Team Dynamics

...

How would you handle the issues you have identified?

If one of the team members has adopted behaviors that affect the group negatively, such as in the free riding example above, the leader needs to act quickly to correct the behavior and not let issues linger. I provided feedback to show the team member the impact of his actions and encouraged him to reflect on how he could change his behavior. I needed to address the negative behavior to send the message to the team that I was in control and able to deal effectively with conflict. Ultimately, that team member decided to leave the team because he could not hold himself to the higher standard that the team required.

A major way to handle issues is to break down barriers. As the leader for the IT analyst team, I made sure that we had team building activities often. We would do such activities as team lunches, offsite team outings, happy hours, etc. Additionally, I strived to create a safe environment, where all team members felt they could share ideas and options without fear of reprisal.

To overcome the issues mentioned above about negative perceptions, I had meetings with my peers who managed the second and third tier support teams to find areas where my team could be trained to take on additional responsibility. We had intentional training sessions for the team to be able to learn to use some tools which would allow them to have a greater level of responsibility when troubleshooting issues for employees. This ended up taking off quite a support load from the tier 2 and 3 teams so they could focus more on development and less on support. It was a win-win situation because my team felt more empowered as well and were more encouraged to offer solutions for future issues.