I work in an office that is mostly female. How do you get that many women and personalities to get along? I don’t need them to love each other just respect and work together as a team.
The Team Doc Says…
Well, just get them together for a meeting and tell them just that! 
Seriously you need to get together and talk. But don’t talk in perceptions and innuendo. Talk about specific acceptable behaviors for all team members.
Get the group together on the premise of working the best together. Before the meeting, ask every team member to come up with at least one behavior she expects from other team members. Then when you have your meeting, compile the list from the team and brainstorm others.
Once you have a complete list, give each person three votes they can use to identify what behaviors are most critical to the success of the team. Note: They can use their three votes on one item or split them up.
After everyone has voted, talk through those items from most popular to least popular and get consensus from the team members that each person is willing to demonstrate the appropriate behavior.
You’ll also want to take some time to talk about how you will hold each other accountable. Decide what would be acceptable in calling a team member on inappropriate behavior, such as, “Betty, that behavior (whatever the behavior was) is contrary to the acceptable behaviors for our team members. I would appreciate it if you would use the behaviors we agreed to.”
Try it out and let me know how it goes for you.
What about the rest of you? Have I missed anything? Please leave a comment.
About Denise O'Berry
I have a passive aggressive employee (ee) that is always behaving when I am around; misbehaving in my absence and does not like to support one specific team member with their workload, citing that it is her problem that she cannot keep up (to others). This ee will comment that she is caught up and has nothing to do and when a certain team member asks for her assistance, she is suddenly busy. This ee job shares and can pace her work. When I have discussed these behaviors with her, she denies that she has done anything inappropriate. I am going to have a conversation with her talking about these issues, but I am sure there will be subtle hell to pay for some of the other staff.
Emmie — Thanks for taking the time to share your issue. Let me know how this works out for you. You may need to take other actions to get this to work well for your team, but give this a try first.