The tone in a team has to come from the manager or team leader and trickle down religiously throughout. If you are working for one of those guys or girls that take pleasure in lobbing grenades into team dynamics or likes to divide and conquer, start planning your next move right now.

Here are 3 simple Dos and Don’ts

1. A team exists to solve a business problem or to meet a goal. Focus the team on that business issues and not necessarily the personal issues within it. Some people like to spend a of time looking, and commentating on, what others are up to do. Do not allow discussion about individuals within the team, unless there is clearly an issue you are aware of and it is being brought to your attention, such as bullying. Work night and day to ensure everyone understands the team goal(s) implicitly. The team must be able to recite their goals forwards, backwards and sideways. As the manager, you have to walk the walk. In my experience, when a team is united around an objective, every person has a clear role in meeting that objective, issues of personality and fragmentation tend to disappear. This is especially when a team is successful. Success breeds success.
    
2. When teams are comfortable with one another, we can use smart personality studies to help us understand one another better. I reiterate, though, that a team needs to have good level of understanding and trust before using any kind of technique. There are many methodologies out there and the one that I love is Extended DISC (www.extendeddisc.com). Extended DISC helps my clients formulate effective teams by showing each team member, in a non-judgemental manner, how they tend to work; what is their personal behavioural and communications style. Their style can be overlaid very clearly with those of the other team members. Extended DISC shows clearly why and how team members work in different ways and gives them a framework to communicate, and relate, more clearly with one another. It has a balanced component of humour. I would never use an uncontrolled, cards on the table, discussion with a team under any circumstances. These kind of sessions rarely leave anyone unscathed and they don’t move people forward in terms of either a better understanding of each other, or a better understanding of their team’s goals. At all stages in a team’s lifecycle, communication should be respectful and protective of people’s feelings.
    
3. Managers should not hire people whom they know are difficult. The challenging cases are rarely rehabilitated and just demoralise everyone else, even if they are supertalented. You could hire a diva if you had a particular make-up of team that meant they could be accommodated but this would be rare. It is possible to hire talented people to fill gaps who don’t have attitude problems. On the same note, destabilising behaviour should not be tolerated in any team, no matter what the circumstances. The long term effects will cost you way more. I would swap 10% of talent for 10% of team ethic any day

Spend some time this week making a few notes about the current challenges in your job and see how many of them come back to team dynamics. Whether you are the manager or a team member, what can you do to remove some of the friction which is making you less productive?

This article was first published in edition 3 of Rocket, our magazine. Download your copy here, or save your address in your profile to receive a printed copy.