Why Your Team Isn’t Performing (Hint: It’s You)
The uncomfortable truth about why your team isn’t thriving and how to stop getting in their way.
Let me guess: You’ve tried everything.
You hired better talent. You restructured. You brought in consultants who charged you $40K to tell you what your team already knew. You implemented new tools, new processes, new “frameworks for high performance.”
And yet — your team still isn’t delivering at the level you know they’re capable of.
So you’re back to square one, wondering: What’s wrong with them?
Wrong question.
The right question is: What am I doing that’s making it impossible for them to succeed?
I know. That’s uncomfortable. But if you want different results, you need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. So let’s talk about the ways you’re unknowingly sabotaging your own team.
You’re Solving Problems That Aren’t Yours to Solve
Your creative team brings you a challenge. Before they finish explaining it, you’re already solving it for them.
You think you’re being helpful. You think you’re “unblocking” them.
What you’re actually doing? Teaching them they don’t need to think. Teaching them to wait for you to have the answers. Teaching them that their judgment doesn’t matter.
Every time you swoop in and solve their problem, you rob them of the opportunity to build competence. And then you wonder why they’re not more proactive.
The fix: Next time someone brings you a problem, ask three questions before you offer a solution:
“What have you already tried?”
“What do you think we should do?”
“What do you need from me to move forward?”
Your job isn’t to have all the answers. Your job is to help them find their own.
You’re Confusing Urgency with Importance
Everything is a priority. Every email needs a response in 10 minutes. Every Slack message is marked urgent. Every meeting is “quick” but somehow takes an hour.
You’ve created an environment where your team is in a permanent state of reaction. They’re not doing their best work — they’re doing their fastest work. And there’s a difference.
Deep work requires space. Strategy requires silence. Creativity requires time to think without someone asking for a status update every 30 minutes.
But you’ve made “responsive” the highest virtue. So your team is burned out, scattered, and shipping work that’s 70% as good as it could be — because 70% is all they have time for.
The fix: Protect your team’s time like it’s your budget.
Block focus time on their calendars. Kill half your meetings. Stop treating every request like a fire that needs putting out. If it’s truly urgent, fine. But if you’re honest, most of it isn’t.
Your team’s attention is their most valuable asset. Stop spending it like it’s infinite.
You’re Giving Feedback Like a Grenade
You wait until the work is almost done, then you drop a bomb.
“Actually, I don’t think this is the right direction.”
“The client’s not going to like this.”
“Can we start over?”
Your team isn’t failing to meet your expectations. They’re failing to read your mind. Because you never told them what success looked like in the first place.
And now they’re redoing work at 9 PM that could’ve been right the first time if you’d just been clear upfront.
The fix: Get better at the brief. Get better at the check-in. Get better at giving feedback early and often — not as a surprise at the finish line.
If you don’t know what you want until you see what you don’t want, that’s not their failure. That’s yours.
You’re Rewarding the Wrong Behaviors
You say you value strategy, but you promote the person who ships fast.
You say you value collaboration, but you celebrate the hero who “saved the day” by working all weekend.
You say you value work-life balance, but you send emails at 11 PM and expect responses.
Your team isn’t stupid. They see what gets rewarded. And they adjust accordingly.
If you want strategic thinkers, stop rewarding firefighters.
If you want healthy teams, stop glorifying burnout.
If you want collaboration, stop rewarding lone wolves.
The fix: Audit what you celebrate. Look at your last three promotions, shoutouts, or “MVPs.” What behavior did you reward? Is that the behavior you actually want to see more of?
If not, change what you reward. Your team will follow.
You’re Not Creating Safety
Your team doesn’t tell you when they’re stuck. They don’t admit when they don’t understand the brief. They don’t ask for help until it’s too late.
Why? Because the last time someone said “I don’t know,” you made them feel stupid. Or when someone admitted a mistake, you made an example of them in front of the team.
You think you’re holding people accountable. What you’re actually doing is teaching them to hide problems until they explode.
Psychological safety isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation of high performance. And you can’t mandate it. You have to model it.
The fix: Start admitting when you don’t know. Start thanking people for bringing you problems early. Start treating mistakes as data, not failures.
Say it out loud: “I need your help. I don’t have this figured out. What am I missing?”
If you can’t be vulnerable, don’t expect your team to be either.
You’re Leading from a Position, Not from Service
Here’s the hard truth: Your title isn’t what makes you a leader. Your behavior is.
You can have “CMO” on your LinkedIn. You can have the corner office and the executive assistant and the budget authority.
But if your team doesn’t trust you, you’re not leading. You’re just managing.
Leadership isn’t about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about making everyone else smarter. It’s about clearing obstacles. It’s about taking the hit when things go wrong and giving credit when things go right.
It’s about showing up as a human being who genuinely cares whether the people on your team get to do work they’re proud of.
If you’re leading because you like the power, your team knows. And they’re quietly checking out.
The fix: Ask yourself every week: Did I make my team’s jobs easier or harder?
If the honest answer is “harder,” you’ve got work to do.
The Uncomfortable Truth
If one person on your team isn’t performing, that’s a them problem.
If your entire team isn’t performing, that’s a you problem.
And the good news? You problems are fixable. You just have to be willing to look at them.
Stop blaming your team for the environment you created.
Stop expecting them to thrive in conditions you wouldn’t tolerate.
Stop waiting for them to change while you stay exactly the same.
Your team isn’t the problem. Your leadership is.
And the moment you accept that, you can actually start fixing it.
Which one of these hit home? Reply and tell me what you’re changing this week.