High-performing leaders don’t automatically create high-performing teams. Even the most impressive executive teams on paper can struggle with alignment, trust, and collective execution. When a team isn’t functioning, a leader’s instinct is to blame individual performance, skill gaps, or the strategy. More often the underlying issue is that the team doesn’t know how to operate together.
In the earlier stages of a leader’s career, they are often rewarded for what they produce. There is far less emphasis on how leaders can drive team performance. As they move up in the organization, leaders find themselves in more team environments. Yet what makes leaders successful individually can limit team effectiveness.
Through coaching hundreds of executive teams across various industries, I’ve seen five patterns emerge again and again that if not addressed will lead teams to fail.
1. They don’t say what needs to be said
While teams communicate constantly with each other, too often they aren’t saying what needs to be said. They act overly polite, saying things like, “everything looks great” and “all milestones are on track” at every meeting, even though it’s not true. No one talks about problems or has tough conversations. This communication culture of toxic positivity can create false harmony and impede progress.
High-performing teams engage in conflict skillfully and constructively. They challenge with care, speak the truth, and build an environment of psychological safety. They understand that honest, open communication means saying what needs to be said.
2. They optimize for their department, not the enterprise
Leaders are skilled at and rewarded for driving results for their teams. On the surface, achieving their department’s goals looks like success. However, there’s a hidden risk when leaders optimize only for their own department: fragmentation.
Fragmented teams operate in silos, with rampant competition between departments and resource hoarding. No one is focused on what’s best for the organization as a whole.
High-performing teams move out of a “my department” mindset and into an “our organization” mindset. They define success collectively and collaborate to drive outcomes that move the entire business forward.
3. They have an unclear target
Teams can’t hit a target they can’t see. Lack of clarity is one of the fastest ways to erode trust, hinder momentum, and create unnecessary rework. When the goals and roles are unclear, team members duplicate efforts, step on each other’s toes, and experience avoidable conflict. Over time, this creates frustration and a sense that time and energy are being wasted.
High-performing teams prioritize getting clear on their goals, priorities, roles, and how to get work done effectively, creating an environment where members lean in and support one another, stepping in where it matters most.
4. They have decision debt
When teams keep accumulating more open decisions, they have what I’ve termed decision debt. This shows up in three ways: no decision made, delayed decision, or decision made but not clearly communicated. The costs to the team are high. Teams constantly spend their valuable mental energy revisiting the same topics and gathering more data, stalling progress instead of moving forward.
High-performing teams are intentional about how they make decisions. They determine when they need more data versus when they have enough information. By prioritizing making clear and timely decisions, teams create momentum, moving the system forward.
5. They undervalue connection
Connection is often undervalued on teams and considered a nice-to-have versus a key driver of performance. As leaders are busy and focused on their own results, connection gets relegated to occasional off-sites or optional social events. But when connection is lacking, performance suffers. People feel isolated and disconnected from each other, trust erodes, and teams fall short of what they’re capable of delivering.
High-performing teams understand what we’ve found in our recent research: Connection is foundational to team performance. They invest in building strong relationships, creating trust, and showing up for one another as whole people with care.
If you recognize your team in any of these five scenarios, it’s because they are more common than most leaders realize. These show up even with the most talented leaders. The difference between struggling teams and high-performing ones is whether they’re willing to put in the effort. High-performing teams notice the challenges, address them directly, and build habits to work well together. The strongest teams deliver results that far exceed the sum of their parts.