5 Ways to Improve Your Team’s Performance
5 Ways to Improve Your Team’s Performance
(Problem > Solution > Steps > Tools)
👋 Hey, Carlos here! Welcome to “The Holistic Leader”, your weekly source of simple and honest leadership, Agile, Management & team insights.
Today’s Overview:
No number of stand-ups, sprint boards, or fancy tools can fix what leadership hasn’t addressed. Strong leadership comes first, processes come second.
5 practical ways leadership can help teams improve their performance.
Does it ever feel like your team is working hard but the results just aren’t there?
It’s frustrating, right?
But here’s the secret: it’s not about pushing them harder—it’s about leading smarter.
If your team is busy but not hitting the goals you’ve set, there are five key areas where small changes from leadership can make a big difference.
1️⃣ Focus on what really matters
Teams often get stuck with a long list of tasks, and not all of them actually help the business.
This might feel like progress, but it doesn’t always bring real value.
The solution:
Use Impact Mapping to make sure your team is working on what matters most. This helps connect everyday tasks to big business goals so the team knows where to focus.
Identify your main business goals (like increasing customer satisfaction).
List the people who will be affected by these tasks (like customers or other teams).
Highlight the most important tasks that will create the biggest impact.
Tools:
Try using Miro or Lucidchart to visualize your Impact Map, and use Trello or JIRA to keep these priorities clear during sprints.
Teams often get caught up in busy work—checking off tasks that don’t actually move the business forward.
Imagine leading a team with a long list of things to do.
>> Without clear priorities, weeks can go by with little real progress
2️⃣ Stop Micromanaging and let your team own their work
Micromanaging hurts team morale and slows things down.
When leaders hover over every decision, it makes team members feel like they can’t take action on their own.
The solution:
Use Delegation Poker to decide who gets to make decisions and when.
This helps the team feel more in control while still allowing leaders to check in on bigger decisions.
Use Delegation Poker to sort out who makes which decisions (like planning the sprint or setting priorities).
As the team gets more confident, slowly let them take more responsibility for decisions.
Tools:
You can use MURAL or MIRO to run a Delegation Poker session in person or online.
Think about this scenario:
You’re a manager who feels the need to constantly check in on your team’s progress.
You think you’re helping, but instead, team members are waiting for your approval on small decisions.
>> This leads to delays, frustration, and a demotivated team.
3️⃣ Spot and solve dependencies
Progress often stops when teams have to wait for approvals, resources, or input from outside their group.
These dependencies slow everything down.
The solution:
Use a Kanban Board to make these hold-ups visible.
When the team can clearly see what’s blocking them, they can solve problems faster.
Set up a Kanban board with columns like "To Do," "In Progress," "Blocked," and "Done."
Make sure any blockers or dependencies are clearly shown in the "Blocked" column.
Assign someone to follow up on the blockers and keep them updated at stand-ups.
Tools:
JIRA, Trello, or Asana help you create a Kanban board to track these blockers in real-time.
4️⃣ Fix Bottlenecks
Even if the team is producing a lot of work, things can still get held up at bottlenecks like quality checks or approvals.
This slows down the entire process.
The solution:
Use the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to identify where things are getting stuck and take action to fix it.
Identify the bottleneck (for example, a slow approval process).
Streamline the process at the bottleneck to improve workflow (like simplifying approvals).
Add resources or automate tasks to help ease the bottleneck.
Tools:
Use tools like Celonis (Process Mining) to analyze workflows and identify constraints, or track your process in Asana to ensure efficiency.
5️⃣ Cut out wasteful tasks
Teams often waste time on tasks that don’t add real value, like too many meetings, excessive reporting, or reworking tasks that weren’t done right the first time.
The Solution:
Use Lean Principles to identify and cut out waste.
Lean helps you streamline processes and focus only on what’s really necessary.
List all your activities and sort them into “value-added” and “non-value-added” tasks.
Get rid of tasks that don’t directly support productivity (like reducing the frequency of status meetings).
Use Kaizen to regularly check in and improve your processes.
Tool:
Track how time is being spent with Toggl, and streamline documentation or meeting management using Confluence.
Lean Principles push you to look critically at these tasks and ask:
“Is this adding value?”
>> When you cut out unnecessary meetings or reports, you free up valuable time that can be spent on meaningful work—whether that’s actual product development or more focused problem-solving sessions.
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Thanks for reading
See you next week!
- Carlos✌️
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