Take away your team’s safety net. Safety nets are an added bit of protection that teams try to provide themselves by padding schedules or intentionally operating staff, equipment, and resources at levels below full utilization.
Safety nets are a bit like bicycle training wheels; once you are able to keep yourself going without them your self-confidence rises and they are quickly discarded. What safety nets have you placed under your people? What would happen if you temporarily removed them?

For example, could you juggle around assignments to maintain your current workload during vacation periods? Could you challenge your team to make do without resources on which it’s traditionally relied? Set a goal to eliminate any safety nets that may be discouraging your staff from performing at its best.

Create a competitor for your team. In my experience, teams often suffer from complacency because they’ve been shielded from competition. Use the following ideas to create a competitor for your team:
• Invite bids from outside vendors who offer services competi¬tive with those provided by your team. Force your team to conduct a detailed make/buy analysis proving that it can match the quality, response time, and cost offered by these vendors.  Performing a comparative cost analysis will help your team better understand the overhead costs it represents to your company.
• Sponsor competitions with similar teams within your depart¬ment on selected performance measures.
• See if other divisions will work with you to sponsor a biannual conference in which teams can showcase significant improvements they’ve made in selected performance areas.
• Use peers to encourage individuals to consider alternative approaches to their work.

This guide may prove helpful when you or any of your team members are attempting to cope with either of the following stresses.

Situation l. Managing Conflicts
1. Quarantine them. Whenever possible, quarantine conflicts by keeping additional issues out of the discussion. Anyone who has ever observed arguments knows that in most conflicts there is a tendency to drag in the kitchen sink. Unfortunately, once the scope of the conflict has been enlarged, the conflict is much more difficult to resolve. Before beginning a conflict discussion with another associate, write a one- or two-sentence description of how you view the conflict and then ask a friend to review this description to make certain it doesn’t contain any blame casting or personal attacks. If it does, reword it so that it represents an objective opening for discussion and is focused on a single issue for review.

2. Enter with a written agenda. Bring a written description with you to the discussion, along with the main points that you would like to cover. When you begin, read your description and ask the other party if it provides a fair and objective summary of the conflict. If she disagrees, take the time to reword it until it represents both of your reviews.

Next, ask that the discussion be limited to this topic so that the two of you can reach closure on this issue during the meeting. Don’t proceed with the discussion until you’ve accomplished this. In addition, keep your list in front of you to prevent the discussion from going off-track.

3. Avoid personal attacks. During the discussion, avoid engaging in personal attacks or taking cheap shots at the other person.  To do this, prior to the discussion practice presenting some of the main points you would like to get across to the other person. Make an audiotape of this practice session, and screen it for any comments that sound overly critical or personal.

During your discussion, if the other party engages in personal comments, try to filter out these comments and focus back on the issue at hand.

For example:
Other: The problem is your lack of responsibility in this area. You promise one schedule date and then deliver another.
You: So from your point of view, a key issue is that you need to know that I will keep my commitments on schedules, right?

See continues article in Stress Situations Guide -2