agile journeys

...rants by Asheesh Mehdiratta on Coaching, Transformation and Change

Tag: leadership

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10 Questions Every Team Leader Should Ask

March 10, 2025 /

Leadership isn’t about having all the answers —

It’s about asking the right questions.

At first, stepping into a leadership role feels like it’s all about strategy, execution, and results. But soon, reality hits. Leadership is about people. It involves navigating complex dynamics and handling unspoken challenges. You must make decisions in situations no playbook can fully prepare you for.

So, what are the biggest hurdles team leaders face? And more importantly, how can you overcome them? Here are 10 team leadership challenges and the critical questions you should be asking to tackle them.

1. Resistance to Change

You introduce a new process or tool, expecting it to boost efficiency. Instead, you find some employees eager to adopt it, while others hesitate or outright refuse. Instead of improving workflow, things slow down.

Why it matters:

Change resistance can stall progress and affect morale. Research by McKinsey & Co. suggests that 70% of change initiatives fail due to employee pushback and poor communication. Read more here.

💡 Question to ask:

Am I helping my team embrace change—or just expecting them to?

2. Uneven Workloads

One team member is overworked and constantly putting in extra hours. Another has lighter tasks but doesn’t step in to help. The high performer won’t complain—until burnout forces them out.

Why it matters: Overworking top performers can lead to high turnover. A study by Gallup found that burnout leads to a 2.6x higher likelihood of employees actively seeking a new job. Check the report.

💡 Question to ask:

Do I truly know who’s overwhelmed and who has capacity?

3. Lack of Psychological Safety

You ask for input in a meeting. Silence. Later, someone tells you they had an idea but didn’t feel comfortable sharing it. If people aren’t speaking up, how many good ideas are getting lost?

Why it matters: Studies show that teams with high psychological safety outperform others. Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the #1 factor in high-performing teams. Explore their findings.

💡 Question to ask:

Do my people feel safe enough to challenge ideas?

4. Communication Breakdowns

You’ve explained the new direction in meetings, emails, and Slack. Yet someone still asks, “Wait, what’s changing?” Information overload doesn’t mean clarity.

Why it matters: Poor communication costs businesses an estimated $37 billion annually in lost productivity. See the report.

💡 Question to ask:

Are my messages being understood—or just heard?

5. Decision-Making Bottlenecks

One team is waiting on approval, but the person making the call is waiting on someone else. Meanwhile, progress is stuck in limbo.

Why it matters: Research by Harvard Business Review found that slow decision-making reduces organizational efficiency by 20-30%. Read more.

💡 Question to ask:

Are slow decisions costing my team speed and momentum?

6. Managing Remote & Hybrid Teams

A key decision is made in a casual hallway chat. A remote team member has no idea it even happened. Now, there’s confusion and misalignment.

Why it matters: Microsoft’s Work Trend Index reports that hybrid work has increased miscommunication and misalignment across teams. See the full report.

💡 Question to ask:

How can I make remote and hybrid teams feel equally included?

7. Misalignment on Goals

Marketing is focused on brand awareness, sales is pushing for revenue, and product is prioritizing user experience. Everyone is working hard—but in different directions.

Why it matters: Companies with high goal alignment see 3.5x better revenue growth, according to a study by LSA Global. Check the data.

💡 Question to ask:

Is my team aligned on what truly matters?

8. Low Team Engagement

You ask for input, but no one responds—cameras off, phones out, energy low. They’re showing up, but are they actually engaged?

Why it matters: A Gallup study found that only 36% of employees are actively engaged at work. This lack of engagement leads to lower performance and retention. Explore the research.

💡 Question to ask:

What’s quietly killing my team’s motivation?

9. Avoiding Tough Conversations

Two teammates aren’t getting along, and it’s starting to affect everyone. You keep hoping they’ll work it out. They won’t.

Why it matters: Avoiding conflict results in 57% of employees actively avoiding colleagues, causing drops in collaboration. See the study.

💡 Question to ask:

Am I avoiding a tough conversation that needs to happen?

10. Bridging the Skills Gap

You need someone to take on more responsibility, and they want to, but they don’t have the right skills yet. You don’t have time to slow down for training.

Why it matters: The World Economic Forum predicts that 50% of employees will need reskilling by 2025. Read more.

💡 Question to ask:

Am I prioritizing execution over development?

Final Thoughts

Great leadership isn’t about knowing everything—it’s about asking the right questions. If you want to grow as a leader, pay attention to the unseen barriers. Be prepared for the tough conversations. Address the gaps that hold teams back.

💬 Which of these challenges do you face most often?

Let’s chat! I offer coaching sessions designed to help team leaders create stronger, high-performing teams.

👉 Follow me for more insights and actionable team leadership tips and team building strategies!

6 Hidden Gaps Holding Your Team Back

February 13, 2025 /
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Photo by Ralph David on Pexels.com

Ever felt like your team isn’t on the same page, despite regular meetings and updates? You’re not alone. Poor communication is one of the biggest barriers to team success—but often, the real gaps go unnoticed.

Here are six hidden communication gaps and how you can fix them:

1. “Assumption Gap” – Assuming Everyone Understands

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make?

Assuming clarity. Just because you explained something doesn’t mean it was understood.

Fix It:
✅ Encourage “repeat-backs” – Have team members summarize key takeaways.
✅ Use simple, direct language instead of jargon.
✅ Give written follow-ups after key discussions.

✅ Example: A sales team misinterpreted new pricing guidelines, causing confusion with clients. After implementing written recaps, errors dropped significantly.

2. “Tool Overload Gap” – Too Many Communication Channels

Teams often juggle emails, Slack, Zoom, project boards, and more. This leads to information overload and lost messages.

Fix It:
✅ Define a clear communication hierarchy (e.g., Slack for quick updates, email for formal info).
✅ Reduce tool clutter—stick to essential platforms.
✅ Set response expectations for different channels.

✅ Example: A software team cut unnecessary Slack channels, reducing distractions and improving focus.

3. “Hierarchy Gap” – Leadership is Out of Touch

Employees often hesitate to voice concerns to leadership, leading to blind spots in decision-making.

Fix It:
✅ Implement reverse Q&A sessions where leadership listens instead of talking.
✅ Conduct anonymous feedback surveys to find hidden challenges.
✅ Make leadership more accessible with informal check-ins.

✅ Example: A CTO held “Ask Me Anything” sessions, allowing engineers to voice concerns. This led to critical process improvements.

4. “Silent Team Members Gap” – Not Everyone Speaks Up

In every team, there are louder voices that dominate discussions, while others hesitate to contribute. This creates an imbalance in decision-making.

Fix It:
✅ Use round-robin speaking in meetings to ensure equal participation.
✅ Encourage written input before discussions so everyone’s ideas are heard.
✅ Create a culture where no idea is dismissed too quickly.

✅ Example: A design team required all members to provide feedback before meetings. As a result, quieter team members contributed innovative ideas that were earlier overlooked.

5. “Remote vs. Office Gap” – Disconnected Hybrid Teams

Remote employees often miss out on spontaneous office discussions, leading to information gaps and decision delays.

Fix It:
✅ Default to virtual-first meetings to ensure equal participation.
✅ Document key discussions and share them transparently.
✅ Rotate “meeting facilitators” to ensure everyone’s input is valued.

✅ Example: A company started using Slack threads for post-meeting summaries. This ensured remote employees had the same updates as in-office staff.

6. “Unspoken Expectations Gap” – Lack of Clarity on Priorities

When deadlines and priorities aren’t crystal clear, teams waste time working on the wrong things.

Fix It:
✅ Define top 3 priorities at the start of each week.
✅ Use a visual project board to track status.
✅ Encourage regular “priority check-ins” with team leads.

✅ Example: A marketing team introduced a Monday priorities review. As a result, they improved alignment and reduced last-minute rework.

Conclusion

Small communication gaps can lead to big inefficiencies. But by identifying and addressing these hidden barriers, you’ll build a more connected, productive, and engaged team.

Which gaps resonate with you ?

Want to improve communication in your team? Let’s chat! I offer coaching sessions designed to help leaders create stronger, high-performing teams.

👉 Follow me for more insights and actionable team leadership tips and team building strategies!

Coaching Leadership Teams Journal: Everything You Need To Know – #1

July 4, 2022 /

Leadership Teams are everywhere, but most teams need support with Team coaching, to be able to leverage the true potential of their team members and the team itself and realize the benefits and generate value for the team’s stakeholders.

In this multi-post series, I will share my personal experiences along with notes from the book “Leadership Team Coaching”, by Prof Peter Hawkins and would love to hear your insights and experiences.

KEY Leadership Team Challenges

In this first post, let us understand the KEY Challenges currently being faced by Leadership Teams :

Leadership Team challenges
  1. Managing expectations of all Different Stakeholders

Leadership teams today must be able to respond and ‘win the hearts and minds’ of multiple stakeholders – which include key customers, internal staff, partner organizations and the broader spectrum of regulators, board members and shareholders, with communities and the wider shared ecology. Future generations and millennials have even greater expectations and less respect for titles and roles, and leaders will need to earn their respect with creative inspirational and credible actions.

  1. Leadership teams have to RUN and TRANSFORM the Business in parallel

All leadership teams today have to focus on not just running the business, but also look at transforming the business and the wider system and this is never easy! With parallel work across the three horizons, the leadership teams typically have the below focus areas and tend to struggle on maintaining the right balance.

  1. Immediate – Business as Usual
  2. Innovating for tomorrow
  3. Future foresight requiring radical change

  1. Teams need to increase their Capacity for working through Systemic Conflict

Multiple leadership teams are under pressure from the stakeholder group that they represent (CFO – Investors interests, HR – Employees, Sales – Customers etc..), and this leads to systemic conflicts between the various leaders. But for transformational leadership to succeed, we need these leadership teams to collectively engage the commitment and participation of all major stakeholder groups to change in the context of shared purpose, values, and vision. This conflict resolution requires the teams to expand their collective capacity to manage this systemic conflict.

  1. Human beings learning to live with Multiple memberships and belonging

The leaders in leadership teams are increasingly becoming more interconnected with the broader ecology, and increasingly matrix organizations. Every leader is a member of multiple teams, representing the interests in various capacities (E.g. – Executive team, Board member, Industry committee representative, Working groups etc.). This multi-team belonging is difficult for human beings who traditionally as species have learned to be loyal to a tribe/family group, and therefore it is difficult for us to adapt to this new multiple membership’s world.

  1. The World is becoming more Complex and Interconnected

Team leaders today are living in an interconnected world with an ‘Always ON’ mode with demands across the organization, and ‘work anywhere anytime’ post pandemic scenario. This makes it harder to stand back and reflect and see the bigger picture and the team leaders are now turning to team coaching to provide the protected space and outsider perspective.

  1. The Growth of Virtual working

Post the pandemic we are all now forced to work with remote working, and teams working either virtually or hybrid, and all this change requires for us to learn and enhance our communication skills, but also learn new ways of building and establishing trust. We need to be able to build the informal social circles and/or build those ‘moments of trust’, which can replace the earlier physical interactions, and this is still a work in progress for most leadership teams.

  1. The major leadership challenges lie not in the parts but in the Interconnections

As the world has become interconnected, the main challenge lies not in the people, or in the parts but in the interfaces between people, teams, functions, and different stakeholder needs.  This leads us to effectively coaching relationships, which leads to enabling the dialogue, resolving conflicts, or helping teams relate better inter-personally. This means that it is not just sufficient to be ‘customer-focused’ but we need to focus on our customer’s customer – enabling their customers in turn to make a difference for their customers. The leadership teams now need to shift to a virtuous cycle of active collaboration, which is grounded in a shared purpose instead of the vicious cycle of blame.

  1. Restoring Trust

Employees increasingly now expect the companies they work for to be purpose led, delivering social and community change, and not just profits. This requires that we ‘restore trust’ which has been lost or is falling across customers and our stakeholders. Leadership teams struggle with this trust deficit and are learning new ways of restoring this trust.

  1. Increasing the Quality of Engagement

Leadership teams are finding it extremely important to engage effectively with employees and stakeholders, considering that trust is critical in this VUCA world. The key elements requires that leadership teams provide a strategic big picture, have engaging managers, employees who can easily voice their ideas and concerns, and organizations whose values align and finally ‘real teamwork’ to enable teams working on shared purpose.

We will explore more on Leadership Team coaching in my next post , but would be interested to hear more about what are your leadership team challenges ? Do these challenges resonate with your teams ? Do these resonate with you as a Team Leader?

Feel free to reach out to me for your team or individual coaching needs and subscribe to my blog to learn more, as I share my coaching journeys.

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