Have you ever heard the word ‘morale’ used when things are going well? No, me neither you only hear of morale when performance and results are slipping downwards.
Think about your team, if you are an individual contributor then think about a team you were on once. If every member of that team had a good attitude then would you ever have had morale issues?
I have been in some high performing teams and seen up close some poor performing teams. The low morale of the poor performing teams were not the cause of the poor performance but the symptom. The causes were perhaps some of the following:
- Arrogant leadership
- Poor communication
- Toxic work environments
- Whispers and rumours are everywhere
- Resentment of each other
- Lack of accountability
- Bad team chemistry
So what can you do? The first step to dealing with a problem is admitting there is a problem. Then understanding morale is the symptom not the cause of your teams poor performance. Once you ID the root cause issues and remove them, then and only then can you work on your team and attitudes to correct and succeed.
The Quicker you can demonstrate and therefore encourage positive attitudes the quicker you can return to high performance. Your teams attitude will define what sort of team you have. It is impossible to have a positive team with a negative attitude.
Nothing will kill a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one
Perry Belcher
Sea's The Day 