Last week, I wrote about some of the reasons teams get stuck. Today, the balance of my top ten list. I hope one or more of the items will stimulate a thought or shine light on a blind spot that’s been holding your team back.
So, what if your problem is not: Lack of leadership, wrong players, unclear goals, lack of focus on performance, or poor decision-making practices, what else could be impeding the performance of your team? Here are a few more common maladies to consider.
6. Ineffective meetings – Meetings are the forums in which teams identify problems, create solutions, encourage each other, challenge each other, hold each other accountable, learn and grow together and build deep personal relationships. Effective meetings are essential to high performance.
7. Low accountability – The best teams provide accountability for each other. There is a sense of purpose that is bigger than the discomfort of holding another member of the team accountable. In less mature teams, accountability resides exclusively with the team leader. When the team steps up on this one, they’ve made a significant step towards high performance.
8. Lack of interdependence – Some groups aren’t teams at all – they work independently and simply combine their collective output and call it the work of the team. If members of the team see their work as “their work,” there is little incentive or felt need to become a team. The leader’s goal should be to create a “We’re all in this together” mentality. The team wins together or loses together. Work should be structured to foster collaboration and interdependence.
9. Poor problem solving discipline – Teams are at their best when they combine the creativity, experience, passion and expertise of its members to solve problems. Unfortunately, many teams have no process for solving problems. What masquerades as problem solving is shallow and insufficient. If a problem constantly reoccurs, it was never solved to begin with.
10. Lack of trust – There are many ways to attack this issue. My recommendation is to work diligently to build community within the team. Community is what separates good teams from great ones. A team that wants to not only get unstuck, but also excel, will have to create the environment in which members of the team have deep, authentic relationships with each other. They must really care about the others on the team as much as they care about the work itself.
What’s holding your team back?
