Why Your Team Ignores You: Leadership Mistakes and How to Fix Them for Good

Welcome back to Shedding the Corporate Bitch. I'm Bernadette Boas, and this week I'm bringing you back one of the episodes that continues to get more responses from leaders and HR professionals. And I think it's because it really hits a chord on something that we all know is true, but we don't always say it out loud. If your team doesn't trust you, doesn't open up to you, can't give you honest feedback, nothing else matters. Not your strategy, not your goals, not your KPIs. None of it sticks without trust as the foundation. In this episode, I'm walking you through 5 critical functions of a high-performing team and why dysfunction always traces back to a breakdown in trust, and more importantly, what you could be doing about it starting this week. Whether you're hearing this for the first time or coming back for a second listen, I promise there's something in here that you can use this week. Let's get into it.

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your host, Bernadette Boas, executive coach and author, brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode.

Have you ever had an employee who didn't do what you asked them to do or actually said no to a request that you made of them? Maybe every meeting that you have with team members is full of tension, arguments, or a complete lack of focus and attention or responses to anything that's happening in the meeting. Have you ever spent time to really consider why and to understand the motivations behind their behaviors and attitude? Openly and honestly, so you get down to the root cause. Let me share some statistics with you from The Five Behaviors by Wiley and Sons. 59% of people say their team members don't take personal responsibility to improve team performance moving forward. 55% of teams leave meetings without collective commitment to agreed-upon decisions. And 79% of people that say that their team members don't acknowledge their weaknesses to each other. So we have a lack of transparent and honest communication feedback with each other, lack of accountability with each other, a lack of working together to really help each other grow and improve and therefore build that team cohesion. Any one of those things, let alone all of those things collectively, will create a very dysfunctional team. And so what we want to discuss today is really those 5 functions of a highly successful team and the actions that you can take to really understand and get in the nitty-gritty around what is going on. Why is that? Happening and what you can do about it. All right. So first off, let's give you an idea of what really defines or makes up a highly functioning team. What do you think they are? If you were to think about them and start jotting them down, everything between humans, everything is built first on a foundation of trust. Without trust, you can't have anything else. Think about it. That individual, that employee who didn't do what you asked them to do, that individual who said no to the request that you made, or the tension that is happening within your meetings, maybe the arguments, maybe the lack of focus, maybe the lack of care toward what it is that you're all working so hard to achieve. Think about why that might be. And if you first thing, don't think about trust, think about trust. Think about what could be causing my team members to potentially not trust each other, but also not trust me as the leader. All right. Because again, highly successful teams first have a foundation of trust, and that trust means that they then feel confident and safe to then have some really great, meaty, healthy conflict. What Brené Brown actually refers to as rumbling, where any issue that might exist or any disagreement or any tension that might be happening amongst two team members or the team as a whole, or maybe employees with you as the leader. Well, if you have trust and you have that foundation of having a safe environment, an environment where people can speak their minds, an environment where there won't be any retaliation or retribution for disagreeing or for raising up an issue, if you have that foundation of trust, then you're going to be able to be open, transparent, brutally honest with one another. One-on-one or as a team and have those healthy conflicts. And once you're able to have that trust and healthy conflicts, then you know that whether or not that any team member agrees with a solution or a decision that is made by you or the collective team, they'll at least commit to the direction that they're being asked to take. Commitment is not consensus. You don't need 100% of everybody to agree with you as a leader on what it is that you're trying to do. But you also don't want to, because remember, you're building trust. Trust means that you really respect and regard all of your team members. So you don't want to be also that person that mandates, "I'm the boss and this is the way it's going to be." Think about it. What would be far more productive and effective for you as a leader if there are key new initiatives, strategies, or decisions that are being made, good or bad, easy or hard, than to engage your employees in that problem resolution, in that decision-making, in that strategy Because with that trust and with that ability to have healthy conflict, then you're going to get them to commit to it. Now, some people don't like to use the term buy-in. Buy-in meaning that they, they agree, but they don't necessarily agree. Overall, people like to say consensus. Consensus doesn't mean that 100% of everybody agrees. It just means that they are consensual to what it is that you are either deciding on or the solution that you found, whatever the case might be. And therefore, as a result of trust and the ability to be open and honest with each other, sharing the differences, sharing the views, sharing the beliefs, so forth, and sharing the ideas, you get to a point where you need to make that final decision or find that final solution or get to that final idea. And Therefore, you take a poll, so to speak, and gain everyone's support or consensus or commitment to whatever that, that final output is. So you only get that as a result of being able to have those open communications because the fact that everyone trusts one another. And then there is The ability that once you have that trust, you have the ability to have that rumbling, have that healthy conflict and come to a point of commitment. Everyone's then working on the same path. Your team is all of a sudden really clear and on board with the vision that you have that might be passed down from higher above, but they're all on the same trajectory of the vision that you have, the goals that you might have set, the expectations you might have defined, the measurements and the outcomes that you have for yourself and for the team collectively, and even individuals on the team. And therefore, now you're building an environment where they can remind each other or hold each other accountable to what it is that they consented to or committed to. So let me kind of dissect that just a little bit. And that being is, have you ever experienced where you're working with your team members, maybe your employees, but also your peers, someone's just not pulling their weight, someone's just not doing what they should be doing, they're not doing their job, and yet other team members are jumping in to cover for them. Maybe you're even picking up the slack because the ultimate end goal would be you don't make your business goals, you don't make the numbers, you don't make the output that you're, that you're expected to, you don't meet the deadline. And so instead of addressing that, which means, again, the dysfunction would be a lack of trust, inability to have conflict, inability to gain consensus. And therefore, there's no way anyone's going to hold each other accountable. And the reason why they do that, they don't like conflict. They don't like confrontation. They don't know how to handle it, or they don't want to upset somebody else. But as a highly successful team, the fact that you've built that foundation of trust as a leader within the culture, and you're— you allow in a safe environment very open, honest, brutally transparent conversations, rumbling, and therefore everybody can get on board even if they disagree, then they are comfortable. They do feel safe. And they know that nothing bad is going to happen by holding each other accountable, by saying, hey, Joe, you're not pulling your weight here. And the other team members, it's not fair to them to have to pick up the slack. The moment you have all of those other foundational elements, you have a team who aren't afraid of calling each other out, of reminding each other that, hey, look, we all committed to this goal, did we not? Yeah, we did. Then is it fair if Joe and Mary aren't doing their part, therefore the rest of the team have to make up for that? And it might not even be employee peer groups. It could be the senior managers aren't even holding each other accountable. But highly successful teams ensure that they remind each other, as opposed to getting in your head that accountability is confrontation or conflict. All accountability is reminding each other of what it is that you all agree to, including that individual. And therefore you're looking for them to keep their commitment. Okay. So trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, which then ensures that everyone is going down that same path toward those same goals and outcomes and business results. And therefore the peak of a highly successful team would be that everyone is very clear and is very targeted on the business results that have been outlined and committed to and communicated and passed down and are now being acted upon. So again, the 5 functions of a highly successful team is to have trust with— that allows healthy conflict that leads to commitment, accountability, that ultimately ensures that everyone is driving and is focused on the business results. All right, but let's go back to the initial examples that I laid out around that individual who doesn't do what you ask them to do or says no to you, or maybe, or you have a meeting that's full of tension and arguments and disagreements. Well, something's broken, and Once one of those five, as I mentioned earlier, are broken, then everything falls apart and you don't have a highly successful or high-functioning team. And so what you as the leader need to do is you need to dig in and try to figure out why that is. And therefore, you're responsible to set it up. And what I mean by that is First, I would always coach and recommend that a leader goes away, uses a brainstorming strategy, whiteboarding session of their own, or they can engage peers if they want to, or a professional facilitator. And they really could find for themselves, what do I want in my team? What do I want the culture to look like? What do I expect team members in their behaviors and their attitudes and how they show up? At the same time, what do I expect of myself? And what is actually in it for all of us as a result of building a team that is built on X, Y, and Z that you've defined? And hopefully, when you go off and you really put some consideration into the type of team and the type of leader you want to be, you're thinking about— and if you don't have the 5, the 5 functions that I've outlined, you now do. But say somebody doesn't, just think about what are those things that you know make you work at your peak and therefore would make other people work at their peak. And you're probably going to find the fact that you want to know that everybody has your back. On your team and that each other, everyone on the team has each other's back. That's trust, right? And then you also want to be able to call each other out and make sure that you're being open and honest about their highs and their lows, their successes and where they misstepped. But you want to be able to go in and have a heart-to-heart, honest conversation with team members and/or your boss and vice versa. And then you continue to go on saying, when you would hope that everybody is looking toward and working toward the same goals, someone's not splintering off as just thinking about themselves and what it is that they want to achieve, not only in their role, but in their career. And we don't want people splintering off. Yes, individuals can have their own individual personal and career goals. At the same time, we need everybody to be cohesive and we need everybody to understand that we're all working to the same drum. You can go back to those 5 functions, write them down, and use that as a starting point to build the type of leader you want to be and the type of team you want to build. All right. So you have a really good, solid understanding. Now, you might not know all the answers to how do I do that? We're gonna get to that in a minute, but you might not have those answers initially. However, this is when you can also start engaging your team. So you figure out for yourself what it is that you want from yourself and your team, and then you ask them. And it could be in a group setting, or it could be one-on-one. Now, of course, group settings with the boss tend to keep the quiet ones quiet and the loud ones loud. So you might choose to have a conversation one-on-one with individuals. And I'm not talking you even have to book a half hour. You can book 10, 15 minutes and pull all of your individuals aside, all your team members aside, on the phone, in person, whatever the case might be. And you just simply ask them, what do you want from me as a leader? What do you need to be successful? What do you need from your peers as a, as a cohesive collective team? What does that look like to be a highly successful, high-functioning team? And gather their input to all of it. All right. So you ask yourself, so you have a clear understanding of the type of leader and the type of team you want, but then don't go— and the first thing you could do to break trust is then go and just use all of your great ideas and not ask your team members for their input to it.

All right.

So ask your— ask yourself and then ask your team members. Now, what can you do once you have all of that? What can you do to actually start acting on building this highly successful team? And again, It's not going to be overnight. You're going to need time. You're going to need patience and persistence. But if you did the work when you asked yourself and you really laid out and defined the type of leader and the type of team that you want, then you can start chipping away. And maybe your team gave you inputs on priorities. So of the trust and healthy conflict and commitment and accountability and results-focused, a great question to them is, Which is the most important for us as a team to work on? You might want to say, okay, give me the top 3. We're not going to worry about the, the ocean of all 5. Give me the top 3, but then give me your top 1. And what do you, what ideas do you have? What do you suggest we start working on over the next 30, 60 days? And then we can build on from there. All right, and so don't do it in a vacuum. Ensure that you are then acting as a leader to be open-minded to the fact that your team members could have great ideas as to what it is they need, because they all talk. You're in your office all by yourself, and unless you're talking to them on a regular basis and have the trust, then one, it wouldn't be an issue, right? But most likely, unfortunately, the majority of teams often lack— and there's a gap in not complete trust, but there's a gap in really the manager and the employees having those very open, transparent, honest discussions about what's working and what's not working. So have them. Make sure that they're part because that's where you're going to gain the commitment. OK, so you went and asked yourself, you went and asked your team, you pulled it all together now into what you are defining and mapping out. Because again, you're never going to gain 100% agreement to everything. So you could work with your team to have everyone's input to it, but there'll be some strays, there'll be some stragglers of things that don't necessarily mesh into what you're trying to accomplish. And as the leader, you ultimately are responsible to defining that culture, defining the vision, defining the goals, and the direction the team's going to take. So you get to that point, and you have already, through this process, tested the trust, the healthy conflict, the commitment, the accountability, and the focus on the results. But now you're formulating your vision, your charter, your mission for the team, and you're communicating it to them. All right. And one of the number one things that employees want for their managers is just very open and detailed, thorough communication. Now that doesn't mean you have to share everything with them. They don't expect that. However, when it comes to what you expect and the direction you're taking and the vision that you have for the team and the business, they need to know that. And it kills me when I work with my clients who are predominantly high-level corporate executives. It kills me how few have defined their vision, their charter, their goals and expectations and communicated those to their people. The 5 functions of a highly successful team that I want you focused on: building that trust. As a result, having healthy conflict, rumbling with each other on the good, the bad, the hard, the easy, the disagreements, the agreements, everything. Just building and working on that ability to have healthy conflict, which will easily lead to everyone getting on board and committing to the plans that you have for the team and for the business, which will then lead to everybody reminding each other. Accountability is reminding. It's not conflict. It's not confrontation. It's simply reminding everyone and each other of what it is that they made a commitment to, which then makes sure everyone's working on the same page, going in the same direction toward the same goals. Okay, so what can you do step by step to make this happen, to take what might be a fragmented, dysfunctional team and chip away over time? Don't have too grand of expectation that this is going to happen in the immediate short term or overnight. For all of my A personalities out there. And what can you do to where you can start transforming you and your team over time? Which, which does beg me to mention one thing before I share that is doing this and working toward this means you even have to transform yourself. And go against some things that are some mode of operations that you've done all along. And what I mean by that is that, real quickly, is this: many individuals, many professionals I know, whether it's corporate or on their own entrepreneurially, small companies or large, some of them have come from very dictatorial type of environments, very non high-functioning, highly successful teams, more very— I don't like to use and say very corporate organizations because that's not fair to those that are very successful in building high-functioning teams, but just very non-inclusive, more mandate, more dictatorial type of environments. Then they move to a different type of company and a different type of culture and environment. And sometimes they deal with a great deal of challenge and struggle in trying to adapt and adjust to that new environment. So if you've ever heard anyone say business is about the results, about the metrics and not the people. Those are some of the types that I'm talking about, because business is people. And that we can go off on a tangent, and I'm really going to try hard not to do that. But what this is— this discussion is showing and is hopefully illustrating is that to have a strong business, you need to have strong relationships engagement and connection with your people. And you can only do that through these 5 functions. Would you agree with that? And so it will take time for you to transform a team that you might find to be broken. The, the leader themselves might have some breaks in the way that they're accustomed to leading and operating as well. And so everyone around each other needs to be patient and have a lot of grace on themselves as the leader and the team members who are also adjusting to the new mode of operation. All right. So I need— that was a little diversion there, but I needed to say that because people will ultimately assume that the leader's perfect and now they're just trying to get their team perfect. And that's not necessarily always the case. All right. So what can you do? So first decide the type of leader that you want to be. We talked about that. And decide the type of leader that you want to be. Share that with your team. And this is one area of communication that doesn't happen a lot between managers and the teams. They don't talk about the type of team that they're trying to build, the type of culture that they're looking to build. Yes, they share, "This is what I expect of you." But it's more around getting the job done on time, maybe on budget, so forth and so on. Not necessarily. I'm really looking for all of us to mutually respect each other, to be very well connected and understand and know each other to the point where X, Y, and Z. So you want to share what it is you want for yourself and the team and the culture that you're working to build. And you, you need to be totally open and honest with them. You need to be just very brutally frank. We're broken. Here are some observations, not only from myself but from other members outside of us, plus in my discussions with all of you. These are the areas where we're broken, but these are the areas where we're really strong and we really need to lean on and leverage because we're not necessarily getting the credit as a team for our strengths, because some of these breaks in our— and dysfunctions in our behavior and our attitudes and our mode of operations are pretty whacked. So you want to be totally open and honest and thorough in your communications with your team. And you want to say to them, what are your suggestions? What are your ideas? So ask them for their solutions, ask them for their ideas, ask them for their insights and their inputs and their beliefs as to what the team could be and what it might look like 6 months, 18 months from now. And then what is going to be key is that you start modeling and behaving in the way you want your team members individually and as a team to, to operate. So let's break that down a bit. So first, you individually, for your— within yourself, to them, need to demonstrate a model, the type of individuals, the type of workers, the type of leaders you want and you expect to engage with. So if you want trust, you need to trust, you need to respect, you need to engage and collaborate and communicate. If you want healthy conflict, you need to model and behave in the way that's appropriate. So you need to even get coaching yourself as to how do I deal with difficult conversations? How do I give hard news? How do I praise someone without diminishing somebody else? But you need to first take the lead in, in behaving and modeling the type of behavior and attitudes, qualities and traits, and values that you want in this new team that you're forming. You want to ensure that— remember we said you can engage your team to pick what the priorities are. So once you have the priorities of the areas of the team building that you wanna focus on, you then wanna make sure that you put a plan to them. Too often I hear, yeah, we had this brainstorming session. We were asked for our input and then nothing came of it. Like nothing happened. That what you're modeling there is definitely a complete lack of trust. Because if they can't trust that you're actually going to do something as a result of this, this activity, this initiative that you've taken. There is the trust right out the window. And once you don't have the trust, what don't you have? Or what— let's say, what do you have? If you don't have the trust, then you're going to have people that can never be open and honest with each other, and they're not going to hold each other accountable, and they're not ever going to commit. They're going to tell you in your face that they agree, and they're going to walk away and not do anything. Remember those examples at the beginning? When you give direction to someone, they don't do something, or they actually say no to you. If you were to say to yourself, I wonder why that is. Why are they behaving that way? You don't automatically blame them because it could be you. It could be that you haven't established trust in them and therefore they don't listen to you. They don't respect what you are asking them to do. All right. So you have to be the one to model and behave, and then you have to ensure that you're putting plans or actions in place for yourself and for all of them to then follow. So the things you could be doing is decide the type of leader you want to be and come up with also the type of team that you're looking to build and put that structure, put that plan, that vision, that charter, those expectations in place and share it with them very brutally, openly, and honestly. Ask them for ideas, their inputs, the insights, solutions, because you would have already asked them the priorities of where should we focus on first, second, third. And then you start modeling and behaving the way you want everyone else to, and they'll start eventually modeling and behaving the way that you are. And you'll have a team that is then taking action on the plans that you put into place to make these shifts. And as when you're tracking and measuring and assessing and making adjustments to them, they're all on board and they're making those adjustments as well. They might even be raising their hand and saying, hey, wait a minute, we need to adjust here. Something's not working. Something's really working well. We need to expand on that. But they're then naturally engaged, naturally committed, naturally supporting each other, holding each other accountable, naturally dealing with the highs and the lows. And the next thing you know, you turn around and you're like, I have a very high trusting team. Before you go, if this conversation sparks something for you, I want to give you a free tool that takes it even further. Head over to ballofirecoaching.com/optin and download my free leadership gap diagnostic. It's designed to help you pinpoint exactly where your leadership or team's performance is breaking down so you know precisely where you need to focus your energy. No guesswork, just clarity. Go grab it at ballofirecoaching.com/optin, and I will see you next week. Bye.

Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within you. Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Wanna dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffirecoaching.com to learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.