defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.’’ (Eccles.
4)
Nehemiah realized this when he assembled teams of Hebrews to re-
construct the wall around Jerusalem:
Therefore I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families, with their swords, spears and bows . . . From that day on, half of my men did the work,
while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor
. . . So we continued the work . . . from the first light of dawn till the stars came out. (Neh. 4)
Nehemiah knew the power of a team with complementary strengths
(building and fighting) and an overriding purpose (the protection of
their families and the building of a nation).
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THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
A modern leader who has likened the building of a team to the build-
ing of a wall is Akio Morita, CEO of Sony. Morita observed that the
people of a company are like varying stones rather than standardized
‘‘bricks,’’ a fact that should be celebrated, not bemoaned: ‘‘The manager
takes a look at these rough stones, and he has to build a wall by combin-
ing them in the best possible way, just as a master mason builds a stone
wall. The stones are sometimes round, sometimes square, long, large or
small, but somehow the management must figure out how to put them
together. . . . As the business changes, it becomes necessary to refit the
stones in different places.’’
When Moses led the Hebrews through the desert, there was a con-
siderable amount of individual sacrifice in the service of the overall team goal of reaching the Promised Land. Morita’s and Sony’s success have
been largely built on the subordination of individual goals to team goals:
‘‘The problem with the person who is accustomed to working for the
sake of money is that he often forgets that he is expected to work for
the group entity, and this self-centered attitude . . . to the exclusion of the goals of his coworkers is not healthy.’’9
Everyone on a team has a separate and important function. Jesus
picked his apostles based on their differing skills and backgrounds (some
were fishermen, one was a tax collector!). Romans 12 speaks of people
with ‘‘different gifts . . . prophesying . . . serving . . . teaching . . .
encouraging . . . leadership.’’ Ephesians 4:11 says, ‘‘It was he (Christ)
who gave some to be apostles . . . prophets . . . evangelists . . . pastors and teachers . . .’’ Everyone on the team possessed ‘‘different kinds of
gifts and service, but the same spirit.’’ The overriding biblical message?
No matter how seemingly humble, no part of the team is any less valu-
able than any other.
A similar message was delivered by Gordon Bethune in his efforts to
revitalize an ailing Continental Airlines. Rather than use the body or a
stone wall, Bethune used a watch as his model. In a meeting, he was
challenged by an employee who asked why reservations agents should
receive the bonus for on-time performance, since they did not affect
the airline’s punctuality. Bethune collected watches, and realized that,
like the human body, they were ‘‘miracles of cooperation . . . hundreds
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135
of parts fitting together . . . every part of the watch does a job . . . and any part that fails can impair or destroy the function of the entire watch.
It’s no good to you without the hour hand or the clock face, but it’s
just as useless without the tiniest screw . . . that holds the mainspring
on. . . .’’ So Bethune held up his watch and asked the employee,
‘‘Which part of this watch don’t you think we need?’’ The employee
couldn’t answer and sat down.10
Bethune’s logic was very similar to King David’s when he justified
giving part of the spoils of war to men who had merely given logistical
support but had not actually fought on the lines. King David realized
that the whole team had contributed to the effort, and by sharing the
spoils with all, he was rhetorically asking, ‘‘Which of these men don’t
you think we need?’’
Bethune’s emphasis on teamwork has been a major ingredient in the
successful revitalization of Continental. He says, ‘‘An airline is the big-
gest team sport there is. It’s 40,000 people working together . . . toward
the same goal . . . Now everybody’s on the same team and everyone
knows it . . . Everyone knows what the goal is . . . We’re all working
from the same playbook . . .’’11
Jack Stack of Springfield Re has a ‘‘selfish’’ reason for wanting to be
part of a team (he elected to limit himself to a 19 percent share of the
company): ‘‘I didn’t want to be alone. I was going to be leading the
charge up the hill. I wanted to make sure that when I got to the top of
the hill and turned around, there was a bunch of people coming with
me. It’s easy to stop one guy, but it’s pretty hard to stop a hundred.’’12
This was the same philosophy that helped ensure the victory of Joab
and Abishai, biblical rulers, each of whom was facing an enemy and
each of whom knew he might need help. They applied the concept of
‘‘flexible teaming’’: ‘‘If the Arameans are too strong for me, come over
and help me. And if the Ammonites are too strong for you, I will come
and help you.’’ (2 Sam. 10:12)
The name Marc Andreesen does not necessarily conjure up the
image of a team leader. Andreesen is the originator of Netscape, and he
could be pardoned if he had a ‘‘swelled head’’ like Samson and thought
he did it all himself and could keep doing so (but look at what happened
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THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
to Samson!). But Andreesen’s experiences, particularly his battle for
market share against Microsoft, have convinced him of the power of
teams:
When people quit, they tend to leave because they’ve lost faith in their manager. A management team with a lot of respect can do a much better
job of retaining employees, which is why a company like Microsoft, Intel, or Cisco could turn on a dime, do radically different things, and still have those people say, ‘‘Okay, we’ll follow.’’ 13
SELECTING THE TEAM
Most of us remember the experience of choosing sides for kickball dur-
ing recess. The selection of the teams (‘‘choosing sides’’) was the pri-
mary predictor of how the game would go. No matter how good the
‘‘captain’’ was, if he or she made poor team selections, the game was
over before it began. Everyone knew the outcome, and the team that
was the victim of such poor selection could only hope for the bell to
ring to end the slaughter.
Every year, the National Basketball Association holds a draft of col-
lege players. There is a tremendous amount of suspense around this
process, because everyone knows a team’s fortunes, for the coming year
and years to come, hinge on this selection process. No matter how good
a coach or leader you are, if you do not select your team wisely, you
will be at a severe disadvantage. Red Auerbach, for years the coach of
the successful Boston Celtics dynasty, was a master at picking the right
players, particularly a young man named Bill Russell from an obscure
school in California. But he also picked a group of teammates to com-
plement Russell, each with a particular role to play.
‘‘How you select people is more important than how you manage
them once they’re on the job,’’ observes Auerbach. ‘‘If you start with
the right people, you won’t have problems later on. If you hire the
wrong people . . . you’re in serious trouble.’’14 Auerbach knew how to
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137
select the right mix of superstars and ‘‘role players,’’ and how to get
them to function as a team.
The Bible is also very explicit about the importance of selecting the
right people for a team. Before he picked the twelve apostles, Jesus
went out to the mountainside and spent the night praying to God. He
knew he had to have just the right team if his message was to be spread
throughout the world. When David became king, one of the first things
he did was to select a cabinet that was very similar to the cabinets ap-
pointed by heads of state today: people with expertise and wisdom to
match their responsibilities:
‘‘Joab . . . was over the army; Jehoshaphat . . . was recorder; Zadok
. . . and Ahimelech . . . were priests; Seraiah was secretary . . . and
David’s sons were royal advisors.’’ (2 Sam. 8:15–18) Presumably Da-