Bill and Tabetha Taylor develop and unify teams of all sorts with 'elite team dynamics'
Lacey Klotz |
"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." [Andrew Carnegie]
Although teamwork is desired within any team setting, most teams never reach their full potential because they fail to realize and accept the reality of change.
To the Lipscomb community, Tabetha Taylor is most commonly known as the wife of Bill Taylor, Lipscomb’s head coach of the men’s and women’s cross country and track and field teams, and a member of the program’s coaching staff. To others in the business world, she has been referred to as the “the human change guru.”
For over 25 years, Tabetha has made a career linking the practical and human side of change, and has helped some of today’s most successful corporations learn how to overcome change and see the results they desire.
Working for organizations such as Comcast, Boeing Employees Credit, Starbucks and Cox Automotive, Tabetha stresses that change is constant in every aspect of life and business. Tabetha, however, has been trained to help counter change by diagnosing an environment and applying practical processes that have proven to be successful and vital to a company’s internal and external well being.
Tabetha’s desire is to help teams grow and thrive in their environment using both individual and team strengths.
She explains that once she truly understood what it took to be successful, she was able to help develop teams from the inside out.
“I found that in every business book I read there were a few constants,” Tabetha says, “focusing on team work, assimilating into a team and that team success is all about culture and responding to change properly.”
Throughout 27 years of marriage, Bill and Tabetha Taylor have worked together to grow in their understanding of how to best develop a team. Through the years they discovered tangible ways to create a healthy team atmosphere and unify a team to see the best results possible.
Since becoming the head coach of Lipscomb’s men’s and women’s cross country and track programs nine years ago, Bill Taylor has helped to shift the 
culture, recruit a wide caliber of top athletes, win six conference championships and has helped Lipscomb become one of the top NCAA Division 1 cross country teams in the nation.
What sets Bill Taylor apart from other Division 1 coaches, however, is his unique recruiting process. He does not recruit solely on athlete’s times and accolades; he recruits character and evaluates if each athlete will be a good fit for the program and culture.
“Our program’s goal is to win conference and national championships,” Bill says, “but the way we want to obtain our goals is to keep our focus on Christ, be excellent in both athletics and academics, and have a culture where hearts are big and there is a genuine care fore each other and team success.”
Bill has seen great success at Lipscomb, and he has done so with Tabetha by his side.
Tabetha has aided Lipscomb’s cross country and track programs in conducting extensive training in team building, leadership and adapting to change. These skills have helped the programs attain both environmental and performance advantages and will also help each athlete post college, simply because they are developing skills that they will use to be successful in their future careers.
“Tabetha brings a skill set that is both unique and practical to success,” Bill says. “She is helping to give solutions to not only become better athletes and teammates, but better people.”
Jenny Randolph has experienced the value that Tabetha Taylor’s team building and leadership development strategies have made on the Lipscomb XC and track teams as she has been a student athlete, three-year team captain, four-year graduate assistant and has recently been hired on full-time as an assistant coach for Lipscomb’s women’s cross country and track programs.
“One thing Tabetha emphasizes in every session is how to deal with conflict because whenever you have a group of people working together you’re going to have conflict, guaranteed,” Randolph says. “I remember learning as an athlete ways to deal with that and to ask the question of am I going to bring the people down around me or try and react in a way that will help the team and ultimately grow us closer?”
Lipscomb’s Athletic Director, Philip Hutcheson, emphasized the unique and dynamic team environment that both the cross country and track programs at Lipscomb uphold.
“Our teams have men and women from over 40 states and a variety of backgrounds, but I believe that Coach Taylor and his staff do as good a job as any at recruiting for ‘fit’ within our team's culture,” says Hutcheson. “Once they get here, the staff is intentional about communicating expectations and standards clearly and promoting leadership and ownership from within. As I've told many before, it is easy to cheer for a team like that."
For the first time, Bill and Tabetha Taylor are offering their combined skills and resources to the greater Nashville area including coaches, business and church leaders and anyone else interested, this fall. They will host the first Elite Team Dynamics workshop that will educate leaders on strategies and exercises to help unify their teams and achieve their desired goals.
To find out more information on this workshop and about Elite Team Dynamics, click HERE.