Communicate courageously
A lot of dysfunctions in teams arise because of a lack of courageous communication.
Done poorly, bad communication has two extremes, and all of us likely have seen this. At one end of the spectrum is is lack of courage to speak the truth: You paper over the difficult conversation and hope the matter will resolve itself. And it rarely does. Avoiding the difficult conversation enables bad behavior or process to grow further.
At the other end of the spectrum is the bully. The bully is loud and arrogant. One of the worst displays of this was at an offsite I attended once. At the end, the leader said ‘some of you did not speak today. you will not be invited to the next offsite’. This leader was the problem, not the people who did not speak up. He did not invite participation. He did not set an expectation that everyone needs to speak (as opposed to having a proxy speak for them). He was a bully.
Be neither. You have to address the difficult problems head on — in a respectful way. Not doing so will make the problem worse, and often, it will get to a point where someone will lose their cool or quit. Head off the hard problems by being willing to share feedback. And set an expectation that you welcome feedback. When you do get feedback, do not react to it. Think it over and be measured in your response.
