We work with many teams from both a recruitment and HR Management perspective.  It’s easy to spot the teams that are succeeding – they have positive relationships, they trust each other and have an innate understanding of the business goals and how their roles contribute to success.

The teams that aren’t succeeding… and dare we say the ‘f’ word – ‘failing’?  Well, we can spot that too.  Here are 5 reasons that teams fail, how you can prevent it and develop the building blocks in your business for your employees to thrive.

Why teams fail

Failure can be a positive thing as it provides employees with a contextual reference of their growth.  It’s probably not so great for the business overall as it means the business isn’t growing as it should.  Teams fail due to a lack of something (trust, training, clarity) which means that as business leaders, you can change the dial and implement strategies to ‘turn the ship around’.  Failure can be largely grouped into the following 5 categories:

Environmental reasons

Environmental reasons occur when a team isn’t ‘set up for success’ and can include a lack of physical resources for employees to do their jobs.  It could also cover impacts such as employees working in different areas or remote working.  If this is the case, it’s important that the business implements strategies to build a positive team culture.  Other environmental reasons can include a lack of recognition of effort.

Goals

If a team isn’t involved in developing business goals, they won’t be as clear to them.  It’s that simple.  Many teams fail because they don’t understand where the business is headed and how it is planning on meeting it’s goals.

Roles

If your employees don’t understand how their roles contribute to the overall success of the business, you’ve lost them already.  Role ambiguity can cause problems between staff members, particularly if the leadership of the group is unclear (and you may have employees assuming leadership positions when they shouldn’t).  Additionally, if employees don’t completely understand their roles, there is less accountability, engagement  and commitment.

Processes

Have you ever worked in a business with such clearly defined processes that you have to become ‘best friends’ with someone within the organisation just in order to get things done?  Lack of proper processes can be huge time wasters for an organisation but also mean that people are unable to do their job to the best of their ability.  It’s also why many people choose to leave organisations.

Relationships

When conflicts aren’t properly addressed within a team, employees often don’t wish to be acknowledged as a team (but instead as individuals).  It’s important that relationship issues are addressed as it’s the first building block to building trust.

If your team requires support to increase success, speak to the HR Consulting team at Flexi Personnel.

Next time, we’ll discuss the key steps to success for your team.