Last school year I experienced the worst staff morale problem I’ve ever faced. There were high levels of distrust among the staff members and much discord. What do you suggest?
The Team Doc Says…
Your words “high levels of distrust and discord” imply certain behaviors that your team members have demonstrated. Since you weren’t explicit in identifying those behaviors, I’ll guess what they might be and answer accordingly. And although you don’t state it, I’m also going to assume you are the leader of this team.
So, given that, it’s time for you to take some action.
1. You need to identify a set of ground rules for interaction within your team.
2. You also need to determine how you will hold your team members accountable for following those ground rules and what the consequences will be for not following them.
3. You need to hold a team meeting and share these ground rules with your team. You could start the meeting by saying, “I’ve been remiss in allowing unacceptable behavior to occur between team members on our team and it has produced an unpleasant team environment. I take full responsibility for allowing this to happen. And now it’s time for the unacceptable behavior to stop. I’ve developed some team ground rules that define what is acceptable behavior for being a member of this team.” Then you share the ground rules with them and ask for questions and get clarification. You also will advise them that you’ll hold them accountable for their behavior.
Start now.
What about you reader? How would you handle this situation? Please leave a comment.
About Denise O'Berry
Morale and ethic, eh? Well, first of, great article. It gave a seed to a few thoughts that I would like to post here. They are not directly related to the topics that you covered in the article, but let me share nevertheless. The concepts of morale and ethics are not linier, no matter in what contexts they are used. Ethic of a group is an ethereal term used to describe the ability of people to sustain belief in an institution or a goal, or even in themselves and others.Yet the term of ethic is often used by “authority” figures (and everybody perceives herself to be so), as a generic value judgment of the willpower, obedience and self-discipline of a group tasked with performing duties assigned by an “authority” figure, more accurately it refers to the level of individual faith in the collective benefit gained by such individual sacrifices. So, the conclusion is obvious – morale is highly subjective. It is guided by self-interest of the individuals or institutions that take liberty to define it. What is more critical is to empower humans to enhance their ability to maintain belief in the goal, in oneself and others, and act accordingly to their inner intuition rather than determined by others concets and ideas about what is right and wrong. Well, that’s my 2 cents. Once again, thank you for the wonderful article, and for the opportunity to reflect on highly disputable topic.
Chris — Thank you for your very thoughtful comments. Ethics and morale are indeed a huge topic and very personally driven. I agree 100% with your statement that what’s critical is to empower people to maintain their belief in the goal and behave accordingly.