Why Leaders are Hindering Team Success
Are you hindering your team's performance without realizing it? In this episode, discover how to empower your team, foster collaboration, and unlock their full potential. Andrea and Michelle dive into the four stages of team development and how leaders often inadvertently prevent their teams from reaching high performance. They discuss common pitfalls like micromanaging, unclear expectations, and lack of trust.
Showing leaders how to step back, delegate effectively, and become an architect of high performance.
Takeaways
High performance teams require clear expectations and boundaries.
Micromanagement hinders team development and performance.
The four stages of team development are crucial to understand.
Leaders must step back to allow teams to thrive.
Managers often become bottlenecks in decision-making processes.
Empowering teams leads to greater independence and success.
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Are You Blocking Your Team's High Performance?
Unlock Your Team's High Performance Potential
Picture this: You're leading a team with all the right talent, resources, and potential - yet something's holding them back from reaching peak performance. In this eye-opening episode of The Leadership Hustle podcast, hosts Andrea Fredrickson and Michelle Hill reveal a startling truth: leaders often unintentionally block their teams from achieving excellence.
The podcast explores why many managers become the bottleneck in their team's growth, whether through excessive control, fear of letting go, or misunderstanding what true team development requires. As Andrea points out, "We as manager leaders are probably preventing our teams from being as independent and high performing as they possibly could be." This insight sets the stage for a deeper look at how leaders can step back, empower their teams, and create an environment where high performance naturally emerges.
The Path to Team High Performance Success
The journey to high performance requires leaders to understand the four distinct stages their teams must navigate. Many managers become overly involved in day-to-day operations rather than focusing on strategic leadership activities.
"The majority of our leader managers are way too involved and don't spend enough time doing their high payoff activities," notes Andrea Fredrickson, highlighting a common pitfall in team development.
Teams must revisit earlier development stages whenever composition changes - whether adding one person or restructuring entirely. This reset allows proper integration and prevents performance issues that arise from rushed transitions.
The Critical Role of Forming in Team Success
The forming stage lays the essential groundwork for team success, requiring deliberate attention to roles, responsibilities, and resources. Leaders must establish clear expectations and create a structured environment where new team members can find their footing.
"It's the dynamics when something someone changes on the team," Michelle Hill explains, emphasizing how forming isn't just for new teams but recurs with each personnel change. This insight helps leaders understand why performance might temporarily dip during transitions.
Smart leaders recognize that any personnel change requires revisiting the forming stage to reset team dynamics.
Why Teams Get Stuck in Storming
The storming phase often becomes a sticking point where teams struggle with conflicts, misaligned expectations, and communication challenges. During this stage, leaders frequently witness increased tension and decreased productivity as team members navigate their differences.
Leaders often miss the subtle signs of storming when conflicts simmer beneath polite workplace interactions.
Teams get trapped in storming when leaders either overreact to conflicts or fail to provide proper guidance through disagreements. The key is finding the balance between allowing healthy conflict and preventing destructive behaviors.
Building Trust Through Norming
Norming represents a critical transition where teams begin developing trust and learning to work through differences constructively. This stage marks the beginning of true team cohesion, as members start understanding each other's strengths and communication styles.
Getting to norming requires leaders to step back and allow their teams to navigate challenges independently. The norming phase only succeeds when managers resist the urge to jump in and solve every problem for their team. Trust-building happens gradually through successful conflict resolution and collaborative problem-solving experiences.
What True High Performance Looks Like
In a truly high-performing team, members solve problems independently and make effective decisions without constant leadership intervention. These teams demonstrate remarkable self-sufficiency, handling challenges and changes with minimal disruption to productivity.
"The majority of what's happening on that team is happening with the employees, not necessarily the leader," Andrea explains, highlighting how proper leadership creates space for team autonomy. High-performing teams maintain such strong foundations that they navigate most challenges independently without leadership mediation.
Common Leadership Blockers to Watch For
Leaders often become the biggest obstacle to team performance by positioning themselves as the central hub for all decisions and information flow, creating bottlenecks that stifle growth.
Many managers fall into the trap of solving every problem themselves, believing they're being helpful when they're actually stunting team growth. This behavior creates dependency and reduces team confidence in handling challenges independently.
Micromanagement, constant oversight, and the need to be involved in every decision serve as major barriers to team development. These behaviors stem from leadership insecurity rather than actual organizational needs.
Fear and Control: The Hidden Performance Killers
Leaders often let their fear of failure or loss of control dictate their management style, creating barriers to team growth. Many managers unconsciously tighten their grip on team activities due to anxiety about potential mistakes or criticism from above.
“They have a fear of missing out, a fear that whatever it is that their team's working on won't be good enough," Michelle reveals about this common leadership challenge. This fear-based approach ultimately undermines team confidence and capability.
A leader's need for control manifests through constant oversight and excessive reporting requirements, creating a restrictive environment where innovation cannot flourish.
Creating Productive Team Autonomy
Building team autonomy requires a deliberate shift from control-based leadership to a more facilitative approach. Leaders must carefully construct frameworks that allow teams to make decisions and solve problems independently. The journey to autonomy begins with clear expectations and boundaries that eliminate confusion about decision-making authority while creating space for team freedom.
Successful autonomy develops gradually as leaders systematically transfer responsibility and authority to their teams. Each successful independent decision builds team confidence and proves the value of autonomous operation.
Coaching Strategies That Actually Work
Effective coaching moves beyond simply providing answers to help team members develop their own problem-solving capabilities. Leaders must resist the urge to jump in with solutions and instead guide their teams through the discovery process.
The best coaching conversations use thoughtful questions to help team members explore challenges and discover solutions independently. This approach builds confidence and creates lasting problem-solving skills rather than temporary fixes.
Coaching success requires patience, trust, and the willingness to let team members occasionally struggle through challenges. Leaders must stay focused on long-term development rather than short-term efficiency.
Taking Action: Your Next Leadership Steps
Begin your journey toward better team performance by conducting an honest assessment of your current leadership behaviors. Identify specific instances where you might be blocking team independence through overcautious or controlling management.
Start small by choosing one area where you can practice stepping back and allowing your team more autonomy. This might mean delegating a decision you'd normally make or allowing the team to solve a problem without your direct involvement.
Document your progress and celebrate small wins as your team develops greater independence. Remember that building a high-performing team requires consistent effort and willingness to change your own leadership approach first.
Elevate Your Leadership Journey Today
Ready to elevate your team's performance? Revela's experienced coaches specialize in helping leaders build high-performing teams that operate with true autonomy and excellence.
Don't let your leadership style hold your team back from reaching their full potential. Contact Revela today to discover how our tailored coaching programs can help you develop the skills needed to foster genuine team high performance.
Take the first step toward transforming your team dynamics and unlocking their true capabilities. Your team is ready for more - are you?
The Leadership Hustle podcast is produced by Two Brothers Creative.
About the Hosts
Andrea Fredrickson
Andrea Fredrickson is a thought leader and consultant at Revela, an organization based in Omaha, Nebraska specializing in the development of leaders, culture alignment, and business strategy for private and family businesses of all sizes. Revela is one of the region's most experienced thought challengers, helping individuals and companies find their greatness. Andrea has built an amazing team by believing that fundamentally people want to be successful and become better versions of themselves.
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Andrea has degrees in education, management, and business. She is the author of Insight Unseen; How to lead with 20/20 business vision. She helps people see things differently, self-reflect, and never stop looking for ways to improve themselves on a personal and professional level. Andrea has spent more than 30 years researching and developing methods to help people communicate and lead more effectively.
When Andrea isn’t working with clients, you’ll find her spending time with her family & friends and making memories by exploring new cities.
Michelle Hill
Michelle Hill is a master facilitator and coach at Revela, an organization specializing in the development of leaders and aligning the culture of privately held and family businesses of all sizes. Revela is one of the region's most experienced thought challengers, helping individuals and companies find their greatness.
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An ambitious leader, Michelle has the natural ability to create forward momentum to build teams and get results. She inspires others to look within themselves and to challenge the status quo. She helps create high-performing environments. Michelle brings a diverse background: operations, employee development, and sales in the steel, hospitality, and consulting industries.
Outside of work, you will see her competitive side engaged in her daughter’s sports and ISU athletics. She loves life, her four-legged companions, and captures all the moments through her camera’s lens.
TRANSCRIPT
Andrea Fredrickson: On this episode of The Leadership Hustle, we'll discuss how you might be preventing your team from achieving high performance. Hello, and welcome to the Leadership Hustle for executives whose companies are growing fast and need leaders who are ready. Hi there, and welcome back to this episode of The Leadership Hustle. I'm Andrea Fredrickson and Michelle Hill. And we're back today doing an episode on high performance teams. And we talked about bringing this forward because there are so many scenarios where we have one of two things happen where we have people who are in leadership roles, who are not involved enough, haven't given enough direction. But more often than not, we find that managers are way too involved with their teams and are micromanaging those teams and will never get them to high performance. So are you running into this?