Coaching practices for Team Underperformance

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Team Underperformance, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• Everyone on my team is quietly playing for their own scoreboard
• I’ve basically written my team off as weak
• My team keeps dropping the ball at the same stage every single project
• My team is genuinely running well without me now, but I keep inserting myself into decisions they could make
• My departments are each winning their own little battles while the whole thing loses

Practices that may help

1. Align around collective results, not individual status
   Teams fail when members prioritize their own visibility or department’s success over the shared goal.
   The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
2. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders
   The same people perform differently under different leadership — so start with the leadership.
   Extreme Ownership, Made Practical
3. Map your team’s genius coverage
   Check whether all six activities are covered by someone who finds them energizing.
   The 6 Types of Working Genius (Patrick Lencioni)
4. Performing: step back and protect the conditions
   A Performing team needs air cover and resources, not direction.
   Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development
5. Cover and move (teamwork over silos)
   Every team and department exists to support the others toward the same mission, not to win locally.
   Extreme Ownership, Made Practical
6. Create a culture of peer-to-peer accountability
   Teams that only hold each other accountable through the manager haven’t built real accountability at all.
   The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
7. Assess readiness task by task, not person by person
   Rate competence and commitment for the specific task in front of them, not the person overall.
   Situational Leadership, Made Practical
8. Deliberately expand your inner circle
   Move team members from low-LMX to high-LMX through intentional relationship investment.
   Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Made Practical
9. Set realistic goals and chip away at them — resist "crush it" culture
   Aspirational goals that require heroic effort normalize crisis; realistic goals with steady progress normalize calm.
   Designing a Calm Company (Fried & Hansson)
10. Regulate the level of distress in the system
    Keep productive pressure high enough to motivate change but low enough to prevent shutdown.
    Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.