The Overwhelmed Team
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Managing team dynamics and performance can be tricky, and when you add different personalities or major change to the mix, the job only gets more challenging. Below we share the experience of a team who came to Diamond Insight for help as it navigated new terrain and sought to improve performance.
The Overwhelmed Team: Focusing in Chaos
The director of this team knew they needed help. This was perhaps the most stressful period the team had ever experienced. Demands were high and resources were tight, and the team was struggling to keep up with the workload. If only team members were better at time management and strategic planning, the Director thought, then they could deal with this situation and performance would most certainly improve.
The Director brought in Diamond Insight to help with skill building. But her initial consultation with Virginia suggested that something else was really going on with the team. Conflict among team members was widespread, creating a lot of negativity that was undermining productivity. And the team’s attrition rate was nothing short of alarming, especially given the team’s increasing workload.
As a result, the focus of the team’s engagement with Diamond Insight shifted to reversing the cycle of conflict and negativity and developing a unified, concrete plan for improving performance. Virginia interviewed each of the team’s managers and held focus groups with team members to identify what they thought worked, what did not, and what contributions they were making, both positive and negative. Much of the conflict, she discovered, could be traced to an unclear decision-making process and conflicting instructions from different managers. The team also was in the habit of taking on multiple major initiatives simultaneously, which was unrealistic for the resources and people available.
Through a facilitated off-site meeting, team managers were able to air these issues and articulate their ideas for improvement. Together, they drafted a new approach for making decisions, prioritizing resources and working together more constructively. After the off-site, the managers solicited feedback from the broader team, which showed the team that their concerns were heard; helped transform tension into open communication and proactive problem-solving; and demonstrated the managers’ unity by communicating a consistent message. The team today faces the same workload challenges—but they are on much stronger footing and collaborating effectively to meet them head-on.
Note: To protect client confidentiality, case studies are simplified snapshots, used for example only, to illustrate common client situations and solutions. We are happy to provide references upon request, with client permission.
