers responsible for the first years of Saturday Night Live (SNL). The cast included Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy – all “big” personalities (Duhigg goes so far as to call them “egomaniac misanthropes”).

Showrunner Lorne Michaels used two key tactics to ensure psychological safety on the team. First, he made sure everyone in the room had their turn to share. Second, he was particularly sensitive to non-verbal cues that showed someone was thinking something that they were holding back on verbalising.

As a high verbal contributor in meetings, this strikes me at the heart. Are you like me? Or, are you more likely to sit back in meetings and think things that you don’t feel you have the right (or the permission) to share?

Psychological safety requires a belief that every group member’s contribution is valued and valuable. Isn’t this exactly what the body of Christ imagery is meant to convey to us?

1 Corinthians 12:21-26

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”. On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

In my meeting all those years ago, I was like a toe, turning to the arm and saying “because you’re different from me, you don't belong.” My team leader was an eye, looking at the arm and saying “because I don’t understand you and I’m so different from you, you don’t belong”. And the result was, the arm started to think he didn’t deserve to be part of the body.

Is there a member of your team in danger of feeling like James? If so, what can you do to provide the safety he or she needs to thrive in their service of our Lord Jesus?

As a postscript: My friend James did stop youth leading that year, but another team leader highly prized his contribution to youth ministry. For years later he was a co-director of our Church’s Youth Summer Camps. He still loves the Lord and serves faithfully at his church. I apologized a few days later for my remark in the meeting and he graciously forgave me. Now he and his wife are two of my closest friends.