8 habits to build a more healthy leadership team (and... a more healthy church)

Recently, our Leadership Team at Cuyahoga Valley Church spent a morning with John Palmer, President of Emerge Ministries. John is a gift to the church at large, helping leaders grow to be more healthy. He says, "Healthy teams lead healthy churches. And healthy leaders make up healthy churches."

From the Emerge website: "Early in his leadership of EMERGE, John recognized that EMERGE has been a very effective ambulance at the bottom of the cliff for nearly forty years... In addition to assuring that EMERGE remains strong and healthy in its redemptive ministry, John started preemptive ministry helping spiritual, professional, and business leaders build stronger fences at the top of the cliff, so they can be emotionally, mentally, and relationally healthy as they face the stresses and pressures of leadership."

At our Leadership Team retreat, John challenged us toward greater health by using a tool, a formula: A + A + A = PG. Assessment + Action + Accountability = Personal Growth. He gave us the opportunity to take an assessment that stimulated lots of reflection, conversation, and commitments to make significant changes to be more healthy. 

As a part of our time together, our team considered creating some norms. values, behaviors that we think will help our team become more healthy. Maybe your team would benefit from looking at our list and crafting one of your own.

Building a better team for fostering healthy habits…

1. Prepare: Make sure we as leaders are prepared for the meetings.

2. Shorten: Conduct shorter meetings and make sure they start on time.

3. Share: Create space in our meeting for personal, vulnerable interactions.

4. Remove: Assess time demands; help one another remove non-essential demands.

5. Engage: Follow-up when someone shares significant issues – personal or otherwise – by asking additional clarifying questions.

6. Serve: Be open-handed to serve other departments; be aware of others’ busy seasons; encourage all staff to be "all in” on others’ big initiatives.

7. Model: Live according to a healthy schedule; go home on time.

8. Clarify: Eliminate “suggested, but not mandatory” meetings/events for the staff to attend.

Question: What habits do you think would make your team better?