Consider Ken.

It’s Monday morning. As Ken struggles to wake up, he feels a familiar sense of dread. The Monday morning blech.

He wishes there was some way to avoid going into work. His job would be great if it weren’t for his ‘team’. They don’t act like a team; they act like competitors. It just doesn’t make sense. Individually, they all seem like decent people; but put them around a conference table, and it feels more like managing a group of middle-schoolers.

Hopeless? No. Here are 6 steps to building strong and effective teams:

Step 1: Accept Your Role. Like it or not – you, as the leader, set the tone of the work environment. You set the conditions for success of the team. You are in the driver’s seat. Accept that you need to put your hands on the wheel and steer.

Step 2: Determine What Would Make Change Valuable. Get gutsy, dig deep, ask others and don’t lie to yourself. Answer these questions:

• How is your bottom line, mission, staff moral, customer/client/congregation retention or referrals impacted by how the team relates? If you don’t know, you aren’t looking closely enough. You are already paying for poor team work – in what ways are you paying and how much?
• What would be different if you had a team of unified people, guided by the same values, focused on the same core objective? What if they knew and trusted each other enough to leverage each other’s strengths and support each other’s weaknesses? What could you accomplish?

Step 3: Diagnose & Address The Problems. Look for underlying issues and patterns.

• Do the problems seem to revolve around one individual? A particular relationship on the team? Are they systemic – and seem to relate to things like communication patterns, flow of information or decision-making processes? Are they cultural – and the team has developed a general avoidance of conflict or a focus on tasks beyond people?

Step 4: Create a Clear & Common Goal. Work with your team to answer this – using your answers to questions in Step 2 & 3 – how should this team grow or change in the next 6, 9 or 12 months? How will you measure success?

Step 5: Maintain Consistency. Stay in your role as leader, stay honest about where things are at, keep clear on where the team is going, and continue to address resistance. (With resistance – try to understand where it’s coming from and address that deeper issue.)

Step 6: Hold yourself and others accountable. Once goals are clear and expectations are set – keep yourself accountable and hold others accountable. Don’t let goals slip or change without your decision. Get help when you need it. Support staff to change – but don’t be afraid to correct or let go of the ones who insist on being toxic.

Turning teams around is the responsibility of the leader. Most teams can be turned around by addressing issues gracefully, but directly, coming up with a clear plan and sticking to it. Don’t sacrifice the team and its purpose for the benefit of a few toxic personalities, relationships or unhelpful patterns and ways of doing things. No more Monday morning blech. Monday mornings, and every morning for that matter, can now become a time of energized anticipation of all you will accomplish together.