An unbalanced team can be an operational nightmare – projects stall, ideas dry up, and morale plummets. Fortunately, unbalanced teams manifest themselves in five predictable ways, each of which can be fixed by bringing in people to fill gaps, or reassigning people where too many individuals are trying to fill a role.
- Nobody, or everybody, seems to be in charge
Teams need one or two individuals who naturally assume a managerial role to organize work, clarify roles, distribute tasks, and evaluate outcomes. Without someone to take charge, teams tend to drift away from their goals. Too many of these team members, however, can result in infighting.
- Nobody gets along
No matter how strong the individual members of your team, if they won’t work together, it does little good. Relationships-oriented team members are important for building cohesion within the group.
- They aren’t producing any big ideas
Large companies have trouble innovating – they tend to be risk averse, set in their ways, and hindered by bureaucracy and internal politics. Companies rely on small, nimble teams to drive promising ideas from conception to market, and teams rely on innovative individuals to produce those ideas.
- Their ideas never get anywhere
A team’s big ideas don’t serve anyone if they never make it to market. To stay productive, organized, and on schedule, teams rely on people who naturally focus on process.
- Nobody plays the Devil’s advocate
Every team needs a good pragmatist – a practical, somewhat hardheaded challenger of ideas and theories. They promote realistic approaches and aren’t easily swayed by the need to preserve harmony or innovation for its own sake.
Achieving the right mix of skills, experience, and personality is the key to creating a productive team. To find out more about how to find the right balance of people on your team, check out our complimentary eBook, Dysfunctional Team? It’s Your Fault.