When working with leaders of teams to identify areas that would improve the team, it’s helpful to have a variety of questions to pull from. Asking a few different questions will often result in a broader understanding of the leader’s concerns about their team.
These questions can also be asked to the team members, individually or collectively to draw out specific issues and examples. Once there is clarity on the issues, it becomes easier to figure out ways to move forward and address the issues.
Questions and prompts to discover more about a team’s challenges:
- Tell me about your team.
- What are the greatest challenges your team is facing?
- Give me an example of a time your team was not performing optimally.
- Where does your team struggle?
- What do you think is the root cause?
- What do you want your team to be doing that they aren’t doing now?
- If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change about your team?
- What has changed on your team recently that has caused disruption?
If the leader is the only person supplying the answers to these questions, it’s important to check for accuracy because all leaders have blindspots. Asking these questions to team members in individual interviews or as a collective group during a team building session will result in a broader, and more full perspective of the team.
Another option to gain input from the full team would be to ask team members to complete a team assessment such as the Better Teams Assessment.
While this blog is focused on questions aimed at weaknesses, it’s also important to also ask questions that will focus on a team’s strengths.
About the Author: Leigh Ann Rodgers, Founder of Better Teams, Team Consultant Academy, and FORWARD, is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator with 20 years of experience in the human development field. Leigh Ann is a skilled meeting facilitator, trainer, and coach working across the globe to help leaders cultivate teams that are happy and high-performing.
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