Yesterday I co-chaired the media and entertainment day for the Leadership Brentwood program. We began the morning at the Dave Ramsey headquarters in the Cool Springs area, south of Nashville. Dave leads a thriving business with more than a dozen profit units. He shared with the group his list of the 5 enemies of a healthy team. According to him, if you don’t protect your team against them, your organization will be in trouble. If you want your team to work to its potential, then protect them from:

1. Poor communication. When people don’t know what’s going on they assume the worst. The combination of human nature and old experiences can help derail your team faster than you can say “I have no idea what’s going on here.” Make sure your internal communication is intentional. Don’t assume that everyone knows what’s going on because they don’t. In my experience there’s no such a thing as over communicating.

2. Lack of shared purposes. If we don’t have common goals  nothing happens.  A functioning team knows where they are going and they do it together. Make sure you have shared values and purpose. According to Ramsey to get everyone on point “requires a sickening amount of repetition.”

3. Internal gossip. I would call this lack of loyalty.  If you’re frustrated you have one option: serve it up the organization; talk with someone in leadership, but don’t complain to people who cannot do anything about it. That doesn’t help anything only creates a destructive force in the organization. If you can’t trust what someone will say behind your back you cannot trust them.

4. Unresolved conflict. When there are disagreements leadership must step in and clean it up. A team that’s not unified cannot have a shared purpose and cannot perform well. Leaders who ignore internal strife and don’t deal with it are hurting the entire organization.

5. Sanctioned incompetence. Incompetence that goes unchallenged demoralizes. You cannot attract and keep great talent when other team members are not pulling their weight and are getting by with it. It’s true in business, ministry, sports and most any arena of life that “A” players do not want to deal with “C” and “D” players. Keep enough turkeys around and the eagles will fly away.

Have you ever experience any of these team enemies?

What else would you add to this list?