#405: How to Improve Lagging Performance

Summary

Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast #405: How to Improve Lagging Performance

Date: July 16, 2026
Host: Perry Holly
Co-Host: Chris Cody

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Episode Overview

This episode explores why performance sometimes lags in teams and organizations—and, crucially, what leaders can do to address it effectively without resorting to micromanagement or overcontrol. Perry Holly and Chris Cody discuss common pitfalls, offer a practical framework for diagnosing the root causes of lagging performance, and share actionable mindsets and tools for leaders to drive sustained improvement. The conversation emphasizes clarity, capability, systems, alignment, trust, and adopting a coaching (rather than controlling) leadership style.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Urge to Control vs. the Need to Lead

[01:20–04:03]

• Chris Cody shares his natural reaction when performance lags: “Do I begin to press? … Am I just creating a bottleneck and that’s a problem?”
• Leaders often revert to hands-on control because they were strong individual contributors, but this tendency can stifle team initiative and worsen results.

2. The Power of Asking Better Questions

[04:03–05:56]

• Instead of, “How do I get them to work harder?” leaders should ask better questions:
  • “What’s making results difficult right now?”
  • “What obstacles or challenges are you facing?”
  • “Are there interruptions or conflicting priorities?”
• Chris Cody: “What can I be helping you with?”
• Avoid assuming the team is lacking commitment—identify the real barriers.

3. Clarity is Key: Are Expectations Understood?

[05:56–08:46]

• Perry Holly: “Clarity is not what I said. Clarity is what they understood.”
• Symptoms of unclear expectations:
  • Duplication of work or mimicking others
  • Repeatedly having to rework tasks
  • Hesitation/confusion on assignments
  • The “I thought you meant…” misunderstanding
• Chris Cody: “You need to hit pause, write [that] down… it’s not what you said, it’s actually what they understood.” ([07:24])
• Encourage feedback loops: Ask team members to repeat back what they heard—not in a demeaning way, but to ensure true comprehension.

4. Simplicity and Simplicity in Execution

[08:46–10:14]

• Leaders should define “what success looks like” as simply as possible.
• Complexity can cause performance to lag: “Simplicity is the key to being able to scale your business.”

5. Capability vs. Effort Gaps

[10:14–11:28]

• Misdiagnosing a skills gap as a lack of effort can hurt morale and performance.
• Perry Holly: “Is it can’t do or won’t do? Do I need to solve a skill problem or attitude problem?”
• Peer coaching: Pair top performers with those struggling for practical, peer-to-peer support.

6. System Problems: Too Many, Too Few, or Misaligned

[11:28–13:17]

• Overly complex systems (excessive approvals, too many meetings) create friction.
• Not enough process or structure can also lead to chaos and low performance.
• Leaders must balance having sufficient systems with not overwhelming the team.

7. Alignment Problems Across Departments

[14:25–15:55]

• Competing departmental priorities (e.g., sales = speed, legal = risk, operations = efficiency) cause friction and lagging performance if unaligned.
• Perry Holly: “If [departments] are out of alignment, teams start competing instead of really collaborating.”
• Symptoms:
  • Political behavior, stalling decisions, territorial thinking, protecting “sacred cows”
• Leaders should reinforce shared outcomes and clarify cross-functional accountabilities.

8. Trust Issues and Psychological Safety

[15:55–17:06]

• Low trust is seen in symptoms such as excessive escalation, silence in meetings, over-checking, low risk-taking, and low engagement.
• Chris Cody: “It starts with trust—not only in the people and the leader, but also do people trust the process?”
• Psychological safety encourages initiative and honest communication.

9. The Leadership Mindset: Coaching, Not Controlling

[17:06–22:50]

• Perry Holly: “This is the coaching moment. Stop judging ... and instead decide, what is the coaching opportunity here?”
• Use curiosity and open questions to uncover the root of problems:
  • “What am I missing here?”
  • “What’s the real bottleneck?”
  • “What decision are we waiting on?”
  • “How could we simplify this?”
  • “What’s preventing people from taking ownership?”
• Leverage the team’s proximity to the problem—they often have the most valuable insights.
• Chris Cody: “If you can then entrust and empower your people... not only is it more efficient, it’s more effective.” ([21:41])
• Leaders don’t always have the answers. Creating environments with clarity and trust leads to sustainable, scalable performance.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Clarity is not what I said. Clarity is what they understood.”
  — Perry Holly ([06:40])
• “You need to hit pause, write [that] down… it’s not what you said, it’s actually what they understood.”
  — Chris Cody ([07:24])
• “Is it can’t do or won’t do? Do I need to solve a skill problem or attitude problem?”
  — Perry Holly ([10:14])
• “Your job as a leader is to remove friction.”
  — Chris Cody ([12:17])
• “This is the coaching moment. Stop judging ... and instead decide, what is the coaching opportunity here?”
  — Perry Holly ([17:09])
• “If you can then entrust and empower your people... not only is it more efficient, it’s more effective.”
  — Chris Cody ([21:41])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:06] — The prevalence of lagging performance as a leadership coaching topic
• [04:03] — Asking the right questions about team performance
• [05:56] — Diagnosing clarity and communication issues
• [07:24] — Ensuring understanding, not just giving instructions
• [10:14] — Capability versus effort
• [11:28] — Balancing systems and processes
• [14:25] — Departmental alignment and its impact on performance
• [15:55] — Trust, psychological safety, and behavioral symptoms
• [17:09] — Mindset shift to coaching and leveraging team insights
• [19:40] — Empowering those closest to the problem to find solutions
• [21:41] — The impact and effectiveness of entrusting teams

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Actionable Takeaways for Leaders

• Resist your urge to micromanage when results lag—focus on diagnosing root causes.
• Prioritize clarity of expectations: regularly verify what your team has truly understood.
• Differentiate between skill gaps and motivational issues; offer coaching and develop capabilities.
• Evaluate if your systems are too complex (or not robust enough), and adjust to remove friction.
• Foster cross-departmental alignment; reinforce shared goals and accountabilities.
• Invest in building trust and psychological safety—teams perform best when they feel safe to speak up, take risks, and own results.
• Shift from a controlling to a coaching mindset: use curiosity, ask open-ended questions, and draw solutions from those closest to the challenge.

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Final Thoughts

Creating a culture of clarity, capability, alignment, and trust enables organizations to overcome lagging performance and achieve consistent, scalable results. By moving away from control and toward coaching, leaders empower their teams to perform—and to grow.

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For more leadership resources, guides, or coaching:
Visit maxwellleadership.com/executivepodcast

Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Perry Holly]

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast for our goal to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I'm Perry Holly a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

[Chris Cody]

And I'm Chris Cody, executive Vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Just as a reminder, I want to encourage you to go to maxwellleadership.comexecutive podcast. There you can learn more about some of our offerings when it comes to training with teams, coaching with leaders, and if you're interested in that, there'll be a button there you can click on. Fill out a form. We'd love to get back in touch with you. Well, today's topic is titled how to improve Lagging Performance. And I, I have to admit is before we jumped in studio to record this for you guys today, this was something that I was really interested in and I dove into some of the content. I was working through it in preparation for today, but also in preparation for my current leadership because I know there are times where we're not always hitting the numbers that we want to be hitting. And so then what, what happens, right? Like where do I go from there as a leader? Do I do I begin to press and and do I do different things? Do I want to make sure that I'm like in more meetings and more oversights? And what as the leader of our organization in the corporate solutions group, what am I doing when we're not hitting that? Because then, hey, that's oftentimes what the team is going to show up. And as I began to reflect I thought, well, it's probably opposite in some ways of how I want to do that because then it's like I'm creating these maybe Caution, I'm no doubt creating a bottleneck and that's a problem. Right. So we're going to talk about this as leaders of how to fight that urge of we're all leading at a level that we're leading for some reason or another because we were a good individual contributor. So when things start lagging, what do we want to do and how do we fight that?

[Perry Holly]

Yeah. And just so you don't feel like you're the only one that's feeling this topic, it's almost number one topic on coaching calls today. We're in 2026 as we record this and I just noticed that business is good, I would say, but people are not as good as they'd like it to be.

[Chris Cody]

Yeah, I agree with that.

[Perry Holly]

It may have been a little better in some past years. And now this is a topic that comes up quite a. It's. If you follow us on the five levels of leadership, this is a level three topic where you're trying to produce results and it's the production level, you have level two where you've got the relationships or level three. I'm asking for your hand, not your heart. I want to actually, can we improve how we do things? There's all kinds of clarity problems or capability problems, coordination problems, lots of challenges that go with every business. But today I was going to present maybe a little mindset and framework around how do you really address when performance is not where you want it to be?

[Chris Cody]

Yeah, I love the word mindset there because it really is. As I was mentioning as we opened up, like, I don't want to be more controlling. I don't want to go back to having the hands on there. But oftentimes that's our natural reaction and that's exactly opposite of how people succeed and the people that are under your leadership succeed and are able to lead. So a couple of things. Let's start with are you asking the right questions? This is something that I think is huge because when we start to lag in performance, a leader may say, well, how do I get them to work harder? Are they working enough hours? Right. Whereas the better question would be what is making a good performance? What is making the results difficult right now? Like, what can I be helping you?

[Perry Holly]

Like obstacles or like, yeah, like what

[Chris Cody]

are the challenges that you are, are facing? Because let's be, let's just talk the flesh here. Sometimes, Sometimes we were like, well, maybe they just don't have the commitment that I do.

[Perry Holly]

Right.

[Chris Cody]

Or I did back when I was doing that wrong with these People, what's wrong with these people? Right. How many times I'm thinking about my dad right now, like our parents, right. Like, I feel like I'm in that mode where, where we would say that, but it's, it's really not the issue itself. And so one of the things that we need to make sure is that we, we are not unintentionally creating this overzealous micromanagement mode because it's just gonna make things, it's gonna make things worse. And so we need to really get into, hey, are we being clear? What's the expectations? Are there conflicting priorities right now that are doing that? What are the interruptions that the team is feeling? What barriers can I move? How can I help? How can I be a part of the solution and the team not trying to strictly just drive it and do it myself?

[Perry Holly]

Yeah, and the idea about clarity is really one of the first things I would look at is are people clear about your priorities? Are they clear about what the success metrics are? Are they clear about who owns what? Where's ownership on the team? Are they clear on your expectations? We talk a lot about this in our new firm. Feedback from the fragile world, content that we're doing is performance management really comes down to expectations, feedback and accountability. And we'll talk more about that. But the, the idea here is that are they clear on my expectations or how they make trade offs? I mean, there's lots of things that they need to be clear about. I would say tell you that some of the symptoms you may look for, if you're having a lagging performance or the things that you may want to look at, Is there any duplicate work going on? Are people mimicking someone else or they don't feel like they're doing it on their own? Are you constantly asking for rework on things, things aren't being done right the first time? Is there hesitation or confusion when they tackle an assignment to get that done? What I picked up on, I wrote it down because I think I heard this more at home and at work is, oh, I thought you meant it. And they said something else. So what I learned was just because I said it doesn't mean it was communicated. That clarity is not what I said. Clarity is what they understood. And so I've got to really be clear on what they understand.

[Chris Cody]

Yeah, that statement right there, you need to hit pause, write it down, something. Because the statement about it's not what you said, it's actually what they understood. Which led me to start asking this question periodically and not in a demeaning way, but it was like, hey, what did you hear me say? Because I needed them to repeat it back to me.

[Perry Holly]

I always struggled that.

[Chris Cody]

And it feels like it's a demeaning comment, but I now I've even prefaced it with saying, hey, I'm working on my communication, and oftentimes what I'm thinking is moving way faster. And so when I end up speaking, I can't keep up with what's going on. Can you tell me what you heard me say? Like, I try to soften it up even more because I know what you're saying because you kind of struggle with that.

[Perry Holly]

When I'm listening to someone, I've gotten in the habit of saying, so what I heard you say was, that's great, if they would just do that, we're recovered. But they don't do that. So that. So I'm wanting you to say, so what I heard you say, boss was, but they don't do that. So now how do I say so? I've come up with what you said was repeat back to me. But it sounds demeaning.

[Chris Cody]

It does, right? It's like, are you listening? Like, like, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, we're raising our kids.

[Perry Holly]

A lot of leaders using. They're using it way too repetitively, but they're saying, does that make sense? Tell me, does that make sense?

[Chris Cody]

But even that is a little broad. Okay, we're getting way off on a different topic. But that, that is so true, right? Because. Because that. That is the first area that we

[Perry Holly]

say it back to me and see if it makes sense to me.

[Chris Cody]

That's exactly right. So you gotta be clear, you gotta be able to communicate. And strong leaders, you know, define what success actually looks like. Because the team. The team may be just a little bit off, but a month or two without no correction, maybe that's why we're lagging. Right. And so what does that look like? What. What outcomes are we driving? What matters most? What are the priorities? And so the other thing is, is that I had just dove into a book maybe two months ago. We were thinking about scaling and ideas around that and talked about how simplicity is the key to being able to scale your business. And maybe what is lagging is just too complex on how we execute that. So just make sure, man. Just try to keep it as simple and as clear as possible as you can. The second area that we should add to our framework as we think about this is capability problems. So sometimes in the team this, this lacks where we lack skill, maybe we lack a little bit of experience in that area, a little, a little bit of coaching. We're not, we're not providing it for. We might have the right tools and so we, we misdiagnose the capability gap as, as an effort gap. And maybe they're given everything they can effort wise, but it's just they're not capable with, with the resources that they have or the, the competence that they currently have on that team.

[Perry Holly]

Well, I think this makes it about, when you describe that it's about, makes it about growing people being your focus instead of controlling the people which you said earlier. And I thought it really is about being a coaching leader. If I'm a. That curiosity that comes from what's really going. You said was the question am I asking the right questions? What is in the way? And if I'm a coaching leader, I'm looking for is there a capability that's missing? Is there a training that's needed? Is there. What am I actually trying to solve here? Is it can't do or won't do? Do I need a skill problem or attitude problem? What is it I'm actually trying to face here? So I like maybe the practical strategy of even partnering people up that some of your top perform helping some of the struggling performers and showing them the way. So there's a bit of a peer to peer coaching that could go on there as well. Another area that I think gets overlooked sometimes is is it a systems problem that do we have and that you're underperforming because the operating system you're, you're running by is inefficient. I know we talk a lot about this around how we track and, and ownership and rocks and things like that, but what are your thoughts on system?

[Chris Cody]

I, I think this, I want to answer this two ways because I, I think that's why it's so interesting because I think it absolutely could be a symptom problem. Maybe we have too many approvals, maybe too many meetings. Okay, yes, amen to that. Maybe there's conflicting incentives. But I also think at times there could be a lack of systems. Oh yeah, right. It's the opposite. Yeah. Because I, we are always looking at that because we are a people led relational heavy organization and we have opportunities for growth on the systems and processes and I think sometimes we lag in performance because of that. And so I think it's interesting to look at it collectively and how do you have just enough, how do you, you got to have Some. But you also can't overwhelm the team to be able to have that, because if you do, you're creating like you're creating friction, which then leads to them not being able to do it. And ultimately your job as a leader is to remove friction. And so, you know, are you equipping them with the things that they need to do the job the most efficiently? And what are you spending the most time in and how do we go about doing that? Whether it is you shorten approval chains and people that have to approve everything, maybe it's dropping meetings. Maybe you're saying, hey, if I'm not adding value or bringing anything to this meeting, do I have to be in the meeting or can I focus another hour on this? Can you improve the workflow so all of those things go into it? And I think it's a combination of both making sure you have enough, but not too much.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Perry Holly]

Yep. Another consideration I found popping up a lot was alignment problems. And this is interesting because all your departments, I don't know if you feel this one, but we have, you know, sales, they have their priority. They want speed, we got to move fast. Legal wants to reduce risk compliance, right?

[Chris Cody]

Yeah.

[Perry Holly]

Operations wants efficiency. We gotta, we can't duplicate that. Finance wants cost controls. And while all of those things are important, then you and you have to have them individually, they're outstanding. But if they're out of alignment, teams start competing instead of really collaborating. So you think as a leader, what are the symptoms I'm looking for? There might, you know, be a little political behavior. I don't want to do something because I don't want to rock that boat. Or I'm not going to say this, or I'm not going to do that.

[Chris Cody]

Sacred cows. Yeah, yeah. Like that's one of them. Right. Like every, everyone has a sacred cow. What is it?

[Perry Holly]

Yeah, what is it? And you don't want to get in the way of that. And then stall decisions. We're slow to making decision. There's some territorial thinking. Yeah, well we don't do it that way over here. We're not going to, we're not going to handle that way. I think great leaders really reinforce this shared outcomes. What is it we're actually trying to accomplish? So does it mean aligning incentives? Does it mean clarifying cross functional accountabilities? I know for years they use the word. We're in a matrix environment here. We have to interface and we have matrix based teams. Are you aligning those teams correctly or is it causing a lagging performance because people are walking on eggshells because they don't want to rock the boat?

[Chris Cody]

Yeah. Final component to this is as we look at this framework, but it's the most important we talk about it being the currency of all influences. Are there trust problems now as a leader, you may be listening or a team member, you may be listening, going, yeah, no, we don't have any trust problems. But I think if you look internally, here are a couple of things to be looking for that maybe there are some trust things we need to think about. Excessive escalation. Are there silence in meetings? Is everybody participating? Or do you have people that are just being silent? Maybe you're over checking on certain projects. Maybe they're not taking enough risk to try to solve a new problem. And then if there's low initiative and low engagement, there's probably a trust. There's probably a trust problem there. So this goes back to that psychological safety. That's a word that keeps popping up as we think about what this looks like to drive performance inside an organization. This level three skill set. But it starts with trust not only in the people and the people in the leader, but also do the people trust the process that's currently set up to actually achieve what we're asking them to achieve?

[Perry Holly]

Yeah. You're not asking me to do something that's impossible.

[Chris Cody]

Right. That's right.

[Perry Holly]

You're like, I've got all these walls and mountains to get over to do that. I'll just before I hand it to you to wrap up, I'll just say there's a mindset shift that I think is really helpful here. And it was having a coaching mindset. Yeah. And what, what transferred this in my mind was I, I would always look at people that you kind of said, what's wrong with these people? And. But I would say it even more rudely, which was, why can't you be more like me? And because I obviously perform at the highest level. What is your problem?

[Chris Cody]

Next episode will be a narcissism by Perry Holly.

[Perry Holly]

But the idea, I know this is at home, as I was. I was kind of probably torturing my children to raise their performance because you're not. If I would do it so differently. And then I got some coaching, which was, we're not you. And so the idea for me and the words, the little mind worm I use when I see people struggling is, Perry, this is the coaching moment. This is the coaching moment. Stop judging them and formulating judgments and instead decide, what is the coaching opportunity here? So perhaps when you're noticing a lagging performance problem, it is not just to start throwing your attention at symptoms, but to actually get to the root of it. And how do I do that in a coaching mindset says, maybe I work with the team. You're so great at this because we have struggles, we have hills that we're trying to get over. We have challenges that are happening. But you'll bring us together and you'll say, what am I missing here? What are assumptions we're making? I wrote down some of the. What's the real bottleneck here? What decision are we waiting to make? What's not being made? How could we simplify this? What's preventing people taking ownership? And these coaching questions built out of curiosity to Genu really want to solve the issue, not blame somebody or not to get past it in a hurry or not to cast judgments. But I really want to solve it. But I can use the team to help me do that. And they're a lot closer to the action than you are. They are seeing things you don't see. And if you go back to the things you shared about, it's okay, I trust you. I can say things. Chris can handle it. We can tell Chris these things because he's not going to blow up or get mad or say, that's ridiculous. Even if Chris is the problem. I know you would tell us. You want to know, am I doing anything to hinder you from doing your job? And yeah, you don't ever. You Microman. Okay, you would like to know that. And I've seen that in you. So I think it's a really a great model that they. Is my mindset one of coaching and not controlling? And am I asking others to help speak into this?

[Chris Cody]

Yeah, I'm going to Try to articulate a conversation I had with a good friend of ours, an incredible client and a longtime listener. We were talking last week about a struggling area of a business and how we were going to go about solving those issues. And to your point about the fact that those that are in it and have done it and are closest to the problem oftentimes have the best solutions versus those that are sitting in an office, in the ivory tower, as they say, or at headquarters in an example, to be able to solve the problem. And so we were talking through how the organization is going after a certain situation to improve a lagging performance. And there were some critique in different areas of things that they were throwing at it, and they were throwing the kitchen sink at it. And one of the areas is led by an individual who has actually experienced what it's like to be in that situation, boots on the ground. And the decision that they made of how they would add value to that situation and help was to do it differently than how some leaders would have thought. And I'm building off what you said. Just a minute. Because if you can create an environment where you are open and trusting of your leaders to be able to help lead through valleys, we all go through them, Right? You don't hit your numbers. You're off this, that, this, that. But if you can, then entrust and empower your people, especially those that have done it before and they're close to the problem to solve it, versus throwing the kitchen sink at it, not only is it more efficient, it's more effective. And that's what we were talking about. And so the leader that's actually struggling left, you know, came out of the field for a little bit and had a conversation with this individual, and they're like, that's exactly what I needed. I didn't need that. I needed that.

[Perry Holly]

Right, right.

[Chris Cody]

And I just thought about that as you were saying that, and I was like, that's a leadership environment. Right? You're creating an environment where people can perform at their best and can perform consistently, but also understand the problem and where it's lagging. And leaders, listen, not only is it hard for us to say I don't know on certain questions, we also don't have those answers all the time, and we don't have the right answers. And so I just want to encourage you as we wrap up, you know, man, don't tighten control. Don't just throw the kitchen sink at it. Try to figure out how do I maybe increase the clarity from your position, remove any friction that you can help with align, you know, certain incentives for certain people to do things the right way. Give ownership where it needs to be to solve the problem. And I promise you, your people are there for a reason. If you get out of their way, you gotta lead them right. You gotta communicate. There's gotta be trust. But, man, create an environment where people know that there's clarity and there's trust, and it will, I think, not only solve most of your lagging performances, but it'll create a scalable performance going forward.

[Perry Holly]

And I'll encourage you if you listen to this and go, yeah, I don't think our environment would handle that. Go back last week and the week before. We talked a lot about building a culture where no one wants to leave and what they don't want to leave. They want to win and they want not to have lagging performance. And so if you feel like your culture can't support what Chris is sharing there, there's a good opportunity for you to work on actually developing that culture. As a reminder, if you'd like to get the learner guide for this that has all the list of the things that we talked about, you can do that. As well as learn about our other offerings, the five levels of leadership, or our other podcasts in our podcast family. You can also leave us a comment or a question. You can do all [e-mail] executive podcast. We love hearing from you. Very grateful that you spend this time with us. That's all. Today on the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.