Marcus had been in the role for less than 30 days when he realized something wasn’t working. The team had experience, a track record, and they knew the work. But the way they operated told a different story.
Meetings were tense, conversations were guarded, and progress slowed.
Marcus was hired to lead Shared Services and take the function in a new direction. No one told him that several senior members of his team had interviewed for his job — and didn’t get it. So he walked into a team that was resistant to his leadership from the start.
Trust was low. Morale was low. And the team’s performance didn’t match its talent.
Marcus knew he had a people problem. He also knew he needed help, so he brought in coaching. What he didn’t realize yet was that his team wasn’t operating in its Area of Greatness.
The Three Hidden Frictions That Hold Teams Back
Area of Greatness is the place where your strengths, your passions, and your purpose come together. I often talk about this in the context of an individual leader. But teams have an Area of Greatness, too.
High-performing teams operate from their greatness. And they have alignment — right people, right roles, clear direction.
When there’s misalignment, the impact shows up quickly.
Everyone is busy, but the output doesn’t match the effort. Leaders rely on their go-to people just to keep things moving.
Calendars fill up with back-to-back meetings that end without anything decided. Work starts feeling like Groundhog Day. The same conversations come back around, again and again.
Over time, burnout sets in. Frustration builds — with the work, and with each other.
When I see a team struggling like this, it almost always comes back to the same three sources of friction:
- Not playing to strengths — people are doing work that doesn’t effectively use what they do best.
- Not connected to the work — people are going through the motions, not fully invested in what they’re doing.
- No shared purpose — people aren’t aligned on why the work matters or what they’re working toward.
When Marcus and I started working together, all three were actively sabotaging his team’s performance.
Friction 1: Not Playing to Strengths — Right People. Wrong Roles.
The first thing Marcus did was clarify where the function needed to go. And what roles and skills the team needed to get there. Then we assessed the talent he already had.
When we compared what each person did well to what their role required, we found a mismatch.
Several of his most experienced people were in roles that had nothing to do with what made them exceptional. They were capable. But the work their roles demanded every day didn’t make the most of what they did best.
That’s more common than most leaders want to admit.
When people spend most of their time on work that doesn’t use their strengths, the output suffers. And so do they.
They work harder to compensate. They stay busy without making real progress. And over time, the gap between their effort and their impact erodes their confidence.
When the role fits the person, the performance gap closes. Gallup research shows teams that focus on strengths daily see 12.5% greater productivity.
Marcus restructured his team. Some team members shifted into roles that better matched their strengths. Others found opportunities elsewhere in the organization and made voluntary moves. A few who weren’t the right fit, regardless of role, had to be let go.
It wasn’t an easy process. But it was the right one. And it became the foundation everything else was built on.
Friction 2: Not Connected to the Work — People Disengage
When people have been on the same team, doing the same work, in the same way for too long, it starts to wear on them.
That was part of the friction on Marcus’s team. The work had become predictable. What once felt challenging had become routine.
But the business environment was evolving. Client expectations had shifted. The team needed to evolve with it. The work required more strategic thinking, a fresh perspective, and a different level of leadership.
That’s why the organization hired externally. But for the team, that decision landed hard.
Promotional opportunities were limited. So bringing Marcus in created tension and reinforced something many of them were already feeling.
They had stopped growing.
That was the visible issue. The one everyone focused on. But it wasn’t the real problem. The harder truth was that many people on the team had disengaged long before Marcus arrived. They were no longer excited about the work.
That became clear in the conversations Marcus started having with his team. He didn’t assume he knew what was going on. He asked.
“Tell me more about yourself.” Then he listened to understand.
He asked questions like:
- What parts of your work do you look forward to?
- When do you feel most engaged in what you’re doing?
- What parts of your role feel like a drain?
The answers made it clear: people had either outgrown parts of their role or settled into work that didn’t challenge them.
Once that was clear, Marcus made changes. He shifted how work was assigned, gave people opportunities to take on work that challenged them again, and moved others out of responsibilities they had long outgrown.
As those changes took hold, people began to re-engage with the work.
Friction 3: No Shared Purpose — People Don’t See the Why
Even when people are in the right roles and engaged in the work, a team will underperform if they don’t understand why their work makes a difference.
That was the final piece Marcus needed to solve.
The team was executing. But they weren’t unified around a common direction. Each person understood their responsibilities. Few could articulate where the function was headed or what success looked like at the team level.
Marcus started by sharing his vision for what Shared Services could become. Then he did something many leaders skip. He asked the team to help shape it.
He asked questions like:
- What do you think we’re missing?
- What would make this function genuinely valuable to the people we serve?
- What does success look like to you?
The answers became a shared purpose that the team understood and believed in.
When people help shape the direction, they feel accountable for it. That doesn’t happen when it’s simply handed to them.
Marcus made the team’s impact visible. He connected their daily work to outcomes that mattered to the broader organization. He celebrated progress and publicly named wins.
Slowly, the team stopped working in parallel and started working as one team.
If you’re looking at your team and recognizing one or more of these frictions, these fixes may help. More personalized help is available through a strategy session.
What Changes When a Team Finds Its Area of Greatness
None of this happened overnight. Marcus and I have been working together for two years. The restructure alone took the better part of six months. And before it got better, it got harder.
Reorganizing a team that was resistant, frustrated, and watching closely to see what kind of leader Marcus would be, created its own disruption. There was pushback. Some people struggled with the changes. A few decided the new direction wasn’t for them.
That’s the part of team transformation most people don’t talk about: the messy middle. The period where you’ve named the frictions, started making changes, and the results haven’t caught up yet.
Marcus stayed the course. He kept assessing, adjusting, and leading from the vision the team helped build. Two years in, the team looks different. It operates differently.
The talent is in roles that fit. The work is engaging. Their purpose is clear and shared. The performance reflects all three.
That’s what a team operating in its Area of Greatness looks like.
There are still opportunities and challenges. The team leverages their individual and collective strengths to navigate both.