Why Aren't My Team Performing the Way They Should?
- gabriella7086
- Jul 1
- 5 min read
Most senior leaders who come to me are asking some version of the same question.
"Why aren't my team performing the way they should?"
The direction is clear.
The people are capable.
What they're doing feels right.
And still, execution keeps slipping.
Here's what I've seen across 2,000+ leaders in 15+ industries over the last 20 years. It's almost never a strategy problem. It's almost never a people problem.
It's a values problem. And then it becomes a guardrails problem.
Most leaders don't realise they have both.
Most leaders do have a values problem. It's just not the one they think.
When I ask senior leaders what their three differentiating values are, most can't tell me without thinking.
The ones who can usually say trust, honesty, integrity or respect. Those don't differentiate. Every leader claims them. I've written a separate free guide on exactly this, and I'll link it at the end.
And when leaders borrow from their company's value list, those company values usually don't have guardrails around them either. So they sit on the wall without doing real work.
Here's the sequence most leaders miss.
Without articulated personal leadership values, there's nothing specific to build behaviours on.
Without clear behaviours, there's nothing to hold yourself accountable to.
Without accountable behaviours, you have no guardrails.
That's the whole chain. And it explains why "try harder" or "be more consistent" doesn't work. You can't be consistent about behaviours you haven't defined, rooted in values you haven't articulated first.
So when I say it's a guardrails problem, this is what I mean. The values have to come first. The behaviours come second. The guardrails are what hold all of it in place when pressure hits.
A value tells you what matters. A guardrail tells you what you will and won't do when that value is under pressure.
Values without guardrails are aspirations. Values with guardrails are leadership.
Your behaviours are your guardrails. When you drift, return to them.
Let Me Tell You About My Own Guardrail
For years, one of my values was loyalty. Deep, unwavering, lifelong loyalty. I was proud of it. It felt generous and human and true.
Then I realised I didn't have guardrails around it.
Loyalty without guardrails meant I felt I had to be there for people forever, whether or not the relationship still worked. It meant I was generous without ever asking whether the other person was meeting me halfway. It meant I was loyal to situations that had long stopped being right.
So I changed the word.
I'm committed now. Not loyal. I'm committed fully to a person or a piece of work for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I have guardrails around when I step in. And clearer ones around when I step back.
The value is still generous. It just isn't endless anymore.
That's what a guardrail does. It keeps the value generous instead of depleting you.
Why Your Team Is Responding to the Gap, Not the Value.
Here's where the research lands.
McKinsey found that 70% of transformations fail. The root cause is almost never the business case or the strategy. It's the human element: leadership behaviour and team alignment under pressure.
And this is the one that really hit me: Gallup's 2025 workplace report shows manager engagement fell from 30% to 27%. The steepest decline of any group in the workforce.
Not because the pressure disappeared. Because it got harder to hold the line.
When leaders don't have guardrails, their teams feel the inconsistency. Standards shift depending on who's in the room. Expectations blur. People stop knowing what's safe to push back on and what isn't.
That's not a capability problem. That's a signal problem. And the signal comes from you.
Two quick examples from client work.
The over-functioning CEO. One of my clients valued "supporting my team." He meant it. He also carried every team problem like it was his own.
His guardrail, once we named it: "I'll answer what needs my perspective. I won't rescue what needs their ownership."
Same value. Different behaviour. Within weeks his team was making decisions they'd been waiting on him for. He wasn't less supportive. He was more useful.
The leader who said yes to everything. Another client valued "being available to her people." She meant it. She also had a calendar that no one respected, including her.
Her guardrail: "I'll protect my focus hours like I protect my team's. Availability isn't the same as access."
Within a fortnight her team stopped interrupting her with things that didn't need her. They went to each other instead.
That's culture. Built through one guardrail.
The Exercise That Changes This In A Week
Pull out a piece of paper.
On one side, write the guardrails you're willing to hold. The behaviours you'll stand in no matter who's in the room or how much pressure is on you.
On the other side, write the ones you won't hold. The behaviours you've tolerated, rescued, or said yes to when you knew better.
That's it. Two lists. About fifteen minutes.
When those two lists are clear to you, they become clear to your team within weeks. Usually without a single speech.
I've built this into a free worksheet you can download below. Same two lists, with space to write and a short guide for how to use them.
One last thing
Misalignment is not failure. It is simply a cue to reset.
Every leader drifts. The signs are the same across the 700+ leaders I've worked with in depth: your tone shortens, you rush, you do too much for others, you avoid a conversation, you feel resentment building.
That's drift. It isn't a character flaw. It's a signal to come back to your guardrails.
Leaders who know their guardrails reset faster. Their teams notice. Trust goes up. Execution goes up. The weight goes down.
Want to Find Out Where Your Guardrails are Working, and Where They're Not?
Take the Leadership Impact Audit.
Three minutes.
Completely free.
You'll get a written insight from me based on exactly how you answered.
It'll show you where your guardrails are doing the work they should, and where they're slipping.
Or download the free Guardrails Worksheet and try the two-lists exercise this week.
And the free guide I mentioned earlier, for leaders whose values are still sitting at trust, honesty or integrity:
Download: Why Trust, Honesty and Integrity Don't Differentiate
If you want to go deeper, the Leadership Impact Accelerator Self-Paced ($197) is the structured way through this work.
About Gabriella Horak
Gabriella Horak is an executive coach, leadership team alignment specialist, and founder of Leaders Impact and What's Your Edge? Over 20 years she has coached more than 2,000 senior leaders across corporate Australia, including ASX-listed, government, infrastructure and executive search client. She is accredited in behavioural profiling with 700+ leaders DiSC-profiled in depth.
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