MODULE 1 - Section 5
Becoming a Healthy STT Coordinator: Uniqueness & Perspective
30 minutes to complete section and related assignments
In this section, you will learn:
To leverage your unique qualities, experiences and talents as a coordinator.
To take time to examine your perspective of short-term teams and be aware of healthy and unhealthy aspects of your view.
That our minds take shortcuts, so question your underlying assumptions and thoughts about short-term teams.
To reflect on common characterizations of short-term teams to better understand your own view and how it impacts your role.
Introduction
So far we have talked about setting a healthy foundation for short-term teams (Purpose, Priorities and Perspectives). We also explored what it means to have healthy parameters, people and process. That leaves a remaining question for us then that we have to consider: What does it mean to be a healthy short-term team coordinator?
The 3 key aspects of a healthy coordinator to embrace:
Unique Self Perspective Actions.
Let's start by engaging a few questions to prime the pump for this section. As you read through the list, see if you can figure out the answer to each of them.
Who will help ensure a short-term team understands the unique particularities of the community in advance of their visit?
Who will help an STT understand why and how the projects/activities they are doing in-community will feed the long-term transformation already happening?
Who will teach the team how to engage with the vulnerable as Jesus did - in a way that affirms their dignity, worth, and humanity?
Who will connect how the team’s preparation has readied them to engage the complex issues they’ve learned about from afar that are now right in front of them?
Who will show the team where God is at work and share His stories of transformation in the lives and life of the community?
You have likely concluded the answer to each of these questions is a short-term team coordinator. That’s you!
The Missing Link:
The irony to what seems like such a straightforward answer though is that in the world of short-term teams too often organizations’ primary focus is on execution (i.e. location, price, logistics, etc.). Sometimes that will include quality training. As you have discovered in Module 1, less so is there a clear and healthy vision of short-term teams that will ensure a team's efforts are complementing long-term transformational work.
Even then, however, a clear vision and strong team execution won’t set the team up for success unless there is a person linking the connections between vision and execution, between training and real community issues, and between all the relationships it takes to create cohesion.
For these reasons - and many more - your role is tremendously important, and, what adds to your impact is the fact that you are deeply and directly connected to the community in a way that allows you to offer a perspective that few others can. Your short-term team needs you to be you!
Uniqueness
Did you expect to see your unique self as one of the three key aspects of being a short-term team coordinator? We think it has to be! By the nature of being you, you bring with you a mix of unreproducible qualities that are truly unique to you including your:
Personality Personal story Talents Skills Life Experiences
Literally, no one else in the history of the world has the same combination that you have. Scripture says it this way in Psalm 139:14:
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
No one else can do what you do in the way that you do it, because no one else can be who you are. It is out of your unique self - we call it your "you-ness" (insert your name for "you") - that exudes who you are. And that is the imago dei - the fearfully and wonderfully made - that God is and will continue to use in the way He has designed you.
Your "You-ness" Matters
You may be wondering, but how does my uniqueness matter when it comes to short-term teams? Let’s use an example that will speak to these questions.
Imagine you are planning two teams at the same time. And, for the sake of the example, you cloned the team members so you had the exact same teams. All aspects of both teams were the same - vision, systems, process, training, etc.
The only difference is one team is going to Chile and the other to Zambia. If all other factors were the same, each team would still have different experiences, outcomes, etc. because of the unique personality and context of the two communities.
In the same way, your Spirit-led uniqueness means you will bring a flair and flavor to the way you orchestrate teams unlike anyone else. Whether it’s your compassion, insightfulness, service, generosity, decisiveness, humor, or any other attributes you possess, along with skills, experiences, etc., you will influence and empower a team in the way they come alongside the vulnerable in your community and beyond. That’s incredible!
The question then is: Why would you leave your biggest asset at the door when engaging teams?
Activity
Whether these thoughts about your unique self are new or a good reminder, now is a great time to engage with your "you-ness" in a way that helps you take hold of the specific impact you will create through your attribute mix. While there is no complete way to capture this, personality assessments are a helpful insight into some of the things we each offer. One Collective uses the PDP ProScan tool to do just that. Let's take a look at how your unique self will empower you when combined with your work as a short-term team coordinator.
To access your PDP ProScan report, use the directory in Ohana to find yourself. Click on your name and navigate to the Documents tab. Your PDP report should appear in the list.
Note: There is an additional resource at the end of this section entitled A Healthy Person Eats PIESS. This resource is yet another tool you can use to ensure you are a healthy person in your day-to-day life.
Playing with Perspective
Keeping it Real?
This comical video encapsulates the undercurrent of how some short-term team members can view a short-term team.
For folks like yourself in-community, you may see short-term teams a bit more the way this tongue-in-cheek video captures.
Know Your perspective
While these videos reflect how some team members can view short-term teams, the reality is that even as global workers we too have our own stereotypes, perspectives and conclusions that could use some "freshening up." Let's take a few minutes to increase awareness around where your perspective may need to be reviewed. Through this exploration, you will have a better understanding of your own particular perspective of teams, along with the healthy and unhealthy elements that perspective can carry. To help this exploration be vivid and relatable, we have taken common perspectives of short-term teams and characterized them into four different combinations. Download Perspective: STT Characterizations from the Resources section, then take a few minutes to read them through. When you are done, use the form below to reflect on your own perspective. This exercise lays the foundation for the next section, so we highly encourage you to complete it before moving on.
Resources for Module 1.5
