Is your team not hitting its targets? When you gather your team, do you ever wonder why no one speaks up? Have you tried every team building opportunity but aren’t seeing improvement? Then read on.
As a manager, it can be frustrating when you know something’s off but can’t quite put your finger on what’s wrong. Let’s walk through the most common team performance issues and provide actionable solutions you can implement today.
1. Your Team Members Don’t Really Know Each Other
Remember your last team meeting? If it felt more like a formal business transaction than a gathering of colleagues, you might have a connection problem.
Without personal connections, communication becomes transactional, leading to misunderstandings, misaligned expectations, and a lack of trust. A lack of familiarity also makes it harder to leverage individual strengths—people get assigned tasks that don’t fit their skills, leading to frustration and inefficiency. Worse, when there’s no personal investment in colleagues, accountability weakens, and motivation fades. A disconnected team might look functional on the surface, but beneath it, silos, disengagement, and friction can quietly undermine performance.
What This Looks Like:
- Conversations stick strictly to work topics
- Team members hesitate to ask for help
- Communication feels stiff and formal
- People rarely share personal updates or challenges
- There’s no dedicated time for getting to know one another
Taking the time to get to know each other establishes a vital component of a high-performing team: trust.
Trust – the belief that your teammates are reliable and have good intentions – develops through personal connections and consistent behavior over time. It’s what makes people comfortable sharing resources, delegating important tasks, or depending on each other during crunch time. When we trust our team members, there’s no reason to be protective or careful around the group.
Research on team trust consistently shows that it is a critical factor influencing team dynamics, performance, and outcomes. A meta analysis of 112 independent studies found that when intrateam trust is high, so is team performance.
Even without the piles of research that shows the importance of team trust, think about who you’re more likely to trust – Mike, who you’ve gotten to know about their family and where they went on their last vacation? Or John, who has been more reserved and you don’t know much about? My bet is you trust Mike more and will be more inclined to share information and pull him in on projects.
The Fix:
Start small – As a leader, you can start sharing a bit about yourself. Start by talking about your next vacation, your pet, or what you’re doing next weekend. After you share, you can then ask your team about what they have going on. They’ll feel more comfortable sharing if you start.
The goal isn’t to force friendship, but to build the basic trust needed for effective teamwork.
2. Information is Stuck in Silos
If you’ve ever heard “Oh, I didn’t know you were working on that too,” you’re dealing with silos. These invisible walls between team members can kill productivity and lead to wasted effort.
High-performing teams thrive on cross-functional collaboration, but silos create barriers that slow decision making, reduce agility, and prevent organizations from adapting quickly to challenges. Without a free flow of information, critical updates can be missed, efforts may be duplicated, and opportunities for innovation are stifled.
Beyond operational inefficiencies, silos also impact team morale. Employees working in isolation often feel disconnected from the larger mission, leading to disengagement and frustration. A lack of alignment between teams can also result in a disjointed customer experience, where inconsistent messaging, slow response times, and misaligned priorities create confusion.
What Silos Looks Like:
- Duplicate work happening across the team
- “That’s not my job” is a common phrase
- Important information getting stuck with individual team members
- Confusion about who’s responsible for what
- Team members view each other as competitors instead of collaborators
The Fix:
Break down silos by creating a unified goal for the team that ties to departmental or organizational goals.
Here are two questions to consider:
- How does your team contribute to the department’s success? To the organization’s success?
- What would happen to your company if your team didn’t exist?
You don’t need to answer this yourself – take it to your team as a thought exercise. You can contribute the larger departmental and/or company goals. They can discuss ways to support these goals as a team.
For example, we worked with a department who had teams who worked in silos. They didn’t see the overall connection among their teams, so people didn’t see how their area could impact their teammates. It wasn’t until the leader shared what the “higher ups” cared about that they found two common goals – to grow their participation numbers and to make sure they stayed relevant to their customers.
After they established these unifying goals, each team member could then understand how they could contribute to the team goal.
Once you have a clear goal, make information sharing a regular part of your team’s routine, not an afterthought. You can regularly revisit the goal, create status checks, and/or have a way to track progress.
Don’t forget to reward and recognize when your team collaborates. That can be as simple as saying, “I appreciate how you all have been working to breaking down silos. (Don’t keep it generic. Insert specifics here)”. A little reinforcement goes a long way!
3. Your Team Avoids Healthy Debate
Quick agreement might seem great, but avoiding conflict is a sign of artificial harmony. Artificial harmony occurs when teams prioritize surface-level agreement over honest discussions, avoiding conflict to maintain a false sense of unity.
While it may seem like a peaceful work environment, this avoidance of disagreement suppresses diverse perspectives, hinders innovation, and leads to passive compliance rather than true commitment.
So, what is healthy debate? Healthy debate is a constructive discussion where team members openly share differing viewpoints, challenge assumptions, and critically evaluate ideas—all while maintaining mutual respect.
It’s not about arguing for the sake of being right, but about engaging in meaningful dialogue to refine decisions, uncover potential risks, and arrive at the best possible solutions. Healthy debate focuses on concepts and ideas (not people) to produce the best possible solution.
If your team never debates ideas, you’re missing out on pushing ideas forward and getting to better solutions. A lack of debate can also create a culture of complacency, where employees feel disengaged or believe their input doesn’t matter.
What a Lack of Healthy Debate Looks Like:
- Meetings end quickly with everyone nodding in agreement
- Although team members agree, they don’t follow what they’ve agreed to
- Important issues only surface in private conversations
- Team members seem uncomfortable with disagreement
- The same person’s ideas (possibly yours) always win out
The Fix:
Start actively asking for different perspectives in meetings. Ask open-ended questions like:
What are your thoughts on that?
What are the downsides to this approach?
What may we be missing with our current path?
Then listen to their responses. Even if you don’t agree, simply say, “thank you for the feedback”.
Make it clear that respectful disagreement is valued, not punished. One way to do this is to assign a “devil’s advocate” role to ensure ideas get properly challenged. For more information on how to elicit different perspectives, listen to our podcast episode, “Why You Need to Encourage Constructive Dissent as a Leader”.
To accomplish healthy debate, creating a psychologically safe environment is vital. This is an environment where respectful debate is welcomed and people feel comfortable expressing their opinions without fear of judgment or retaliation. No one fears being ignored, dismissed, or punished for offering a different perspective.
Healthy debate is marked by curiosity, active listening, and a willingness to challenge and be challenged. Instead of waiting for their turn to speak, team members genuinely listen to each other, ask clarifying questions, and build on others’ ideas. The discussion feels dynamic and thought-provoking. When someone challenges an idea, it’s met with curiosity rather than resistance.
The goal of the debate is progress, not endless argument. Even if there were strong disagreements, the team ultimately rallies behind the final decision, knowing it was reached through thorough discussion. There’s no lingering resentment or passive resistance.
4. Goals Are Fuzzy
If you ask your team members about their top priorities, do you get different answers? Unclear goals are like trying to hit a moving target – frustrating and ineffective.
Unclear or fuzzy goals create confusion, misalignment, and wasted effort, preventing teams from reaching high performance. When team members don’t have a clear understanding of what they’re working toward, priorities become scattered, and productivity suffers.
Instead of focusing on meaningful progress, employees may work on tasks that don’t align with broader objectives, leading to frustration and inefficiency. Without well-defined goals, accountability also weakens—if no one knows exactly what success looks like, it becomes difficult to track progress or hold each other responsible for outcomes.
Moreover, unclear goals sap motivation. People want to know that their work matters and contributes to something meaningful.
What Lack of Goal Clarity Looks Like:
- Different team members have different ideas about priorities
- Work frequently needs to be redone
- Deadlines are often missed or forgotten
- Success metrics are unclear
- Low or no accountability
Some Fixes:
Decide on clear and measurable goals. For example, if your goal is “increasing participation”, it’s clear but not measurable. If you change the goal to “increase participation by 30% by December 31st”, that makes it clear and measurable. After the goals are defined, check with your team to ensure clarity and any potential conflicts between goals.
Align your goals to the bigger organizational goals. High-performing teams need to understand how their work contributes to the broader mission. Leaders should consistently communicate the “why” behind goals so that every team member feels a sense of purpose and ownership in driving results.
Create a visual dashboard of current priorities. Transparency is key to maintaining focus and accountability. Don’t get caught up in the large variety of tools available – just find something you’ll use on a regular basis to track progress.
Most importantly, recognize and celebrate progress. Recognizing achievements—big or small—keeps morale high and reinforces the importance of clear objectives. Public acknowledgment, rewards, or simple shoutouts can motivate teams to stay engaged.
5. Delegation is Weak or Non-existent
If you’re drowning in work while your team seems underutilized, you’ve got a delegation problem.
Ineffective delegation—whether it’s micromanaging or failing to assign responsibilities—can cripple a team’s ability to operate at a high level. When leaders hold onto too much work, they become bottlenecks, slowing down progress and overwhelming themselves while underutilizing the strengths of their team.
On the other hand, vague or inconsistent delegation leads to confusion, where team members aren’t sure who owns what, resulting in dropped balls, duplicated efforts, or tasks that never get done.
Beyond inefficiency, poor delegation stunts professional growth. When employees aren’t given meaningful responsibilities, they miss opportunities to develop new skills, build confidence, and take ownership of their work. This not only limits individual development but also weakens the overall capability of the team. Without this, engagement drops and both leaders and teams risk burnout.
What a Lack of Delegation Looks Like:
- You’re consistently working longer hours than your team
- Projects stall when you’re unavailable
- Team members seem bored or underutilized
- Everything needs your approval – even minor decisions
- Tasks keep bouncing back to you – and you take them
The Fix:
High-performing teams thrive when leaders empower their people, delegate effectively, and trust them to execute.
Start by listing tasks all the tasks on your plate. Then ask yourself, “do I need to be the one to do this?” and if the answer is no, mark it with a “D” for delegate.
Using this list, match team members’ skills with opportunities. There’s nothing more disheartening than delegating to a person who doesn’t have the skills to handle the task. Delegate based on strengths, skills, and development goals. Assigning work to the right individuals ensures efficiency and gives employees opportunities to grow. Take your tasks that have the “D” next to them and list team members that may be able to take them on.
Keep in mind that every team member may not be ready for the task, but that doesn’t mean you pass them over. Maybe they can take a smaller piece of the bigger task or you can coach them through the steps first.
To ensure clarity, use the”Who, What, When, Why, and How” approach when delegating:
- Who is responsible?
- What is expected?
- When is the deadline?
- Why does this matter?
- How will success be measured?
After you answer these questions, schedule regular check-ins to make sure they get the support they need. You can also create simple decision-making guidelines so people can move forward without constant approval.
6. Nobody’s Really Accountable
When deadlines regularly slip and nobody takes ownership of problems, you’ve got an accountability issue. There’s nothing that frustrates high performance more than a lack of accountability. They feel they are picking up the slack while others coast by unnoticed (and many times get paid the same). Over time, a lack of accountability erodes trust, lowers morale, and fosters a culture where mediocrity is tolerated rather than excellence expected.
What a Lack of Accountability Looks Like
- Commitments are often forgotten or ignored
- Problems are discovered too late
- There’s lots of finger-pointing when things go wrong
- “I thought someone else was handling that” is a common phrase
- Your high performers are feeling unnoticed or undervalued
Some Fixes:
Accountability isn’t about blame—it’s about ensuring that commitments are followed through and that everyone takes responsibility for their role in the team’s success. Leaders can create an environment where accountability is expected, reinforced, and tied to both individual and collective success.
Assuming you’ve set clear goals that are regularly tracked and team members know their roles and responsibilities, accountability is crucial.
Start tracking commitments publicly and schedule regular check-ins. Make sure every task has a clear owner, and address missed deadlines immediately.
Start by holding yourself accountable. Leaders set the tone. If you hold yourself accountable—admitting mistakes, following through on commitments, and accepting feedback—you create a culture where others do the same.
Although you set the tone, it’s not your sole responsibility to hold the team accountable. Empower your team to respectfully hold each other accountable when deadlines are missed.
Team members should feel comfortable addressing issues directly instead of relying on the leader to step in. Using a constructive, non-judgmental approach (e.g., “Hey, I noticed this is running behind. Do you need any support?”) makes accountability feel like collaboration, not criticism.
Accountability isn’t about punishment—it’s about creating a culture where people take responsibility for their work, follow through on commitments, and drive results. When done right, it builds trust, improves performance, and strengthens the entire team.
7. Good Work Goes Unrecognized
If your high performers are leaving and enthusiasm is low, you might not be recognizing and rewarding the right behaviors.
Lack of recognition is one of the fastest ways to drain motivation from a high-performing team. When employees consistently put in effort but receive little to no acknowledgment, it leads to frustration, disengagement, and eventually, burnout. Over time, people begin to feel like their contributions don’t matter, and their willingness to go the extra mile fades.
Recognition isn’t just about praise—it’s about reinforcing positive behaviors, making employees feel valued, and motivating them to continue delivering great results. Without it, top performers may feel overlooked, while others may adopt a “why bother?” mentality.
What a Lack of Recognition Looks Like:
- Decreased initiative from team members
- Low energy in team meetings
- Rising complaints about fairness
- High performer turnover
- You focus more of what your team didn’t do right than what they did
- Lack of peer recognition
Some Fixes:
Make Recognition a Habit, Not an Afterthought – Appreciation should be frequent and genuine. Regularly acknowledge contributions in meetings, emails, or one-on-one check-ins. Recognition should be embedded in the culture, not an occasional event.
Celebrate wins – even if they’re small. Recognition shouldn’t be reserved for major milestones. Acknowledging daily and weekly contributions keeps motivation high and reinforces a culture of appreciation.
Be Specific with Praise – Instead of a generic “Good job,” highlight exactly what someone did well and why it mattered. For example, “Your presentation was well-researched and helped clarify the project direction for everyone.” Specificity makes recognition feel authentic and meaningful.
8. Meetings Are a Waste of Time
If people are multitasking during your meetings or the same issues keep coming up, your meetings need an overhaul.
Meetings should be a space for collaboration, decision-making, and alignment—but too often, they become a productivity drain. Long, unfocused, or unnecessary meetings pull people away from meaningful work, leaving them frustrated and disengaged. Instead of driving progress, poorly run meetings create confusion, rehash old discussions, and fail to produce clear action items.
A high-performing team values collaboration, but that doesn’t mean every discussion needs a meeting. When meetings lack purpose, attendees tune out, multitask, or leave wondering, Why was I even here? Over time, this erodes team efficiency, slows down execution, and fosters resentment toward leadership.
What Ineffective Meetings Look Like:
- People regularly check their phones or laptops
- The same topics come up meeting after meeting – with no resolution
- Meetings often run over time
- Few concrete decisions or action items emerge
- Too many status updates
The Fix:
Start with the basics: create and share agendas, assign clear roles, and end every meeting with specific action items and owners. At the minimum, define the purpose of each meeting and state it at the beginning.
Taking Action
You don’t need to tackle all these issues at once. Start by identifying your team’s top two or three challenges and focus on those first. Remember, small consistent improvements add up to significant changes over time.
Quick Win Action Plan:
- Identify your team’s top 2-3 issues from this list
- Implement one quick fix for each issue this week
- Schedule time to plan longer-term solutions
- Monitor progress and adjust as needed
The most important step is to start somewhere. Pick one issue that resonates with you and take action today.
Need help implementing these solutions? Let’s talk about how I can help your team reach its full potential. Contact us for a consultation.
