Chad Silverstein says high-performing teams fail because people won't call out underperformance. He recommends starting with self-accountability, keeping the right feedback ratio, and setting clear documented expectations so everyone knows what they're responsible for.
Chapters
The number one problem I see on teams, I hear it in every team practice, is the fear and insecurity of calling people out. The fear and insecurity of having to address conflict with someone who's not performing, not holding up their end of the bargain, not, you know, performing at a level that is at least meeting the standard bar. And it's hard for people to call people out, especially if they're not in a position, whether it be due to hierarchy or management, that they feel like it's their place to say anything. But if you're a high performer, obviously you have to be focused on one thing and one thing only first, and which is you. And that means you got to be hard on yourself. And you have to make sure that anything that you're calling anyone else out for, that you're calling yourself out first. High performers, they do that, they do it before anyone else has to do it. And if you've got this issue on your team where you feel like you can't go tell people things, you know, it's important that you get your ratios right. That's the first thing. Meaning that you have to make sure that the only time they hear from you is not when it's something bad, that you have to call them out. And that too, that you own your own issues first. So that if you're going to call other people out, you better make sure that they can't say what about you. And if they see you calling yourself out, taking responsibility, showing a little bit of transparency and vulnerability with closing your integrity gaps, showing how you're increasing your performance, you know, what strategies you're pursuing, where you messed up and where you're repairing, then you have all the right to call people out. And as long as you do it from a good place because you care and you want to see people do well, you know, not maybe out of, out of spite, because it's a personal reason, then you should feel like you can step in and say something. And typically in most organizations, organizations, the way you earn a leadership role is when someone sees that you're acting like a leader without holding the title of a leader. You don't need that label. You don't need a title. You just have to be hard on yourself. You have to have self awareness. And then you go and you can step in and mine for other issues with other people on your team and try to tee them up through challenge or holding them accountable. One of the biggest issues for employers and not having accountability is they haven't done the hard work themselves on themselves. But they also haven't done the hard work as a leader or to set clear expectations so that they can hold people accountable to whatever the standards are. And it's probably one of the biggest failures of a leader is to not document what's expected of somebody and hand it to them so that six months from now you're not having a complete meltdown because the person thought X and you thought Y. You knew they were expected to do this, but they didn't know that you said it, but they don't remember and what they heard was something different. And so it's important for leaders to write things down, give clear expectations, and that is, again, it starts at the top and it's on the leader. So you're not off the hook. If you're a leader, it's harder for you. You gotta look in the mirror first. You gotta set those clear expectations so that people know what's expected of them. And if you don't, you're just delaying, just misery of people coming to you and sending mixed messages and sabotaging you behind your back.
