Ineffective team? It happens…
Here’s the five lessons I learned on how to react effectively to an ineffective team.
I was talking to a teammate and friend just yesterday, and she was telling me she’s been lucky to never have worked with a poor team. She said she always fears recruiters asking about negative experiences in teams, because she’s never had one!
I laughed and told her that was me before, but that it had finally happened some months ago and somehow I was very fascinated — now I could say I’d learned from it!
So, since my first Medium post was about the importance of a good team, I decided my second post should be about learning from the opposite. Here’s the five lessons I learned on how to react effectively to an ineffective team.
- Understand your impact
All team members are affected from an unhealthy team, whether you notice or not. Even if they’re not the ones “causing” the problem or directly suffering from it, any issue going on might affect their work, their ability to communicate, and ultimately their happiness. Understand the impact of your actions when working with a team. By taking the space from someone else, you might not be letting your teammates speak up or move freely in the environment.
2. Who’s right and who’s wrong isn’t important
At least not in a team. You’re all coming up with a same deliverable anyway, and on your way there, you might run into a couple or many errors. It’s unproductive to spend time pointing fingers or even taking the time to say “that’s what I’ve been saying.” It doesn’t matter who said it, you’re all a team. Think about the things you say and what’s your intention behind saying them.
3. Have an agenda.
This one I think is very important, especially if you’ve already realized the team doesn’t work efficiently. If you are feeling meetings tend to stray away from the main topic, or people seem uninterested in engaging or following, an agenda will at least set the minimum expectations for the meeting. Who knows? Maybe people will feel more participatory that day. But it definitely beats a “what should we talk about today?”
4. Check in with everyone
Personally, I think my biggest problem with this particular team was feeling only one member was calling the shots, even with many other ideas on board. I think this made me feel it wasn’t a safe space or team to work with. It’s good to check in with teammates, giving them the space to talk if they prefer. Especially if you’ve been talking for a while — Why should they be listening to you? Or, what makes what you’re saying more important than what anyone else is saying? Answer: it isn’t. So make sure you ask what everyone thinks after you’re done talking.
5. Be honest and open. If you feel something isn’t working, say so.
When you’re working in a team, it’s important to allow yourself to ask questions and to be wrong. If making sure you are perceived as always being right and superior is important to you, you are creating unhealthy competition and also discouraging other teammates from being wrong. Be honest and willing to admit when you don’t know things. Someone else might be good at something you’re not, and that’s what a team is all about.
I had a meeting once where me and a teammate got into an unproductive conversation discussing the needs of the user. After two hours of discussion, it was clear that we had two very distinct opinions. The rest of the team seemed to understand my position, but I got hung up on trying to make this specific teammate understand me. At the end, I was in the wrong for even entertaining a problem for so long, and taking the space from the rest of my teammates to talk. I felt very bad about this meeting — it had gotten the worse of me. I realized I got hung up on wanting others to perceive me as being right.
I finally had to put these feelings aside, and I was honest with my team. I asked everyone how they felt about the meeting we’d just had — I told them I felt pretty bad about it, they said the same. Breaking that barrier and acknowledging my mistakes definitely created more space for us to communicate honestly.
Great Team > Great Deliverable.
Funnily enough we still got a good deliverable from this project, but sadly I can’t say I made good teammates from the experience. If you ask me, I’d rather have the latter any day.
A team that works well together eventually finds its balance. A team that doesn’t get along might start off right due to everyone’s individual skills, but in the long-term: recipe for disaster.
Ultimately, not all teams can become perfect, but good communication can make the experience better for everyone involved. At the end of the day, you can learn from both the positive and the negative, and take it with you on your next opportunity.
