Weak Link Team Members and Their Excuses

Have you ever played on a serious sports team or worked in a management position? Have you ever been on a committee where everyone had to pull their weight to pull off a rather large project to insure success? Have you ever noticed that there invariably in the group was a weak link and it just really made things tough on the rest of team?

You probably thought to yourself how unfair this was. Perhaps you had a talk with them, tried to motivate them or worked to move things forward? Then each time you mentioned a point of contention your found that their excuses just kept coming faster and faster at you and you thought to yourself if they had this much time to think up all these excuses then they certainly have enough time to do their share of the work, assignment or duties to complete the task, target or mission.

Simple stuff really, but how do you deal with an excuse maker of this caliber? Well some teams who are really into winning and not so much political correctness will simply throw them off the boat, or island and say; You