S8E2: High-performing teams - what's really going on beneath the surface?

Before you can fix a team, you have to understand it. Not what you assume is happening - what's actually happening. 

In this episode, Imogen and Amanda talk about how to diagnose the real causes of underperformance: why anonymous surveys rarely tell you what you need to know, why leaders say they want honesty but often struggle with what comes back, and why the most revealing answers are often sitting outside your team entirely. 

This isn't about apportioning blame, it's about clarity. And this is how you get it.

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

Transcript

[00:00:05.480] - Imogen

Hello and welcome to Dear Comms, the coffee break podcast where we tackle your biggest corporate comms challenges. I'm Imogen.

[00:00:12.540] - Amanda

And I'm Amanda. We're here to give you practical, no-nonsense advice so you can focus on the things that really drive influence, engagement, and impact.

[00:00:24.010] - Imogen

Well, welcome to our second episode around high-performing teams. In the last episode, we talked about symptoms. How do you know that you may have a problem? Um, today we're going to look at what kind of questions we need to ask, or how we need to approach the diagnosis. How do we find out what the causes are of low performance? Because as I've always said, before fixing anything, you really need to understand where you are and what's going on. So this is about how do we figure out what's actually wrong with the team.

[00:00:56.700] - Amanda

Yeah, and, and You know, we all jump straight to fixing, don't we? 'Cause it feels like we're doing something, it feels decisive. You get to hold a workshop, launch a new process, write a new strategy, it feels like moving forward.

[00:01:13.010] - Imogen

Everyone likes a workshop, Amanda.

[00:01:15.160] - Amanda

Well, particularly us consultants, Imogen. But if you skip a proper diagnosis, you're usually solving the wrong problem. You're treating the symptoms and then, you know what, 3 months later you're back having the same conversation, wondering why nothing is sticking. I think this is a classic example of you can't fix what you can't see. And quite often, if you don't, you know, you can't see the real issue, it's subtle, it's in the gaps between what people think is happening and what's actually happening. Happening? Quite often it's assumptions. It's you and me leaving the same meeting with completely different interpretations of what was agreed.

[00:02:01.070] - Imogen

The whole question of what's actually happening, or what is the problem we're really trying to solve here, it makes people a little defensive. They don't like asking it. No. A lot of the time that comes down to, self-preservation, I guess, because it's about politics and it's about fear potentially of highlighting something that other people don't want to think about or talk about. Sometimes we hold back from really digging deep into an issue because we're tired and we don't really want to know, we just want get on with our job and get on with it. Or maybe in the past we've asked the question and we've been stonewalled, or we've been put back in our place, and so therefore we've just learned to not ask those questions.

[00:03:01.450] - Amanda

Yeah, it can be cultural, can't it? And I think the big thing for me is honesty, um, and how safe it feels to speak. You can say you want open feedback as much as you like, but if people are reading the room and asking themselves, is this is this safe? Will this be used against me? And I often think that leaders want honesty, say they want honesty, but struggle with what comes back. Because it isn't flattering. It might be—

[00:03:33.210] - Imogen

Honesty as long as it's nice honesty.

[00:03:35.050] - Amanda

Yeah, exactly. It might be unclear direction or inconsistent behavior or you as a decision maker, quite frankly. And I think here's the hard truth you've gotta be ready to hear. Discomfort. Because getting to the heart of things, you know, it's about maturity. You know, you've gotta park the defensiveness or the justification. You know, be curious, ask that question, tell me more. That phrase is very powerful.

[00:04:05.720] - Imogen

One of the joys of not being part of any organizational politics is that We can ask questions and we can ask difficult questions and challenging questions. But when you are sitting in a room with your boss or with your team, it can feel risky to push back and to challenge. And for all companies saying that they have an open and honest culture and they're very transparent, very vulnerable, a lot of the time that is just kind of words. And the lived experience of employees within that organization means that they just don't feel that they have that authority or that mandate to speak up. A lot of companies— I was just going to say, a lot of companies get over this by anonymizing surveys. For me, that's— it doesn't work very well. Partly because, and it's not because of the anonymity, anonymity of it, but it's really because nothing actually changes. Like, how many times are you going to ask for someone's opinion and then nothing actually happens as a result?

[00:05:21.250] - Amanda

I think as well, you need to be really careful when you frame things. If you ask the question about who's dropping the ball, people are going to shut down. But if you frame it in the right way, and it's about, you know, where is work harder than it should be, people tend to lean in a bit and want to get involved. And to your point, we can't do this and not do something about it. You need to be very clear what will happen with the feedback. If you're asking people to share and take the risk of sharing, You need to tell them what's going to happen next. You know, will you summarize themes? Will you prioritize actions? And when will they hear back? Because if nothing— and you and I know this— if nothing changes, then you lose trust. And then the next time you ask, you're going to get silence or surface-level answers. People aren't really going to get involved. So be prepared to act on what you find. Not everything at once, but, you know, just make sure that you are visibly showing the results of what you're asking.

[00:06:34.720] - Imogen

Yeah, I mean, you know, we asked, you said, we heard, just giving some indication of what's happening. Because otherwise, I mean, there's such fatigue and communicators recognize this because everyone wants to do pulse surveys and pulse checks and— just quick questions, and we ask a lot of our employees a lot of the time. But they're often so unsatisfying, not only for the employees because nothing ever changes and they don't ever hear back from their opinion, but also for us as communicators, as leaders, because we're getting numbers. But as we know, numbers don't really mean anything unless there's that narrative, that story behind it. So, you can have numbers which look brilliant, '67% said,' but what's not being said is that other percentage and what's going on beneath the surface.

[00:07:34.480] - Amanda

Yeah. I mean, they are useful. They show— Yeah. They show where the heat is. In reasons. Yeah. They tell you that something's happening and they tend to show patterns. But as to your point, they don't— Don't explain the story behind the numbers. You know, a low score on one particular area could mean 10 different things. So use them as a starting point. They're the beginning of a conversation, aren't they? I think that real insight comes from the one-to-ones and from asking that tell me more question. I think that's where you really start to understand where the issue is, you know, is it process, is it pressure, is it misunderstanding?

[00:08:20.990] - Imogen

I also think there's a tendency to only look inwards. So to feel, okay, so my team's not performing the way in which I want it, so therefore it's my team that we need to ask and we need to figure out what's going on. I think there's a lot of power in asking outside of your team and understanding how that team's perceived by other people and people that you work with. So the departments, the markets, whoever it is that you work with, your suppliers as well, and really making some kind of a 360 analysis. Because as we said earlier, from the outside, it's easier to challenge and question. We've done this with clients and internally they felt the problem was that they were busy and therefore didn't have time to do stuff. But asking outside, we actually saw that the perception was that the team was very slow. And so it's about asking questions and it's not questions about who's responsible for newsletters, but it's, is asking more fundamental questions. Do you feel the team has a vision? Do they demonstrate that their work is important to the organization? Do they take ownership and admit mistakes?

[00:09:43.810] 

Do they celebrate victories and rewards? These kind of cultural questions being answered by people outside your team are going to highlight where there are gaps.

[00:09:58.020] - Amanda

I totally agree. I mean, teams don't exist in isolation, and sometimes the most honest feedback comes from the people who rely on you or work with you. Their perspectives count, and that's often where the truth sits. You know, if one team says we're overwhelmed, another says they're unresponsive, you know, that's powerful insight. It tells you something about workload, prioritization, or expectations. I think it's really important that when you're asking these questions to diagnose what the gap is, you don't get defensive, you don't defend it.

[00:10:38.260] - Imogen

Diagnosis is not just about highlighting problems. That diagnosis and that external diagnosis, it's also going to highlight where the strengths are in your team. And what you then have, instead of just numbers of how people might be feeling, you then have opportunities that you can start working on, that you can leverage. So, you can work on the gaps, you can work on the challenges, but you can then amplify those strengths to get the team to feel like they're actually making some progress.

[00:11:14.330] - Amanda

Yeah, exactly. You can build change from what already works, can't you? Teams don't need tearing down. They need time in terms of understanding, really. And I think it's important that you don't expose people, but you look at patterns of behavior, delay, patterns of silence, overcommitment. I think once you can spot the pattern, you can change things.

[00:11:45.150] - Imogen

It's about having a little bit of empathy, isn't it? Because it's quite a tough process. Going through this process, I mean, if you've ever had it as part of your own development, when you were in-house, I remember I had it once where I had a 360. And it's really hard to hear things about you and about the way you work and about how other people see you. And so, we have to remember that we are asking very pointed questions about the team and how it's performing and how it's working. So, you need to have a little empathy. And as you say, it's not about exposing individuals, it's about looking at patterns and what's happening, because then you can start to align your team. Once you know where those patterns are, and where the areas that are not working are, you can start bringing your team around those, and you will have a direction to move in.

[00:12:41.810] - Amanda

I think, you know, friction, a little bit of friction can help because alignment isn't about agreeing with everything, harmony for harmony's sake, but it is about having a shared reference point when things get messy, something neutral to point to. I think, you know, without a reference point, that thing that you're gonna rally around, it becomes more personal. And I think it's a huge shift to have that shared reference point, 'cause it takes the heat out of the room.

[00:13:18.110] - Imogen

Absolutely. You are replacing assumptions with actual insight and actual data and actual evidence about what's going on. It's not about pointing fingers, but actually you have something that you all can appreciate and understand is happening that you want to work against.

[00:13:42.910] - Amanda

And evidence, alongside emotion and honesty, is going to help move teams forward. I want to come back to that phrase, you can't fix what you can't see. If you get clarity, You stop guessing and everything becomes easier because you're building from insight and not assumption.

[00:14:05.430] - Imogen

Right, so I guess the takeaway from this episode is really start asking questions, and not asking questions about, you know, the tactics and about the tangibles, but start asking questions about the way in which your team functions, the culture within your team. Ask outside the team as to how it's perceived and, the way in which other people work with you and feel about working with you. And that's how you're going to start getting the answers that you really need.

[00:14:40.230] - Amanda

Yeah, that clarity and insight is going to help you align, you know, around a team purpose. You know, this diagnosis is only step one. You've got to act on that clarity That's where we're heading next in the next episode.

[00:14:59.670] - Imogen

Yep, we'll be looking at how you turn this diagnosis into direction. So we will be getting over the boring bit and going to the fun, shiny, tactical, wonderful bit.

[00:15:11.310] - Amanda

The new things.

[00:15:12.100] - Imogen

The new things. But in the meantime, if you have got any questions about this, if you need some support in figuring out what questions to ask other people, get in touch.

[00:15:23.360] - Amanda

And don't forget to like, share, comment, and all that jazz.

[00:15:27.430] - Imogen

And we will see you next time.

[00:15:29.120] - Amanda

Bye for now.