Coaching practices for I've Basically Written My Team Off as Weak I Just Don't Have the People but Before I Conclude That I Can't Actually Point to a Single Standard I've Held Firmly or Made Truly Clear and Some Part of Me Suspects the Same People Might Perform Completely Differently If I Led Them Differently
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For I've Basically Written My Team Off as Weak I Just Don't Have the People but Before I Conclude That I Can't Actually Point to a Single Standard I've Held Firmly or Made Truly Clear and Some Part of Me Suspects the Same People Might Perform Completely Differently If I Led Them Differently, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’ve basically written my team off as weak
- I’ve quietly filed each person on my team as strong or weak, and then I’m baffled when my "strong" one flounders on something new
- I look around at the people I’ve hired and they all think exactly like me
- I pour most of my effort into shoring up the things I’m bad at and it crawls
- My team is genuinely running well without me now, but I keep inserting myself into decisions they could make
Practices that may help
- 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 - 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 - Build a team whose combined strengths cover all four domains
Hire and assemble deliberately for domain coverage, not for people who think like you.
Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical - Invest more development effort in your strengths than in your weaknesses
Move from average to excellent in your strength areas rather than from poor to average in your weak ones.
Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical - Performing: step back and protect the conditions
A Performing team needs air cover and resources, not direction.
Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development - Manage LMX differentiation fairly as a leader
Acknowledge that you develop different relationships with different people — and ensure the differences are earned, not arbitrary.
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Made Practical - Ask what alternative perspectives would say
Deliberately steelman the strongest objection to your current position before treating it as settled.
Socratic Questioning - Rate the strength of each logical link
Assign a confidence to each "supports" or "rebuts" link, not just to the conclusion.
Argument Mapping - Use a challenge-calibration partner or coach
Have a more skilled observer set the challenge level — your own assessment is biased.
Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability - 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)
Related concerns
- When Situational Leadership Assess Task Readiness
Rate competence and commitment for the specific task in front of them, not the person overall.
Assess readiness task by task, not person by person
- When Strengths Based Leadership Build A Complementary Team
Hire and assemble deliberately for domain coverage, not for people who think like you.
Build a team whose combined strengths cover all four domains
- How To Build A Balanced Team
Hire and assemble deliberately for domain coverage, not for people who think like you.
- Team Strengths Gaps
Hire and assemble deliberately for domain coverage, not for people who think like you.
- Developing Your Team
Assign Q3 tasks to team members who are ready to stretch — and treat the learning curve as the point.
Use delegation as a development tool
- Strengths Based Leadership On A Budget
Strengths-based leadership, developed by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie building on Gallup’s decades of manager research, holds that the most effective leaders invest in their own strengths and build teams whose combined strengths cover all four leadership domains — executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking. Gallup’s correlational research consistently finds that strength-focused teams report higher engagement and performance, though the causal direction is not fully established.
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