As a business leader, what is your strategy for creating team unity?
Overcoming this current crisis requires four elements: margin improvement, revenue growth, optionality, and the right leadership to create team unity. I wrote about this in a previous post, here. You see, our gateway to the future depends on our organizational resilience, and organizational resilience depends on great teams.
A manager’s first step to unite a team is to assess and arrest dysfunctional behaviors and patterns. Dysfunction can take the form of selfishness, arrogance, bullying, manipulation, callousness, and/or control. Savvy managers are careful not to overlook their star player’s transgressions.
Sure, they may achieve spectacular results, but when they are disrespectful and harsh with others, they create enemies. You don’t have to look far to see how those who bend the rules and push the limits of ethics and relationships actually promote destructiveness.
Eliminate Toxicity for Team Unity
To eliminate toxicity within your team, start with the following steps:
- Set an expectation that change is possible and set realistic goals.
- Model personal accountability and abandon blame-shifting, finger-pointing and the use of labels. Encourage all employees to identify their contribution to conflict or problems and participate in finding real solutions.
- Establish codes of conduct that discourage the use of negative language.
- Offer training, coaching, and performance reviews weighted for positive leadership and emotional/social intelligence.
- Recognize small wins to encourage appreciative communication.
- Establish an early detection and intervention process for dysfunctional patterns of behavior.
- Set expectations, goals, and rewards for collaborative efforts and results toward vision and mission.
When this topic comes up in my coaching conversations, I listen for the openings of change. Let me ask you:
- In spite of all the uncertainty, the challenges, and things outside your control, where are the successes?
- Where can we shift our language from a negative to a positive?
Based on my experience, change is possible, but it requires a shift in our assumptions and engagement.
What do you think? How do you create team unity? What steps are you taking to identify and eliminate toxicity? I’d love to hear from you. I can be reached here, on LinkedIn, or give me a call: 561-582-6060.
