Teams with added players falter as they adjust strategies and styles to take full advantage of new talent. As every human comprises a unique set of personality traits, skills, and interests, adding new people changes a team’s overall composition and requires a complete realignment.

Corporate talent faces the same challenge.

Getting staff adjusted and aligned and humming after additions and subtractions takes time, energy, and effort for everyone involved. During the process, everyone feels intense stress, which the struggle to produce quality work in shifting circumstances only exacerbates.

Fixable?

I doubt it. Yet we can, at least, prepare for what lies ahead.

Coaches guide teams to expect worsening before improvement. Likewise, when making staff changes, company leadership should remind its team that struggle will come before increased performance and that it will understand the reasons behind a few missteps along the way.

Further, leadership should support the group through its changes, encourage open communication, and not get too discouraged when employees take a negative tack at first. After all, humans hate change.

People who expect challenges have more patience and open-mindedness when they experience them. They develop mechanisms to better handle the concomitant stress. They adjust their work processes to account for hiccups.

Preparation won’t erase the need for adjustment and a period of stress and hampered performance, but it will ease the process for certain.

When your team last changed members, how did it affect the group and its work?