Over the years, I have been very involved in teams and team work. I have managed team of IT developers varying in size from 6 to 60. One of the things I have observed is that you can usually divide a team into 3 groups of talent and these tend to be equal in size. For example, I went of to set and manage an offshore development team of programmers. One third were extremely talented and would do anything for you, work late, work weekends, go the extra mile. One third were ok, dependable, did the job but were never going to set the world on fire. The final third you could almost do without, the time spent managing them, correcting their mistakes sometimes doesn?t seem worth the effort.
I also observed the same phenomena in bodies of elders. My experience is that you can divide these by 3rds. One third are truly compassionate, caring individuals motivated by a core belief. One third are what I used to term the ?car and sport? elders. These are the guys who always seemed to be more comfortable talking about cars and sport rather than spiritual things. They were ok, but not exactly spiritual paragons of excellence. The final third would be the hardliners. Typically, these have never had a decent secular career but are determined to climb to the top in the congregation. Often these ones have been responsible for stirring up more trouble than they are worth.
In the secular team work scenario, it is the role of the team leader to mentor, lead and sometimes to censor the troublesome third. However, from my observations the Society either does not recognize the problem or has no mechanism to control it. The COs invariably takes the side of the hard liners and the problem of the most inept third exercising a disproportionate amount of power continues.
eyeslice