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Follow These 3 Steps to Find Your Life Team

June 3, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Your life team is critically important to your wellbeing. This support system will help you overcome the challenges you face in the personal and professional realms.

I’m going to discuss my three-step process to help find those great people to have in your corner when the going gets tough below. Hopefully, you will be inspired to find your life team!

1. Identify Your Life Team

First of all, what is a life team? Let’s talk about this a little bit.

In your life, you are going to interact with thousands of people. Family, friends, classmates, coworkers, etc. Having the right kind of people in our lives is a great gift.

Think of your life path like your car. It needs fuel to get down the road. It needs proper maintenance to run correctly and keep you safe. By the same token, you also need the right kind of people in your life. Your life is there to help you accomplish the things you need to do to be successful.

They might offer you support in the following areas:

Take care of your family
Make the money you need
Have the right kind of job
Get up in the morning and feel good
Go work out. Have friends
Go take vacations
Achieve things

Do You Need a Life Team?

Maybe you are wondering if you actually need a life team in order to get the most out of your experiences. Let’s examine this a bit.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by your to-do list at work at home?
Are you completely satisfied with your career?
Is your overall physical and emotional health where you want it to be?

Chances are, you have areas in your personal and professional growth that could use support.

When you aren’t able to make things happen on your own (without support), it’s time to consider changing your fueling system in your car. It’s time to make an effort to build your life team.

We tend to hang around the people in our lives because they chose us. Throughout life, you just kind of choose people who reciprocate. They might pick you because you’re nice, warm, have answers, or you’re kind.

If you really want to get the energy you need, as well as the resources, wisdom, and the smarts you need in life, you’re going to have to pick some people to change your fuel a little bit.

This doesn’t necessarily mean reject or condemn anybody. We all have friends at different levels. It just means you must make sure you’ve got the right people in your corner.

2. Understand Why a Life Team is Important for Growth

So now that you understand what a life team is, let’s talk a little bit about why you need to assemble yours now.

So much of the energy we need to live life comes from other people. It just does! Much like vitamins for our physical body, we have the need for certain people in our circle for a great life. Your life team will give you those nutrients; their support will give you the energy needed to keep growing and moving forward! You then use that energy to fulfill your purpose in the world.

Surrounding yourself with people who you can count on, who will listen to you, who give you warmth, and won’t judge is critical to overcoming obstacles. It’s that simple!

3. Create a Life Team

We’ve covered what a life team is and why it’s important. Now, let’s get started on creating your life team.

Ideally, you need somewhere between 3-10 people on your life team. Ten is kind-of the maximum because it takes time to develop in-depth relationships with people. Keep in mind that the larger the group, the longer it will take.

Your time is valuable and so is theirs. Less than three people may not provide the life nutrients you need for growth.

The great thing about people is that everyone contributes something different to your life. Certain people have wisdom, while others offer empathy, challenge you to grow, or have strong insight.

Now, This is Not a Team in the Traditional Sense.

I know it sounds like everyone is getting #TeamYou jerseys. But, the truth is you probably won’t meet your life team all at one time. Think of them as people you pick up along the way.

Let me tell you about my own life team. I have 10 people on Team Townsend because I have a lot of needs. They all live in different parts of the country and don’t know each other well. The common thread connecting them is me!

What Does it Take to Be #TeamYou?

Consider these questions as you seek out people who can provide valuable nutrients for growth:

Can they be vulnerable with you and can you be vulnerable with them? If you can’t be vulnerable, you can really never get what you need out of the relationship. When people feel they have to have it all together all the time, they’ll sort of never get anywhere in life. Vulnerability is a real answer to growth.
Can you really be honest about the negatives in your life, including failure, things you’re embarrassed about, and things where you’re beating yourself up? Not only must players on your life team be vulnerable, they’ve got to have total safety. There’s no shaming, no judging, and no advice a lot of the time. Chances are they will be great listeners and great at asking you the right questions to help you find answers.
Can they challenge you and offer honesty? They must be able to say, “I think you’re going the wrong direction here,” or maybe just give you wisdom or data or information or life experiences. Bottom line – they’ve got to have truth in them.
Is there chemistry? If you don’t really like them personally, then you won’t want to have lunch or coffee with them. If you don’t enjoy spending time with them and learning from them, don’t add them to your life team!

Life Team: Assemble!

Ready to assemble your life team? Let’s get started! Here are my suggestions to get you started.

Make two lists. One is a list of the prospects by going through your email and phone contacts. Make a second list of the people that shouldn’t be prospects.

Although it may sound harsh, this is an important part of the process. After some reflection, you may learn you’re letting people in your boundary space that you shouldn’t. Or maybe you’re not giving enough time and energy to the relationships that benefit you. Trust me, you’ll find a lot of good things happen when you do those two lists.

This list will likely take you a couple of hours, but prune the list down to 20-40 people. Then, pick the first person that looks like an ideal life team member and, call them and ask to catch up. Spend some time with them.

When you talk, take one little step of vulnerability. Maybe you admit something is kind-of hard to them, like “I’m really struggling with my job,” or, “One of our kids is kind of going south,” or “I’m struggling with my dating life,” or whatever. Be open to the person.

If they give you a bunch of advice, change the subject, or talk about themselves, that’s not a good sign.

But, if they move toward you and say, “I had no idea. Tell me more about that. That’s really hard,” you know you’ve got a potential. The key here is that they are able to listen, and not make it about themselves.

I recommend that you have three or four lunches or coffee meet-ups with someone you consider a prospect for your life team before creating your final roster. Their support will be critical to your overall growth, so take your time and get it right!

Once you have picked your life team, your next step is asking them for their support. What you say after three or four meetings is, “I’m getting really intentional about my growth. And I know my growth involves getting a lot of people around me who really want to grow and change and support each other, and I’d like to meet on a regular basis.”

It will take time to build a team, somewhere between four and six months. A life team can’t be sporadic.

Try to get together regularly, whether it’s once a month or once a week to just talk about life and how you can help each other grow.

If you’re struggling with identifying who should be on your life team, let me help you. Subscribe to TownsendNOW today and start identifying the good people who can truly help you grow.

Leading a Team

April 23, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

The basic idea of leading a team is to influence a small group of individuals to perform at levels that they could not without you. In other words, they can do something without you, but your influence and guidance has them perform at a higher and better level. If they could do it without you, you don’t need a leader, but as you’ll see, they do need one.

Why is Leading a Team Important?

The research is clear – teams do better when there’s a good leader. They perform better, are more motivated, and more engaged because they’ve got someone that they know they can trust. It’s not even a question if you’ve got a team that has no leader and a team that has a leader, all things being equal, the team with the leader does better. But secondly, as the team goes, so goes the organization.

So if you get the team going right, you’ve got a much better probability of success in the entire organization.

Another reason this is important is that a team puts together intimacy. Teams have to learn to connect and be together.

Tips For Leading a Team

First, the leader’s supposed to advocate for the mission.

Secondly, developing trust. Every team leader must develop trust not just toward yourself, but also within the members. They have to learn how to trust each other enough to have hard conversations, to make mistakes with each other, to know they’re safe with each other.

Third, remember to get their views before you give your view. A mistake team leaders make is putting their opinion first. You’re supposed to set the tone, but then your other job is to tease out what they’re thinking.

Fourth, create a path. Sometimes, we call that a strategic path, sometimes we call it a path to growth, but that’s your job. You don’t have to do that by yourself, but you’re the one that’s got to make sure it happens.

Difficult Conversations

April 16, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Great conversations can lead to equally great personal development. But, as we know in life, we sometimes have to contend with those not-so-great conversations.

You will, more often than not, find yourself facing a difficult conversation or confrontation.

A successful confrontation will always involve balancing grace and truth. Grace is you being an advocate for the other person, while truth is whatever you need to say about the challenge at hand.

This balancing combination is referred to as being neutralized. Being neutralized doesn’t mean being neutral about the problem. In fact, the clearer you express your opinion, the better your chances of success.

Instead, being neutralized means that having grace and truth together counters the bad effects of having one of these by itself. In other words, grace or truth alone can have a negative effect in a confrontation.

People need both in their relationships.

For example, think about a time when someone told you the truth without love. You probably felt attacked, judged, or condemned. No matter how accurate the truth, it hardly mattered, because the hurtful feelings erased the truth in the confrontation.

Now reflect on a time you received grace without any truth.

Grace comforts us and keeps us safe and loved, but it doesn’t provide reality, structure, direction, or correction. You may have come away from that encounter feeling refreshed and encouraged, but without the path or insight to know what to do next. Truth neutralizes that problem and provides the way we need.

Here are some ways to keep both aspects in balance when you are having the talk:

The Other Person’s Grace and Truth: Even though you might be upset with someone, their ability to take in truth will also require love and grace, just as yours does. Your intent is not to fix, straighten out, or punish. It is to provide enough amounts of truth and grace to reconcile and solve the problem.
Lead With Grace: Tell the person you care about them and are on their side.
Keep Grace and Truth Together: You’ve got to have both elements woven into your difficult conversation. Otherwise, you are setting yourself up for an unhealthy outcome, which no one wants.

A TownsendNOW membership means you get practical, Christian-based insight for having those difficult conversations.

Originally published by Faith Gateway. Taken from How to Have That Difficult Conversation You’ve Been Avoiding by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, copyright Zondervan, 2005.

Great Conversations

April 9, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Great conversations can be a really important part of your life. What is a good conversation? It’s a dialogue between two people. It’s not a monologue.

Secondly, and one of the outcomes, is information.

Thirdly, the potential for self-improvement. There are a lot of conversations I’ve been in where I’m a better person because of having been around that person.

Many times, improvement, growth, and change can be a big part of it, but it’s not always necessary.

Why is This Important in the First Place?

First off, a transfer of nutrients. The way people grow and thrive in life and succeed is because we give each other nutrients to grow. The nutrients of encouragement and attunement and then the nutrients of wisdom and feedback and all these sorts of things.

A second reason it’s important is that those great conversations are self-reinforcing. A good conversation will reinforce many more.

Third of all, I think great conversations are milestones for great decisions.

So What Do You Do About It?

Let me give you the skills that really work. One is to take initiative. Don’t wait for someone to draw you out. Be a grown-up, ask them how they’re doing but you be the first mover.

Another very important one is to move toward vulnerability. When somebody opens up and says something about themselves like a struggle or a challenge they’re having, you say, “I had no idea you had a kid that was struggling. I had no idea that you weren’t happy with your job. Tell me more about that.” People in great conversations and great conversationalists are always moving toward the vulnerability of the other person. They’re vulnerable themselves. That’s where the real payoff is.

There’s also kind of a process here. Good conversations move from events to deeper matters.

One is feelings.
Another one is relationships in general.
Another one is no hijacking the football. If you are talking about something of interest, you go mutual. You pass it back and forth.
Finally, go for mutuality. Just make that your goal in a good conversation.

Become a TownsendNOW member today to learn more about great conversations and to get the answers you can’t find anywhere else!

Grace and Truth

March 2, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Grace and truth are vital parts of your spiritual and personal growth.

First, let’s talk about grace. Grace is that the other person is for us. They’re on our side. That “for” could be a lot of things. It can be acceptance, support, good listening, or it could be encouragement.

Truth is information. It’s facts. It’s data. It’s reality. Truth comes from so many sources. Truth comes from the Bible. Something good or something you need to change.

Think about how these work for a second. See, grace really means something when someone goes into the negative aspects of who you are. The judged aspects, the embarrassing aspects, the shameful aspects. When you feel grace from that, you really understand grace.

In relationships, grace and truth are essential nutrients for growth. It takes a lot for a person to grow emotionally and relationally. It’s just like all the nutrients we need to take in through food and supplements.

We talk about protein, carbs, fat, vitamins and minerals. Just like our body needs those categories to take in and eat, you have to have grace and truth for the rest of your life to grow.

One of the ways to understand the relationship between the two is that truth is sort of like a protective framework or a skeleton. Grace is the heart of who you are, while truth is the strong framework that keeps it from being hurt or damaged. Truth protects us.

Grace without truth is a lot more fun, but grace without truth really leads to license and chaos. You got to have both.

The relationship between grace and truth is very important. Make sure, when you’ve got truth to tell someone, that you express it within a context of grace, “I’m for you,” and listening to them so they understand and feel. Convey that you’re for them in your body language, the words you use, empathy, and your eye contact. When you express it to them in a way they can understand it, you’ll get a lot more change, openness, and positive feelings back from them because you had grace.