Your Top Ten Obstacles to Teamwork – Teamwork Tuesday

Last week I asked the question on several LinkedIn Groups “What is so difficult about teamwork?” I received well over 200 responses. My intention was to rank each of them and then figure out ways we can create better teamwork.

This is not a formal scientific study by any means. I simply threaded out what I believed each response was saying and then grouped them into categories. I then ranked them by how often a response was given.

So here are the top ten responses I extracted.

1. Lack of a competent leader (27)
2. Lack of goals and goal alignment (26)
3. Individuals focused on themselves and not the team (21)
4. Lack of understanding of team members (20)
5. Lack of clarity on team roles, the purpose or vision of the team (15)
6. Lack of focus on team rewards and appreciation (12)
7. Lack of spending time together as a team (9)
8. Poor communication (8)
9. Lack of trust (7)
10. Lack of accountability (6)

Each Tuesday for the next couple of months I would like for us to talk about solutions to overcoming each of these top ten barriers to teamwork.

Let’s start with the first one – lack of a competent leader. What types of skills are important for leaders to have when leading teams? What does a competent leader of teams look like? What would be the first thing you would do with a leader who was not competent, besides firing them?

Maybe you have additional questions. I look forward to the discussion, so let’s begin.

Note: Here are some others that didn’t make the top ten: lack of understanding by team members of what being on a team means, lack of rules in the organization for teams, team members aren’t being listened to and heard, lack of commitment of team members, lack of deadlines and priorities on teams, given the difficult economic times team members are scared to storm and norm, too many other priorities people are working on, too many leaders and not enough team players, teams are too large at times, lack of providing the “what’s in it for me” to team members, lack of effective team meetings, lack of conflict and too many politics.

Mike Rogers
www.secondg.net
www.teamworkandleadership.com