Training and team development with Jubilee Leadership

Training is an important part of the Jubilee leadership proposition as we seek to build capacity and resilience within Christian leaders. The type of training we provide varies according to the context:

Conferences. Our director Andy Hickford is often invited to address conferences for church leaders. In this instance, the training takes the form of a series of presentations or plenaries, followed by break out group discussions and questions for personal reflection. The content typically starts with teaching from the Bible and then extrapolates from the biblical text applicable leadership lessons and principles for today.
Retreats. Christian ministers of virtually all denominations are encouraged to engage in regular spiritual retreats for their own self-care and resilience. When Andy is invited to contribute to these retreats, the format is similar to conferences with an address followed by questions for personal consideration and prayer, but the emphasis is less on leadership practices and more on spiritual encouragement and self-leadership reflection on the underlying issues of ministry. This covers areas like personal motivation, habits and rhythms, key relationships, personal boundaries etc.
Teaching within consultancy. In order for leadership teams to address problems effectively, some initial teaching is often required to give the situation wider context and provide them with the necessary tools and vocabulary to address the issue. Often trust within a team is insufficient to tackle the presenting problem directly. In these instances unpacking with the team the principles of Patrick Lencioni’s 5 dysfunctions of team can help everyone involved see the issue behind the issue. A number of light hearted team exercises can then help to give them a shared language to tackle the issue and objectify the problem rather than personalise it. Another example of this is when a church leadership team is disheartened because their attempts at change are not getting the traction they hoped for. It’s often helpful to step back and do some change and transition training first, which provides them with the shared understanding and language of what could have been done better and how they can moderate their approach moving forward.
Jubilee training events. These are in person and on-line events designed to resource and encourage churches by training their ‘lay’ leaders. We believe there is a particular need to support what the Bible calls ‘Elders’ whose role it is to ‘direct the affairs of the church’ and play a key role in supporting and holding accountable the minister of the church in the non- conformist tradition. This is a delicate and sometimes demanding role and often falls to people with little or no training. There is a particularly interesting (and tricky) leadership dynamic in this tradition between Elders (who have spiritual authority) Trustees (who have legal responsibility) and the senior minister (who has the day to day leadership responsibility.) We help Church teams work through this minefield.

What is the Jubilee Leadership approach to training?
There a number of factors which need to be held in view for training to have any success in encouraging real and lasting change and growth amongst recipients.

Positioning. Communication prior to the event is crucial. Who is this training for? Why is it important? How will it be delivered? What are the desired learning outcomes? Managing these expectations before the event itself plays a very important part how the training ‘lands’ with an individual or a team.
Culture and atmosphere. Learning necessitates questioning and discussion, so it’s very important from the start to create a fun and relaxed environment in which people feel safe to ask questions from the outset. Encouraging people throughout the event is crucial – validating their struggles, affirming their gifting and calling and helping them set realistic plans for the future. We have found that creating a context where leaders become aware that other churches are struggling with exactly the same issues – even if no complete solution is found to those issues– is still hugely encouraging to the recipients. Knowing they do not struggle in isolation is enough to strengthen their emotional and psychological resilience.
Creating rapport. People need to trust the person delivering the material and experience some kind of connection with them to help them to do the hard work of listening. In order to trust the content they need to know the person has experience of local church ministry, has credible subject knowledge and has compassion and empathy for what they do
Content. In the main, people learn slowly and in different ways so it’s important that the training material is very clear, as simple as possible, visual, illustrated with examples of how the principles work out in practice, use different media, is explored further in small group discussions, with key points repeated throughout the event.
Pace and variety. Short bursts of input is important, interspersed with people moving around and doing something different to embed the learning in their context. (All this obviously varies according to the number of people in the room and the constraints of the space, but the principles remain consistent.)
Clear handouts. It is helpful to provide handouts and online resources for people who want to read and think more deeply about the content. An example is attached.
Barriers explored. For any new idea to take hold in our behaviour and practice we have to help people identify the difficulties of implementation. One of the most important questions is: What are the barriers in my context for putting this into practice? Often there are systemic and cultural barriers within an organisation which need to be addressed and teams supported to come up with an action plan to address them.
Action plans. This part of the training experience, either for individuals or a team, is where we effectively ask the question: What are you going to do with what you have learnt? We encourage the delegates to work on an action plan with SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.)
Accountability. These action plans are then shared with others (it varies depending on the size and type of the training event) and delegates are asked to give feedback to each other and pray for them as they seek to implement what they have learnt.
Ongoing support. Where possible, we want to support our training with the offer of ongoing support to individuals and teams as they seek to deliver their action plans in their context.
Ongoing journey. With Jubilee leadership we are trying to cultivate a culture of ‘the pursuit of truth amongst friends’. We want individuals and teams to see our training events as part of their ongoing support. Emotional and psychological resilience is a huge issue, so we want to create a culture where individuals understand that tackling leadership challenges is a journey which never ends, but we can make significant progress, we can learn and grow through the process and we can travel together.

How are individuals and teams identified and selected?
They are identified in 3 ways.

They self-identify – that is they will contact us through the website, or get in contact following a conference or from a personal recommendation.
They are referred to us – for example a team leader approached us to recently to ask for some help with mentoring a member of his team.
We initiate contact with a church leader either because something they are doing caught our attention or someone has drawn them to our attention.

Our methodology of selection is relational. It begins with a consultation. This is an initial, no commitment conversation between us and a church leader where we explore the idea of working together through asking lots of questions. We then encourage a short period of reflection and prayer for both parties to decide if they want to commit to a working relationship.

From Jubilee Leadership’s perspective, we are trying to discern whether the leader/team/church are a good fit for working with us through answering some of the following questions:

Is there a hunger to learn and grow which is sufficient enough to energize them for the difficult challenges that lie ahead?
Do they have the emotional and intellectual capacity to take this on at this point?
Do they have the emotional intelligence and self-awareness that the self-reflection the process requires?
Spiritually, can they embrace the idea that God uses the unique challenges of leadership to refine and renew us as people?

What are the intended outcomes of our work?

In a broad sense the intended outcome of the training Jubilee leadership provides is to enable thriving leaders leading healthy and effective teams which lead flourishing churches that help transform communities.
As for each individual training event, each event and module will have clear measurable outcomes against which participants will be asked to give an evaluation. (An example of a simple evaluation tool we have used in the past is below.)
Most importantly, what we hope we have been able to communicate through the above is that because we build developing SMART action plans (which by definition are self-motivated, context specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) into the core of all our training, the intended outcomes become super explicit to all involved. The intention to build in an ongoing coaching component to the training, so that individuals and teams are supported to deliver the action plans helps keep Jubilee Leadership training outcome focussed.