Working in a team is something which can make any job more interesting but it can also cause you a bit of grief if difficult situations aren’t handled in the right way. I decided to have a look back at some of the worst team situations I have been in to see whether they could have been fairly easily avoided or fixed.

Jealousy and Pickles

Isn’t it strange how even the most mild-mannered colleague can get overcome by rage at some point in their career? I used to work with a chap whose only notable personality trait was that he ate cheese and pickle sandwiches at his desk at the same time every single day during 4 years.  One day he discovered that he had been overlooked for promotion and went ballistic. For a second I thought that I was going to end up with cheese and pickle all over my new suit. This is one of the most difficult subjects to handle but with a bit of proper team building and better communication I am sure that he would have appreciated the efforts of his colleagues more and not got so annoyed at the news of someone else’s promotion.

Everyone Doing the Same Thing Differently

I once got involved in a fairly big project which had people working on it in different parts of the country. The only bad part of it was that we all ended up doing similar tasks in different ways because we didn’t speak to one another. When we finally all got together for a meeting and a bit of team building no one knew what was going on any more. In this case the communication had to come earlier on, as it was obviously that a geographically dispersed team was going to have problems in this respect.

Longer Working Hours But No Pizza?

I remember another job in which we needed to deliver a report at very short notice. The boss took the wrong approach and tried to force us into staying till late to get it done. The whole office rebelled and by a minute past 5 the place was deserted. For about a month afterwards the office was filled with a hostile and frosty atmosphere due to this problem. What our boss should have done was explain the situation and try to persuade us to stay by offering us overtime pay or even just offering to order in a pizza or something.  Staying late and pulling together to achieve a difficult target is actually a good way of fostering a team spirit through team building, provided it is done the right way and pizza is involved of course.

If you want to stop your team members having a hard time at work then you should look to get some team building done as soon as you can.