Your team is crucial to the success of your business. Managed well, a team can accomplish much more than an individual – working together and using each other’s skills and abilities to unleash creativity, embrace innovation and build a pathway to success.
But what happens if your team is underperforming? What are the warning signs, and how do you deal with problems that arise?
In this article, we look at six of the main reasons teams fail. If you spot any of them in your team, it’s time to act.
1. Lack of Trust
Trust is critical in creating a strong team. It’s the glue that holds it together and nourishes ideas. Without trust, there is inevitably a drop in knowledge sharing; barriers build–up, which lead to the withholding of information and ultimately a total breakdown in communication.
2. No Focus
Does your team have clear goals? Without stimulus and drivers, a team will soon encounter a stall in productivity if they have no sense of purpose.
Metaphorically flailing around without direction will undermine your team’s confidence and a sense of purpose. Without the catalyst of a clear focus on ambitions and goals, they will inevitably begin to look elsewhere to find their work-life motivation.
3. Insufficient Investment
Investment falls into two main areas – investment in collateral and investment in people. Both are relevant to the success of a team.
Firstly, lack of investment in equipment and procedures will see a failure to streamline and advance processes, which will result in your team having to take longer to do tasks that could be made easier and quicker with proper investment.
Secondly, failure to invest in the training, development, upskilling and lifelong learning of your team will mean they are unable to keep up to date with industry development and the skill requirements to do their current job. Unable to build skillsets and knowledge to allow them to progress in their career, they are more likely to suffer from stress, discontent, low morale and consequently lower productivity.
4. Internal conflict
This is always difficult for a leader to handle, but inevitably in your leadership role, you will come across conflict in teams. Sometimes this is generational; sometimes it’s personality clashes between individuals.
Multigenerational workforces are on the increase across all businesses, with Millennials, Baby Boomers and Generation X all having to rub along together when they have very different work styles and ethics. Not easy!
But with Generation Z entering the workplace soon, leaders need to get a handle on managing different age groups by getting to know what makes them tick and leading accordingly.
Additionally, personality clashes are part of working life; it’s impossible for everyone to get on brilliantly all of the time.
If sparks fly in your team, make sure you deal with it head–on, however difficult the conversation may be. Allowing it to fester will only see the situation worsen until it affects the entire team in terms of morale and productivity.
5. Lack of Commitment
Where leaders are vague in what they want from their team, it’s inevitable that their attitude will filter down to individuals who will feel unable to perform tasks, miss challenge in their job role and may, therefore, develop a disinterest in their job.
If leaders fail to listen to them, employees will begin to feel undervalued, leading to further morale drop and lack of commitment to the company. This can result in a high turnover for your business and a diminished and demoralised team left to hold the fort.
Additionally, vague role definitions with no clarity of allotted tasks, no guidance or leadership and constant changing of goalposts by management will see a negative response from your team who will fail to hit targets.
6. Failure to Embrace Workplace Wellbeing
Ignore company culture at your peril. Emotional intelligence is a big player in today’s business world, and your team will be looking for you to embrace it fully. This means being self-aware, empathetic and supportive to your staff. Great leaders encourage wellbeing in the workplace and work to establish high levels of diversity and inclusivity.
Failure to do so – well, it’s not rocket science.
A team with no diversity won’t enjoy the spark of innovation that different ideas can bring to life, will feel lack of empowerment from a sense of exclusion, be unhappy with a leader who shows no understanding, compassion or support, and are as a result more likely to suffer from anxiety, stress and even burn out as a result.
A failing team is almost always the result of poor management. All of the problems above can be addressed by good leadership.
A sense of accountability by leaders results in an awareness of their team’s needs. Listening to what your team wants will make them feel not only valued and therefore more committed to working for you but will enable you to gauge first-hand what motivates them and what they need in terms of support and clarification in order to do the best job possible.
Investing your time and commitment, as a leader, will result in an impassioned, enthusiastic team who are in an excellent position to progress and achieve company goals, keeping you ahead of competitors in the marketplace.
What Next?
Here at Zestfor, we now offer programmes to help you to optimise your leadership skills and personal development and get the best out of your team. If you would like to find out more, then send a quick email here.
Until next time,
Julia
Can We Help?
Zestfor specialises in developing Training programmes and resources scientifically tailored for technical markets – including Pharmaceutical, IT, and Life Sciences.
Our blend of in-classroom, online, and virtual live-stream delivery methods will engage and assure even the most introverted team members from the first meeting – whether face-to-face or virtually. To have a brief chat, call us on 0845 548 0833. Alternatively, please email our team here.
