Page 163 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

150B RE-ENGAGE

and talents just isn’t right. There will always be this unpredictable ele-
ment to assembling a team of people.

: OBSTACLES TO EFFECTIVE TEAMWORK

We detected the following obstacles to effective teamwork among the
less positive statements:

: Failing to speak honestly and directly with each other, indi-
cating the absence of trust.
: Team members are not willing to be genuinely open with
one another about their mistakes and weaknesses—in other
words, not exhibiting the vulnerability required to build a
foundation for trust to develop.
: Covering ill will with surface amiability indicates a fear
of conflict. This fear can incapacitate teams from engaging
in passionate debate of ideas. Instead, team members “make
nice” and withhold their real opinions, preventing the team
from moving through the conflict stage of natural team
growth and development.
: Lack of commitment to team goals and objectives is appar-
ent. True commitment to team goals and decisions is dif-
ficult to muster when team members cannot trust each other
enough to speak openly and honestly.
: Hiding personal and political agendas to achieve one’s self-
ish goals or gain advantage indicates that team members are
not focused on achieving collective results.
: A feeling of entitlement on the part of some team members
to coast, put forth less effort, and be indifferent to custom-
ers often results in resentment and possible burnout among
the more productive and engaged team members. These
symptoms signal that team members lack a sense of mutual
accountability.