Are you looking at your company's performance – stalled growth, missed targets, a workforce that seems disengaged – and wondering what’s really going on? You might have talented individuals leading your departments, but the issue could be deeper, stemming from how your leadership team operates (or fails to operate) as a unit. These internal leadership challenges don't just affect feelings; they directly hit your ability to execute strategy, innovate, and improve your bottom line.

Let's look at seven critical signs that your leadership team itself might be the bottleneck holding your company back, and importantly, what you can start doing about them.

1. When "The Buck Stops Nowhere"

• What it looks like: You see leaders pointing fingers downwards or blaming outside factors when things go wrong. There’s a clear reluctance to own mistakes or shortfalls, either individually or as a group.

• Performance Impact: This creates a culture where blame-shifting is normal. Trust disappears, and the chance to learn from what went wrong is lost. If leaders aren't taking responsibility, it's unlikely anyone else will. When this happens, people on the team won't challenge each other on behaviors or results, because that shared sense of responsibility just isn’t there.

• What to Do About It:

  • Clarify Ownership: Ensure every key initiative and area has a clear owner at the leadership level. Who is ultimately answerable?

  • Leaders Go First: Encourage leaders to openly admit their own missteps and what they learned. This sets the standard.

  • Focus on "What," Not "Who": After setbacks, hold discussions centered on "What happened? What can we learn? How do we prevent this next time?" instead of assigning blame.

  • Link Expectations to Ownership: Make it clear that owning outcomes (good or bad) is a core part of leadership.

2. When Clarity & Connection Die

• What it looks like: Information seems to be a guarded secret, shared inconsistently, or delivered in a confusing way. Meaningful feedback is rare. Difficult, but necessary, discussions are sidestepped.

• Performance Impact: This breeds confusion, causes people to work at cross-purposes, starts rumors, and leads to disengagement. Teams can’t perform well if they don’t clearly understand what they need to do, why it’s important, and how it fits into the bigger picture. Without open, honest, and sometimes spirited discussion around ideas, genuine agreement on decisions is out of reach. People might appear to agree, but true alignment on the path forward never materializes.

• What to Do About It:

  • Establish Rhythms: Set up regular, predictable times for sharing important company updates (e.g., weekly leadership briefs, monthly town halls).

  • Choose Your Channels: Decide which communication methods are best for different types of messages to reduce noise and confusion.

  • Practice Active Listening: Train leaders to truly hear what others are saying and to give useful, constructive feedback.

  • Invite Questions: Create ways for people to ask questions and share concerns safely, perhaps through structured Q&A sessions or an open-door approach.

  • Seek Input Before Deciding: Leaders should make a habit of gathering perspectives from relevant team members before making significant decisions.

3. Chasing Every New Idea

• What it looks like: Priorities seem to change with the wind. New initiatives are launched before old ones are properly seen through. There's a lack of steady focus on core company goals.

• Performance Impact: This wastes money and effort, burns out your teams, creates cynicism, and stops any single initiative from being done well enough to show real results. This constant shifting prevents the team from uniting around common objectives and achieving them together; individual or department goals can easily eclipse what’s most important for the company as a whole.

• What to Do About It:

  • Commit to a Planning Cycle: Implement a clear process for setting strategy with defined review points (e.g., annual planning sessions, quarterly progress checks).

  • Limit Top Priorities: Leaders must agree on a small number of genuinely critical goals and communicate them repeatedly.

  • Gate New Ideas: Before launching something new, ask: Does this support our core strategy? Do we have the people and money for it? What will we stop or delay to make room for this?

  • Recognize Sustained Effort: Celebrate progress on long-term objectives, not just the launch of the next new thing.

4. When Culture Corrodes Cohesion

• What it looks like: Leadership allows, or even participates in, behaviors like playing favorites, undermining colleagues, or showing a general lack of empathy. People don’t feel safe to speak their minds.

• Performance Impact: This drives your best people away, crushes morale, kills teamwork, and creates an atmosphere where people are too guarded to offer their best ideas or efforts. When the environment doesn’t feel safe, individuals won’t show vulnerability, admit they don’t know something, or ask for help – all necessary for a group to function well. Productive debate about ideas becomes impossible.

• What to Do About It:

  • Define "How We Behave": Clearly outline expected behaviors for everyone, especially leaders, tied to your company values.

  • Zero Tolerance for Bad Behavior: Make it clear that actions like bullying, harassment, or deliberate undermining will not be accepted – and follow through, especially with leaders.

  • Train for Respect: Offer guidance on respectful workplace interactions and how to handle disagreements constructively.

  • Leaders Model Safety: Encourage leaders to show empathy, invite different (respectfully stated) opinions, and even admit their own uncertainties to build a safer environment.

  • Ask About Culture: Regularly and anonymously gather feedback on how people experience the work environment and leadership.

5. Stifling Talent Through Micromanagement

• What it looks like: Leaders get too involved in the small details of their team's work, constantly second-guess decisions, and don’t give their direct reports real ownership.

• Performance Impact: This demotivates capable people, creates slowdowns, makes decision-making sluggish, and clearly signals a lack of belief in the team’s skills. It directly harms the ability of team members to feel trusted and to trust one another, preventing the open sharing and reliance needed for a team to succeed.

• What to Do About It:

  • Focus on Outcomes: Leaders should clearly define what success looks like (the "what" and "why"), then empower their teams to figure out the "how."

  • Build Confidence to Delegate: Invest in developing leaders so they feel more comfortable trusting their teams with important work.

  • Shift to Coaching: Encourage leaders to see their role as supporting and guiding, rather than controlling and directing.

  • Check In, Don't Take Over: Use regular one-on-ones to discuss progress, remove roadblocks, and offer support – not to dictate every step.

  • Acknowledge Team Successes: Publicly celebrate achievements that result from teams being empowered to do their work.

6. Leading from a Distance

• What it looks like: Decisions are made without a solid grasp of what’s happening on the front lines, the real operational challenges, or what the market is actually doing. Input from those doing the work is overlooked.

• Performance Impact: This leads to unrealistic goals, plans that don’t work in practice, frustrated employees, and solutions that don’t actually fix anything, wasting time and money. If decisions seem imposed without understanding or input, it's very hard for the wider team to genuinely get behind the chosen path, leading to mere compliance instead of energetic action.

• What to Do About It:

  • Get Out of the Office: Require leaders to regularly spend time where the work happens, talking with frontline employees and even customers.

  • Create Upward Channels: Establish ways for insights and concerns from all levels to reach leadership (e.g., skip-level meetings, employee feedback groups).

  • Factor In Frontline Views: Make it a standard part of decision-making to consider input from those closest to the work.

  • Explain the "Why": Leaders should clearly communicate the reasoning behind decisions, especially if those decisions might seem counterintuitive to people on the front lines.

7. When "How We've Always Done It" Kills Progress

• What it looks like: A leadership group that resists fresh ideas, necessary adjustments, new tools or methods, or adapting to changes in the market.

• Performance Impact: The company stagnates, becomes less effective, and falls behind competitors. Opportunities are missed, and new thinking withers. This approach shows a lack of collective focus on achieving the best results, choosing comfort or the familiar way over the drive for better performance.

• What to Do About It:

  • Encourage Smart Experiments: Build a culture where trying new things (and learning from them, even if they don't pan out perfectly) is valued.

  • Champion Change from the Top: Leaders must clearly explain why change is needed and paint a picture of the positive future it enables.

  • Involve People in Change: Engage teams in identifying areas for improvement and in designing and implementing changes that affect their work.

  • Support New Ways: Provide the necessary training and tools to help people adapt to new processes or technologies.

  • Reward Adaptability: Recognize and appreciate individuals and teams who embrace change and find better ways to work.

More Than Just Missed Targets

These problems rarely exist in isolation. They often feed into each other, creating a cycle that pulls performance down. This affects your ability to carry out your strategy, keep your best employees, develop new products or services, and maintain overall organizational health.

Acknowledgment is the First Step

These signs can be subtle at first, but their long-term effects are deeply damaging. The most important move is for your leadership team to have the courage to look honestly at itself. These problems are solvable, but it requires focused effort and a commitment to new behaviors.

Does your leadership team show any of these signs? It might be time for that honest, critical look – and then decisive action – before performance slips further.

Leadership is a Lever, Not Just a Title

The leadership team sets the example and, in many ways, the upper limit for what the entire organization can achieve. Changing a problematic leadership team isn't simple, but the benefits – a healthier culture, more engaged people, and better business outcomes – make the effort worthwhile.

When you are ready, here are 3 ways I can help:  

1. Assess your Business's scalability: Benchmark your business's potential for scaling. In just five minutes, you can assess your company against the 6 key systems you need to activate to ignite compound growth. Get your results here.

2. The Foundations for Business Growth Masterclass:  When you are ready to scale your business, we run a Foundation for Business Growth Masterclass twice a month. Signup here.

3. Are you a CEO who wants to find business momentum, scale up, and boost your business value? Apply for Business Team Coaching here.