2.164 What your team’s performance is really telling you

When team performance drops, it is easy to assume the issue sits with one person. 

Maybe someone is not motivated enough, not engaged enough, or not taking enough responsibility. And sometimes that might be part of the story. But in growing businesses, poor performance is often telling you something bigger. 

In this episode, Karen explores what team performance issues can reveal about the business underneath. Before you jump straight into performance management or putting more pressure on the team, it is worth asking whether the issue is really about the individual, or whether it is pointing to role confusion, unclear priorities, manager capability gaps, workload pressure, founder bottlenecks, or culture and communication issues. 

This is the diagnosis episode. It will help you pause, read the pattern, and understand what your team’s performance might be showing you about the way your business is currently operating. 

In today’s episode, you’ll learn about: 

• Why performance issues are not always individual issues 
• How unclear roles and responsibilities can show up as poor performance 
• Why founder bottlenecks slow decisions and reduce ownership 
• How manager capability affects feedback, accountability and team standards 
• Why overload can look like underperformance  
• What culture and communication might be hiding when issues stay quiet for too long 
• The questions to ask before deciding whether it is a people issue or a business issue 

If you run a growing business and you can see that performance feels off, but you are not sure what it means, this episode will help you think more clearly about what your team’s performance is really telling you. 

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Transcript

Episode 164 

Welcome to episode 164. And today I'd like to talk about a thing that a lot of business owners and managers experience, particularly when businesses are growing. And that's the frustration of looking at team performance and feeling like something's not quite right, but not really being 
clear on what the real issue is. So you might be noticing that results are inconsistent. Maybe things are taking longer than they should. Maybe standards have slipped. Or maybe one or two people just aren’t stepping up in the way that you hoped. It could also be that it just feels like the team isn't operating with the same energy, ownership, 
or momentum that they're used to or that you think that they're capable of. And it's really easy in these moments to make it about the individuals and to assume that someone's not engaged enough or motivated enough or taking enough responsibility. And that can be part of it. But what I want to explore today is when 
team performance drops, particularly in growing businesses, it's often telling you something bigger than that. You know, quite often it's symptoms of deeper issues in how the work is set up, how people are being led, what clarity they have around their priorities, and whether the business has outgrown the way that it used to operate. 
And this is a really useful conversation to have, especially at the start of a new financial year or calendar year, because these are the times when business owners are naturally looking at targets, budgets, priorities and plans, and you're starting to think about where the business is headed and what needs to happen next. But it's also a really good moment to step 
back and ask not just how the team is performing, but what that performance might be telling you about your business underneath. Because the thing is, if you only ever look at performance at face value, you can easily end up solving the wrong problem. You can put pressure on an employee. 
when what they actually need is clearer direction. Or you can assume a manager isn't doing their job, whereas actually they just haven't been supported to lead people. You can think the team has an accountability issue when it's actually just that the team, you know, are unclear or overloaded or they're working in a structure that no longer makes sense. 
So in this episode, I'm going to talk about the most common things that team performance can be telling you in a really practical way. And this is based on what I see often happening in growing businesses. And the first area is role clarity and structure. This is one of the biggest things that sits underneath performance issues. 
and often gets missed because the symptoms show up in the people and not in the structure itself. So what often happens is that in the early days, everyone just gets on with it. You know, in smaller businesses, we're wearing a lot of hats, communication's informal, decisions happen quickly. And because the team is small, there's enough shared context for that. 
to work. But then as the business grows, more people come in, different layers start forming, more work is flowing through the business. There are more clients, complexity, moving parts, and the way that the work is actually happening starts to drift away from the way the business is structured on paper. 
So what we see happen is that people aren't fully clear on who's responsible for what. They're not always clear on the priorities. The decision rights become blurry. Reporting lines may not actually match the way the work's flowing. You know, someone thinks they own something, someone else thinks they own it. Or sometimes no one owns it. 
at all. And then what you see on the surface is, you know, there's missed deadlines, handovers falling over, duplicated work, frustration, things being dropped. But the deeper issue may not be that people are unwilling, it may just be that the structure itself is creating confusion. This is also where 
bottlenecks start to form, often around the founder or one key leader. And everyone goes to that person for decisions, approvals, or problem solving, because that's just the way the business has always worked. But the business has now grown past that point where it's sustainable. So decisions slow down, people have to wait, accountability gets fuzzy, as the work stalls and this starts to show up as poor performance, but it's actually not. So when you start seeing those signs, it's worth asking, is this really about the person or are we expecting good performance from people who are working in a structure that's actually not serving them? 
The second area I would look at is manager capability and support. And this is a huge one because so many people issues in business are not actually employee issues first, they're manager issues. And I don't mean that critically because lots of managers are doing great jobs and they're doing their best, but very often have been promoted because they were strong in their role. capable, reliable, experienced, high performing, you know, all great reasons to promote somebody, but being good at the job and being good at leading people are two different things. So what often happens is that we find if someone doesn't know how to lead others or isn't supported and developed in that way, then they're going to start to avoid feedback because they're uncomfortable with conflict. 
Or maybe they're vague about expectations because they're trying to be nice. Or maybe they just let issues go on too long because they're just hoping, you know, I'll close my eyes and it'll sort itself out. And then by the time they do say something, it comes out heavier than they intended. Or they swing between really hands off and then suddenly micromanaging. And all of this impacts on team performance because 
When those expectations aren't clear, if feedback is inconsistent, if issues are left too long, if managers don't know how to coach or hold accountability or have difficult conversations, then performance becomes patchy. And good people can disengage when they feel like they're carrying the load of other people. 
When lower performers aren't actually called out, that really lowers the motivation of everybody else. And so from the outside, it can look like the team has a performance problem when really it is just a leadership capability problem. And we see this in a lot of businesses where someone has stepped into management responsibility, 
but they haven't had the investment in helping them build the people side of their leadership. So they just haven't been taught how to set goals properly, manage underperformance early, create accountability or support people in different ways. So again, it's worth stepping back and asking, are our managers equipped to lead performance well? Or are we asking people 
to manage others without actually giving them the tools to do that. The third area is workload capacity and wellbeing. And it can be really easy to confuse overload with underperformance. In a growing business, there's a lot happening. You know, priorities shift really quickly, teams are trying to keep up, everyone's wearing multiple hats, and there's going to be gaps in process. So, you know, work can have to 
be redone. There might be unclear decisions. So teams are going down one path and they have to circle back. And because everyone is busy, that busyness can just start to look normal. But busy isn't always productive. And when people are constantly overloaded, performance usually starts to show the strain. 
You might notice that people are slower than usual or less proactive or more reactive. Quality might be dropping, small mistakes are creeping in. People stop using initiative or start just doing what's just in front of them. And it can be tempting to think that the issue is with their attitude or their motivation, but maybe it is capacity. Maybe they're stretched, they're tired. 
They're dealing with all these shifting priorities and unclear expectations. They're spending a lot of time reacting and not doing focused, meaningful work. And sometimes they're quietly disengaging long before they ever say that they're unhappy or resign. So performance can feel flat across the whole team if you're hearing a lot of frustration or everyone seems busy, but outcomes aren't where they need to be. And so that's a good prompt to say, okay, well, is this capability, motivation, or is it just the workload that isn't sustainable? Because when our people are overloaded, adding more pressure isn't going to fix it. So a useful question at this stage is, you know, what is the workload? 
What's the work environment telling us? 
The 4th area is culture and communication. And I'm not going to go too deeply into this today because I want to come back to this in more detail in another episode. But I do think it's important to mention because culture absolutely impacts on performance sometimes a lot more than leaders realise. And when I talk about culture here, I'm talking about the day-to-day experience that people are having in your business. 
And this is around things like do their concerns and ideas flow upwards or are they keeping things to themselves? Do people feel safe to raise issues early or are problems staying hidden until they become much bigger? Are standards consistent? Do leaders follow through? Are expectations clear and applied fairly? 
Because when there's a gap, then performance is often one of the first places that it shows up. If people stop speaking up, issues stay hidden. If standards are inconsistent, ownership drops. If there's poor communication or patchy follow through, performance becomes uneven. And again, the visible symptom may be lower output or less initiative or lower engagement. 
but the deeper issue might actually be around the culture. So if performance feels off, it's at least worth asking, is our culture helping people to do great work or is it quietly making it harder? So yeah, I'm not saying that individuals are never the issue when it comes to performance. Sometimes they are. 
Sometimes someone's just in the wrong role or there's a genuine capability gap, or there is a need to have a performance conversation. But many times where businesses get stuck is when they jump straight to that conclusion that it's with the individual without checking the context first. So one of the most useful questions you can ask is just, 
you know, thinking to yourself, you know, is this an individual issue? Or is it telling us something about our structure, our leadership, our workload, or our ways of working? Because then you can stop looking just at the symptom and start looking at the system. And if you start noticing patterns, then 
you can start to say, okay, like how is the work flowing? How are our managers leading? Are people clear? Are things sitting just with one leader? Are people overloaded? And you can start to get those insights because team performance, you know, it is data, but it's not just numbers on a spreadsheet. And it needs to really have that context around it to say, 
are we actually helping or hindering the work to get done? So as you head into this new financial year, I think this is a really powerful time to step back and look at the patterns. Where are you seeing the same frustrations come up? Where does work keep slowing down? Where are decisions being stuck? Are managers avoiding conversations? Are people unclear? Are they 
overloaded? Are issues staying hidden longer than they should? Because if you can start to answer those questions honestly, performance stops being just a frustrating problem to solve and becomes a really useful window into what the business needs to do next. And that's the real opportunity here, not just to lift performance in the short term but to better understand what the business is asking for in the longer term. So with this episode, just have a think about, you know, when performance drops, pause before making it about the person and think about that context. Because if you ask the right questions, 
Team performance can tell you a lot. And in the next episode, I want to build on this and talk about what to fix first when team performance is holding growth back. Because once you can see what performance is revealing, the next step is knowing when to start. And then later in the month, I'm going to talk more specifically about the role culture plays. 
in performance, because that's another layer that can either support the good work or undermine it. And if this episode has prompted you to think a bit differently about performance in your team and you want some practical support about how to manage and improve performance with more confidence, we do have a free guide on our website, which you can download from Amplifyhr.com.au in the free tools and guides section. If you found this episode helpful, I would love it if you could leave a rating or a review over at Apple Podcasts or Spotify so someone else can find the episodes to help with their business. Thanks so much for joining me. If you have any feedback, questions or ideas for future episodes, 
head on over to AmplifyHR.com.au or connect with me on LinkedIn and we can start a conversation.