We’ve all been there… The dreaded negative nancy is wreaking havoc through your forensic team. The toxicity has spread to every person you are responsible for and now you dread coming to work. Not to mention you feel out of control. Like your team is running you rather than the other way around. How did you get here? She seemed so nice when you hired her. Well, maybe the toxic employee isn’t the reason so here are some of our reasons why you have a negative team.
Start with thinking about common issues your team has:
It’s not always as cut and dry as “we hired this person and now my whole team has a negative attitude.” Being able to determine the catalyst is great to determine the solution, but if your whole team has a negative attitude I’ve found that there are often a lot more issues under the surface that you may have noticed.
Remember, this is to reflect – not point blame or create a scapegoat.
Take five minutes and think about your team. Did you come into this team that already had a negative attitude or was there something that pushed them to this point?
Do you find you’re often repeating policies?
Do you have policies?
What are the most common problems being brought to your attention?
Is anyone bringing anything to your attention?
Struggling? Keep reading for some of our most common environment factors that lead to a negative team.
Common Negative team environment factors:
Untrained and Inconsistent Leadership:
Speaking of reflection…
A common way to remove all trust and positivity from your team is to constantly have issues with either your leadership or higher up leaderhsip.
Here’s a not-so-little secret that we based our entire company around… FORENSIC SUPERVISORS AREN’T TRAINED PROPERLY!
So don’t beat yourself up if you feel like your leadership is lacking because your training is lacking. You’re not alone.
Communication Gaps:
Perhaps you are knowledgeable or do know exactly how your team should be running, but you struggle with communication.
Again, you’re not alone.
There is an art to communication that not very many people take the time to figure out. Think about a few conversations you had… Did those conversations end with individuals walking away with a completely different mood than when they started? Or do you find that you communicate more effectively with certain people?
Take a look at how your team communicates with each other. Do you have team cliques?
Worklife imbalance:
Some employees just don’t get that balanced work-life ratio that we as humans need. It starts to tear them down. Especially, if you have tenured employees that get all the holidays off or get to take vacation whenever they want.
Look into your schedules. How balanced are you?
Is anyone complaining of getting calls after hours?
Does anyone just look tired???
Growth potential:
This is a big one when we work with CSI and Tech Proffessionals.
Sometimes your employees will just wake up one day and realize that they will never be able to grow in the position that they are in. That’s a daunting thing for someone to realize.
To think that they have to do the same job with no change for the next 20 years to get anywhere in there career is going to leave them feeling stuck. We often see the best techs lose all motivation and leave. Silent quitting, heard of it?
Hypercompetition vs Healthy Competition:
Hypercompetition is when your team is pushed to outperform each other so that a supervisor can meet deadlines, quotas, or a certain goal.
Never…. I repeat… NEVER use scheduling as a tool to get your team to produce.
If you want to do fun little competitions that will boost your team’s morale, go for it, but remember that every team is different and this can quickly turn into a method of development that is not received well.
Lack of accountability:
This one is in two parts – Supervisor & Team members
As a supervisor you are looked to to hold accountability for your team. If you’re throwing your team under the bus or undermining them then you are the one that is lacking accountability. It doesn’t feel good when your supervisor cuts you down in front of the higher ups. Even if it is a little thing like a file naming convention. It’s your job as the supervisor to hold your team accountable, but it’s also your job to set them up for accountability.
Some people just don’t hold themselves accountable and that comes back to you, we get it. So, try setting them up for success or at least a sure fire way you can hold them accountable. For example, one of my first core teams always had a problem with equipment and tools going missing.
Rather than belittling and chastising the whole team constantly I created a system that would always pinpoint the who I need to hold accountable. Take all your tools and equipment and color code them to your individual team members. Find a blue SD card? Must be Charley’s.
Toxic Coworker:
AND the most commonly blamed issue for a negative team environment – the toxic coworker.
This brings us back to the point of not everyone communicates the same or on the same level.
If you have a gen z fresh out of college new hire that you integrate into a team that is full of gen x been doing this for 20 years techs then you should be expecting team conflict. Why? They communicate differently. So maybe it’s not the new hire – maybe it’s how your team communicates with each other and it’s your job to mediate and figure out the best method for them communicate.
What if you did hire a debby downer? We can tell you that toxic positivity and trying to motivate with positivity is not the way to go. You have to determine the source of this downerness and how you want to go on fixing it before the negativity continues to disease your team.
Wrap Up
It’s not always on one individual that causes the negative. Sometimes the reasons why you have a negative team are a plethora of factors that you as the supervisor have to identify and fix.
The fact that you’re starting with the why is a great.
Check back with us for ways you can fix a negative team and close your gaps.
