Building a team is one of the most challenging tasks of a leader. Like building a business, creating a good team is a really tough endeavor that every leader must take upon.
One of the most frustrating things you can experience as a leader is to continuously try, but experience difficulties and obstacles in human relationships continuously.
Make no mistake, human relationships are everything in teams. After all, that's what teams are: people driving for a common goal.
There are several evident barriers to team success that are common to most teams; let me describe some of them. Hopefully, if you're struggling with managing your team, you can identify with some of these issues and realize it's a problem.
Three Barriers to Building a Team
1. Poor leadership
Everything flows from leadership. And when there's a problem in the team, usually, it's the leader's fault. Either he's not giving enough direction to his team, or he's not communicating enough.
Remember, when there is a problem with the team, look to yourself first. Do you think you've got enough instructions for your team to fully understand what you're telling them? Are you committed to your goals, and it came out through a speech that you save them?
If you're not sure, you can always ask someone in the team for feedback about yourself. Be ready for criticism; after all, you're asking so that you can improve.
2. Poor Communication
Communication is the key of life; and more so in teams. You need to have a lot of communication among the team members, and the team members with you.
With communication, you can eliminate a lot of misunderstandings, ambiguity and hence possible conflict from the team. A team with bad communication often has a lot of mistrust, politics and backstabbing. Everything is under the table, because nothing is bought up the table.
This often causes the dynamics to breakdown. Because information is not shared openly or constantly, the team can not operate at its full potential.
3. Poor Team Dynamics
Teams can fail because some people just can not work with others. For example, if you have two extremely opinionated team members in the team, you'll be seeing conflict all day. Also, if you have team members that are 'yes' men; people that are just passive and wait for orders, you will not see a lot of participation and open discussion in the team.
The thing is that, you must find the right mix of individuals to make a team; not just in terms of personalities, but also in terms of skills and abilities.
Overcoming these barriers are not just a simple task. I have learned from experience that it takes time to break any team through these barriers. Know them, and start dealing with them one at a time.