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@growwithpolina

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Team Playbookseen in 2 videos →https://polinamireau.com/team-playbook-tt ↗

Why it worked

The video provides actionable advice on a common leadership challenge, differentiating between individual and structural issues in a clear and relatable way. The speaker's emphasis on a non-judgmental, curiosity-driven approach makes the advice more approachable and effective.

Summary

This video explains that when addressing team underperformance, it's crucial to first understand individual experiences before focusing solely on structural issues. The speaker advocates for one-on-one conversations using a '4 leadership filters' approach to gather data and identify underlying problems, which then informs structural changes for the entire team.

Structure

1Introduction to the dilemma of structural vs. individual issues in underperformance.
2The importance of addressing individual experiences first to understand structural problems.
3Explanation of the speaker's process: one-on-one check-ins and '4 leadership filters'.
4Distinction between judgment and understanding in performance assessments.
5

Original caption

If you're trying to fix structural problems before talking to your people... you're going to miss what's actually broken. I get why leaders want to go structural first. It feels less personal. Less like you're picking on anyone. But in reality... structural issues and individual issues aren't two separate problems you can fix in sequence. You can't see the structural problem clearly UNTIL you understand how it's showing up for each person. The same bad system hits every team member differently. Inconsistent guidance might make one person freeze. Another starts making decisions alone. someone else quietly disengages. You need to understand which one you're dealing with before you can design the right fix. Here's my process when I step into an underperforming team 👇 1️⃣ 1:1 check-ins with each team member I use a specific set of questions called the 4 Leadership Filters (I have other videos on this). The goal is to understand where each person is at and what's getting in the way. Two questions I always ask: "What would you change about how things are working, and why?" "What do you need from me to support you better?" 2️⃣ Run a Red/Yellow/Green assessment on each team member Green = thriving Yellow = room to grow but coachable Red = needs urgent attention (🟢 Comment "ASSESSMENT" for the email I sent to my newsletter subscribers on how I run a Red-Yellow-Green assessment.) 3️⃣ Find the overlapping themes Look for what keeps coming up across multiple people. Those patterns tell you where the structural problem actually is. If most of the team mentions inconsistent guidance, I now know I need a better meeting cadence, clearer project briefs, shared priorities. But I only found that by going person by person first. When you go into those conversations from curiosity instead of blame, you get the information you need to fix what's actually broken. And you build a team that trusts you enough to tell you the truth. #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #teamperformance #businessgrowth #SmallBusiness

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Transcript

Okay so as a leader, what do you do when underperformance is a structural issue versus an individual issue? A leader sent me a question about this and they said, "I want to focus on structural issues first, rather than judging people." So structural issues would be things like unclear standard, inconsistent guidance, lack of recognition, poor management. So I want to share my process on addressing underperformance, but before I share that, I want to address: we cannot identify or address structural issues without going to the individual level first. That is why in my content, I talk about how to run productive 1:1s, doing a red yellow green assessment on your whole team so you can diagnose the issues and where they're coming from. So my process when I first come into underperforming teams as a fractional COO is to first check in with each individual and ask a specific set of questions, I call the 4 leadership filters, to understand better about where they're struggling. By the way, I have other videos on leadership filters and doing a red yellow green assessments, so make sure to check those out. So here's the thing, there's an assumption that we're judging people as soon as we talk to them at the individual level and start assessing individuals. But judgment would mean we're blaming the individual for their performance, which is not the case. What we wanna do instead is get to the underlying issue of what's causing the underperformance and what's going on for that person. The same set of structural issues on a team will cause different people to behave and react in different ways. So we want to understand each person and do a temporary check on where they're at. Once you check in with your whole team, you will have better data and have overlapping threads of what they are bringing up. Those overlapping themes is where we can start to plan for structural changes. For example, if most of the team is frustrated with inconsistent guidance, meeting cadence, to communicate priorities, and have a better project brief to explain what we're working on and why, so that we're on the same page. Assessing your team is not a judgment, it's understanding where each person is at, and what blockers are getting in the way of them being successful. In those one-on-one conversations, I always ask, "What would you change about how things are working, and why?" And, "What do you need from me to be able to support you better?" If you approach the conversation with curiosity instead of punishment or blame, you will get much more out of your people and you will build a much better team.