I’ve was sitting across a very sharp, self-aware, results-driven leader last week. Her team was delivering. Numbers looked fine. But something felt off. After twenty minutes of honest conversation, the real issue surfaced.
This VP in a large global firm had built a team that consistently hit its quarterly targets. On paper, everything was working. But in our sessions, she kept circling back to the same tension: her top performers were exhausted, quietly resentful, and starting to disengage. She couldn’t figure out why.
We started mapping the team’s actual contribution patterns. Not titles. Not tenure. Actual output, ownership, and accountability.
What we found wasn’t dramatic. It never is.
Three individuals: present in every meeting, agreeable in every discussion, were contributing almost nothing to execution. They’d mastered the art of visible busyness. And because the team kept winning, no one had looked closely enough to notice.
That’s the real danger.
Wins can make you blind.
When a team is delivering results, leaders naturally ease up on scrutiny. Understandable. But sustained success has a way of masking the slow leak happening underneath—and by the time the damage becomes visible, it’s already expensive to fix.
Here’s what I’ve learned from working with leaders across industries: performance drainers rarely announce themselves. They don’t miss every deadline. They don’t refuse every task. They operate in the grey, just enough contribution to stay under the radar, just enough visibility to seem engaged.
And the people paying the price? Your best performers. Quietly. Every single day.
So what does this actually look like in practice?
The “yes” person who agrees enthusiastically in the room and disappears when ownership is required. The idea generator who has zero follow-through. The perpetually busy person whose busyness produces no discernible output.
Look closer, and the patterns sharpen.
Procrastinators over performers. Missed deadlines, once or twice, are human. A recurring pattern is data. Don’t explain it away—examine it.
Dependent over doers. Team effort is not the same as team dependency. When someone consistently can’t complete their responsibilities without pulling others in, that’s a skill or role alignment problem, and it’s yours to solve.
Avoiders over accountable. The person who always has a pitch-perfect excuse? At some point, the excuse is the pattern. Name it.
Here’s what I want to be clear about, though.
The goal is never to label people. It’s to correct patterns, early, and with intention. I’ve seen individuals who were quietly dragging a team completely transform when a leader chose to engage rather than ignore. When the right coaching conversation happened at the right time, before the damage compounded.
Sometimes a wrong hire creates a performance gap. Sometimes it’s role misalignment. Sometimes it’s a person who simply hasn’t been challenged or guided the right way.
Early identification changes everything. Not just for the team, but for that individual’s trajectory too.
The difference between a good team and a great one often has nothing to do with talent.
It’s what you, as the leader, choose to see, and how early you choose to act on it.
If you’ve been sensing something’s off but haven’t been able to put your finger on it, that instinct deserves attention. Book a free breakthrough session with me today. Sometimes all it takes is one honest conversation to change the entire picture.
Change your game!
Vivek
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