Leveraging Team Insights for Leadership Growth

90% of leaders think their teams are effective. Only 15% actually are. Where do you fall? If you've been struggling with team performance, I've got a framework that transformed my own leadership approach. The traditional way to build teams focuses on individual performance. We hire for skills, evaluate based on output, and reward personal achievement. But this approach misses something critical: true high-performance comes from how people work together, not just how skilled they are individually. In my experience leading multiple teams across different industries, I've found a simple but powerful approach: 1. Establish Clear Goals  Not just what needs to be done, but why it matters. When team members understand the purpose behind their work, motivation soars. 2. Foster Open Communication Create an environment where everyone feels safe to share ideas, concerns, and feedback. The best solutions often come from unexpected voices. 3. Emphasize Collaboration Set up systems that reward collective achievements over individual heroics. This shifts the focus from "me" to "we." 4. Celebrate Diversity Different perspectives lead to better decisions and more creative solutions. Actively seek out and value varying viewpoints. 5. Lead by Example Show the behaviors you want to see. If you want collaboration, collaborate. If you want open communication, communicate openly. High-performing teams don't happen by accident. They're built intentionally. What's one team-building practice that's worked well for you? ✍️ Your insights can make a difference! ♻️ Share this post if it speaks to you, and follow me for more.

After 25+ years of leading teams, I realized: Certainty is the enemy of growth. "I've seen it all before." "Been there, done that." "Nothing new under the sun." All dangerous phrases from a leader's mouth. The moment you think you know everything, is the moment you start falling behind. Here's what happens when you stay curious: 1/ Fresh Perspectives Emerge ↳ Schedule monthly reverse mentoring sessions ↳ Have a junior team member teach you their specialty ✅ 30 minutes, new topic, every second Tuesday 2/ Innovation Accelerates ↳ Read one book outside your industry monthly ↳ Share 3 key insights with your leadership team ✅ Implementation review every quarter 3/ Teams Trust You More ↳ Admit knowledge gaps openly in meetings ↳ Ask your team to fill those gaps ✅ Track & celebrate team teaching moments 4/ Decision-Making Improves ↳ Start meetings with "What don't we know?" ↳ List assumptions before major decisions ✅ Review outcomes vs. assumptions quarterly 5/ Culture Transforms ↳ Reward questions more than answers ↳ Create learning sharing rituals ✅ Weekly 15-min team learning standups What’s the greatest threat to your success? It's not market changes or competition. It's the certainty that you've got it all figured out. Your team doesn't need you to be perfect. They need you to be growing. That's what makes them feel safe to grow too. What’s one way you stay learning as a leader? ♻️ Repost to help others continue to grow. 🔔 Follow me (Nadeem Ahmad) for more.    

Your Recent Results Are Your Best Teacher Most leadership teams celebrate wins and forget failures. Both approaches miss the real opportunity. The best way to learn as a team is through rigorous retrospectives. Not the surface-level "what went well, what didn't" meetings that most teams do. I'm talking about really digging into what happened. Here's what effective retrospectives look like: Get real data, not opinions. Develop genuine insights, not excuses. Have honest conversations about what actually occurred. See multiple points of view, not just the loudest voice in the room. Pull apart the threads. Figure out which specific decisions led to which outcomes. Understand what could have been done differently and what couldn't have been changed. This process creates new strategies, develops better approaches, and gives you a roadmap for doing things differently going forward. Your recent results are some of the best places to develop insights on how to improve future performance. Whether you succeeded wildly or failed spectacularly, there are lessons buried in the details. I do this with all of my leadership teams on a regular basis and teach them how to run these sessions with their own teams. The teams that master retrospectives accelerate their learning faster than anyone else. I learned this when my company hit a plateau. We kept making the same mistakes because we never took time to understand why things worked or didn't work. The moment we started dissecting our results, everything changed. How does your team learn from recent wins and losses? Follow Bruce Eckfeldt for more scaling insights. #Leadership #ContinuousImprovement #FounderCEO #TeamAlignment #Retrospectives #BusinessStrategy #ScalingUp #ExecutiveCoaching

Years ago, I was told I was “too inclusive” with my team. Too many invites. Too many voices. “Why bring them to this meeting?” “Why not speak on their behalf?” “Isn’t it your job to represent the team?” But I had already learned a valuable truth: When the problems are thorny, the stakes are high, and the path forward is unclear — You need the people closest to the work in the room. Not because it’s “nice.” But because it’s smart. It takes a no-ego leader to bring in someone who might be smarter than them in a particular space — and to let them shine. That’s why I started this practice years ago. It’s now one of the leadership habits I value most. And recently, I was reminded of just how powerful it is by watching one of my senior managers turn a struggling team around with one simple question: 📌 Every meeting. Every decision. Every time. She would ask: “Who isn’t in the room that should be?” Most leaders focus on: ✔️ Who’s present ✔️ Who’s senior enough ✔️ Who’s directly involved But she focused on: • Bringing in junior team members with deep insights • Inviting adjacent functions for diverse perspectives • Creating space for disagreement and pushback 👉 And that’s what inclusion really looks like. Not checking boxes. Not filling seats. But expanding your circle to get to better outcomes. Over time, I’ve seen this practice unlock three transformational benefits: 🎭 1. It breaks the fourth wall of leadership. When others see how conversations are shaped, how tradeoffs are made, how hard your team is working — it builds real trust. It demystifies leadership. And it helps others grow by watching it all in action. 🧠 2. You’ll get fresh insight from fresh eyes. Someone not buried in the weeds can often see the signal more clearly than the noise. Ask them what stood out. What was missing. What they’d challenge. It’s how blind spots get surfaced before they become roadblocks. 📣 3. It creates internal evangelists. When people feel heard, valued, and trusted — they talk about it. They become advocates for the vision, the change, the team. That kind of buy-in? You can’t manufacture it. But you can create the conditions for it. Here’s the truth: Leaders don’t need to have all the answers. They need to know how to invite the right people to the table — especially the ones who make us think differently, speak candidly, and challenge the status quo. So the next time you’re facing a big decision, a big challenge, or a big bet… Ask yourself: Who isn’t in the room that should be? Then make the room bigger. You’ll be surprised what happens when you do. 💬 What’s one time inviting someone in changed your perspective, your outcome, or your leadership? Let’s hear it.👇 #Leadership #Inclusion #PeopleStrategy #Transformation #HRLeadership #PeopleFirst #NoEgoLeadership #Teamwork

Your expertise might be dimming your best thinkers. Here's how to spark their brilliance instead: As leaders, we often face a choice: Do we fortify the walls of our expertise, or do we build bridges to new possibilities? As an executive coach, I've witnessed this countless times: The moment a leader shifts from "I know the answer" to "What might we discover together?" the entire team dynamic transforms. People who rarely spoke up begin sharing innovative solutions. Long-standing problems suddenly have fresh angles. This simple change in approach activates the collective intelligence and experience of the whole team. While your expertise got you here, staying curious will take you further. Every time you think you have the answer, pause. Your team has insights you haven't considered and solutions you can't see alone. Here are 3 practical ways to make this shift: 1. Replace your solution statements with genuine questions in your next team meeting. Instead of "Here's what we should do," try "What approaches haven't we considered yet?" 2. When a challenge arises, pause before sharing your expertise. Instead of "In my previous role, I solved this by..." ask: "What perspectives am I missing? What would someone with fresh eyes see here?" 3. Create space for contagious curiosity. When team members bring ideas, respond with genuine interest rather than immediate guidance. "Tell me more about how you came to that insight" sparks deeper exploration than "Here's what I'd suggest instead." Watch how these simple shifts ignite fresh thinking and bring in the quieter voices. 𝗥𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿: Your expertise isn't a destination – it's a launch pad for collective discovery. 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: How might you use your knowledge not to shine, but to spark brilliance in others today? ♻️Repost if you believe your expertise should spark curiosity, not silence it. ➕Follow Michelle Awuku-Tatum for more insights on leadership and team dynamics.

I have an army of 150+ professionals, and some of the greatest lessons have come from them. Over the years, as I scaled TMG, we hired and collaborated with numerous people. Each of the people brought unique skills, perspectives, and ideas to the table. The biggest mistake I see leaders make? Failing to create an environment where their teams feel empowered to share. Here's how I fostered a culture of open learning at TMG, and the incredible results it brought: 📍 Fresh perspectives drive breakthroughs: A complex multinational tax case stumped our seasoned team. The solution? A junior analyst from Singapore who spotted a recent legal precedent. Combining her fresh insight with our senior partner’s expertise, we saved our client millions. Never underestimate the power of new eyes on old problems. 📍 Empower your team to thrive: When a top legal professional faced burnout, we dug deeper. We found their desk drowning in papers and their to-do list in chaos. It was clear: burnout wasn't the problem, it was a symptom. Our solution? A custom program leveraging dashboards and delegation tools. Result: A transformed work experience and renewed productivity. 📍 Passion Fuels Performance: During a creative block, we invited our IT specialist to a marketing brainstorm. His tech-savvy idea not only won the client but sparked a new cross-department collaboration model. Are you tapping into your team's diverse passions? Here's our challenge to you: 📍 Think about your last team meeting. Was it a monologue or a dialogue? Did you leave with new insights from your team? 📍 Share a time when a team member surprised you with their insight. What did you learn? How did it change your approach to leadership? 📍 By learning from their teams, founders can nurture their organisations into hubs of innovation and growth. What is the biggest learning you got from your team?