Homeopathic remedies for team toxicity

By creating better goals and results definition, by clarifying and checking on rules, and by ensuring processes are well integrated and documented, you can avoid workplace toxins. But the real secret to long-term project health lies in ensuring that every team member feels it appropriate to their role to expose toxic levels of team activity and to name a solution. You can ensure this by implementing five antitoxins: clear, mutually agreed upon goals and results; clear rules that make sense; well-integrated and visible processes; increased accountability of all team members for uncovering and reporting toxic performance levels; and, most importantly, recognition and a positive approach to answering tough questions about the project's progress. Continuous positive feedback about small successes is still the best medicine for keeping a team healthy and productive. What do healthy team members do when they see a toxin! They add it to the list of other toxins already caught or prevented before they caused bugs in the team's software. Such lists become an important part of the project's lessons learned.