Team Building: How to Deal With The Weak Links in Your Team

A good team is not one that is void of weak links but a group of people that know how to complement and maximize their strength as a unit. Nevertheless, it is imperative that any leader should recognize and know how to deal with the weak links in their team. This gives the team an awareness that will further strengthen them as a unit and in tackling set objectives together.

There are different requirements for different spheres of life. What is obtainable for a team of Marketing department may be different for a Soccer team because the dangers are different as well as the punishment for failure.

A weak link in a team might be a single individual, but it is important to recognize that every member of a team has certain weaknesses. It is important that you identify as many weaknesses as possible because it will help you in playing to your strength. However, as in most cases, the embodiment of the weakness of your team can usually be found in one person. It is also critical that you identify the person. The first step to building a formidable team is therefore identifying the weak links. The weak links may be in form of:

This could be viewing the individual weaknesses of team members collectively or the weakness of the leader or those in strategic positions in the team. The weakness of the leader can become that of the team when their authority and word is final as it concerns decision-making.

This is the individual weakness of each member of the team. Every team member has a weakness and recognizing it could build the team. One way of building team spirit is to have each discover and state their weakness. This may be far from appropriate in certain spheres of business or interaction because you would want to be able to ascertain the weakness of an individual so that they can be used to the best of their abilities.

The weakest of the group is simply the individual in a group that has the most weakest collection of attributes.

The fact about recognizing that everyone has a weakness, there is a collective as well as individual weakness is that it will eliminate the idea of cutting off the weakest link as if that would be the quickest solution. It can be argued that applying this strategy would be misleading and too simplistic. However, when weakness is seen in the way we have just mentioned, it brings every issue into a better perspective and proffering solutions and building the team then goes beyond removing one person from the team.

The objective of a team is that everybody has functions that works according to their strength. Strategies can then be devised to help each member deal overcome or improve upon their weakness.

Such tasks may be designed to build their confidence level by making them excel in their recognized strength and enforcing the idea that they are important to the team. Weak links that recognize this may have confidence issues and this could adversely affect the team and prevent them from achieving set goals. Tasks that build their confidence would also serve to make them focus on their strength and know that this is basically, why they are in the team.

In teams that are sensitive and play critical roles, giving them responsibilities with the lowest risks involved is a way of addressing this. This could be applied in situations where the team is already on task. However, a system must be a place in developing the weakest link in your group.

Spending more time with stronger members of the team could help develop the weaker members of the team

A bigger picture is in addressing the weaknesses in each member of the group is in developing strategies that will tacitly support and cover for each other in such a way that the success of the team in achieving set objectives is met with everyone making a positive contribution to it. Your team may be a business arm of a larger organization or an Olympic relay team, dealing with issues concerning team weakness in a way has to do with working on the strengths as a unit why working on each weakness individually.