The Upcoming Leader: Bootstrapping Your Team

Now that you understand the expectations of your new role as leader, it is time to bootstrap your team. Bootstrapping is simply the creation of a team with little or no external help. While this isn’t the preferred method of starting a team, most often a church doesn’t have an existing set of processes and procedures for your team. This means you will have to put them together as you go.

Bootstrapping requires that you:

1. Identify a specific problem that needs to be solved. Select something small among the many needs that exist
2. Work with your staff and team to determine one or more solutions to the problem
3. Select a solution and determine the steps needed to resolve the issue
4. Work to solve the problem with your team
5. Make some simple notes about what worked, what didn’t, and what you would do to solve the problem in the future
6. If this problem or solution requires consistent action (e.g. every Sunday), turn your notes into a set of procedures
7. Assign one or more of your volunteers to handle these tasks in the future using your procedures as a starting point, refining them as they go

Work through these steps, focusing only on what you and your team can handle immediately. Remember: don’t focus on doing more; rather, do your best consistently.

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