When working in a team environment, it is important for each member to be completely invested in the success of the team. Otherwise, the team has to work much harder to make up for the lack of commitment from poor team members. There are a few key characteristics of poor team members. Once a team leader identifies these characteristics, he can either replace the member or work to correct the problem.

Attendance Problems

Constant attendance problems, such as missing or being late to work, coming back late from lunches and breaks, regularly disappearing for bathroom breaks and missing or being late to important meetings is a clear sign of a poor team member. This behavior demonstrates to the team that the job and the success of the team are not important to the member.

Poor Contribution

Poor team members do not contribute their fair share of the team's workload. Time that should be spent working might be used to handle personal tasks, talk with co-workers, surf the internet and avoid the responsibility of working in general. These team members are not only unproductive -- the work they do turn is often poor.

Creates a Stressful Environment

Creating a stressful work environment is a characteristic of a poor team member. He might be disrespectful to supervisors and co-workers, participate in harmful workplace gossip, use vulgar language, demonstrate poor service to clients or display other disruptive behaviors towards the team.

Lack of Involvement

Effective teams thrive on involvement from all of members. Without this involvement a team is not a team at all. A characteristic of a poor team member is a lack of involvement in team activities. A poor team member will isolate himself from the group during work and during team building times. This creates division in the team and is harmful to its success.

Lack of Responsibility

A poor team member refuses to take responsibility for his role in any problems or failures of the team. Instead, she will blame everyone and everything else. This type of team member will find excuses for poor performance or low quality work and place the fault on other teammates, the client or customer, the resources she has to work with and anything else other than herself.

Refuses to Share Credit

A characteristic of a poor team member is to take credit for every success of the team without sharing credit with his team members. This type of team member wants to be in the spotlight and craves all the positive attention. He will make his teammates feel insignificant while creating an illusion of his own significance.