Recently we asked the question, “Why is everyone so stressed?” and didn’t really answer that question. We ignored why and jumped to reminding you, the leader, that you are there to make your team successful regardless of why. However, the question of why is also important, and its examination can help us foster teams that don’t sour.
There are lots of ways to categorize sour/toxic/funky work environments; here are six categories to ponder. Do you have any of these on your team?
Management Funk
Widening gap between leaders and their team
Work Politics Funk
Decisions and rumors that make the team question everything
Overwork Funk
Worked to death, with no apparent end in sight
Appreciation Funk
Credit not going where it's due, despite mission success
Eyeing The Door Funk
Well, if that person left, maybe I should leave too
Underwork Funk
Work-life balance is great, but maybe we're all just about to get laid off
Management Funk
In some workplaces, a consensus emerges when executive leadership is disconnected from those doing the work, and you hear things like,
- “Management doesn’t listen to me”
- “They don’t listen to us“
- “…so out of touch…”
Have you ever been in an all-hands meeting that left you feeling worse about your membership on a team than before the meeting? Then your team might be suffering from Management Funk. The collective angst of the group is toward the failures of the leadership team, and it usually comes down to communication.
Appreciation Funk
Even if a team is wildly successful by all of its measures, there still might be a funk hanging over the team. Does everyone know how successful the project is? If so, is the leader taking all the credit? Does the team leader know what each person on the team is doing?
- Is the team fairly compensated for their hard work?
- Do the team members’ titles match their contributions?
- Do successive assignments show growth paths for each member of the team?
For each of the questions above, does the leader know or care about the answers for each member of the team?
Work Politics Funk
“Oh, man. Did you read that announcement yet? Can you believe it?”
Unless that quote is followed by I can’t believe we all get pizza delivered to our desks every day!, then your team might be suffering from Work Politics Funk. Maybe high-profile promotions seem questionable, or a reorganization seems to be taking steps in the wrong direction, or some scandalous or legally dubious behavior was revealed and the organization is playing clean-up.
Eyeing The Door Funk
Keeping everyone on your team happy is a great strategy for success, generally. Sometimes you could be doing everything right as a leader, and someone on your team might just get a more interesting opportunity elsewhere. That’s great! Celebrate successes in all forms, wish them well, and stay in touch!
Then… someone else gets an opportunity. Good for them! Your team can shoulder a bit more burden until you hire up until… another person leaves. At some point, an avalanche of attrition becomes a run-away situation, even if Overwork Funk hasn’t set in yet.
Sometimes when one person leaves a team, others think they might be on to something, and something like a stock market panic occurs… do they know something I don’t know??
Overwork Funk
Your organization is so good at what it does that the work keeps coming. Maybe the first project didn’t quite finish on time, and the second project’s schedule depended on the team being free. The second project has deadlines too–now everyone’s working double-time.
Did you hear? We just won project #3! Do you celebrate, cry yourself to sleep, or both?
If an organization suffers from Overwork Funk long enough, even normally-positive announcements about business successes could turn into Work Politics Funk (“why are we taking on more work?”) and Management Funk (“they have no idea how overworked we are!”), and eventually Eyeing The Door Funk (“I bet they’ll work half as hard at the other company”), especially if you are already suffering from Appreciation Funk (“…and I bet they’ll make twice as much there, too!”).
Underwork Funk
Teams should have healthy work-life balance, and we should all encourage proactive self-care and mental health.
However, if an organization has the opposite of Overwork Funk, then the team wonders whether or not more work is coming. Nobody who is happy in their job wants to be laid off, and if a state of underwork persists, then a work culture might emerge that rewards begging for charge numbers rather than creative thought. This could evolve into Eyeing The Door Funk at best, and going out of business at worst.
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