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:
Leverage your unique qualities, experiences and talents as a coordinator.
Take time to examine your perspective of short-term teams and be aware of healthy and unhealthy aspects of your view.
Our minds take shortcuts, so question your underlying assumptions and thoughts about short-term teams.
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 complimenting 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 are you. 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. At our organization, we use 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.
Before we jump into the PDP Proscan activity, please 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.
Meanwhile, click on the link below to begin the PDP Proscan activity and be sure to read the instructions at the top.
Playing With Perspective
We now want to turn our attention to the perspective of a healthy STT coordinator. To do so, let's go on a fun, experimental adventure together!
Click on the form below to engage in a brief, playful activity that will help us see how perspective shapes and guides the role of a short-term team coordinator. As usual, check out the instructions at the top of the form to guide you.
Brain Games
As you looked at each word in the activity, isn't it incredible how quickly your mind and body brought you a response to each prompt?
This is a small window into our limbic system and how helpful it is in saving us a tremendous amount of energy and resources as it filters incredible amounts of information in mere milliseconds. This allows us to not be overwhelmed by all the sensory 'data' coming at our body and mind. What a gift!
The challenge, here, however, is that the limbic part of our brain often likes to take the easy route and stick with established norms. In the case of our activity, we thought what we thought about each word and didn't consider if that perspective is healthy, unhealthy, or somewhere in between.
This means that we seldom consider the thoughts behind our thoughts. A healthy coordinator is increasingly aware of this and takes time to notice their perspective with its strengths and its limitations.
So when it comes to short-term teams then, when was the last time you considered what your perspective of them was?
Your Perspectives
Keeping It Real?
For many, this comical video encapsulates what many people perceive when they think of a short-term team.
For folks like yourself on the field, knowing the deeper layers of our work and that there is a lot at stake in the relationships and work you’ve invested in your communities, you may see short-term teams a bit more the way this humorous video captures.
Know Thy Funk
One of the base commandments of short-term teams is to know thy funk. Yes, you read that right.
The reality is there are places within our thinking about short-term teams, like with any other matter, that could use some "freshening up."
Let's take a few minutes then to increase awareness around those places within your perspective that may need 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. Take a few minutes to read through these characterizations and reflect on which you most identify with. This will be a critically helpful exercise that will really bring to the power of perspective of a coordinator in the next section so you will definitely want to review this exercise before moving on. You can find them in the resource at the end of this section entitled Perspective: STT Characterizations.
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