Top 5 Elements of an Unhealthy Team

Successful team leadership requires possessing the skills necessary to recognize when your team is unhealthy. When a team is unhealthy, they’re less productive and less efficient. It’s devastating to business owners, but it’s certainly not a sign the entire corporation needs to be overhauled. Sometimes it means nothing more than gathering those in team leadership positions together for a retreat. A lunch, a meeting, a conference, or anything in between to help build team spirit, motivate leaders, and promote positive team relationships can cultivate a positive change in the workplace. If you’re worried your team is unhealthy and in need of a space for leadership training in an intimate but upscale setting, get to know the five elements of an unhealthy team.

1) Time Management is Nonexistent

If a team is working well together, they’re using great time management skills. When your team is not working well together, it might be due to a lack of time management. It’s essential to integrate this skill into any project and on any team to boost morale. Time management is more than just getting things done by a certain time. It’s also working hard to ensure everyone on the team is using their time well and efficiently.

When even one member of any team fails to practice time management skills, it throws the rest of the team off their own balance. They cannot work well if they’re picking up the slack being issued by one member of the team. This leads to resentment, poor attitudes, and the inability to properly work in a productive manner.

2) Team Members are Not Rewarded for Their Great Work

Children who are recognized and rewarded for their good behavior more than chastised for their poor behavior tend to have an easier time behaving appropriately. They love the positive reinforcement, and they love that feeling they get when someone recognizes a job well done. Adults are no different. If your team lacks a reward program for those who excel at their job, there’s a problem with the leadership on the team.

Recognizing those on the team for their outstanding efforts makes them want to work harder to feel that way again, and it can motivate everyone else on the team to do the same. If you’re looking for an effective way to reward team members for a job well done, a personalized retreat in building great leadership skills could be the answer to your problems.

3) Teamwork is Nonexistent

Teamwork makes the dream work. It’s a cliché saying, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Teamwork is what helps a team succeed. If everyone is on the same page, they know their roles, and they’re willing to lend a helping hand when needed, it makes a team work so much more efficiently. For example, if one person on the team is out with the flu, other people on the team will take on bits and piece of their sick teammate’s role while he or she recovers. This allows the job to still get done, it helps the missing team member, and no one falls behind.

That teammate will do the same for another team member, and that’s how it works. If everyone ignores the missing team member’s absence, it’s only going to cause resentment and put everyone further behind. A team is like a family. You pick up the pieces when someone is in need, and you work together to make sure it all flows well.

4) Trust is Absent

Your team should trust one another implicitly. If there is a lack of trust on a team, it shows. Without trust, no one can work well together. If your team doesn’t work well together because trust is absent, it helps to bring them together for some team-building activities. With 25-landscaped acres and enough room for up to 100 team members, this retreat location is perfect for trust exercises. There are options available for everyone in every line of work. Promoting teamwork with trust is one thing you can help your team do to grow and flourish.

5) Attitudes and Outlooks are Poor

One of the most common elements of an unhealthy team is poor attitudes. Unfortunately, sometimes a bad attitude is a very personal thing people cannot willingly or easily change. Other times it’s a result of being around someone with a negative attitude. Your job as a team leader is to find out what the situation looks like. Is there someone on the team with a perpetually bad attitude who brings everyone else down?

Is there someone who needs to have their attitude and outlook adjusted, or do they simply not fit well into the team? Sometimes this is a fixable situation, and sometimes it’s nothing more than poor placement. Removing someone from a team who brings everyone down can change the face of the game if the player refuses to play by the rules.

Working as a healthy team takes work, it takes dedication, and it takes effort on behalf of everyone on the team. One of the easiest ways to ensure people work well together is to periodically bring them together for recognition, for team building activities, and for leadership training. An effective leader can change the face of an entire group, and even natural-born leaders are able to learn a thing or two from leadership training. Finding the perfect venue for this type of training, recognition lunch or dinner, or even overnight retreat is imperative.

Bringing people together to learn about the importance of effective team relationships is imperative, and it’s something that can only help your team grow. A healthy team is more productive and efficient, and that’s the kind of thing that helps a business grow. Promoting growth regularly is a lot like positive reinforcement. The moment even one person on your team assumes they’ve got nothing else to learn is the moment your team takes a turn for the unhealthy.