5 Silly Simple Mistakes Leaders Make When Setting Team Goals
July 18, 2023
If you’re like most, you have moments where you get frustrated when team performance misses the mark.
It’s never been more critical for your team to stretch and win. In this season, it’s also never been more challenging.
Many teams feel disoriented, which makes missing targets or objectives even more likely. How do you even know what to shoot for in a swirling environment as confusing as ours?
All of these are great questions, and fortunately, there are answers.
After leading teams for three decades, here are five mistakes I’ve made and want you to avoid when setting goals with your team.
The solution for many of these issues is a framework I call “Results-Based Leadership,” which I outline in-depth inside the Lead Team Institute {LTI}.
5 Silly Simple Mistakes Leaders Make When Setting Team Goals
1. No clearly owned mission, vision, and set of values.
Your mission, vision, and values decide how and in what direction your team runs (with or without you). Most organizations know enough to throw a mission statement and set of values on the wall, but it usually doesn’t make it into the hearts of the team.
What’s on the wall often isn’t owned down the hall.
It’s the same with cultural values. Many leaders love envisioning the culture they want, but often there’s a big gap between the culture they want and the culture they have. In addition (and from testing this out), most staff members couldn’t name more than one cultural value their organization has embraced.
So, how can you tell if your team owns your mission, vision, and cultural values?
Here’s a little test:
During your next Lead Team meeting, ask your team if they can sketch out your campus values, mission, and vision without looking them up.
If they can’t, you know there’s work to do in the front office before your DNA can scale throughout the rest of the system. When mission, vision, and values aren’t owned by your Lead Team, your other teams will move in a thousand different directions and might not progress much of anything.
If you would like to experience the simple 3-step process I use to create better cultural value statements, you will want to consider the
Executive Team Quarterly {EQ}.
Defining your values is the first step to having your team own them.
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Sign up for my FREE Leadership Download for better practice leading team 1:1 meetings.
2. No clear strategy.
Mission, vision, and values should have a long shelf life.
Strategy, not so much. And that’s critical because your strategy is how you plan to accomplish your mission.
Here’s an example that’s probably fresh on everybody’s mind: For almost every campus system, COVID threw a wrench (or nuclear bomb) into strategy. And a return to your old strategy likely didn’t work.
As much as you didn’t have certainty during that season, it was vital to have clarity.
Part of my strategy before the pandemic was speaking and training exclusively on campuses. When COVID shut down travel, my team and I pivoted (overnight) to become a 100% digital Executive Team Coaching practice.
- Faith communities moved online.
- Schools and campuses delivered virtual instruction.
- Restaurants moved to takeout and outside patios.
The mission of serving your people stays the same but the strategy changes.
In fact, in times of rapid change, quick pivots in strategy preserve the mission.
If you haven’t clarified your strategy recently (even if it’s a strategy for the next 30 days), block a 2-hour session with your Lead Team and do it. Soon!
No team can own and commit to what it doesn’t understand.
3. No clear goal.
Once you decide how to accomplish your mission, you must determine how much.
Many leaders naturally answer that question by telling their teams that they want ‘more’—more enrollment, grants, community partnerships, retention, and graduates.
Having more as a goal demotivates your team because you’ll never hit it.
You can’t hit more.
Eventually, your team feels like the kid who brings home a straight-B report card, only to have the parent say, “Why not A’s?” And returning the next semester with As and hears, “Do they give A+’s?”
Who doesn’t want to say, “I quit” in that environment?
So, define it. What does
more
look like?
One person? 100 people? 2% growth? 20 growth%? 200 growth%?
Then when you hit it, celebrate it.
4. No focus on lead measures.
Leaders are easily lured into focusing on measures they cannot control. These are the system’s lag measures (i.e., graduation rates, enrollment numbers, and expenses).
- Get the numbers.
- Say they’re not quite good enough.
- Tell their team(s) to do better.
While these measures are great for telling you how your organization has done or is doing, the challenge is that you can’t change them. Your lag measures represent your historical data that cannot be changed.
A better option is to look at lead measures. Lead measures are elements within your control that ultimately impact the performance of your lag measures.
Lead measures might include focusing on response times to inquiries from prospective students, the number of formally guided campus visits each week, or program partnerships secured each semester.
Your team will never crush its goals if it focuses on what it can’t change. Instead, Higher Performance Teams a savvy to understand the dynamics between their preferred lag measures and the most impactful lead measures that influence their growth.
5. No one is accountable.
Of all of the strategies on this post, this is the one that’s the hardest for most leaders but also gives the most significant return. I know because I’ve been on both sides of the challenge—not wanting to hold people accountable (and doing it poorly) and then learning how to do it well.
When a team member misses an expected goal, leaders tend to utter two phrases that create a complete lack of accountability.
- “That’s okay.”
- __________ (nothing at all).
Mature leaders know it’s NOT ok that a team member missed the goal or deadline. Stop acting like it
is ok.
Not saying anything when someone missed an expected goal is a pretty good tell that the leader:
- Didn’t know.
- Didn’t care.
- Were too afraid.
Both responses are toxic to team health.
Ironically, holding your people accountable (I prefer the term ownership) in a healthy way motivates them rather than demotivates them. Guess what else?
Your best leaders love being a part of teams where every member owns their work.
- On-time.
- On budget.
- As expected.
Leaders who fail to hold team members accountable will end up with B and C-Team players because your A-Team players are leaving out the back door.
Transform Your Future | Lead With Clarity | Grow Your Performance
You aren't alone if you've struggled to find clarity in leading your team forward.
Teams function at less than 60% of their performance potential and community trust is at an all-time low.
Simply put, leading people and systems has never been more complex.
The Lead Team Institute {LTI} will equip you to break through your growth barriers.
Whether it's leading results-based teams, communicating with success, improving your engagement, increasing influence, refreshing your vision, building trusting communities, or many other challenges we face as campus leaders, you'll know exactly what steps to take to generate momentum for your community.
If you want to build an irresistible campus brand, you will want to join the waiting list to enroll in the next Lead Team Institute {LTI} Campus Cohort.
Accelerate Your Team’s:
- Communication
- Connection
- Alignment
- Capacity
- Execution
- Culture
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DR. JOE HILL President @HPG | Author of The TQ ADVANTAGE When Your Board Metrics Say "Winning" But Your Gut Says "Failing" I had the same conversation 23 times last year. Not in conference keynotes, where everyone performs as a "strategic leader who has it figured out." In parking lots after workshops. On follow-up calls at 7 PM. In texts that started "Can I ask you something that's been eating at me?" A superintendent, after crushing every board metric: "Joe, why do I feel like I'm failing at everything that actually matters?" A university president with the most credentialed cabinet she's ever led: "We can't make a decision without three meetings. What am I missing?" A college president at 11 PM (via text): "I spend more time managing my cabinet's dysfunction than actually leading. How did I become this person?" Here's what's frustrating: I gave terrible answers. Not because I'm incompetent—because these questions revealed problems I hadn't solved for myself. So I spent Q4 doing what I should've done in Q1: figuring out what I should have said. Turns out, the questions superintendents and presidents struggled with most in 2025 weren't about strategy, enrollment, or board politics. They were about survival while everyone watches you succeed. Here are the three questions I botched—and the answers I wish I'd had ready. QUESTION 1: "When Does Being Driven Cross Into Being Obsessive?" The Moment I Realized I Had No Answer Community college president—let's call her Rachel—after a Team Institute session: "I'm in the office 6 AM to 7 PM. Weekends. My cabinet says I'm 'inspiring.' My spouse says I'm 'unavailable.' I thought this IS leadership. But am I driven or just addicted?" I gave her the standard consultant answer about balance and boundaries. It was garbage. Because I was answering emails during our Netflix date night. I was "inspiring" my people while my wife wondered if I remembered her name. Glass houses, meet stones. What I Figured Out By December There's actual research on this—the dualistic model of passion : Harmonious Passion: Flexible and energizing Fills you up When you can't do it, you're disappointed but okay Sustainable forever Obsessive Passion: Rigid persistence even when it's destroying you When you can't do it, you feel shame When you DO do it, you STILL feel inadequate Major contributor to burnout (and divorce, and health crises your board will call "unexpected") Campus leadership selects for obsessive passion and calls it "commitment." Your board rewards it. Your community celebrates it. Until someone has a breakdown, and everyone acts shocked. The diagnostic? The Vacation Test. Can you take a full day off without checking email? If yes—when did you last actually do it? If you can't remember, you're not driven. You're hyper-optimized. And hyper-optimization always precedes system failure. Ask any Formula One team that pushed too hard without pit stops. 💡 "The same drive that got you the presidency is the exact thing that will end it—unless you build recovery infrastructure around it before crisis forces the conversation." What To Do Tuesday Morning (Not "Someday") Pick ONE recovery ritual. Just one: The Phone Kennel: Tonight, plug your phone downstairs. Don't bring it to your bedroom. (Sounds simple. Most presidents can't do it for three consecutive nights. That's diagnostic, not judgmental.) The "This Area Is Clear" Ritual: When you leave your office, say out loud: "Work time is done." Creates a psychological boundary your brain actually respects. The 3-Hour Sacred Window: Block three consecutive hours this weekend for something non-work that requires full attention. Coffee roasting. Long bike ride. Fiction reading. Playing with grandkids without your phone nearby. If you take vacations and check email daily, that's work with a view, not recovery. Your body knows the difference even if your calendar doesn't. Objection Handling: "But I LIKE working—it's my passion!" Great. Harmonious or obsessive? Can you stop without shame? That's the test. "My board expects me to be available 24/7." Your board expects you to lead for a decade, not flame out spectacularly in year three. They just haven't said it yet because you keep performing invincibility. QUESTION 2: "My Cabinet Is Brilliant Individually But Collectively Incompetent. What's Broken?" The Moment I Had No Good Answer Superintendent in Texas—let's call him Marcus (Marcus, your CFO was laughing when we reviewed your Team Intelligence results, so you know this is you): "Joe, every person on my cabinet has 15+ years of experience. Advanced degrees. Strategic thinkers. But together we can't make a simple decision without three pre-meetings and four follow-ups. What's broken?" I said something generic about communication and trust. Consultant garbage. The real answer? I hadn't figured out the math yet. What I Figured Out By December It's literally a math problem : IQ × EQ × PQ = TQ Most leadership cabinets look like this: IQ (Individual Intelligence): 9.1/10 → You only hire brilliant people EQ (Collective Emotional Intelligence): 3.8/10 → They can't disagree productively PQ (Positional Intelligence—role clarity): 2.5/10 → Nobody knows who decides what Result = TQ (Team Intelligence): 4.2/10 → Permanent impossibility despite impressive resumes That's not a communication problem. That's a multiplication problem. When any variable approaches zero, the whole equation collapses. You keep investing in the variable that's already maxed out (IQ—hiring smart people) while ignoring the two that determine whether smart people can think together under pressure (EQ and PQ). It's like installing a Ferrari engine with bicycle wheels and wondering why you're losing races to Honda Civics. The pattern I've now seen 47 times: Monday 6:30 AM: Your CFO wants to "align before Tuesday's meeting" (translation: lobby before anyone else can) Tuesday 10 AM: Cabinet meeting where everyone performs collaboration while avoiding actual disagreement Tuesday afternoon: Three separate "clarification" requests (translation: renegotiations of what seemed decided) Friday: Everyone's exhausted, nothing's actually resolved, but calendars are impressively full, so at least it LOOKS like leadership is happening That's a Team Intelligence deficit costing your district or institution roughly $1.1M annually in wasted meetings, duplicated effort, and opportunities missed while you're stuck in alignment purgatory. Meanwhile, enrollment is shifting, your best teachers are wondering if leadership will ever actually lead, and your board is asking increasingly pointed questions about execution velocity. 💡 "Individual brilliance without Team Intelligence produces impressive LinkedIn profiles and permanent impossibility. The math doesn't care about your credentials." What To Do Tuesday Morning The Cabinet Intelligence Audit (15 minutes) At your next cabinet meeting: "Quick exercise. Everyone rate our team's ability to think together under pressure, 1-10. Write it privately first." Go around the room. Read answers aloud. If everyone says 8+: Somebody's lying (or everyone has wildly different definitions of "thinking together") If answers vary by 3+ points: You don't share reality about your own team dynamics If anyone says below 5: You've just identified why pre-meetings exist—people don't feel safe thinking out loud together Then ask the question that changes everything: "What would need to be true for everyone to feel comfortable disagreeing in THIS meeting instead of lobbying outside it?" The silence will be uncomfortable. Someone will deflect with process talk. Someone else will say "I've been thinking the same thing." That second person is your ally. Start there. Objection Handling: "We don't have time for this meta-conversation about meetings." You spent 47 hours last month in meetings ABOUT meetings. You don't have time NOT to fix this. Your problem isn't time—it's Team Intelligence producing a 47-hour Meeting Tax. "My team won't go for it—they'll think I'm criticizing them." Your team is currently "going for" a system producing permanent friction despite everyone working 60-hour weeks. They already know something's broken. You're not revealing a problem—you're naming what everyone already feels. QUESTION 3: "Why Do I Keep Neglecting What I Literally Teach Others?" The Moment I Realized I'm A Hypocrite This one's personal. I teach Team Intelligence to superintendents and presidents. Sustainable systems. Recovery architecture. "You can't pour from an empty cup." Then I worked through Thanksgiving. Answered emails Christmas morning. Ran on 5 hours of sleep and spite. The question a superintendent asked me in October haunted me all through December: "Joe, you teach this stuff. How do YOU avoid burning out?" Honest answer? I wasn't. I was just better at hiding it. What I Figured Out By December I interviewed Dr. James Hewitt , a human performance scientist who works with Formula One teams. He said something that gutted me: "I taught recovery to Fortune 500 companies while being 'always on' myself. 100+ flights a year. Missing family dinners. I genuinely believed I was the exception to the rule—until one morning in the shower, I found a lump." Cancer forced him to confront the truth: You're not superhuman. You're just a human who hasn't rested. The most dangerous leadership belief isn't "I need to work harder." It's "The rules don't apply to me." They do. Physics doesn't care about your board's expectations, your strategic plan, or how many people are counting on you. Your body will force the conversation your calendar keeps postponing. 💡 "You're not too busy to build recovery systems. You're too busy BECAUSE you haven't built recovery systems. There's a difference." What To Do Tuesday Morning Design Your Weekly Recovery Day Block ONE full day this week. Not "I'll try" or "maybe next week"—this week. Then: Morning: Something requiring full attention but not work (bike ride, elaborate coffee ritual, whatever makes you feel human) Afternoon: Something actively decreasing cognitive load (fiction, show-watching, napping—NOT business books or "personal development") Evening: Time with people who don't need you to perform leadership Critical Rules (Non-Negotiable): Phone stays in another room (not "on silent"—physically elsewhere) No "just checking email real quick" (that's work, which means you failed) If you work at all, even "just for a minute," you failed the assignment Objection Handling: "But I have too much to do." Then you've built an unsustainable system that will fail spectacularly—either next month or next year, but it WILL fail. Taking one day off either proves your cabinet can function without you (healthy) or reveals they can't (critical diagnostic you desperately need). "What about emergencies?" Define "emergency" as "can't wait 24 hours without significant harm to students, staff, or institution." Watch how shockingly few things meet that standard. Most "emergencies" are just someone else's poor planning becoming your crisis. THE MATURITY SHIFT Immature presidents think: "I just need more willpower, more passion, more drive. If I push harder, I'll break through." Mature presidents think: "I need better systems, clearer boundaries, sustainable practices that multiply capacity without multiplying hours." Immature superintendents optimize themselves to death while their cabinets watch and learn that sustainable leadership is performance art. Mature superintendents build infrastructure that multiplies cabinet capacity without heroic individual effort. The difference isn't motivation. It's systems. One makes you busy. One makes you effective. One gives you an impressive calendar screenshot. One gives you a decade. One makes you a cautionary tale. One makes you a model worth following. Your turn: Which question hit hardest? What are you specifically changing Tuesday morning? Not "I need better balance"—that's consultant-speak performance art. Be specific: "I'm blocking Sunday completely. Phone stays downstairs." "I'm running the Cabinet Intelligence Audit this week." "I'm designing my first full recovery day for Saturday." Drop a comment. Tag another superintendent or president who's crushing metrics while quietly drowning. Repost with your one specific action. Because insight without implementation is just expensive entertainment that changes nothing. STOP LEAVING PERFORMANCE ON THE TABLE Here's what I've learned after working with 987 leadership teams: Your team isn't broken. Your team model is. You've invested millions in hiring brilliant individuals. But individual brilliance without Team Intelligence produces impressive resumes and permanent friction. The superintendents and presidents who've cracked this code aren't working harder. They're working human—with recovery systems, Team Intelligence architecture, and the courage to admit that sustainable leadership requires more than inspiration and long hours. If your talented team is performing at 60% capacity despite everyone's best efforts , the problem isn't motivation or competence. It's multiplication : IQ × EQ × PQ = TQ And when any variable approaches zero, your entire equation collapses—no matter how impressive your board reports look. The TQ Keynote: Transform Your Team From Friction to Acceleration This isn't another motivational talk about working together better. This is the math, the research, and the practical protocols that help leadership teams move from 60% to 90%+ capacity—not by working harder, but by thinking together. What You'll Discover: The TQ equation that reveals exactly where your team is stuck (and why traditional development hasn't fixed it) Five cognitive "BEST FIT" types every high-performing team needs (and which ones you're missing) Practical protocols for transforming cabinet friction into execution acceleration How to navigate complexity 40% faster than average teams (verified across 1,000+ leadership teams) Live team mapping exercises using actual TQ types from your cabinet This keynote is grounded in: Analysis of nearly 1,000 leadership teams across K-12 and higher education Research-backed insights showing 2:1 performance advantage for high-TQ teams A practical framework that creates measurable results within 90 days, not "someday" Duration: 2 hours Format: On-site with your full leadership team Investment: Book a conversation to discuss Why This Is Different 94% of executives believe collaboration is critical. Only 8% see results from traditional team development programs. TQ bridges that gap—because it treats team development as a math problem with a systems solution , not a motivation problem with an inspiration band-aid. Teams working with HPG consistently move from 60% to 90%+ capacity. We protect that standard by choosing partners carefully. If your team is talented but stuck, if you're crushing board metrics while quietly drowning, if you've tried everything except addressing the actual multiplication problem—let's talk. Book a TQ Keynote Conversation →Your community deserves leaders who multiply each other's strengths instead of working around each other's weaknesses. Your talented individuals can become an unstoppable team. But not with the same model that got you here. Book Your TQ Keynote Today! - https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/team-intelligence-keynote P.S. Stop Performing Sustainability. Start Practicing It. The questions I couldn't answer in 2025 revealed my own gaps—in recovery systems, in Team Intelligence, in sustainable leadership architecture. The answers I found by December might close yours— if you actually implement them instead of just nodding along. Your cabinet is watching how you lead yourself. Your family is waiting for the version of you that comes home fully present. Your future self is begging you to build better systems before crisis forces the conversation. Whether you book the keynote or not: Stop leaving 40% of your team's capacity on the table while everyone works 60-hour weeks. The math is solvable. The systems are buildable. The question is whether you'll address it Tuesday or wait until Friday's crisis forces your hand. Next Issue: "Your Cabinet Doesn't Need Another Retreat—They Need Recovery Architecture" How one superintendent cut meetings 61% and increased results 3x. Not by working harder. By working human. Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group for insights that close the knowing-doing gap.
How To Avoid Your "Fresh Start" Next Week As Just July's Underperformance Wearing A Turtleneck DR. JOE HILL Founder Higher Performance Group December 31, 2025 The Most Expensive Lie You'll Tell Yourself Next Tuesday It's December 31st. Your first cabinet meeting is Tuesday, January 6th. And you already know what's going to happen. You're going to walk in and do what you've done every January for four years: Pretend the last six months didn't just prove exactly why your next six months will fail. Here's the math that hurts: That retention initiative from August? Dead by October ($73K wasted). Academic program revision from convocation? Tabled in September ($127K in committee time and consultant fees—poof). "Culture of collaboration" you promised the board? Your cabinet still can't coordinate lunch without territorial violations. Add it up: $200K+ in failed initiatives from this semester alone. Not because your team lacks talent. Because you keep building skyscrapers on foundations designed for tool sheds. Here's the lie you'll tell yourself Tuesday: "This time will be different. We just need to refocus. Renewed energy. Fresh priorities." And here's the truth you already know but won't say out loud: Your July priorities didn't fail because they were wrong. They failed because your foundation can't support them. You have four days before that cabinet meeting. Four days to ask yourself one question that could change everything: What if the problem isn't your priorities? What if you keep attempting Level 5 work on Level 1 infrastructure? Comment "FOUNDATION" if you're dreading next Tuesday's cabinet meeting and wondering whether anyone else sees what you see. THE DIAGNOSIS: YOU'RE COSPLAYING STRATEGIC PLANNING Let's talk about what's really happening. You're six months in. Enrollment is 6% below projection. (It's always 6%. Why is it always 6%?) Three of your July priorities are effectively dead, but no one has said it out loud yet. And next Tuesday, you'll gather that same cabinet and ask: "What should our priorities be for semester II?" As if the answer exists anywhere other than in the data you're about to ignore from the six months you just lived. Here's what actually happens: Your CFO will suggest: The budget transparency initiative you launched in August and stopped discussing in October when it became clear nobody actually wanted transparency—just protected territory. Your CAO will propose: Academic program restructuring that died in September, when it required actual decisions about resource allocation. (Easier to blame "resistance to change" than admit nobody had the courage to make cuts.) Your VP of Enrollment will float: A "reimagined" recruitment strategy that's basically the August strategy with different adjectives and a Canva template. (Because what failed in fall will definitely work in spring if we just believe harder.) Someone will say: "What if we focused on just a few key priorities?" (Everyone nods. You'll still end with 14. This is the way.) By lunch, you'll have a polished document. Strategic priorities in pillars. Impressive-sounding metrics. A timeline requiring 40% more capacity than your team demonstrated having for six months. Nobody will ask: "Why didn't our July priorities work? What does that gap teach us? What foundation are we missing?" Asking implies admitting something went wrong. And if someone's responsible, this whole "fresh start" vibe gets uncomfortable. So instead, you'll create new priorities that will fail for the exact same reasons. This isn't strategic planning. This is institutional amnesia with better fonts. Your turn: What's one priority from July that died by Thanksgiving? One word only. Let's see how many of us are living the same pattern. THE LIE WE KEEP TELLING OURSELVES Here's the story we'll tell Tuesday: "We just need to refocus. Get back to basics. Prioritize what matters." Here's the story we know but won't say: Our priorities aren't the problem. Our foundation is. You launched a retention initiative in August. Required Academic Affairs and Student Services to coordinate. Both divisions nodded enthusiastically at convocation. You felt hopeful. By October, Academic Affairs was sending students to advisors with schedules that Student Services was unaware of. Student Services was creating support plans that Academic Affairs wasn't tracking. Students got contradictory guidance. Faculty were frustrated. Staff were exhausted from manually bridging the gap. The initiative didn't fail because people didn't care. It failed because you have zero infrastructure for cross-divisional coordination. No clear decision rights. ("Who actually decides when we intervene with a struggling student?") No escalation pathway when priorities compete. ("Academic Affairs needs faculty time for curriculum revision. Student Services needs faculty time for intervention meetings. Who decides?") No shared language for resolving conflicts. ("Academic rigor" means different things to Academic Affairs and Student Services, and you've never aligned on it.) No accountability system that doesn't rely on someone working nights and weekends to manually coordinate. You tried to run a Level 5 initiative on Level 1 infrastructure. That's not a priority problem. That's a foundation problem. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 "You can't strategize your way out of a foundation problem. If your infrastructure can't support what you're building, no amount of renewed focus will matter." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ And next Tuesday, when you propose a "refined" retention strategy—maybe with better communication protocols, definitely with more frequent check-ins—it will fail again. Not because your team won't try. Because your foundation can't support what you're asking it to carry. 60% capacity. 100% workload. Zero infrastructure. You can't strategize your way out of that math. WHAT WE'VE BEEN BUILDING WHILE YOU'VE BEEN STUCK While your cabinet was trapped in the July→December cycle, we spent 18 months building the systematic solution. THE TEAM INSTITUTE officially launches in January 2026. It's not another leadership development program. It's the infrastructure underneath strategy —the 8-session sequential system that transforms 60% capacity cabinets into multiplication engines. We've piloted this with 47 leadership teams across K-12 and higher ed: 3X performance improvement 29% higher engagement scores 27% better organizational outcomes Zero burnout increase despite performance multiplication The framework addresses what every leadership program ignores: You can't skip foundational stages. You can't attempt Level 5 work (managing change, resolving conflicts, developing others) on Level 1-2 infrastructure (inconsistent trust, basic reliability). The Team Institute builds sequentially: 01 - Base Camp → Understanding your team's {BEST FIT} profile 02 - Building Trust → The foundation for everything else 03 - Empowerment → Authority + clarity + confidence 04 - Collaboration → Creating something better together 05 - Broadening Influence → Leading beyond your position 06 - Managing Change → Leading transformation without casualties 07 - Managing Conflict → Using friction as refinement 08 - Developing Others → Multiplying the talent within Each session builds on the previous foundation. You can't skip trust and go straight to empowerment—that's abandonment, not leadership. Early bird enrollment opens January 6th. All consultations booked before January 12th receive early adopter pricing. But whether you join or not, you can use the next four days to break your cycle... [SCHEDULE A TEAM INSTITUTE DISCOVERY CALL TODAY] THE FRAMEWORK: Three Questions To Ask Before Tuesday You have four days. Use them. Pull out last July's strategic priorities right now. Ask yourself these three questions. Alone. Honestly. Question 1: What Did We Actually Attempt July-December? Not what's in the strategic plan document. What did you ACTUALLY attempt? Which priorities did you really try to execute? Include the quiet ones that never made it into official documents: "We tried to get the cabinet to communicate honestly instead of performing collaboration in meetings and having real conversations in the parking lot." "We hoped department chairs would step up so we could stop being the bottleneck." "We wanted to feel less reactive and more strategic." (You spent November in crisis mode. Again.) Write them down. All of them. No judgment. Just data. Question 2: Where Did Things Actually Stall? Without blame. Without immediately jumping to fixes. Just notice: Where did things not work? The retention initiative requiring coordination you don't have infrastructure for? The "data-driven decision making" you abandoned in September when enrollment dropped, and you made cuts based on politics instead of data? The "empowering middle leadership" until they made a hiring decision, and your cabinet overruled them because "we need to be strategic" (translation: "we don't trust you")? Just see the pattern. Question 3: What Is This Revealing About Our Foundation? What foundation are we missing that would make these initiatives actually possible? Not "what's wrong with us." Not "who's to blame." What infrastructure gaps do these failures reveal? Old story: Our retention initiative failed because people won't coordinate. New story: Our retention initiative revealed we have no system for cross-divisional coordination. We expected collaboration through wishful thinking. We can't fix retention until we build coordination infrastructure. Old story: We're not really data-driven. New story: Under pressure, we default to politics because we've never practiced data-driven decisions when stakes are low. We need to build that muscle before the next crisis. Old story: Our middle leaders can't handle responsibility. New story: When we tried to empower them, our cabinet took control back. That's not a middle leadership problem. That's a cabinet trust problem. See the difference? If you're seeing foundation gaps everywhere—trust issues, coordination breakdowns, decision paralysis—you're not alone. 73% of leadership teams in our research operate at Level 1-2 foundation while attempting Level 5 work. This is exactly what The Team Institute was designed to solve. Not through weekend retreats. Through 8 months of sequential, collective capability building with sustained accountability. Early bird discovery calls open January 6th. All consultations booked before January 12th receive early adopter pricing. [GET THE TEAM INSTITUTE DETAILS HERE] THE CASE STUDY: The President Who Stopped Pretending Let me tell you about Eric (not his real name, but Eric, you know who you are). December 2023. Four days before his first cabinet meeting. Absolutely dreading it. For three years, he'd done the same thing every January: Project optimism. Create "renewed priorities." Watch them die by March. Wonder what was wrong. This time, he did something different. He pulled out his July 2023 priorities. All twelve. He asked: "What did this teach me about my foundation?" The answer was brutal: His cabinet couldn't coordinate across divisions. Not because they were incompetent. Because he'd never built the infrastructure that makes coordination possible. So in January 2024, Eric said something nobody expected: "We're not creating new priorities for January-June. We're building the foundation that makes priorities possible." His CFO looked confused. "What does that mean?" Eric: "It means I've spent three years watching initiatives fail because we have no system for cross-divisional work. No clear decision rights. No escalation pathways. No way to resolve conflicts without making me the bottleneck. January through June, we're building that infrastructure. Then in July, we'll launch priorities our foundation can actually support." His board pushed back: "What will we tell stakeholders?" Eric: "We're going to tell them we're building the capacity to actually accomplish what we commit to—which is more honest than launching priorities we can't execute and explaining next December why they didn't work. Again." They spent January-June 2024 on foundation work: Clarifying decision rights Building coordination protocols Practicing difficult conversations when stakes were low Creating accountability that didn't rely on heroic effort July 2024, they launched five priorities. Not twelve. Five. By December 2024: All five were complete or on track. Zero quiet deaths. Zero "we need to realign." Student retention up 11%. Faculty satisfaction up 18%. Staff turnover dropped by a third. Not because Eric became a better strategic planner. Because they built the foundation that makes plans possible. Eric told me, "I spent three years trying to strategize my way out of a foundation problem. The moment I admitted we needed to build differently—not plan better, but actually build the infrastructure—everything changed." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 "The question isn't whether your cabinet has talent. The question is whether they've built the collective infrastructure to multiply that talent before communities stop tolerating 60% results." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ YOUR MOVE: Four Days To Break The Cycle You have four days. Option 1: Do what you've always done. Walk into Tuesday's meeting. Create 10-14 "renewed priorities." Watch them stall by March. Call it a "strategic pivot" in June. Repeat next January. Option 2: Use these four days to get honest. Pull out July's priorities. Ask the three questions. Walk into Tuesday and say: "Before we create new priorities, let's examine what the last six months tried to teach us about our foundation." Option 1 is easier. Familiar. Expected. Option 2 is terrifying. It means admitting something fundamental isn't working. But here's what I know after 25 years with 987 leadership teams: Five years from now, you'll either still be in this cycle—or you'll have built different. 60% capacity. 100% workload. Zero sustainability. The industrial model gave you that math. Then told you to fix it with better planning. BUILD DIFFERENT means stopping the cycle. WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW Poll: Where does your cabinet actually operate? 👍 = Level 1-2 (Unreliable/basic trust, hero-dependent) ❤️ = Level 3-4 (Consistent integrity, functional systems) 💡 = Level 5 (Institutional trust culture, multiplication engines) Then: → Repost this with your honest answer: "What's one priority from July that died by Thanksgiving?" (One word only.) Tag me. → Tag a cabinet member who's ready for the foundation conversation → Screenshot the Three Questions and text to your CFO: "Read this before Tuesday." → Download The Team Institute framework: [Get the PDF] → Schedule a discovery call if you're ready to build differently: [Book Your Consultation] — All calls before January 12th receive early adopter pricing. Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group for weekly Team Intelligence insights. P.S. — THE TEAM INSTITUTE: Early Bird Opens January 2nd If your January-June priorities require foundation you don't have—and you're ready to build it systematically—let's talk. The TEAM INSTITUTE isn't another strategic planning framework. It's the 8-month infrastructure system that determines whether your team can execute what it commits to. What's included: Comprehensive discovery & Team {BEST FIT} mapping Team 360 baseline and follow-up Eight monthly 2-hour facilitated sessions Between-session practice with accountability Executive coaching for senior leaders The commitment: Full leadership team participation—no exceptions. Early bird opportunity: All discovery consultations before January 12th receive early adopter pricing + priority cohort placement. [SCHEDULE YOUR 30-MINUTE CALL] You can't plan your way out of foundation problems. You have to BUILD DIFFERENT. Book your call: [SCHEDULE HERE] Download framework: Learn more: https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/team-institute NEXT ISSUE (January 7th): "Your Cabinet Treats Coordination Like Telepathy (And Wonders Why Nothing Works)" Why educational leaders keep launching cross-divisional initiatives without building coordination infrastructure, then blame "resistance to change" when nothing aligns. Spoiler: You're not having a people problem. You're having a physics problem. And physics doesn't care about your strategic plan. —Joe P.P.S. — If this helped you see something differently, repost it with your biggest takeaway. Your network needs this too. We're building a movement of campus leaders who refuse to accept that 60% capacity is sustainable. #HigherEdLeadership #K12Leadership #TeamIntelligence #BuildDifferent #EducationalLeadership #TheTeamInstitute