Five red flags in senior management teams that you need to know as a charity leader.

Working in a charity can be a challenge, it can feel like the odds are stacked against you, even when everyone is working well together. But if you find yourself working in?at best, an ineffective team, and at worst a dysfunctional one, the work can feel impossible, and it can have a huge impact on not only your wellbeing but create a wide-ranging ripple effect on the rest of the staff, and the communities you serve.?

In this article I’ll explore 5 red flags which might suggest that your team isn’t working as effectively as it could and share 4 things you can try.?

A lack of trust?

Trust is everything in a team. Without it you’re just a group of people who work together, not a team; it is essential to enable a team to function cohesively. When there is real trust then team members can ask each other for help, they can say how they feel, admit mistakes, weaknesses and fears.?

This can show up as team members not feeling able to share their views or being confident in what they have to say; conversations being shut down; staff not asking for help; a fear of being judged or ridiculed; the formation of cliques and talking about colleagues behind their back. ?

This all leads to a situation where staff feel unsafe at work, they don’t know where they stand, and they are going to be more concerned about how they survive at work, than whether the team is successful in its objectives. ?

Fear of conflict?

If a team doesn’t trust each other, then they cannot participate in open discussion, they can’t disagree and debate, to get to a point of consensus. This lack of disagreement can create the appearance of harmony, but the team is far from harmonious, and there will likely be a real sense of tension simmering beneath the surface.?

This can show up as the appearance of a team who really get on; a censoring of what people say; feeling like you have to be diplomatic; tension in the air; repeated meetings on the same topic; a lack of decision making, or decisions being made outside of meetings to avoid the difficult conversations.?

Lack of commitment?

Lack of commitment and failure to buy into the decisions of the team is the result of fear of conflict. Without honest discussion & debate, then real agreement cannot be reached. This means that those who disagree are unlikely to get on board, because they haven’t been heard and their view validated. ?

This can show up as people outwardly agreeing, but not following through; team members undermining each other; going through the motions; focusing on their own areas of responsibility not others; not completing tasks which are critical for other departments; ?

Avoiding responsibility?

Teams will often avoid team responsibility, of holding each other to account, because they don’t want to have a negative impact on their relationships - they don’t want to have difficult conversations. A healthy team will have these uncomfortable conversations.?

This can show up as team members turning a blind eye to behaviour or actions which is unacceptable or doesn’t meet the needs of the team; acceptance that a member of staff doesn’t pull their weight; and this allows resentment to build.?

Ignoring outcomes?

When a team is working well together, they will not only be thinking about their individual goals, but the goals or objectives of the whole team, how they are achieving the objectives of the team or organisation together. A dysfunctional team is paying little, if any attention to whether their team are achieving their shared goals, and why this is (or isn’t) happening.?

This can show up as individuals only focussing on their and their teams’ goals; not monitoring?Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and not addressing any failure to meet them; pushing back the dates on objectives because they’re not important.?

Addressing these five areas, and helping a team move from a place of dysfunctional to healthy requires more than a quick fix, and it starts with the leader. If the leader cannot model the behaviour that they want to see in their team, it will be impossible for the team to function. The starting point has to be trust, without building a truly supportive and trusting team the other issues cannot be resolved. This means the leader needs to be open, vulnerable, admit their mistakes, ask for help, and create an environment where it is safe to do this without fear of their vulnerability being punished in some way.?

And whilst this shift will take work, here are 4 things you can try:?

1. Building trust: each member of the team identifies the most important contribution their colleagues make to the team, and one area which they need to improve.?

1. Acknowledge the power of conflict: if a team is conflict avoidant, the team need to accept that conflict has a place (this may include creating ground rules for how to disagree).?

1. Review commitments & responsibilities: at the end of meetings the team should review the decisions which have been made, the actions required, and how this needs to be communicated.?

1. Create accountability: Simple and regular reviews of progress for the teams’ objectives as a whole team, with honest discussion about challenges.?

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