No one intentionally sets out to create unhealthy team environments, but I’ve seen it done so many times. There are things which injure the health of a team.
Perhaps understanding how an unhealthy environment develops can help us avoid them. Just as with a healthy team environment, creating an unhealthy team environment often happens – though perhaps unintentional – by things we do as leaders.
Give yourself a point beside each one of these true of your team currently.
10 ways we create unhealthy team environments:
1. Make people question their role or performance on the team. We have no system of practice of follow up with people on their work.
2. Avoid all conflict. We are either passive or conveniently absent when it occurs.
3. Pretend things are okay when they are not. Sometimes we even exaggerate the positives so we can avoid the negatives.
4. Add rules which impact everyone, rather than dealing with the real issue – which often involves one person.
5. Never applaud success or stop to celebrate wins. Instead, we only critique what isn’t working.
6. Keep people wondering what the leader is really thinking. We don’t create a culture where people can ask questions nor have regular forums for the leader to unpack what’s on his or her mind.
7. We allow a few small – often negative – voices to guide our decision-making.
8. We hold mistakes against people rather than using their mistakes as a learning experience to make them and the team better.
9. We limit the control of decisions made to a few people – even worse – only the leader.
10. Our team has no clear purpose, no planned goals and objectives, and no follow up system of accountability.
How many “points” did you score?
These points are spot on. Thanks for sharing.