Learning Objectives
- Recognize common barriers to effective teams.
- Learn how to address some of the most common barriers and
maintain group effectiveness.
Problems can arise in any team that will hurt the team’s
effectiveness. Here are some common problems faced by teams and how
to deal with them.
Common Problems Faced by Teams
Challenges of Knowing Where to Begin
At the start of a project, team members may be at a loss as to
how to begin. Also, they may have reached the end of a task but are
unable to move on to the next step or put the task to rest.
Floundering often results from a lack of clear goals, so the remedy
is to go back to the team’s mission or plan and make sure that it
is clear to everyone. Team leaders can help move the team past
floundering by asking, “What is holding us up? Do we need more
data? Do we need assurances or support? Does anyone feel that we’ve
missed something important?”
Dominating Team Members
Some team members may have a dominating personality that
encroaches on the participation or air time of others. This
overbearing behavior may hurt the team morale or the momentum of
the team. A good way to overcome this barrier is to design a team
evaluation to include a “balance of participation” in meetings.
Knowing that fair and equitable participation by all will affect
the team’s performance evaluation will help team members limit
domination by one member and encourage participation from all
members, even shy or reluctant ones. Team members can say, “We’ve
heard from Mary on this issue, so let’s hear from others about
their ideas.”
Research shows that teams deal with poor performers in different
ways, depending on members’ perceptions of the reasons for poor
performance (Jackson & LePine, 2003). In situations in which
the poor performer is perceived as lacking in ability, teams are
more likely to train the member. When members perceive the
individual as simply being low on motivation, they are more likely
to try to motivate or reject the poor performer. Keep in mind that
justice is an important part of keeping individuals working hard
for the team (Colquitt, 2004). Be sure that poor performers are
dealt with in a way that is deemed fair by all the team
members.
Poorly Managed Team Conflict
Disagreements among team members are normal and should be
expected. Healthy teams raise issues and discuss differing points
of view, because that will ultimately help the team reach stronger,
more well-reasoned decisions. Unfortunately, sometimes
disagreements arise owing to personality issues or feuds that
predated a team’s formation. Ideally, teams should be designed to
avoid bringing adversaries together on the same team. If that is
not possible, the next best solution is to have adversaries discuss
their issues privately, so the team’s progress is not disrupted.
The team leader or other team member can offer to facilitate the
discussion. One way to make a discussion between conflicting
parties meaningful is to form a behavioral contract between the two
parties. That is, if one party agrees to do X, then the other will
agree to do Y (Scholtes, 1988).
Key Takeaways
Barriers to effective teams include the challenges of knowing
where to begin, dominating team members, the poor performance of
team members, and poorly managed team conflict.
Exercises
- How could some of the things discussed in “Understanding Team
Design Characteristics” help to avoid the common barriers to team
effectiveness?
- Have you ever been involved in a team where dominating team
members hurt the team’s performance? Share what happened and how
the team dealt with this.
References
Colquitt, J. A. (2004). Does the justice of the one interact
with the justice of the many? Reactions to procedural justice in
teams. Journal of Applied Psychology,
89, 633–646.
Jackson, C. L., & LePine, J. A. (2003). Peer responses to a
team’s weakest link: A test and extension of LePine and Van Dyne’s
model. Journal of Applied Psychology,
88, 459–475.
Scholtes, P. (1988). The team
handbook. Madison, WI: Joiner Associates.