If Your Team Is Underperforming, It’s On You

If you’re not equipping your team to win, their underperformance is a reflection of your leadership, not their potential.

That may sting a little, but it’s the truth.

Let’s be honest: most leaders are terrible at training and enabling their teams.

A quarterly lunch-and-learn is not a training and enablement strategy.

A library of recorded calls is not a training and enablement strategy.

A day of shadowing a coworker is not a training and enablement strategy.

Sending people to a webinar is not a training and enablement strategy.

And yet, when I ask leaders what they’re doing to help their struggling teams, this is exactly what I hear.

The reality is simple: you can’t expect someone who’s never done the job before to figure it out from a handful of recordings or one day of shadowing. That’s not development, it’s survival mode. No wonder your team is underperforming.

Hire or Invest - But Do Something

Here’s the truth: you either need to hire the profile of the folks you want and need, or you need to invest in the team you already have.

Writing a shiny new job description and hoping for better results is not a strategy. It’s avoidance.

If you want your people to step up, you have to meet them halfway. That means creating an environment where skills are built, confidence is grown, and execution is supported.

What Real Training and Enablement Looks Like

If I were focused on helping my team develop new skills, or sharpen existing ones, here’s exactly what I’d do:

1️⃣ Hire outside experts. Bring in people who have done the job and can deliver structured, role-specific training that builds real, transferable skills.

2️⃣ Invest in an L&D budget. Give your team the resources to pursue learning in their areas of growth. Books, courses, certifications, growth doesn’t happen for free.

3️⃣ Build a clear onboarding and ramp plan. Define expectations, milestones, and success metrics from day one so there’s no ambiguity about what success looks like.

4️⃣ Create playbooks and process documentation. Make execution repeatable and scalable. No one should have to reinvent the wheel every time they face a common scenario.

5️⃣ Provide ongoing coaching and feedback. Training isn’t a one-and-done event. Skills fade without reinforcement. Feedback loops keep people improving.

The Bottom Line

Your people want to perform. They don’t wake up in the morning hoping to underdeliver.

But if you’re not equipping them to win, through real training, enablement, and coaching, the responsibility for underperformance lies with you.

Great leaders don’t just hire talent. They develop it.