An employee commitment form is a tool to use in addressing situations where team members may show a lack of commitment towards a team goal.
In my last article and video, I explained the symptoms, causes and solutions for a lack of commitment. This can derail a team and inhibit the team growth and development.
An employee commitment form should not be used as discipline but simply as a tool to put in writing an agreement that the employee may have been having a hard time committing to.
Dealing with Team Problems: Lack of Commitment from Team Members
One team problem in the evolution of a team is a lack of commitment from team members. This is quite common and there are solutions to this problem.
What you may be seeing is team members skipping meetings or sending representatives in their place. There may also be a lack of support or open undermining of team decisions. At the team meetings members may appear withdrawn or preoccupied.
Many teams experience growing pains once the hard work of taking actions starts. The two major causes are that the:
The solutions are to address and clarify the team constitution and to ensure everyone’s collaboration.
Can someone be a leader without managing people? Here is my perspective on this.
This is an easy to execute team development activity that is fun, quick and provides good learning and discussion about teamwork and planning projects. It can be done in a meeting room and requires simple materials. Here is a summary of the activity:
Explain to the participants that they will be divided into even number of teams to conduct a team activity, which is to build the tallest structure they can in 15 minutes (you can designate 5 minutes for planning and 10 minutes to build the structure or just provide 15 minutes and discuss the time used for strategizing in the debriefing).
Handout the straws and pins (or masking tape). Set the timer and start the activity. Let them know when each 5 minutes has passed and let them know when 2 minutes is left. Call time and end the activity.
Review each structure and announce the winning team. Have everyone applaud the winners.
This is a great exercise to discuss the components of teamwork. It is especially effective for those who have been through teamwork training to help them recall the skills they should have learned. It is also excellent as an icebreaker activity to introduce teamwork training.
Here are some questions to ask the participants and generate discussion. Formulate your own as well.
What was the biggest challenge you feel your team faced?
Did you give enough time to planning your approach?
How well were you able to reach consensus on your plan?
How effective were you in assigning roles?
Did an informal leader emerge?
What was the level of participation from each member?
How well did members listen to each other?
Did any conflicts arise? How were they resolved?
What would they do differently next time to improve their performance?
Provide specific teamwork skills that the teams should be aware of during the exercise and during the debriefing period, discuss how well they used these skills. Some skills to use are strategizing, planning, consensus, active listening, participation, role assignment, etc.
Assign one person per team to act as an observer to see how well the team used the teamwork skills. They would provide feedback during the debrief. You can let everyone know the skills that the observers will be evaluating or just let the observers know.