Think Your Team Is Struggling? Look in the Mirror First.

When someone on your team falls short, misses the mark, or underdelivers there’s a likelihood you — yes, you — are part of the equation.

Yet I’ve known and coached many leaders whose first instinct was to conclude the behavior or performance problem was 100% attributable to any team member who missed a deadline, short-changed a deliverable, or somehow underperformed.

Occasionally, they were right. But most of the time, they were wrong.

I’m not saying that underperformers are never the problem. But all too often, they’re simply the one left holding the bag, for reasons having nothing to do with them. The leader may, for instance, have overloaded them with tasks or overestimated their capabilities. The leader may have “set” expectations that were never clearly communicated. Or the leader may have delegated the work and then walked away – a classic “fire and forget” move – assuming delivery would follow.

The irony here is that leaders who likely pride themselves on accountability are failing to apply it to themselves.

Leading by example, which I explore in detail in my book, Creating a Culture of Accountability, is one of the three elements of accountability and the foundation upon which consistent high performance is built. Before you can hold anyone else to a meaningful standard, you must hold yourself to one first. Failure here creates a 100% probability of downstream suffering.

So let’s have a hard look in the mirror today.

The Instinct to Look Outward

When something goes wrong, most leaders’ first inclination is to look for the cause externally. It’s an understandable cognitive shortcut – after all, you’re not the one “doing the work.”

Experienced leaders are especially vulnerable to this reflex. The longer you’ve been in the seat, the more successful your track record, the more confidently and quickly you’ll conclude your leadership isn’t the issue. What’s more, looking outward is easier, faster, and far less uncomfortable than examining how you may have contributed to the problem.

But in these instances, confidence can quickly become a liability. As you fixate on symptoms — so-and-so’s attitude, output, or apparent lack of ownership — you become blind to the true root causes of the problem. Meanwhile, the costs compound. For instance, you might spend substantial time and effort trying to coach and manage someone who you yourself set up to fail.

Your team, meanwhile, has already concluded where the real issue lies, and the discrepancy between what they see from you and what you’re willing to acknowledge doesn’t go unnoticed. Over time, this damages morale and erodes trust in your leadership, sending a message to high performers that learning, growth, and accountability only apply selectively. And let’s not miss what this does to your own trajectory as a leader: An executive who only looks for problems in others lacks self-awareness and never truly grows.

None of these costs are hypothetical. I’ve seen them appear across businesses of all sizes and shapes. For instance, years ago I coached the executive team running a chain of fast food restaurants in New York City. They seemed to have an inexhaustible list of examples illustrating just how lazy their store managers and frontline staff were. Over time, it became clear to me, however, that the issue wasn’t the team, but with the CEO herself, who was consistently demeaning toward her staff. She had communicated, through both words and actions, she expected very little from the people running her stores. Her own belief system became a self-fulfilling prophecy that set her teams up to fail, yet she couldn’t see it. Her path forward began with self-awareness as I illuminated the role her beliefs and assumptions played to set the stage for the problem she was experiencing.

Ask: “What Is My Role in This?”

So what’s a senior leader to do when a problem surfaces with a member of their team? The answer is deceptively simple, but not necessarily easy.

When someone on your team is failing to perform to expectations, FIRST take time to objectively assess your own potential role in the situation. Here are five questions I recommend to get started:

1. Did I give them the right tools?

More than just assigning them the work, did you give them what they needed to do it well? Did they have a budget, or were they supposed to execute without funding? Did they have access to the right people, tools, and information? Did they understand the history and context of the assignment? If you never gave them everything they needed to succeed, don’t be surprised if they’re simply doing the best they can with what they have.

2. Were they ready for this role or assignment?

This is one of the most common and costly errors I see. A strong performer in one seat is promoted or elevated and everyone assumes the transition will be smooth — because why wouldn’t it be, if they were successful before? But past performance in a different role is not necessarily evidence of readiness for a new one. This gap is especially wide in doer-to-manager transitions, where the skills that made someone exceptional doing the work have almost no bearing on their ability to manage others.

3. Did I invest in their success?

Your responsibility as a leader extends far beyond handing out work and stepping aside. Did you schedule time for ongoing coaching, mentorship, and development, or did you assume they’d ask if they needed help? Did you rush through their onboarding, or did you give them the depth of instruction and training the role demands? Delegation without ongoing investment is not delegation; it’s a form of abdication.

4. Were my expectations clear?

There’s an enormous difference between communicating expectations and them being understood. Consider how often expectations are “set” in passing — say, at the end of a meeting that ran long, or in a conversation where three other things were also discussed — and you’ll see why this is an issue. It’s easy to walk away feeling all is clear when, in reality, you’re both operating with completely different pictures of success.

5. Have I been utilizing the three building blocks of accountability?

Accountability is built on three things: belief, context, and attention. Belief: Did they know you were confident in their ability to deliver? Context: Did you make it clear why the project or assignment mattered — to them, to the team, to the broader business, and to you personally? Attention: Did you check in regularly to catch obstacles early and demonstrate that you were invested in their progress? If you missed any one of these building blocks, there’s an excellent chance you’re a contributor to the performance issue at hand.

When you perform this exercise, consider enlisting an outside party (a mentor, coach, or peer) who you trust to tell you the unvarnished truth, especially when it’s something you don’t want to hear. While uncomfortable, outside perspective is critical to self-awareness and establishing the reality of your situation.

It’s extremely rare for a leader to have zero culpability for a team member’s failure to deliver. The point of this process isn’t self-flagellation, but to help you identify your contribution, making the invisible visible.

Accountability Starts with You

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.” —Attributed to Theodore Roosevelt

There’s no doubt there will be situations where you find the other person fully at fault due to their capabilities, fit, engagement, or judgment. But you must earn the right to arrive at that verdict, which means ruling out your own involvement first. It’s a step – and a habit of looking in the mirror – few leaders are willing to practice. And from what I’ve observed over the past twenty years, it will likely reveal you play a bigger role in your team’s performance challenges than you think.

Leading by example is the most challenging element required to build a culture of accountability. It requires enduring the discomfort of both intellectual honesty and a willingness to examine your own decisions and behaviors before scrutinizing anyone else’s. This makes it tempting to brush off — but without holding yourself to the same standards as you hold your team to, what you preach will always be undermined by what they see you do.

So the next time someone on your team misses the mark, resist the reflex to jump to conclusions and take a look in the mirror before you look across the table. Your team, your business, and your own development as a leader depend on it.

If this article challenged you to think differently about your role, share it with someone else, and subscribe for additional insights on becoming a more effective leader.

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