As leaders, we’ve all felt that simmer of frustration when your team isn’t meeting expectations. Perhaps you wish they’d take more initiative, show greater attention to detail, or demonstrate better ownership of their work.
When these feelings bubble up, stop and take a breath. That frustration isn’t just about them; it’s a profound opportunity for leadership self-reflection. Why? Because the patterns you see in your team—both good and bad—often have their roots in your leadership behaviors. Despite what we intellectually desire, our actions sometimes enable the very behaviors we profess to want to eliminate or disable the ones we wish to cultivate.
The team you have is, in many ways, a reflection of the environment you’ve created.
Behaviors That Build and Boost Your Team
To cultivate the high-performance team you desire, your actions must consistently enable the target behaviors:
1. Get Radically Clear on Expectations
It’s easy to assume you’ve been clear, but clarity is the reception, not the transmission. To ensure your message landed, use a feedback loop. Instead of asking, “Do you understand?” try this: “To make sure we’re aligned, could you briefly paraphrase what you heard the expectation is?” This simple check ensures alignment and closes potential communication gaps.
2. Reinforce and Reward Desired Actions
People repeat behaviors that are noticed and rewarded. A lack of positive reinforcement is often interpreted as a lack of interest or value.
- Simple, Specific & Immediate: Recognize small wins immediately. A comment like, “I really appreciated how you took the lead on the client follow-up today,” goes a long way.
- Formal Recognition: For truly outstanding work, use formal mechanisms like spot bonuses, public acknowledgment, or even dedicated time off. Recognition is currency; spend it often.
Behaviors That Block and Burnout Your Team
Conversely, you must identify and eliminate the actions that disable your team from reaching their potential. These are often subtle, unintentional, but highly impactful:
1. The Micromanagement Trap: Second-Guessing Success
You ask a team member to step up, but then you constantly scrutinize, tweak, or redo their work. This is one of the quickest ways to erode initiative. When you convey that nothing is “good enough” unless you do it, you are effectively communicating that they are not competent enough to own the outcome. This turns them into order-takers, not decision-makers.
2. Information Hoarding
Teams can’t meet expectations if they don’t have all the relevant context. Withholding information—whether consciously or inadvertently—creates blind spots and bottlenecks. If they fail, it may not be incompetence; it may reflect not having all the relevant information.
3. The Accountability Void
If you state a clear expectation but allow it to be consistently unmet without any consequence or coaching conversation, you are essentially signaling that it’s not a real expectation. Lack of accountability teaches the team that your direction is optional, undermining future performance.
Leadership Reflection Moment
Let’s use the common frustration of a lack of team initiative as an example:
- Notice the Frustration: Acknowledge the feeling without judgment. “I am frustrated that I feel I have to make all the decisions.”
- Ask the Hard Question: Turn the lens on yourself. “What am I doing to enable this lack of initiative?”
- Am I rewarding them for bringing problems to me (which is what happens when I immediately make the decision)?
- Have I been truly explicit about which decisions I want them to own?
- Identify the Disabling Action: You might realize that when a team member asks for a decision, you instinctively make it. While this feels efficient in the short term, it reinforces your role as the single decision-maker.
Your Pivot: To cultivate initiative, you may need to insist they take ownership. The next time they come to you, instead of giving the answer, try asking: “What is your recommended solution, and what information do you need to move forward?” Perhaps they need coaching on how to make decisions, but if you keep stepping in, you are communicating that you are the only one who can competently make decisions.
Action Plan for Reflection
The next time you feel that wave of team frustration, commit to this exercise:
- Name the Frustration: Identify the specific behavior you want to change (e.g., “lack of detail orientation,” “poor follow-through,” “low initiative”).
- Self-Audit for Enabling/Disabling:
- What are you doing (or not doing) that might be enabling this behavior?
- What are you doing (or not doing) that might be disabling the behavior you want to see?
- Seek Outside Insight: Sometimes, it’s hard to see our own blind spots. Ask a trusted team member or a peer coach: “I really want to see the team excel at [target behavior]. Is there something I am doing or not doing that is unintentionally getting in the way of that?”
Your actions as a leader are powerful. They are the soil in which your team’s potential either flourishes or withers. Use your frustration not as a reason to blame, but as a map for where your leadership needs to grow.
© Anne Garing, PhD & Peg Hunt, MS