Labeling

There are good teams, and there are bad teams. Pick the right ones, and you will be fine as a leader. If you got a bad team, spending time and effort on helping them to improve will not gain significant results. There is not much you can do about it, you just have to live with it now, and look for a better opportunity.
Labeling - Teamleadsky
How does this anti-pattern impact the team?
  • Impact
    Labeling a team as "bad" leads to sweeping under the carpet the real reasons for unsatisfactory performance. Often the root cause lays outside of the team, or is a combination of factors internal and external to the team. In case of labeling these causes can not be identified and fixed.

    This anti-pattern impairs the ability of the team to Learn.
How can you spot this anti-pattern?
  • Signals
    • "They have never delivered anything on time."
    • "No, there is no point in involving team X in the analysis."
    • "Let's see, how we can implement that, without involving team X."

    These signals are the "red flags", that indicate it is worth taking a closer look to check whether the anti-pattern is present.
Let's review this anti-pattern on different levels:
  • Events
    On the level of events we can notice that nobody from the Team X attended the brainstorming session on a new exciting feature.
  • Patterns
    On the level of patterns we can hear that "Team X is always a bottleneck."
  • Systems
    On the level of systems we can state that "Attributing the repeating issues solely to the internal qualities of a team limits the ability to learn from a wider organizational context and improve."
  • Mental Models
    On the level of mental models we might discover that in the organization it is considered wasteful to spent time on Team X onboarding or involving the team in decision making.
Written by Alex
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