Reasons Teams Fracture
Posted on April 29, 2012 by Liz Cosline, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
Teams can start to fall apart or fracture if not maintained.
There are symptoms that teams are beginning to not function well even if they have in the past. These manifest in different ways. The most obvious are that more absences begin to happen along with people being late. But more will occur that has to do with attitude. Employees will seem to lose energy with everything taking longer or worse a feeling that employees don’t care as much. I personally don’t think that employees don’t care but instead are upset with a situation.
This sometimes comes from changes in the company that were not communicated well that make the employees nervous. It can come from cut backs or budget cuts. It can however come from a feeling of not being listened to and ideas from the employees never being used. It can occur when employees to not feel like management is involved in the daily operation. If employees are never praised and only hear from management when something goes wrong it will take little time to have moral go down.
What about the goals of the team and company? Do the employees know what these are? What are the goals the team is working towards? Just like any human being if people are doing the same things over and over without being challenged boredom has a way of creeping in. This can also cause a slower attitude or a feeling that nothing ever changes.
Teams can fracture quickly if there is not respect for each and every member of the team. This is extremely important and should be emphasized. Each person should be expected to help one another, cheer each other on, and be a part of the solutions that make the team even better.
Any time a team fractures even a little the customer is the one that pays. Attitudes affect the way that employees deal with customers. The team takes care of the customers and needs to be sharp and up in thinking because the customer just wants the product or service. A team will fracture as soon as the people on it think they are not being considered or cared about.
