5 Strategies that Won't Fix Your Dysfunctional Team

Hi Enlightened Managers,

Today I want to share with you a short segment of the speech I gave yesterday to the Seattle Rotary on Healing Dysfunctional Teams.  When it comes to healing a team of it's issues, there are some common strategies that do not work.  How do I know?  I've tried them, and seen that they have only a temporary effect in most cases.

Five Strategies that Don't Work:

1. Fire the Troublemaker - If you select one person to fire because they are the "ringleader" or the most obvious choice, it may create some improvement, but it probably won't fix the dysfunction in the team.  It's fine to fire problem employees, but don't count on it to magically restore a team to health.  Besides, a new troublemaker usually arises.

2. Clear the Air - When we all sit in a circle and share our feelings to "clear the air" we'll feel better for a while, but the relief is usually temporary.

3. Ignore It - A popular strategy.  But are you ignoring unwanted turnover, losses in productivity, and employee disengagement?

4. The Doughnut Solution- Having Doughnuts (or Bagels) weekly in the break room won't help your team get along better. Nice try, but no.

5. Blame the CEO - "Until my boss changes, we can't change."  This is a cop out and we know it.  We are each responsible for our own behavior.

The best solution of course is to identify the real causes of dysfunction and target the behaviors causing the problems.  More on that another time.

Have you been part of a dysfunctional team turnaround?  If so, what do you feel worked or did not work?

Comments

[Simon King]

I was leading a project team that was dysfunctional - in that we weren't acting as a team with a lot of blaming going on and "that's not my job". We were still delivering but it was harder than it needed to be and we weren't delivering everything I knew we could. I had been promoted from within the team (and was friends with all of them) and I found it difficult to bring about the full change in my relationship with the team.

I then had a change of boss who became my mentor. She not only brought on my skills but gave me the courage and the focus that I needed. I found I had the confidence to ask them (firmly) to take on tasks that normally would have been 'someone else's job' and I felt I had the backing to support them shifting other work about to help with this.

This behaviour very soon had the team members themselves volunteering to help each other out when they were in danger of becoming a bottleneck to the project and our productivity, motivation and job satisfaction increased. Most importantly the project became more fun to work on, the team became more fun to be in and we didn't lose our friendships.

It's something that I'm really proud of.

[Cheri]

Simon,

You *should* be proud, that's a great accomplishment. I've seen countless times how one great mentor can step in and give a leader the courage and permission to change things for the better.

I had a boss once who did that for me. Sounds like you had one too. Now you get be that mentor for someone else in the future!

Awesome story. Thanks for sharing it with us. :)

Cheri