One of my clients told me they were having a problem with a new front office reception person. He said they checked out all of his background references and he passed with flying colors. Now that he has been working with them for several weeks the entire workplace team has noticed that their new reception person is not a team player.
It is not that he does not do his job, it is that he only does his job, and does not consider how what he does affects the rest of the workplace team.
For example: This office is a medical practice and they try to schedule their lunch from 12 -1:30, but that may or may not happen on time depending on the patient load and other things that may come up during the morning. The team knows that they all stay to help finish up with the patients and then dash for lunch.
Their new employee, even though it was explained to him how the office works, leaves right at noon, not caring that patients are still being seen has anything to do with him.
At the new employees’ previous employer, he functioned as an independent. Not really accountable to anyone else but himself.
Being an independent player will be a hard habit to break and re-training him will take time and his willingness to understand how a team works and how his teammates view him if he chooses to function as an independent person and not as a team player.
As a team leader or manager, we need to be able to be upfront and direct with what our workplace culture is and what it is that our employees need to do and demonstrate while on the job.
If your place of employment functions as a team then all employees need to know what it means as far as their position, and what is it that they need to do to make it happen so they do not hinder the team from moving forward.
How do you create good team players?
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