Judging your team by its problems

The problems might give insight into how you are doing and actions to take. Photo Karla Hernandez on Unsplash

Here in Sydney, we are in the middle of a two week lockdown...in the middle of the school holidays. It has caused frustration, challenges and disruption to many people. It also got me thinking about how we might be able to use the friction points in our team as a proxy for assessing how we are operating.

In the context of this lockdown, for most people it is leading to some combination of frustration, inconvenience and extra logistical challenges. These are real problems. They are also better problems than our friends in Melbourne faced last year through a four month lockdown last year. The problems of any lockdown in a developed country are significant and significantly less than the problems faced right now in many developing nations where COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc with .

I know which problems I'd rather be dealing with.

It's all relative. I am not denying that the challenges and frustrations felt by all of us are real - nor am I intending to be insensitive. These problems are all real and legitimate. I am suggesting that reframing those challenges from a different perspective can be useful.

In terms of teams, the problems that you are experiencing can give you insight into how your team is operating - and where to focus your efforts.

Here's what I mean...

You can judge how your team is going based on the things that are identified as a problem.

In toxic team environments, the problems are of a nature where the team is causing damage (to itself and others) through the way it is working together (or not working together as the case may be). If these are the problems, focus on harm minimisation first - stop things getting worse.

In dysfunctional teams, the problems tend to mean that no real progress is being made on meaningful work - these teams are not working on the right things. Focus here on reducing the friction points within the team - stop the team getting in each other's way.

In functional teams, the challenges experienced typically are around how to move beyond doing good work that ticks boxes to doing great work. Focus here on effectiveness over efficiency - to become greater than the sum of its parts.

In high performance team environments, the challenges are around meeting the high standards that are expected of them (by themselves and others) as well as how to maintain and develop their way of working. Focus here on growth for the team - both personal and collective.

Every team's got problems. The problems your team is experiencing might give you some insight into how you are doing and the actions to take.

Here are a couple of questions for you to consider this week:

1. What are the problems that your team are currently facing?

2. Do these problems indicate how your team is performing at the moment?

3. Might these problems give guidance to the work that you need to do?