Higher Performance Insights | YOUR CABINET HAS HOPE DEPENDENCY

November 11, 2025
higher performance insights

(And You're the Dealer They Keep Calling)


Do this math: 6 times per week × 47 weeks × 15 min × $125/hr = $17,625 annually being "the optimistic one."


That's a slightly used 2023 Honda Civic you're burning while calling it leadership.


73% of leaders in our 987-team study are the only "hopeful one" on their team. You're not helping them. You're creating dependency.


Here's the pattern nobody's naming: Every time you loan your hope, you confirm they don't have their own. Every time you're "the optimistic one," you teach them optimism isn't their job. Every time you solve their hopelessness problem, you rob them of the exact agency that builds real hope.


That question you love asking—"Who on my team needs to borrow my hope?"—isn't supportive leadership. It's enabling learned helplessness with inspirational language.


And while you're performing hope for your cabinet, your board is wondering why decisions take forever, your teachers/faculty are experiencing inconsistent leadership, and you're Googling "leadership burnout symptoms" at 11 PM on a Tuesday.


Your turn: Count this week. How many times were you "the hopeful one"?


Drop the number in the comments—I'm curious.


THE DIAGNOSIS: Why Smart Leaders Build Dependent Teams


Let's talk about this like adults who've survived multiple enrollment crises and at least one strategic planning retreat that somehow cost $40K and produced a vision statement that could apply to literally any organization with a mission.


Here's what your last two weeks actually looked like:


Monday, 9:00 AM: Cabinet Meeting


Your VP of Enrollment presents fall numbers. They're... not great.


(In K-12, substitute "your Director of Student Services presents discipline data." In higher ed, it's enrollment. The pattern's the same—someone brings math that hurts.)


The room catalogs obstacles:


  • Demographics working against us
  • Competition has better facilities
  • Budget constraints everywhere
  • That new program bleeding money
  • Board asking uncomfortable questions
  • Someone mentions "headwinds" because apparently we're all sailing ships now


Energy drops like your retention rate during that semester we don't discuss.


And you—because this is leadership, right?—step in.


"Here's what I'm seeing as possible..."


You reframe. You remind them of the community college that turned around enrollment with adult learners. You point to opportunities buried in the obstacles. You tell that story about the institution that was struggling five years ago and is now thriving.


You provide the hope injection.


The room shifts. People nod. Someone says, "Good perspective." Meeting ends on an upward trajectory.


You feel like you just performed emotional CPR.


They feel slightly less defeated.


Nobody notices you're the only one who performed life-saving measures.


Tuesday's Meeting: Different Topic, Identical Dynamic


Budget discussion. Your CFO presents constraints. Your deans/principals express concern. The conversation spirals toward "what we can't do."


You redirect: "Let me share what I'm thinking about differently..."


They listen. They nod. They leave feeling better.


And you leave feeling like you just ran an emotional marathon while everyone else walked.


By Thursday


You're in three different "quick conversations":


  • Your CFO in the parking lot: "Can you help me reframe this for the board?"
  • Your Provost via Slack: "I need your perspective on something"
  • Your Dean in your doorway: "Just need 5 minutes" (takes 23)


Translation: They need to borrow your optimism because they've temporarily run out of their own.


You provide it. Because that's leadership. Right?


Wrong.


It feels like supportive leadership. It's actually enabling learned helplessness with inspirational language.


Quick check: How many times THIS WEEK have you been the emotional CPR for your cabinet?


And while you're performing hope for your cabinet, your teachers/faculty are wondering why leadership can't seem to make decisions, your board is asking why implementation is slow, and you're Googling "leadership burnout symptoms" at 11 PM on a Tuesday.


I know the loneliness of being the only person who sees the possibility of feeling like you're carrying the emotional infrastructure of an entire institution.


Would your team collapse into nihilism if you took a vacation?


You're not crazy. Your team isn't incompetent.


You've just accidentally created a system where hope has a monopoly holder, and the monopoly holder is exhausted.


Comment "THURSDAY" if this was literally your week.


(Bonus points if you can calculate how many times you were "the optimistic one" since Monday.)


HERE'S WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING


Your team has high individual competence but catastrophically low collective agency.


They're brilliant people who've never learned to generate their own hope under pressure. So they compensate with dependency.

 

On you.


It's not malicious. It's mathematical.


When you own Goals, Pathways, AND Agency for your team, you're not multiplying their capacity. You're multiplying by zero while working really, really hard.


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💡 "Hope isn't something people borrow. It's something teams build. Every time you loan yours out, you prevent them from constructing their own."


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(This is actually why I created The GROUP—a free community where insights like this become Leader CORE Lessons you can deploy Monday morning. We teach your team to build hope infrastructure, not rent yours. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)


Here's the uncomfortable truth: You accepted the assignment of being "the hopeful one." And every time you perform that role, you confirm the role distribution.


Your team isn't failing to generate hope. They're successfully outsourcing it to you.


And you—because you care about them, because you want to support them, because this is what you thought leadership looked like—keep accepting the outsourcing contract.


THE FRAMEWORK: Stop Being the Hope Source. Start Building Hope Infrastructure.


Call this the Agency Architecture Framework. Or don't. It'll still explain why your last "inspirational message" changed nothing about your team's actual capacity.


THE RESEARCH EVERYONE MISUNDERSTOOD


Psychologist C.R. Snyder spent decades studying hope. He identified three components:


  1. Goals - Clear objectives
  2. Pathways - Routes to achieve goals
  3. Agency - Belief in our capacity to act


Here's the part that matters: Agency is "our belief in our own capacity to act."


Read that again.


Our own capacity.

Not borrowed capacity. Not your capacity that they rent for 90 minutes. Their own.


Every time you loan your hope, you confirm they don't have their own.


Every time you're "the optimistic one," you reinforce that optimism isn't their job.


Every time you solve their hopelessness problem, you rob them of the exact agency that builds real hope.


Data from 987 leadership teams confirms: Teams with one "hope source" report 40% lower collective efficacy than teams with distributed agency.


When only you own Goals, Pathways, and Agency, you're not multiplying team capacity. You're multiplying by zero while working really, really hard.


Comment "BORROWED" if you've ever asked, "Who on my team needs to borrow my hope right now?" Let's see how many of us have been accidentally enabling dependency.


THE THREE SHIFTS: Stop Being the Dealer They Keep Calling

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🎯 SHIFT 1: GOALS Stop Deciding For Them. Start Deciding With Them.


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What you're doing now:


You set goals. Cast vision. Define success. Your cabinet nods, agrees, maybe even feels inspired momentarily. Then returns to their divisions and operates according to entirely different goals because they never actually owned yours.


What happens:


In K-12: You announce district priorities. Principals nod. Teachers experience three different interpretations of the same priority because it never belonged to anyone except you.


In higher ed: You define institutional objectives. Deans agree. Faculty wonder why priorities keep changing because the goals were never co-created, just announced.


What to do instead:


"Before I share what I'm thinking, what does success look like from your seat? What would make next year feel like progress for Student Affairs? For Academic Affairs? For Finance?"


Then facilitate the messy work of finding the intersection between eight different definitions of success.


⚠️ The Uncomfortable Truth: This is slower than just deciding. It also produces goals your team will actually pursue when you're not in the room. Choose wisely.


The difference between clarity provided and clarity created is the difference between compliance and ownership. One requires you to constantly reinforce. One sustains itself.


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🛤️ SHIFT 2: PATHWAYS Stop Bringing Back Conference Insights. Start Building Collective Capacity.


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What you're doing now:


You went to the conference. Learned the framework. Came back energized. Built the implementation plan. Ready to deploy.


Two months later, you're experiencing "implementation friction"—consultant-speak for "nobody's actually doing this and everyone's pretending they don't notice."


Why? Because you brought back your pathway, not theirs.


What happens:


You keep wondering why your brilliant strategy isn't being executed. They keep wondering why you don't understand their reality. Everyone's frustrated. Nothing changes.


What to do instead:


"We agree we need to improve retention. Before we pick a strategy, let's identify: What's actually in our control? What resources do we have? What's worked before? Then let's build options together."

You're not withholding your expertise. You're teaching them to build pathways instead of walk yours.


⚠️ The Uncomfortable Truth: This feels inefficient at first. But it's the difference between leading a team that executes your plans (requires your constant presence) and leading a team that generates plans (functions when you're on vacation).


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💪 SHIFT 3: AGENCY (The Big One) Stop Loaning Belief. Start Building Their Capacity to Generate It.


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This is where the Hope Tax lives.


What you're doing now:


Cabinet discussion surfaces challenges. You reframe anxiety into optimism. They feel better. You feel exhausted. Nothing changes about their actual capacity to see possibility independently.


Next meeting: Same pattern. They bring problems. You bring hope. They express doubt. You provide belief.


You've accidentally trained them that hope is your job, not theirs.


What happens:


Your calendar fills with "quick conversations" where people need hope injections. You become the emotional infrastructure of your organization. They become dependent on you for basic optimism. Everyone calls this "supportive leadership" while you quietly burn out.


What to do instead:


"I notice we're cataloging obstacles. That's important—we need to see reality clearly. And I also notice nobody's named what's possible yet. Before I jump in, who wants to try? What's one pathway that could actually work?"


Awkward silence? Probably. Will last approximately 47 seconds (yes, I've timed this across hundreds of leadership teams).


Will someone eventually speak? Yes.


Will it be messier than when you do it? Yes.


Will it be theirs? Yes.


And is that the entire point? Also yes.


⚠️ The Uncomfortable Truth: The silence is diagnostic. If nobody can articulate possibility without you, you've created dependency, not capability. And dependency—no matter how inspirational it looks—is the opposite of leadership development.


Honest question: What would happen if you stayed silent for 47 seconds? Would your team collapse or discover they don't need you to think for them?


THE CASE STUDY: When Alicia Stopped Being the Hope Dealer


Let me tell you about a president I'll call Alicia (Alicia, you absolutely know this is you, and your former CFO is probably reading this right now and texting you).


Alicia led a regional comprehensive university. 12,000 students. Declining enrollment. Aging facilities. Board asking increasingly uncomfortable questions about "institutional viability" (academic-speak for "are we going to survive this?").


Her cabinet: Eight people with an average of 19 years in higher education each. Combined credentials that could staff a small academic conference. Combined ability to see possibility without Sarah? Roughly equivalent to their combined ability to agree on where to order lunch (which is to say: zero).


Every cabinet meeting followed the same script:


  • Someone surfaces enrollment/budget/operational challenge
  • Team catalogs obstacles with the thoroughness of people who've definitely done this before
  • Energy drops
  • Alicia reframes, provides hope injection, tells inspiring story
  • Meeting ends on upward trajectory
  • Nothing actually changes about the team's capacity


Alicia was even featured in a Chronicle article about "leading with optimism during challenging times."


Privately? Alicia was exhausted. And confused.


Because her team was brilliant individually but seemingly incapable of seeing possibility collectively. And she couldn't figure out why eight smart people couldn't generate optimism without her.


Before you read what Alicia did—predict: What's YOUR Hope Tax number? Comment your guess.


Then Alicia did something uncomfortable.


At her next cabinet meeting, when the Provost started cataloging enrollment challenges (demographics, competition, the existential crisis of regional comprehensives, probably something about "headwinds"), Alicia did something she'd never done:


She stayed quiet.


The silence was excruciating. Her CFO later told her it felt like 10 minutes.


Alicia timed it. 47 seconds.


Finally, her VP of Student Affairs said: "Okay, what if we looked at this differently? Declining traditional enrollment is actually forcing us to finally fix our adult learner infrastructure. We've been talking about that for six years but never had the pressure to actually do it. Maybe this crisis is the forcing function we needed."


Alicia told me later, "I almost interrupted him three times. I had to physically put my hands under my thighs to stop myself from jumping in. It was the hardest 47 seconds of my presidency. And the most important."


The conversation that followed wasn't as polished as when Alicia facilitated. Messier. Less linear. More awkward pauses.


But it was theirs.


Alicia did this systematically over six months:


  • Stopped immediately reframing every challenge
  • Started asking "Who else sees a pathway forward here?"
  • Practiced counting to 10 before providing hope
  • Named the pattern: "I think I've trained us that my job is to see possibility and your job is to see obstacles"


Her team stopped borrowing her hope and started building their own.


Cabinet meetings stopped being "Alicia inspires everyone for 90 minutes" and started being "eight people solve problems together."


The transformation wasn't dramatic. It was incremental. And it was permanent.


The numbers:


  • Hope Tax: $28,000/year → $4,200/year (85% reduction)
  • "Quick conversations" needing Sarah's optimism: 18/week → 3/week
  • Cabinet decisions made WITHOUT Sarah facilitating: 2/year → 12/year
  • Alicia's Sunday night work sessions: 4 hours → 45 minutes


Same budget. Same enrollment challenges. Same board pressure.


Different hope infrastructure.


Within six months:


  • Cabinet meetings were 35% shorter
  • Implementation increased 60%
  • Alicia's workload decreased significantly
  • Team made a major strategic pivot unanimously—without Alicia facilitating


The strategic plan didn't change. The hope infrastructure underneath it changed.


Turns out, that's what actually matters.


Now, if you're thinking "this framework makes sense, but how do I actually facilitate the awkward 47-second silence without it turning into a staring contest or accidentally making my VP cry?"—I get it. That's the gap between insight and implementation.


This is what The GROUP is for.


Each week, I turn the newsletter topic into a Leader CORE Lesson and Guide:


  • Facilitation scripts for navigating the silence when you stop being the hope source
  • Discussion protocols that build agency without feeling like therapy
  • Team exercises that develop hope infrastructure, not hope dependency
  • The actual language to use when someone says "but isn't hope your job as leader?"
  • Diagnostic tools to assess where your team is on the agency spectrum


It's free (because charging you to solve a problem called the Hope Tax would be peak irony), built for busy leaders who need practical resources—not more theory—and designed for Monday morning meetings when you're already exhausted from last week's hope performance.


Grab this week's Hope Infrastructure guide: https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/the-group

But whether you join The GROUP or not, here's what you can implement immediately...


THE APPLICATION: What to Do Monday Morning


(Assuming you survived last week's hope marathon and aren't currently hiding in your car eating lunch alone to avoid more "quick conversations" where someone needs you to help them "see this differently")


STEP 1: THE HOPE MONOPOLY AUDIT (15 minutes)


In your next cabinet meeting, when someone surfaces a challenge, don't immediately reframe it.


Count to 10. Out loud in your head. Feel the discomfort of the silence.


Then ask: "Before I share what I'm thinking, who else sees a pathway forward here?"


Watch what happens:


  • If nobody speaks, you've just discovered you have a hope monopoly
  • If someone speaks but then looks at you for validation, they're still borrowing agency
  • If someone speaks and others build on it without checking with you, congratulations—you have distributed agency somewhere


The silence is diagnostic data. Don't fill it. Let your team experience the gap between their current dependence and their potential capacity.


If this feels cruel, remember: You're not withholding help. You're creating space for them to discover they don't need to borrow what they can build.


(Objection handling: "But what if nobody speaks and the meeting just dies?" Then you've diagnosed a more serious problem than you thought. And you still can't fix it by continuing to be the hope dealer. The silence itself is the intervention.)


STEP 2: CALCULATE YOUR ACTUAL HOPE TAX (10 minutes)


Track this for one week. Every time you play "the optimistic one," make a tally mark.


Count honestly:


  • Cabinet meetings where you reframe challenges
  • One-on-ones where you "help them see differently"
  • Emails where you provide encouraging perspective
  • Hallway conversations where someone needs hope injection


Then do the math:


[Number of instances] × 15 minutes each × $125/hour × 47 weeks = Your Annual Hope Tax


For the president who hit 23 instances in five days? That's $32,662.50 annually.


That's not a rounding error. That's a full-time staff position you're filling with your emotional labor while wondering why you don't have time for strategic thinking.


Write the number down. Show it to someone. Maybe your spouse, who's been asking why you're exhausted on weekends.

Your Hope Tax isn't a leadership development expense. It's a leadership design flaw that's been costing you actual money and time you'll never get back.


STEP 3: THE AGENCY REDISTRIBUTION CONVERSATION (20 minutes at next cabinet meeting)


This is the uncomfortable one. This is where you name the pattern that everyone's been experiencing but nobody's been saying.

Add this to your next cabinet agenda: "Team development conversation: Hope infrastructure"

Then say this (or your version of this):


"I've noticed a pattern in our meetings, and I want to name it and see if you're noticing it too."

I think I've accidentally trained us that my job is to see possibility and your job is to see obstacles. That wasn't intentional, but I think it's happening. And I think it's making us less effective as a team.


Not because you can't see possibility—you absolutely can. But because I keep doing it for you before you have to. So you've stopped practicing that muscle.


What if we practiced seeing possibility together? What would that look like?"


Pause. Let that land. Count to 10 again.


Then:


"I'm not going to stop being optimistic. But I am going to stop being the only person who's optimistic. Starting today."

Uncomfortable? Extremely.


Necessary? Absolutely.


Will someone say "but isn't providing vision and hope literally your job as leader?" Probably your CFO.


Your response:


"My job is to build a team that can lead even when I'm not in the room. Right now, I'm accidentally preventing that by providing something you need to learn to generate yourselves."

This won't feel natural. It will feel like you're withholding something they need.


You're not. You're teaching them to build what you've been loaning.


There's a difference.


⚡ Pause here. Comment "47 SECONDS" if you're willing to try the awkward silence experiment at your next meeting. I want to see how many leaders are brave enough to stop talking.


OBJECTION HANDLING


"But we don't have time for this philosophical conversation about hope. We have actual crises."


You're currently spending 15+ hours per month being the hope dealer. That's 180 hours per year. That's 4.5 weeks of full-time work.


You don't have time NOT to fix this.


Also, this isn't philosophical. This is operational. Your team can't function independently because you've accidentally made yourself indispensable for basic optimism. That's not crisis management. That's crisis creation with inspirational language.


"What if I stop providing hope and they just spiral into negativity?"

Then you've discovered the actual state of your team's agency, and you can finally address the real problem instead of decorating around it with motivational speeches.


But here's what actually happens: When you stop filling every silence with optimism, someone else will. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not eloquently. But they will.


Because people don't lack the capacity for hope. They lack practice generating it when someone else has been doing it for them.


"This feels like I'm abandoning my team when they need me most."

You're not abandoning them. You're graduating them from dependence to capability.


There's a difference between supporting people and becoming their emotional life support system. One builds strength. One creates atrophy.


And right now, your team's hope muscles have atrophied because you keep doing the emotional heavy lifting while they watch.


THE MATURITY SHIFT: From Hope Performance to Hope Infrastructure


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IMMATURE LEADERS ASK: "Who needs to borrow my hope?"


MATURE LEADERS ASK: "How do I build a team that generates its own?"


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Immature leaders model optimism, yet wonder why their team remains pessimistic.


Mature leaders build systems where agency is distributed and wonder why they didn't do this five years ago.


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Immature leaders measure their effectiveness by how inspired people feel after meetings.


Mature leaders measure effectiveness by how independently their team solves problems when they're not in the room.


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Immature leaders treat "being the hopeful one" as a leadership strength.


Mature leaders recognize it as a team development failure masquerading as inspirational leadership.


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Immature leaders = Indispensable + Exhausted Mature leaders = Team Capable + Vacation Restful


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💡 "The Hope Tax isn't an operational expense you have to accept. It's a leadership design flaw you can fix."


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The difference is the difference between performing hope and building the infrastructure that makes hope renewable.


One makes you indispensable and exhausted.


One makes your team capable and your vacation actually restful.


And unlike your actual budget constraints, your enrollment challenges, and the existential questions your board keeps asking—this one is 100% in your control.


YOUR TURN


Count this week. How many times were you "the optimistic one"?


Calculate your Hope Tax: [instances per week] × 15 minutes × $125/hour × 47 weeks = ?


Drop your Hope Tax calculation in the comments.


(Bonus points if it's so high it makes you reconsider every leadership podcast you've ever loved. Double bonus if you can calculate what you could have bought with that money—spoiler: it's probably a Honda Civic.)


What would it look like to stop loaning hope and start building the infrastructure for your team to generate their own?

Tag the cabinet member who borrows your hope most frequently. (Do it cowardly—don't explain what you're actually tagging them for.)


P.S. IF YOU'RE THINKING "I DON'T HAVE TIME TO TURN THIS INTO A MONDAY MORNING TEAM CONVERSATION"


I already did it for you.


The GROUP is a free community where every newsletter becomes a ready-to-deploy Leader CORE Lesson and Guide:

  • Facilitation scripts for navigating the 47-second silence without panicking
  • Discussion protocols that build agency without feeling like group therapy
  • Team exercises that develop hope infrastructure systematically
  • The actual language to use when your CFO says, "Isn't hope literally your job?"
  • Diagnostic tools to assess where your team is on the agency spectrum
  • Recovery protocols for when you accidentally slip back into hope-dealer mode


Join The GROUP here (it's free): https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/the-group


Plus you get access to hundreds of campus leaders who are also trying to stop being the lone source of institutional optimism. The implementation guides save you hours. The peer conversations? Those might save you from becoming that leader who's inspirational on LinkedIn and exhausted in real life.


HELP OTHER LEADERS DISCOVER THIS


If this resonated (or made you uncomfortable, which is basically the same thing):


→ Repost this with your Hope Tax calculation and biggest takeaway


→ Tag a leader who's definitely paying the Hope Tax right now (you know exactly who they are—the one who's always "the optimistic one" and always exhausted)


→ Comment with your experience—Have you noticed this pattern? What's it costing you? Your story helps others feel less alone


The more leaders who shift from providing hope to building hope infrastructure, the better our educational systems become. And the fewer leaders burn out trying to be the emotional architecture of their entire organization.


Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group for weekly Team Intelligence insights.


NEXT ISSUE: "Your Cabinet Has Commitment Issues (And Your Strategic Plan Is the Emotional Affair)"


Why your team enthusiastically agrees to priorities in September and acts like amnesia victims by October. We'll explore the 15-minute exercise that reveals whether you have genuine ownership or performative compliance—plus the uncomfortable reason strategic plans built through consensus create exactly zero commitment.



Spoiler: Your team isn't failing to follow through. They're successfully executing a plan they never actually owned. And you're about to discover you've been confusing agreement with commitment for your entire leadership career.


Do you want more leadership topics and guides?

Join THE GROUP


An online community for higher education leaders, where we offer a library of lessons and guides that can be utilized during your leadership sessions and other resources.

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Higher Performance Insights | THE MULTIPLICATION GAP: Why Your Good Cabinet Isn't Great (Yet)

By HPG Info • February 17, 2026
Last semester, I watched the same thing happen: The boss announced a major initiative. Everyone nodded. Three weeks later? Eight separate executions masquerading as one strategy. Your cabinet doesn't have a dysfunction problem. You have a pronoun problem—and it's costing you $400K in wasted capacity each year. Count how many times someone in your last meeting said "myself" instead of "me." Then count how many times anyone said "we." That ratio? It predicts everything about your team's performance. Here's the pattern: "The board and myself decided..." "Between the Provost and myself..." "My cabinet and myself are aligned..." Two syllables instead of one. Grammatically incorrect. Functionally revealing. We've inflated from "me" to "MYSELF"—and in that linguistic upgrade, we lost the only word that actually creates multiplication: "we." Your cabinet has a multiplication problem. Eight talented leaders who've mastered individual excellence but haven't built the collective infrastructure that turns good performance into breakthrough performance. That gap between good and great? It's about shifting from "myself" to "we." And most leaders never learn how because "myself" has been rewarded your entire career. THE DIAGNOSIS: GOOD AT ADDITION, MISSING MULTIPLICATION Let's talk about this like adults who've led talented teams that perform well but wonder "what if?" Tuesday, 9 AM cabinet meeting. Everyone's prepared. Updates are thorough. Questions are smart. The meeting runs professionally. (Everyone nods in agreement. The strategic plan gets approved. Then eight people leave the room and interpret it eight different ways. This is what we call "alignment.") But when you announce a major initiative, you can see the mental calculation behind eight sets of eyes: "How does this affect MY area? What do I need to protect? How much can I delegate vs. do myself?" Three weeks later, the initiative moves forward. Sort of. Everyone executes their part. Professionally. Competently. But it feels like eight separate projects that happen to share a name , not one integrated effort multiplying collective intelligence. Or this: Your CFO and Provost are both brilliant. They collaborate when required. They're not territorial. But they've never called each other just to think through a complex problem together. They coordinate. They don't co-create. (They schedule "sync meetings" to align before the actual meeting. Then debrief after. That's not collaboration—that's collaboration theater with intermission.) Here's Why This Keeps Happening You hired for individual excellence. You measured individual performance. You rewarded individual achievement. Then you put eight individual high-performers in a room and expected them to spontaneously operate as a multiplied "we." They can't. Because multiplication requires different infrastructure than addition. Here's what nobody admits at leadership conferences (because we're all performing competence for each other): You hired people whose entire identity is built on being individually exceptional. Then you put them in roles where their primary job is to make OTHER people successful. That's asking Olympic sprinters to suddenly care more about the relay team's time than their individual split. They'd rather protect their reputation as "the smart one" than risk looking average by actually multiplying with others. Your "good" cabinet is actively choosing addition over multiplication because multiplication requires vulnerability they've spent careers avoiding. The real problem? You've built a cabinet optimized for individual excellence in roles that require collective multiplication. The Team Intelligence Formula: TQ = IQ × EQ × PQ Notice it's multiplication, not addition. Any dimension near zero collapses everything. IQ: Individual competence. You hired for this. Your cabinet is brilliant. EQ: Common language for communication and culture. This is where "myself" performers fragment—eight people fluent in different languages trying to have strategic conversations. PQ: Understanding how each person is wired and how roles multiply. Your CFO doesn't have to lead innovation just because they're smart. When any dimension is low, multiplication collapses to addition. Your cabinet isn't broken. It's just never been built to multiply. THE FRAMEWORK: THE A/50 VS B+/3 PATTERN Your cabinet is full of A/50 performers —people who earned A grades by investing 50 hours of effort. Grinding. Perfecting. Out-working everyone. The formula that built their careers: More effort = Better results. A/50 performers struggle with collective multiplication. (And yes, they're exhausted. Which they mention. Frequently. Usually in the context of explaining why someone else's approach won't work.) They've been rewarded for individual excellence through heroic effort. They don't know how to operate in "we multiply together" mode because they're still counting contributions. "I stayed until 8pm Tuesday." "I sent three emails over the weekend." "My section is more thorough than yours." This is why your high-performer cabinet operates at 60% capacity despite 100% effort. Because A/50 performers can't multiply—they can only add and compare. B+/3 performers? They earned B+ grades with just 3 hours of effort. Not the highest grade, but remarkable efficiency. Smarter strategy beats harder grinding. Here's what they figured out: Study groups beat solo grinding (collaboration multiplies understanding) Asking the right questions beats reading everything (leverage others' knowledge) Good enough on time beats perfect too late (execution matters more than perfection) Who gets credit doesn't matter if the team wins (ego takes back seat to results) B+/3 performers default to "we" because "I alone" was never enough. They say things like: "What if we combined your approach with mine?" "Who else should be thinking about this?" "This got better because of what you added." They've developed the one skill A/50 performers never needed: multiplication instinct. (Your A/50 performers secretly think B+/3 people are lazy. Your B+/3 performers know A/50 people are inefficient. Both are right. Neither is winning.) "A/50 performers earned success by grinding harder. B+/3 performers earned it by thinking smarter. Your cabinet is full of A/50s trying to multiply. That's why good stays good instead of becoming great." If your entire cabinet is A/50, you've built a team of individual excellence that underperforms collectively. That's why multiplication feels impossible. THE 60% CAPACITY CRISIS Research shows leadership teams typically perform at 60% of their potential. If your cabinet costs $1M annually, that's $400K burning every year. Not from incompetence. From interference. High IQ leaders who lack common language (EQ) and understanding of how each person is wired (PQ). Here's the good news that changes everything: Your cabinet isn't broken. They're not resistant. They're not incompetent. They're operating on addition infrastructure while attempting multiplication work. That's a design problem, not a people problem. Design problems are solvable through architecture, not heroics. You don't need different people. You need different infrastructure. The talent is already there. The potential is already funded. You're just missing the multiplication system that turns "good" into "great." Your turn: The Multiplication Audit Think about your last three strategic initiatives. For each one: Did it fragment into eight separate executions? (+1 for each YES) Did anyone call someone ELSE just to think through a problem together? (+1 for each YES) Did results feel like stapled-together work or genuinely integrated thinking? (+1 if integrated) Score: 0-2: Addition mode. $400K+ burning annually. 3-5: Transitioning. Some multiplication happening. 6-9: You've cracked the code. You're multiplying. Drop your score below. THE APPLICATION: BUILDING MULTIPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE STEP 1: The Pronoun Audit (15 minutes, solo) Open your last three cabinet meeting notes. Count pronouns: How many times: "I," "me," "my," "myself" How many times: "we," "us," "our" "If 'I/me/myself' outnumbers 'we/us/our' by more than 2:1, you don't have a team. You have a meeting where individuals report progress on separate projects that happen to share a budget." (If this exercise makes you defensive—"but context matters!" "But nuance!"—that's data too. Multiplication doesn't require defending yourself from your own meeting notes.) STEP 2: The Monday Morning "We" Ritual (20 minutes) Start every cabinet meeting with this question. You answer first. "What's one thing happening in your life—work or personal—that you're genuinely excited about OR struggling with? Real answer. Not your portfolio update. Something true about you as a human." Go around the room. Just listen. Don't fix. Don't problem-solve. After everyone shares: "Thank you for trusting us with that." Do this for 8 weeks. Watch your pronouns shift from "myself" to "we." STEP 3: The Multiplication Question (30 minutes in the next cabinet meeting) Put this on your agenda: "How do we shift from coordinating excellence to multiplying it?" Ask: "Was our last initiative eight excellent individual executions that got coordinated? Or one integrated effort where the whole exceeded the parts?" Then: "What would need to be true for us to multiply intelligence instead of just adding it?" Write down 3-5 agreements. This becomes your multiplication infrastructure. THE MATURITY SHIFT: FROM ADDITION TO MULTIPLICATION Immature leaders think: "My team is good enough." Mature leaders think: "Good is the enemy of great, and multiplication is how we get there." Immature leaders accept professional collaboration. Mature leaders architect collective multiplication. Immature leaders think "we" happens naturally among talented people. Mature leaders know "we" requires intentional infrastructure. "Immature leaders accept professional collaboration. Mature leaders architect collective multiplication. The difference is the difference between a cabinet that works hard and a cabinet that works exponentially." One produces solid results through heroic individual effort. One produces breakthrough results through collective intelligence. Your cabinet is good. The question is: Are you ready to build great? Real talk: Which of your cabinet members is an A/50 performer (heroic individual effort) vs. B+/3 performer (multiplication instinct)? Don't name names publicly—but if you counted and your entire cabinet is A/50, that's not a people problem. That's a hiring-for-the-wrong-variable problem. Comment below: How many of your cabinet members have multiplication instinct vs. addition mindset? Your honest answer reveals whether you're one hire away from transformation or one system away. Tag someone on your team who defaults to "we" before "myself"—they've earned the recognition. THE TEAM INSTITUTE : FROM ADDITION TO MULTIPLICATION IN 8 MONTHS Your cabinet just diagnosed the gap between addition and multiplication. That gap? It represents every strategic initiative that fragments, every decision that requires three follow-up meetings, every brilliant idea that dies in translation. This is the pattern The Team Institute was built to eliminate. While most leadership development teaches YOU frameworks to translate back to your team (hello, translation tax), we build the multiplication infrastructure WITH your entire team—through 8 monthly sessions that develop from trust to empowerment to collaboration to breakthrough results. We don't fix people. We multiply systems. The 8-Month Architecture: Month 1: Base Camp - Understanding your Team Profile Month 2: Building Trust - The foundation of multiplication Month 3: Empowerment - "We" distribute authority Month 4: Collaboration - "We" create together Month 5: Broadening Influence - "We" lead beyond hierarchy Month 6: Managing Change - "We" transform without casualties Month 7: Managing Conflict - "We" use friction as refinement Month 8: Developing Others - "We" multiply talent What's Included: Team {BEST FIT} assessment revealing addition vs. multiplication patterns Team 360 baseline measuring current EQ and PQ Monthly expert facilitation applied to your actual challenges Between-session accountability that embeds multiplication Executive coaching for senior leaders The Results: 3x performance improvement. 29% higher engagement. 27% better organizational outcomes. Zero burnout increase. The Requirement: Full team participation. You can't build multiplication with "some of us." YOUR NEXT MOVE If you're ready to transform addition into multiplication—if you sense your good cabinet could be great—let's talk. Schedule a 30-minute consultation to explore whether THE TEAM INSTITUTE will build the multiplication infrastructure your organization requires. This isn't about selling you something. This is about whether you're ready to build multiplication. [SCHEDULE CONSULTATION ] Found this valuable? Help other leaders discover it: → Repost with your honest answer: "Does my cabinet add or multiply?" → Tag a leader building multiplication infrastructure → Comment with your Multiplication Audit score The more leaders who shift from addition to multiplication, the better education becomes. Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group

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. 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.
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