6 Signs of Team Dysfunction. Leader’s Choice – to Diagnose or Deny.
During a recent visit, my physician told me that the two cancers men need to worry about most are colon and prostate. This discussion took place during a follow-up appointment from my annual physical to check into a higher than normal PSA test result and just a few days before my routine colonoscopy.
The reason for cancer screening is to discover problems while they are still in the early stages and can be treated. Often, people will notice suspicious medical symptoms but wait until it is too late to have them checked. The result, tragically, is that the cancer is not discovered until it is difficult or impossible to treat.
The same dynamic occurs with leaders and their teams. Teams show symptoms of dysfunction, but the leader ignores them, hoping they will magically go away or get fixed on their own. Do any of these signs sound familiar?
- On-going conflict between members
- The team is unable to make important decisions on time
- Decisions that do get made get revisited and “relitigated”
- Members show a lack of involvement in meetings
- Members stop showing up to meetings
- You notice meetings taking place behind closed doors after meetings
Mark Twain once famously remarked: “Denial is not a river in Egypt.” In other words, pretending something doesn’t exist won’t make it go away.
This is true for your executive team as well. The way to resolve team challenges is to face them, identify the root causes, and work together as a team to fix whatever is wrong.
Fortunately, The Bailey Group has developed a tool we call “Ignition” to help you to diagnose and act when your team needs a “tune up”. Through Ignition, we work with leaders and their teams to objectively diagnose the causes of conflict, slow decision making and other problems, reach alignment on a plan for solving them, and provide actionable solutions to get the team “back on track”.
Are you and your team still acting as if “Denial is a river in Egypt”? If so, send me an email and I’d be happy to talk about how to efficiently and effectively diagnose and resolve the causes of your team’s challenges.
