Unhealthy or unproductive relationships with your
co-workers can cause great stress, as can working within a dysfunctional
team. There are ways to resolve some of the issues that can make
teamwork so frustrating.
Consider Team Design and Support
Many of us spend a large
part of our time working with the same group of people. When we like
these people and enjoy working as part of the team, our work can be very
satisfying and we can achieve a great deal. However, if we find our
co-workers difficult to deal with and if our teamwork is plagued with
conflict, work can become stressful and unpleasant. Problems with
working relationships can be a symptom of poor team design or of weak
team support and will need to be investigated.
Provide Skills and Resources
A team needs the skills
necessary to achieve its goals, as well as access to such resources as
information, funding, time, coaching, and support. While we all need to
improvise occasionally, it can be intensely frustrating and stressful to
be set challenging goals and not have the means to achieve them.
When individual team members support each other success is almost guaranteed.
Check Team Size
Up to a point, the bigger a
team is, the more likely it is to achieve its goals, but size has its
disadvantages, too. If your team is large, there are questions you
should be asking:
Are you having to spend too much time co-ordinating your activities
with other team members in order to produce a coherent team product?
Are you and your co-workers fully occupied on the team task?
Are less-committed team members shirking some of their
responsibilities and getting a free ride on the back of other people’s
efforts?
All of these issues can
lead to frustration and stress. If, as a manager, you’re having these
problems with your team, then you may need to split the team into
smaller sub-teams and move some of your best people into supervisory
roles.
Reward Appropriately
NOTE
Badly aligned reward systems can undermine team spirit
In a well-designed team, the
reward systems are correctly aligned. It is unlikely that a team will
function well if bonuses are given to people who succeed at the expense
of other team members. If good team behaviour is important to an
organization’s success, then rewards must reflect this. If your
organization is motivating people to behave badly, make sure that you
raise this as an issue.
Tip
Some jobs need star performers, and they need to be
rewarded appropriately. If possible, do this in a way that doesn’t
promote jealousy.
Brief the Team
Once the team has been
properly designed and brought together, team members need to be briefed
clearly so that they know its purpose, are aware of what they can and
can’t do, and understand what has to be delivered. This briefing needs
to be done carefully if your team is to realize its full potential.
Knowing its objectives, the team needs to know what its boundaries are –
what it can do and what it cannot do. For example, it needs to know:
If it can bring more people on to the team
How far it can change standard working methods
What power it has to change things outside the team.
A team that does not know
its boundaries risks, at one extreme, failing to achieve its potential
and, at the other extreme, causing political problems and turf wars. If
you don’t know what the objectives and boundaries are, make sure you
ask. If you’re a team leader and you haven’t explained these things,
make sure you do.
Good teamwork can give you an advantage over apparently stronger opponents and will help you achieve your goals.
Get Coaching
NOTE
A team needs to know both its objectives and its limits
With good team design and
clear briefing, it should be possible to make a good start, but make
sure you get coaching, and give it where appropriate. Coaching is one of
the most useful and effective management tools and can be used to turn a
situation around completely, so that people whose performance was
compromised by the levels of stress they were experiencing can become
enthusiastic members of the team. Coaching can be motivational, helping
people to commit to objectives. It can be educational, helping people to
understand how to achieve goals, or helping them to develop essential
skills. Coaching can also focus on the team itself, helping individuals
to work together effectively.
Tip
Good coaching can reduce workplace stress by
providing problem-solving, team-building, and improved work management
skills.
Think Smart
Teamwork is about communication. If you’re the team
leader, make sure you give regular feedback. If you’re a team member and
are not getting feedback from your team leader, make sure you ask for
it.
Team members need
good feedback on their results. Where problems arise, they need to know
about these so that they can correct related behaviour. They also need
to be told when results are good; this gives them job satisfaction,
increases their self-confidence, and improves the team spirit.
