It has been a few months between editions, but what I have been seeing in rooms lately made it time to write again. Seeing leaders who genuinely want to lead well, who care about their people, are committed to their organisations and are working incredibly hard, but somewhere between the intent and the reality, something is not happening.
Leaders who are keen, capable and motivated, but who are struggling with a lack of know-how, limited mentorship, little time to learn and no real road map for what good team leadership actually looks like in practice. They were promoted because they were excellent at something. Now they are expected to be excellent at something else entirely, with very little support to make that leap.
And they are not alone. The data backs this up.
Gallup’s most recent State of the Global Workplace report found that manager engagement globally dropped from 27% to 22% in a single year, the steepest annual decline on record. More striking still, 70% of the variance in team engagement can be traced directly back to the manager. When leaders are struggling, their teams feel it, whether anyone says so out loud or not.
This is not a motivation problem. It is a support problem.
So what actually needs to happen to turn this around? In my experience working with leaders and their teams, there are three things that must be addressed; not in isolation, but together.
1. The individual: starting with self
Before a leader can lead anyone else effectively, they need a clear and honest picture of themselves. Their strengths, their blind spots, their triggers and their defaults under pressure. Most leaders have never had the time or the space to do this properly. They have been too busy delivering.
Self-awareness is not a soft skill. It is the foundation on which everything else is built. A leader who does not know how they show up cannot meaningfully change, or refine, how they lead, and their team will quietly work around them rather than with them.
2. The leader: building real capability
Knowing yourself is the starting point. Leading others is the practice. This is where the know-how gap lives, the practical skills of giving feedback, having difficult conversations, setting clear expectations, building trust and holding people accountable without micromanaging. And so much more.
These are learnable. But they require more than a one-day workshop. They require repetition, reflection and someone willing to tell a leader the truth about what they are and are not doing well. That is rare. And it is exactly what most leaders are missing.
3. The team: the system around the leader
Even when a leader is developing well individually, the team has its own dynamics, history and unspoken rules. Who holds the informal power. Where the tension sits. What is never said in meetings but always said afterwards. A team is a system, and systems have a way of pulling everyone back to the status quo unless something deliberately interrupts the pattern.
Addressing the team dynamic, separately and together, is what turns a group of capable individuals into something that actually functions as a unit.
Why all three matter
Most interventions address one of these, occasionally two. A coaching engagement for the leader. A team day to reset the culture. A training program for individual skills. Each of these has value. But in isolation, the gains rarely stick.
When you address self, leader and team together, in the same engagement, over a sustained period, something different happens. The leader grows. The team shifts. And the changes hold because everyone is moving in the same direction at the same time.
Gallup found that when manager development is paired with ongoing support rather than delivered as a one-off, the percentage of managers who are genuinely thriving nearly doubles. That is not a coincidence. That is what sustained, integrated development looks like in practice.
The leaders I work with are not failing. They are under-supported in a role that asks more of them every year, with less time and fewer resources to figure it out. The good news is that this is fixable, and it does not take as long as most people think.
If any of this resonates with what you are navigating right now, feel free to reach out or drop a comment below. What are you seeing in your teams?
As always, if you invest in yourself, the rewards will be unfathomable.
Until next time.
