Leading a dysfunctional team should be every Leaders worst nightmare, however many Leaders are doing so unknowingly, lacking the knowledge and tools to identify what dysfunction even looks like, and harder yet, identifying it's root causes.
As written in her article 'How to build success teams', Executive Leadership & Team Coach Dagmara Asbreuk identifies a number of symptoms present in team dysfunction.
From misalignment and inefficiency, blame culture and high attrition, dysfunctional teams many present with a few or many of these symptoms. Although these symptoms arise as the result of different processes, behavioural and strategic issues within an organisation, they all trace back to the root of Leadership.
Ultimately your Leadership has the power to cause or overcome team dysfunction. Without their accountability & involvement in rectifying dysfunction, limited progress is possible.
Building effective and well connected teams begins with awareness and accountability, at all levels. As Leaders, it's critical we view ourselves as part of the problem and the solution, not above or beside them. This empowers us as organisations and Leaders to truly co-create cultures build around mutual respect, value creation and inclusion.
Highlighted by Dagmara in her aforementioned article, to overcome dysfunction and build successful teams that thrive, Leaders need both a mindset capable of change and a strategic focus on developing the following:
Creating a psychologically safe workplace environment
Building strong relationships in implicit trust
Ability to steer alignment at all levels
Utilisation of diversity through cultural and strategic diversity, equity & inclusion policy.
Conscious effort to capitalise on individual employee strengths
Holding productive conflict and space for challenging status quo
Driving affective commitment and personal accountability
Unleashing potential and growing talent capacity
With the right awareness, knowledge and tools Leaders have the capacity to overcome dysfunction and drive change to build connected and effective organisational teams.
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