What Managers Overlook When Deadlines Keep Getting Missed

If you’ve ever said, “I just need to manage my time better,” or “If they were more efficient, we’d be fine,” this episode is for you.

In today’s conversation, we’re flipping the script on strengths and weaknesses at work. While most people focus on improving tactical skills like organization or productivity, the real game-changer is how we show up relationally. You’ll learn how relational weaknesses, like defensiveness, passive-aggressive behavior, and poor communication, are quietly killing trust and morale on your team, even when everything looks like it’s running smoothly.

Whether you're leading a team or just trying to be a better teammate, this episode will help you see the true cause of disconnection, and what to do about it.

🧠 In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why improving your tactical skills might not fix your team problems
• The difference between tactical and relational strengths and weaknesses
• Real-world relational weaknesses that silently destroy workplace culture
• What it really means to be defensive (and how to shift it)
• Why being approachable matters more than being available
• How to start showing up as a human-centered leader... today

📌 Resources Mentioned:

• Previous episode: Love + Work with Tessa Kampen
• Connect with me on LinkedIn

✅ Subscribe & Review:

If this episode challenged your thinking or gave you something practical to try, I’d love for you to hit subscribe, leave a rating + review, and share it with a teammate who might be focusing on the wrong things.

🔜 Next Week:

We’re taking this conversation one step further. With graduation season in full swing, I’m sharing the hard truths I wish I had learned sooner, about self-discipline, ownership, and what it really means to lead yourself well.

Being the boss is both a privilege and a responsibility. Now what are you going to do with it?

• tactical vs relational strengths
• relational weaknesses in t

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Transcript

Desiree (00:00.888)
Have you ever thought to yourself, if I had better time management, things would be better. If I was more efficient in what I was doing, my life would be a lot easier. Or maybe you've even thought about it in the context of someone else. If they did things more efficiently, our entire team would run more smoothly. If they would just meet their deadlines, things would be better. I wanna take a little bit here today and I wanna test that thinking.

I had to test my own thinking with it and I'm here to set up some different expectations for you too. So if you are ready to create a more cohesive team, then lean in and let's get started.

Desiree (00:54.092)
In the last episode, my friend Tessa Campen and I, talked about the book Love Plus Work by Marcus Buckingham. And we talked about what does it look like to enjoy the things that we are doing at work? So much so that at least 20 % of everything we're doing in a day should be something we can claim to love in order to avoid burnout, in order to keep the longevity and the sustainability of what it is that we're doing every day. But in this episode, I wanna talk a little bit.

about the strengths and weaknesses that we view for ourselves. I've already told you the story that I at one point posted on social media. posted on LinkedIn that in order to become stronger, we have to work on our weaknesses. And Tessa questioned that in the

Desiree (01:45.74)
In the last episode, we covered the book Love Plus Work by Marcus Buckingham. My friend Tessa and I, went through all of the different pieces that really spoke to us in that episode and how 20 % of the things that we are doing at work should be something we can claim to love. How that is going to help us avoid burnout, it's gonna create sustainability in the things that we're doing on a daily basis. And everything in that conversation hit me really hard, but.

When I was working with a team this past week, we were talking about different strengths and weaknesses in relation to the workplace. We've already established that we really need to be focusing on our strengths when it comes to what are we good at? Where's our value added to the team? How can we utilize our uniqueness as an individual in the things that we are good at, the things that we're not good at to create a place inside our workspace on our team? However,

When I was having this conversation with a team, we were talking about those strengths and weaknesses and I gave them a prompt. I said, write down your best strength that you add to the team and write down your number one weakness. And as they started to write, I thought to myself, they're not gonna write down the things that are gonna help us to build a more cohesive team. They're not gonna write down the things that are gonna create the conversation that we need to have right now. So I stopped them and I said, the prompt is not,

Tell me your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the tactical side of work. It's not about what are you good at, what are you not good at as far as things that we're doing. Tell me what are your best strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the relational side of work. So let's break this down a little bit because I clearly had it understood in my head what those two things meant, but a couple of them looked at me with a little bit of confusion. So I said, what might it look like?

If we are all focusing on our own individual tactical strengths, we might be getting things done. The tasks are getting done, but the team members are avoiding each other. Projects might stall because our communication is poor or we have a lack of buy-in. People on the team are not agreeing to the same things or we have a lack of clarity. We're not communicating with each other about what it is we're actually doing. Maybe there's a lot of drama on the team, but no one's willing to talk about it.

Desiree (04:13.783)
that would be a relational weakness. Or maybe you feel like you're doing everything right. As an individual, you're doing your job and you're doing it well, but morale on the team is still low. These are the systemic.

Desiree (04:30.369)
These are the systemic issues that I see all the time on teams. These are just some of the symptoms that you might be experiencing if people are only focusing on the tactical and not the relational. Because the real problem is that you might be improving your tactical performance, your things like time management and organization and project planning and your subject matter excellence.

and your subject matter expertise and your task delegation. These are things we talk about a lot on these episodes. They are tactical in nature. But what happens is when we're doing that, we think that we're doing all we need to do in order to be a good and valuable part of the team, but we're ignoring the relational health. We're ignoring the relational side of our strengths and weaknesses. The relational weaknesses like poor communication and low trust and emotional unawareness.

just not even recognizing the impact that we're having on other people. These are the things that actually derail teams. These are the things that make people quit. People would much rather do a job that they hate with a team that they love than to stay doing a job they love with a team they don't like. This speaks so much to what it is that we need to focus on when it comes to our strengths and weaknesses. Do we need to lean into our tactical strengths so that we can be a really strong member of the team?

Absolutely, do we need to focus on what makes us unique as an individual so that we can add value to the team? Absolutely, but we also really need to be asking ourselves the right questions when it comes to how are we in relation to the people we're working with. So I wanna break down the strengths and weaknesses of what it means to be working on them in a tactical sense versus a relational sense, because you're gonna recognize some of these things. I already said time management, organization.

project planning, subject matter expertise, task delegation. These are all things that could be seen as a strength or a weakness. Something like whether you're quick to reply to emails or slow. Are you good at documentation or not? Do you follow through on things or are you somewhat poor at following through? Do you have a consistent workflow or are you somewhat inconsistent? Do you miss deadlines or are you really good about being on time? All of these things are tactical in nature. They are based on time.

Desiree (06:49.857)
They are based on completion. They are based on a check mark at the end of the day. Here's the issue that I run into, especially when I'm working with teams. People are so focused on that side of the tactical strength and strengthening maybe the areas that they're struggling with or maybe really leaning into the things that they're good at and then putting blinders on to everything else. But if they are ignoring the relationships that they have in the company,

in the office, in the team, that's when we end up with some drama. That's when we end up with people walking on eggshells. It's when we end up with either really boring meetings or people not coming to meetings at all because we're ignoring the relational side. So when I advised this team, I said, you need to tell me your relational strengths and weaknesses. I'm gonna give you some examples because I really want you to ask yourself.

What is it like to be on the other side of me? I might be really good at my job, at the things listed in my job description, but do I actively listen to the people around me? Do I show empathy to the things that other people are going through? Am I approachable? Am I transparent? Am I vulnerable? Do I show emotional intelligence in the things that I do? So what might it look like to have weaknesses that are relational?

You might avoid hard conversations, claiming that you don't like conflict. You might become defensive. Now, I want you to think about this. There is a difference between defending yourself and your stance and becoming defensive. Defensiveness is ego based. It's someone giving you feedback and you feeling like they're attacking you as a person. They're attacking you and your character and not the thing that they're giving you feedback about. Becoming defensive is ego based.

Defending yourself is saying, did this thing for this reason and I stand by it because. Defending yourself means that you have a stance and you're willing to share it. There's a big difference. The relational weakness would be becoming defensive, which means you are not willing to take feedback. Another weakness might be you are dominating meetings. You won't let anyone else speak.

Desiree (09:11.051)
Maybe you are someone who always has the ideas and you are someone who is going to fight to the death to make sure those ideas are coming to fruition. Or maybe you're the opposite. Maybe you're not speaking up enough in meetings and people cannot gauge. Are you for things? Are you against things? Are you even listening? Maybe you're failing to build trust because you're not willing to engage in conflict. Maybe you think everything that someone says to you is meant with ill intent and they're trying to hurt you.

That is poor conflict resolution. That is a weakness.

relational strengths and weaknesses look very different, but they are relational in nature. Should we?

Desiree (09:58.478)
I want to give you one more example of what this might look like. I will never be good at accounting. I do not like spreadsheets. Should I focus my time and energy on getting better at them? It is a tactical thing. Should I focus on strengthening that tactical weakness? I would argue to say no. There are going to be people on your team who have a strength in that tactical piece of work.

that can compensate for the fact that you're not good at it. Is it worth your time and energy? Probably not. Is it worth your time and energy to start engaging in hard conversations, to focus on not becoming defensive, but to defend why you are where you are? Is it worth your time to be a better listener and to have empathy for people and to be approachable? Absolutely. It is 100 % worth your time and energy because only you

can fix those things. Only you are able to be on that other side of the relationship with the person you're maybe struggling to get along with right now. Relational strengths and weaknesses are not a 50-50 conversation. A lot of us say, well, I'm going to wait for them to come 50 % of the way so I can meet them halfway. That is not what it looks like to take responsibility for your side of a relationship. 100 % is required by both parties. We both

have to give all of ourselves into that relationship and focus on having part in hard conversations, becoming less defensive when people are giving us feedback, et cetera, et all the things. We have to understand that we were maybe promoted into a leadership role because of our tactical strengths and the uniqueness that we bring to the role. But what will keep us in leadership and more importantly, what will help us to enjoy

leadership is not about the tactical. It is about how we show up relationally. It's how we connect with the people around us, how we can build a really good, cohesive and engaging workplace. And if you have noticed on your team that things are not as effective, as goal oriented, maybe you're not hitting your goals, maybe you're missing some deadlines, what you've probably tried

Desiree (12:19.527)
is to read time management books or to encourage your team to read time management books. Maybe you've downloaded a productivity app. Maybe you've tried to delegate tasks onto your team. But if you don't have that psychological safety of them accepting your delegation of tasks, it's just going to create more relational.

Desiree (12:42.805)
It's just going to create more relational headbutting on the team. Maybe you've tried to hold more meetings because you think that if people could just spend more time together, it would be better, but people dread it because they don't want to be around each other. Or maybe you've tried avoiding the confrontation, hoping that it will blow over only for it to blow up in your face. I can relate to the majority of those things. We've probably already tried all those things and they didn't work. So what we need to do instead is we need to shift our energy.

Tactical weaknesses like not being good at something that you wish you would because you think it would make things faster or maybe a team member doesn't do it the way you want to do it or want it done. So you try and do it instead. Those things might slow you down. But relational weakness, the passive aggressiveness, the gossip, the unwillingness to engage in a conversation that might help to break up some of that conflict. Those relational weaknesses will break your team.

So here's a couple of things that you can do to really start to build up those relational strengths. You can get curious about your team dynamics. We cannot change anyone else. We are not responsible for people. We cannot change the way that they show up, the way that they react, the way that they take what it is that we say. If we have the best of intentions and we ask ourselves, where might I be the problem and where can I put more focus into becoming better in my relations?

Where can I become better in fixing my relationships? That's where we're gonna start to make change. Maybe we can hold regular one-on-ones and focus on connection, not just walking into a room and saying what needs to get done today, but walking into a room and saying, how are we today? We need to prioritize honest and kind feedback, both giving and receiving. If we are not willing to receive feedback, there is no reason anyone should be willing to get it from us.

This one's really hard. And I recently worked with someone who said, I cannot see a world where vulnerability is appropriate on a team. We need to model that vulnerability by admitting when we're wrong. We need to ask for help. Just like when we are defending where we stand, instead of saying, I am right, period. It's, I am willing to believe that I might be wrong.

Desiree (15:11.949)
as long as you can explain to me why that might be. We need to be vulnerable and model that vulnerability for our team and for our coworkers. It might feel really scary, especially if that psychological safety of knowing that people are going to have your back and not use things against you isn't there, but that's what we're working to build. And someone has to go first. And we need to be working on being approachable, not just available. We have some leaders who say, well, my door is always open.

But if their door is open and they snap at you when you walk in, or if your door is open and someone comes in and you just don't have the time of day for them, so you're giving them half of your attention, that is a relational weakness. The tactical piece of it of being available might be there, but the relational piece of being approachable when they come to you, big, big difference. So just wrapping it up one more time, there is a difference between tactical and relational.

weaknesses and strengths. And I want you to ask yourself not how can I get better at my job. Just for today, I want you to ask yourself, how can I get better and take responsibility for the part I am playing in my relationships? It's going to change the way that you do things. It's going to change the way that you show up. And hopefully through the compounding effect, it's going to change the way that your team works together. But take someone to go first. And that can be you. So if this hit home,

I really want you to send me a message. Let me know what you think about this. This is a concept that I literally thought about on Wednesday. And I don't know that I have my full thoughts around it yet, but I do feel very passionate that there is a difference and that it is worth our time and energy to start thinking about this. So if you are working on being a more human centered leader, which if you're listening to this podcast, I know that you are, connect with me on LinkedIn.

If you would be willing, I want you to scroll down and leave a rating and review. It helps me so much to understand what it is that you're loving about this show and the content and the guests. But what I really want you to do is I want you to embody what it is that we talked about today. I want you to try this out, see what it might look like for you to know what your relational strengths and weaknesses are, and then share the episode with a colleague who might be focused on fixing the wrong things. And next week, we're gonna take this step of

Desiree (17:31.533)
personal responsibility just a little bit further because we have a lot of high school and college graduates entering into summer right now and we need to help them to understand what does personal responsibility, what does self discipline look like and how can I apply it to my life sooner than most humans so that I can really get a jump on what it means to be the best version of myself. So hit subscribe so you don't miss the next episode and just remember leadership is a privilege.

but it's also a really big responsibility. And you're the boss now. So what are you gonna do with it?