At times you'll work with ineffective or less effective teams and that can be very frustrating. You may also be an ineffective member of a team now and then? How do we create the kind of teams that are effective, reliable, and responsible?
If you've worked on an effective team of any kind, you know how awesome that is. Effective teams communicate well, play on each other's strengths, share a common mission, and work seemlessly to get achieve their common goals. These effective teams are also compassionate and empathetic towards one another--they know the challenges each team member faces when it comes to doing the job well, and they are there to help out with that.
Ineffective or less effective teams waste a lot of time with inefficient, disorganized communication, lack of a common mission, little coordination, and lack of compassion, care, empathy, and support for one another.
Ineffective teams also often suffer from a lack of honesty. I remember once a long time ago when I worked on a team like that--what I thought was true, was not true since the team did not have an ethic of honest communication and share. In the end, the team was a disaster due to this dishonesty.
So what do you do when you work with an ineffective team?
First, analyze your role on the team? How can you be a more effective member of the team? What can you do to support greater success with the team, and how can you update your expectations for what the team can do given the team's limitations.
Next, perhaps, create or join new teams to get the job done. There may be other groups that can support your efforts, goals, and mission. Also, streamline your focus. Your expectations may be too great.
Effective teams provide amazing strength to any initiative or endeavor, but effective teams don't always exist, and that's when you have to think and act differently to get the job done. Onward.