team

I have been gifted with good teams in communities I have been blessed to serve.
When I choose someone to be part of the team, I am often asked what is my criteria. I answer with a lot of mumbo jumbo - integrity, qualified, accepted by the community, leadership skills, prayerfulness. As if I have a tried and tested measuring stick. Actually, I follow the simplest way - I choose someone who is far better than me in a particular field, generally in 4 aspects - intelligence, experience, commitment, holiness. Not that I have a tried and tested measuring stick. I just rely on 2 things - first impression (gut instinct) and lasting impression (repeated exposure to the person). To put it harshly, when assembling a team, I should be the stupidest, least experienced, most uncommitted, unholiest member. It just so happened that I am the team leader (the parish priest, the spiritual director, the department head) who provides direction at the most and the stamp of approval at the least.
As a side comment, I find myself in a different situation when I belong/ed to institutions where I am given the option to fire people. I do exercise that right when I have to, though often as a last resort, in the most exhaustive and painful way. But if I do need to make that difficult choice, whether to advance the goals of the institution or of the person, I will choose the greater good, that is the community, and in hindsight, the win-win situation is to help the person find his/her fulfillment elsewhere. In parish settings, one cannot fire people, how do you fire volunteers? One should consider himself lucky enough (or trustworthy and charismatic, maybe) to get volunteers without cajoling and begging them to be part of a vision. Still, people should be given opportunities to exit gracefully if they find that they find it difficult to work with the team.
Going back to the topic, I have a simple test on how to assemble a team - I make myself the standard, and members of the team should be better than me. That is the security I find myself in when in a team. And of course, I also take comfort in the fact that we have the best member/team leader on the team however which way you look at it - God.