Higher Performance Insights | WHEN TRUST GOES TO VOICEMAIL

November 4, 2025
higher performance insights

THE MATH THAT DESCRIBES WHY LEADERSHIP TEAMS FAIL UNDER PRESSURE


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Do this math: 8 cabinet members × 12 meetings × 90 minutes = 144 hours annually with people you call "your team" but wouldn't call if your world fell apart.


That's not a leadership gap. That's a relationship infrastructure crisis.


73% of superintendents in our 987-team study report "plenty of colleagues but no one who really gets it." (Most won't admit this until drink two at the conference hotel bar.)


Here's the pattern: We've professionalized educational leadership so thoroughly that we've accidentally made it functionally impossible to build the one thing that determines whether your cabinet actually works—relationships that transcend the role.


I was recently in conversation with a leader who has navigated both established legacy organizations and complete startups—completely different contexts that require entirely different leadership skills. And he said something that stopped me cold: "I only have 2-5 people max who remain my friends through all the seasons of life. And that's all that really matters."


Two to five people. Not 2000 LinkedIn connections. Not your entire cabinet. Not even your full executive team.


Two. To. Five.


And suddenly, everything about why some leadership teams click and others just... meet made perfect sense.


Let's discuss what most leadership development programs overlook entirely.


LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS LIKE ADULTS WHO'VE SURVIVED MULTIPLE ACCREDITATION CYCLES


Here's what nobody tells you at leadership conferences (because they're too busy selling next year's tickets): The reason your cabinet doesn't function like a team has nothing to do with strategic planning tools or communication protocols.


It has everything to do with whether you've built trust deep enough to survive seasons.


SPECIFIC RECOGNITION:


You know this moment:


It's 11 PM on a Sunday, and the board email just hit your inbox—the one that makes your stomach drop. You scroll through your contacts looking for someone to call.


You pass right over your Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum. Your CFO. Your VP of HR.


Not because they're incompetent. Because you need someone who knows you independent of your title.


(And the person you actually call? Probably doesn't work in education.)


Or this one:


You're in a cabinet meeting debating a controversial policy change. Everyone's nodding. Taking notes. Agreeing professionally.


Then you adjourn, and three separate people text their actual thoughts to someone NOT in the room.


You've built a team that performs trust but doesn't practice it.


Or my personal favorite:


Your Chair gets promoted to Dean—brilliant strategic mind. Everyone's excited.


Six months in, she's technically proficient, but the cabinet dynamics feel off—because she's performing her new role while psychologically remaining in her old identity.


And nobody can talk about it because you've never established the kind of trust where identity evolution is safe.


ROOT CAUSE DIAGNOSIS:


Here's why this keeps happening, and I'm going to be direct because I've spent 25 years in the loneliness of the leadership seat: We've confused competency with capacity.


We hire for IQ. We develop EQ. We measure performance indicators. But we completely ignore the foundation that determines whether any of it actually works: Building Trust.


Not trust as a soft skill. Trust as the oxygen of TEAM INTELLIGENCE.


Research from our work with 987 leadership teams reveals something most leadership development completely misses: Leaders cannot skip competency levels without creating fragility in their leadership foundation. You cannot authentically empower others until you've established trust. You cannot facilitate genuine collaboration without both trust and empowerment. You cannot lead change successfully without trust, empowerment, collaboration, and influence working synergistically.


Yet what do we do? We promote people into complex leadership roles and immediately expect them to manage change, resolve conflicts, and develop others—Level 5 work—when they're operating at Level 1-2 on Building Trust.


That's not a competency gap. That's a developmental logic violation. And it's why 67% of change initiatives consistently fail.


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💡 "You cannot empower others until you've established trust. You cannot collaborate without empowerment. You cannot lead change without all prior competencies working synergistically."


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(This is actually why we created the TEAM INTELLIGENCE framework and built it into our TEAM INSTITUTE sessions—to help leadership teams develop sequentially instead of randomly. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)


TQ FRAMEWORK INTRODUCTION:


This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you to "create psychological safety" or "build better relationships." But you already knew that.


The real problem? Most leaders are attempting advanced leadership competencies without mastering the foundational one.


Here's the developmental sequence that actually works, drawn from our Leader Competency Assessment:


Level 1: Building Trust — Foundation for all others


Level 2: Empowerment — Builds on trust foundation


Level 3: Collaboration — Requires trust and empowerment


Level 4: Broadening Influence — Leverages collaborative networks


Level 5: Managing Change — Requires all prior competencies


Level 6: Managing Conflict — Transforms collaborative tension into breakthrough


Level 7: Developing Others — Apex competency synthesizing all others


Your cabinet isn't dysfunctional because people lack skills. It's dysfunctional because you're trying to run Level 5 plays (change management) with a team operating at Level 1-2 trust.


And trust—real trust, the kind that survives leadership transitions and organizational turbulence—isn't built in strategic planning sessions. It's built when relationships transcend the org chart.


🎯 BUILDING TRUST: THE COMPETENCY THAT DETERMINES EVERYTHING ELSE


WHY THIS ALWAYS COMES FIRST (EVEN WHEN WE WISH IT DIDN'T)


Organizations led by leaders who create a psychological safety culture are significantly more likely to foster innovative cultures, with substantially better talent retention and higher stakeholder satisfaction. (That's not motivation-poster wisdom. That's data from institutions that actually work.)


But here's what most leadership development gets catastrophically wrong: They treat trust as a soft skill you sprinkle on top of competence, rather than the foundation that determines whether competence ever becomes performance.


Trust is the oxygen of team intelligence. Without it, every other competency suffocates.

Let me break down the five levels of Building Trust—and show you exactly where your cabinet is probably stuck:


LEVEL 1: DEMONSTRATES INCONSISTENT RELIABILITY


• Communication lacks transparency


• Actions and words frequently misalign


• Tends to blame others for setbacks


Observable reality: This is the superintendent who announces, "My door is always open," but team members never walk through it. Or the cabinet member who commits to the meeting but ghosts on execution. Your team isn't underperforming because they're incompetent—they're hedging because reliability is inconsistent.


Quick gut check: How many times this month has someone on your cabinet surprised you by not following through?

LEVEL 2: SHOWS BASIC RELIABILITY BUT STRUGGLES WITH VULNERABILITY


• Generally follows through on commitments


• Shares limited information


• Hesitates to admit mistakes


Observable reality: This is where most educational leadership teams actually operate. Professional. Polite. Performing collaboration. But when something goes sideways, nobody's texting each other. They're calling someone outside the organization who they actually trust. You've built a reporting structure, not a team.


Be honest: When was the last time someone on your cabinet admitted a mistake before you discovered it?


LEVEL 3: CONSISTENTLY DEMONSTRATES INTEGRITY AND TRANSPARENCY


• Demonstrates vulnerability as a leader


• Advocates for team members even when costly


• Addresses trust violations directly and fairly


Observable reality: This is where the shift happens—from "colleagues who work together" to "people who have each other's backs." Cabinet members start processing real thinking with each other instead of around each other. When one person's worried about something, the team knows about it before it becomes a crisis.


LEVEL 4: CREATES AN ENVIRONMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY


• Establishes systems that promote transparency


• Creates mechanisms for addressing breaches of trust


• Models reconciliation and repair after conflicts


Observable reality: This is the cabinet that can debate controversial decisions and still go to lunch together afterward. Why? Because they've built systems—not just goodwill—that make trust renewable even when it's damaged. They've moved from hoping trust happens to architecting it into how they operate.


LEVEL 5: BUILDS INSTITUTIONAL CULTURES OF TRUST


• Establishes formal and informal influence channels


• Develops systems for cross-campus knowledge sharing


• Connects the institution to external opportunities


Observable reality: This is rare. This is when your cabinet's trust infrastructure becomes the model for the entire district. When principals start running their teams the way you run yours—not because you mandated it, but because they've watched it work.


THE BRUTAL REALITY CHECK:


We spent this fall running TEAM INSTITUTE sessions with campus leadership teams, and we started every single one with the Building Trust assessment. Want to know the most common result?


Leaders rated themselves at Level 3-4. Their teams rated them at Level 1-2.


That gap? That's your entire performance problem right there.


THE THREE TRUST QUESTIONS THAT REVEAL EVERYTHING:


I learned these from a leader who built multiple teams across completely different organizational contexts. He said the distinguishing factor wasn't competence or chemistry—it was answering three questions honestly:


Question 1: "Who on this team would I call at 11 PM if my world were falling apart?"


If the answer is zero or one, you don't have a team. You have coworkers who attend meetings.


Question 2: "Who on this team has embraced the leader I'm becoming, not just the role I'm performing?"


Leadership transitions require identity evolution. If your cabinet can't hold space for that, people perform their new role while psychologically remaining in the old one. (This is why your brilliant new Dean still acts like a Chair.)


Question 3: "Can I make decisions WITH this team, or do I just announce decisions TO them?"


If you're married, you don't make major life decisions unilaterally and then expect your spouse to get on board. Why do we think that works with leadership teams?


The teams that can answer all three questions affirmatively? Those are the ones where trust isn't a nice-to-have. It's the infrastructure underneath everything else.


CASE STUDY: THE TEAM THAT REBUILT TRUST FROM LEVEL 1


A community college president (let's call her "Maria"—and yes, she knows I'm telling this) inherited a cabinet of seven VPs. All credentialed. All experienced. All completely siloed and performing trust instead of practicing it.


Her first 90 days, she tried what most new leaders try: strategic planning. Vision alignment. Goal cascading. Professional development.


Nothing changed.


Then she did something most leaders won't: She admitted the problem wasn't strategy. It was trust.


She brought in our TEAM INTELLIGENCE assessment. Results showed her cabinet at Level 1-2 on Building Trust, yet they were attempting Level 5 work (managing major institutional change).


The developmental logic violation was obvious.


Here's what she did:


She stopped leading cabinet meetings and started building trust infrastructure.


She asked each VP privately: "Who on this team would you call at 11 PM if something went sideways in your personal life?"


Zero VPs named anyone on the cabinet.


Then she asked: "Who on this team knows what you're genuinely worried about regarding your work right now—not the polished version you present in meetings, but the real anxiety?"


Two had someone. Five didn't.


The gap between "colleagues" and "people who trust each other through seasons" was costing them everything.


Maria created monthly one-on-one conversations where the only agenda was: "Who are you becoming as a leader, and how can this team help you get there?"


Not performance evaluations. Identity evolution conversations.


She stopped managing performance and started shepherding transformation.


Within 90 days, VPs started texting each other their real concerns instead of people outside the room.


Within six months, they'd formed what I call "micro-alliances"—2-3 people who processed real thinking together between formal meetings.


Within a year, the cabinet made a controversial curricular decision unanimously because they'd made it WITH each other.

Student success metrics? Increased 12 percentage points. Faculty satisfaction? Up 23%.


But Maria told me: "The strategy didn't change. The trust infrastructure underneath the strategy changed. Turns out, that's what actually matters."


She rebuilt from the foundation up. Level 1 to Level 4 in 18 months.


That's not magic. That's developmental sequence done right.


📋 HERE'S WHAT TO DO MONDAY MORNING (BEFORE YOUR FIRST CABINET MEETING)


STEP 1: RUN THE TRUST LEVEL AUDIT (20 MINUTES)


Pull out our Leader Competency Assessment—or just grab a piece of paper and be brutally honest.


For Building Trust, where is your cabinet actually operating?


• Level 1: Inconsistent reliability, limited transparency, misaligned words and actions


• Level 2: Basic reliability but limited vulnerability


• Level 3: Consistent integrity, demonstrates vulnerability, advocates for team members


• Level 4: Creates psychological safety systems


• Level 5: Builds institutional trust cultures


Don't rate where you want to be. Rate where the evidence says you are.


Then—and this is the hard part—ask 2-3 trusted people on your team to rate you honestly. (If the gap between your self-assessment and their assessment is more than one level, that gap IS your leadership problem.)


STEP 2: ASK THE THREE TRUST QUESTIONS (30 MINUTES TOTAL, 10 PER QUESTION)


Schedule 30 minutes alone. Write down honest answers to:


1. "Who on my cabinet would I call at 11 PM if my world were falling apart?" (Names, not theory.)


2. "Who on my team knows the leader I'm becoming, not just the role I'm performing?" (If nobody comes to mind immediately, that's your answer.)


3. "Am I making decisions WITH my team, or announcing decisions TO them?" (Check your last three major decisions. How many were truly collaborative vs. performatively collaborative?)


If you can't name at least 2-3 people for questions 1 and 2, you don't have a performance problem. You have a trust infrastructure problem.


(Objection handling: "Joe, this feels soft. We need to focus on results." Fair pushback. But here's the data: Leaders in the top quartile for Building Trust competencies are significantly more likely to achieve institutional objectives. The teams that outperform yours? They already figured this out. You can dismiss it as soft, or you can build the foundation that makes results possible.)


STEP 3: CREATE ONE "IDENTITY EVOLUTION" CONVERSATION THIS WEEK (45 MINUTES)


Pick one cabinet member. Schedule 45 minutes. No agenda except this:


"I want to understand who you're becoming as a leader, not just how you're performing in your role."


Ask:


• "What identity from your previous role are you still carrying that might not serve you here?"


• "What new leadership identity are you nervous about stepping into?"


• "How can this team hold space for who you're becoming?"


Then—critically—share your own answers first. Model the vulnerability you're asking for.


This isn't therapy. This is recognizing that leadership transitions require identity evolution, and teams that can't hold space for that will always underperform their talent level.


(Pro tip: This conversation will feel awkward the first time. That awkwardness is diagnostic. If you can't have this conversation, you're operating at Level 1-2 trust. Which means you can't do Level 5 work. The math doesn't lie.)


⚡ THE MATURITY SHIFT: FROM COMPETENCE WITHOUT FOUNDATION TO TRUST-BASED TEAM INTELLIGENCE


IMMATURE TEAM INTELLIGENCE:


• Promotes leaders based on technical competence, ignores trust capacity


• Attempts Level 5 work (change management, conflict transformation) with Level 1-2 trust


• Believes competence creates collaboration


• Confuses "getting along professionally" with psychological safety


• Optimizes for efficient meetings over authentic relationships


• Measures team health by completed initiatives, not trust infrastructure


• Views vulnerability as weakness rather than foundation


MATURE TEAM INTELLIGENCE:


• Develops leaders sequentially through competency levels starting with trust


• Recognizes you cannot skip developmental stages without creating fragility


• Knows trust creates the conditions where competence becomes performance


• Distinguishes "colleagues who collaborate" from "teams that trust each other through seasons"


• Prioritizes identity evolution conversations over performance management


• Measures team health by the "11 PM phone call test" and vulnerability indicators


• Views Building Trust as the oxygen that makes all other competencies possible


The shift isn't about being less professional. It's about being honest that principles without competencies are wishes—and competencies without sequential development are illusions.


Your cabinet doesn't need another initiative. It needs the foundational competency that determines whether any initiative actually works: Building Trust at Level 3 or higher.


Everything else is decoration on a house with no foundation.


P.S. THE FOUNDATION UNDER THE FOUNDATION


I was meeting with a superintendent recently who said something that's stuck with me: "Joe, I've read every leadership book. Attended every conference. My team is credentialed, experienced, and talented. But we're still not clicking. What am I missing?"


I asked him one question: "On a scale of 1-5, where's your cabinet on Building Trust?"


Long pause. Then: "Probably a 2. Maybe a 1.5 if I'm being honest."


"And what level of work are you attempting?"


Another pause. "Change management. Conflict resolution. Developing future leaders. So... Level 5?"


There's your answer.


You cannot skip developmental stages. Leadership competencies build sequentially—each creates the foundation for those that follow.


Attempting Level 5 work with Level 1-2 trust isn't a strategy problem. It's a physics problem.


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💡 "Principles without competencies are wishes—and competencies without sequential development are illusions."

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And here's what I've learned after 25 years of this work, grounded in principles that go way beyond organizational theory: The foundation under the foundation is actually faith.


Not faith as religion forced on secular space. Faith as the recognition that we're building something bigger than our own ambition. That how we lead matters as much as what we achieve. That trust isn't a technique—it's the recognition that we're all navigating uncertainty together, guided by principles beyond self-interest.


I know I'm among friends here who share those values. Who understand that excellent leadership flows from internal alignment with something transcendent. Who get that Building Trust isn't manipulation—it's stewarding relationships with the care they deserve.


This fall, we ran Team Institute sessions with campus leadership teams focused specifically on this: Building Trust as the foundational competency that determines everything else. We used the Leader Competency Assessment to help teams see where they actually are (not where they think they are), then gave them sequential tools to develop from Level 1 to Level 4.


The feedback? Teams are finally addressing the real problem instead of decorating around it.


If your cabinet is talented but underperforming, you don't need another strategic planning session. You need to build the trust infrastructure that makes strategy actually work.


New campus teams enroll in the Team Institute each month. We start with Building Trust. We develop sequentially through the seven competencies. We use the Team Intelligence framework to multiply individual development into collective performance.


Want the full Leader Competency Assessment to run with your team? Message me directly or email info@higherperformancegroup.com and I'll send it to you. No cost, no strings—just a tool to help you see where you actually are versus where you're attempting to operate.


If you're interested in what Team Institute might look like for your team, let's have a conversation about where your team is and where sequential development could take you.


But even if you never reach out, do me one favor: Before your next cabinet meeting, honestly assess—Where are we on Building Trust? And what level of work are we attempting?


If there's a gap of 2-3 levels, you just diagnosed your entire performance problem.


The question is: Are you willing to go back to the foundation and build it right?


ONE MORE THING...


If this resonated, I need your help with three things:


1. Repost this with your honest answer: "Where is my team on Building Trust (Level 1-5)? And what level of work are we attempting?" Tag me so I can see your assessment. (The gap between those two numbers tells you everything.)


2. Tag someone on your leadership team who's committed to building from the foundation up—not just decorating around dysfunction. Tell them specifically why you're tagging them.


3. Comment below with this: What's one moment when you realized your team's performance problem was actually a trust problem? What did you do about it? (I read every single comment because your reality shapes what we build next.)


Tag DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group in your repost or comment.


And if you're serious about moving your team from Level 1-2 to Level 3-4 trust, message me about TEAM INSTITUTE enrollment. New cohorts launching monthly. Or email info@higherperformancegroup.com to get the full Leader Competency Assessment for your team.


Most important question: Who on your cabinet would you call at 11 PM? If you can't immediately name 2-3 people, you just found your starting point.


NEXT ISSUE PREVIEW


"The $847,000 Meeting Tax: Why Your Cabinet Is Bleeding Budget in 90-Minute Increments"


You know those weekly cabinet meetings where everyone reports out, but nothing actually gets decided? I ran the numbers. For a typical superintendent cabinet, those meetings cost $847,000 annually when you calculate salary, prep time, and opportunity cost.


That's not a meeting problem. That's a TEAM INTELLIGENCE deficit costing you nearly a million dollars a year.

(Spoiler: The highest-performing cabinets meet half as often and decide twice as fast. We'll break down exactly how they do it.)


See you next week. Keep building from the foundation up.


—Joe



P.S. - If this issue helped you see something differently, take 10 seconds to repost it with your biggest takeaway. Your network needs this too.


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Higher Performance Insights | THE QUESTIONS I COULDN'T ANSWER IN 2025 (AND HOW I'D RESPOND TODAY)

By HPG Info • January 14, 2026
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. 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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.

Higher Performance Insights | THE MIDYEAR MYTH

By HPG Info • January 8, 2026
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
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