Page 151 - The Bible On Leadership

Team Development 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-
vid’s sons were too young and inexperienced to assume a dedicated
cabinet post, but he wanted to groom them for further responsibility;
one of them was Solomon, who was to become the wisest ruler of
Israel.
An important aspect of building teams is complementarity. King
David selected his teams of warriors largely based on their complemen-
tary strengths: One man, Benaiah, was skilled with a club, which he
used to strike down a seven-foot Egyptian brandishing a spear. Those
from the tribe of Benjamin were archers and ‘‘able to shoot arrows or
to sling stones right-handed or left-handed.’’ The sons of Gad ‘‘were
brave warriors ready for battle and able to handle the shield and spear.’’
(1 Chron. 11–12) Together, this group made up a mighty team with
complementary strengths that could be leveraged in any situation.
Gordon Bethune’s revitalization team at Continental Airlines was
also one with complementary strengths. And, like Jack Welch, who
knew he could not produce a TV show, Bethune knew that he could
not argue a legal case or fly a plane. He needed the best possible ‘‘cabi-
net team’’ he could assemble. To help with financing, he hired Larry
Kellner, who had worked for a large bank. As EVP of operations, he
chose C. D. McLean, who had been responsible for pilot training at
Piedmont Airlines. For technical operations, he chose the former direc-
tor of technical operations at Piedmont.