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When relationships within your team are strained, this can have a range of knock-on effects. Incidences of conflict will tend to rise, while morale and productivity will dip. So what can you do to help team members to get on better and ensure that your team performs to the best of its ability? The following guide offers practical pointers to help you create a more positive and productive working atmosphere.
When to Use This Guide
Signs that team relationships are strained, and team members are not working together as effectively as they should be may include some or all of the following:
- There isn’t much communication between members of the team and team meetings can be a bit of a battleground.
- Rather than a feeling of unity, the team has formed cliques.
- There is little support between team members. They tend not to share skills, resources and knowledge with each other, or volunteer to help others if they have some spare capacity.
- There is evidence of division or competition between work groups.
- Team members are not generally tolerant of each other.
- Members of the team tend not to confront frustrations directly, openly, honestly and assertively; instead they will often vent their views indirectly, sometimes with other colleagues.
- There is often friction between team members. This is not always openly addressed and bad feeling can take some time to clear up.
- Team members can be defensive and will sometimes blame colleagues if standards or deadlines are not met.
Suggestions
Whether this is your first attempt at dealing with the issue, or whether you have been grappling with it for some time, the following tips can help you to encourage better working relationships within your team. Key aspects to consider here are respect, participation and sharing, openness, the team’s physical environment and personal reflection.
Respect
- As a starting point, assess the climate in the team. Pinpoint where the tension lies. You may already have observed the likely causes of tension first hand. But looking back through any 360 feedback forms, your notes from team meetings or team members’ performance reviews may also offer up important clues.
- Set up a meeting with your team. Explain that you are keen to encourage better ways of working together. Ask team members to think about how you can all create a more positive and productive atmosphere. You may wish to establish values and/or ground rules for behavior as part of this session. This could even be done as part of an away day. Sometimes a neutral environment can help team members to set some of their differences aside.
- During performance reviews, make reference to these values or ground rules and give individuals specific feedback on how well you feel they are upholding them. You may even wish to include an objective in individual performance agreements specifically on teamworking.
- Help team members to recognize the value of working together by sharing knowledge and making the most of each others’ strengths. Arranging a teambuilding day can help to encourage collaborative working and bring individual and team strengths to the fore.
Participation and Sharing
- Encourage team members to reflect on their contribution to the team. This will help them to understand the importance of their role, identify their teamworking strengths and weaknesses, and get them to think about what else they have to offer.
- Let team members know how much their information, skills and knowledge are valued and encourage them to share this with others. Selecting different team members in turn to take the lead on a new project is one way of doing this.
- Think carefully about how to run team meetings so that active participation and ownership become the norm. Suggestions might include: rotating the chairperson’s role; running team exercises; splitting team members into pairs or small groups to brainstorm ideas then present back in the main group; and giving candid feedback.
- Pair up team members or put them in small groups to work on their day-to-day tasks or larger projects together. Praise their achievements and point out how working together as a team helped them to get things done.
Openness
- Promote open communication within the team. Encourage team members to air their thoughts openly, honestly and in a positive and constructive manner. When having team discussions, team members with strong personalities may try to dominate. It is important, therefore, to actively encourage input from all members of the team. A simple question such as ‘And what do you think about this?’ may be all that it takes to elicit the required response from more reserved members of the team.
- Encourage team members to deal with any tension or conflict tactfully but honestly. Issues should be raised promptly, rather than letting them linger and build up under the surface. If you notice any tension yourself, investigate it and raise it swiftly with the individuals concerned to help them to deal with it positively and constructively. You may wish to ask for conflict management training to help you to facilitate this.
- Lead by example. Always be open, honest, frank, tolerant and show respect with team members.
Physical Factors
- When team relations are strained, it is important to question whether it is the structure of the team that is causing problems. What changes could you make to improve things? Would appointing team leaders help? Or perhaps the physical layout of the work environment is an issue. For example, if some members of the team need peace and quiet to work, consider moving their desks together in a quieter area of the office.
Personal Reflection
- Ask for feedback from team members, peers and your manager about your own leadership style. How does this influence the relationships and atmosphere in your team? Seeking specific input from your manager at your performance review, or through participating in a 360 degree feedback exercise can help you to elicit this information.
- Find a mentor. What teams have you worked with that stand out as having particularly good relationships? Ask the team leader how this is achieved. They may be able to give you some ideas about how you could improve relationships in your own team.
