Everyone wants to be on a functional team. Nobody signs up saying “is your team dysfunctional? Hire me!” So the leader’s job is to ensure every team member has great people to work with—which means finding the right match, not judging people as good or bad.
When someone isn’t performing well, they don’t enjoy it either. The question isn’t “are they good enough?” but “is this a match?” Sometimes it’s a different role on the team. Sometimes it’s a different team entirely. But the leader’s primary responsibility is to the team, not to any individual—because that’s how everyone, including the struggling person, ends up in the right place.
“Think about the moment that you are happiest working in a team—it’s probably the most functional team that you were ever a part of.”
Related Concepts
- How you do it determines if you do it
- Functional teams are measured by people wanting to be there
- Team functionality is an endless scale, not a binary
- The leader’s job is not to take care of everyone
- Peer accountability outperforms hierarchical accountability
- Unfelt emotions in a team create all the dysfunction