What If Your Leadership Team Is Driving With the Handbrake On?

Over the years, I’ve seen plenty of leadership teams that look great on paper, strong CVs, strategic minds, ambitious plans. And yet… performance still drags.

It’s a bit like driving a high-spec sports car with the handbrake half on. You can move forward, but the engine’s straining, the wheels don’t spin freely, and sooner or later, something burns out.

So what’s holding these teams back?

We’ve been digging into this question using a methodology that’s as data-led as it is psychologically astute. I’m not here to pitch the tools, we use what works, and this works. But I am here to share what the data’s telling us about high-performing leadership teams.

And frankly, it’s not what most people expect.

The Inner and Outer Game of Team Performance

I work with senior leadership teams using a methodology that examines two crucial dimensions:

• The Inner Game: what’s happening within the team. The trust, purpose, resilience, and accountability that shape how people think, feel, and show up together.

• The Outer Game: how that team performs outwardly. The clarity of decisions, the influence they wield, how well they align with broader strategy, and how effectively they deliver across and outside the business.

Ignore one, and you’re building a lopsided team.

You might have cohesion internally but no cut-through with stakeholders. Or you might have outward confidence masking internal friction. Either way, it catches up with you.

What High-Performing Teams Do Differently

Recent work we’ve done using the Meta Team framework shows some striking patterns. Teams that score highest on performance metrics consistently excel at both the inner and outer game. For example:

• Decision-Making: 37% better at making timely, well-informed calls with confidence

• Agility: 39% stronger at adapting how they work together, not just responding to change

• Accountability: 36% higher mutual ownership of performance—reducing the need for oversight

• Strategic Connection: 36% stronger in “joining the dots” between day-to-day action and the bigger picture

• Strengths-Led Execution: Top teams tailor roles and tasks around individual strengths, dynamically

It isn’t a case of soft skills vs hard outcomes. It’s about habits that drive results.

So What’s the Opportunity for Business Leaders?

If you’re trying to drive transformation, scale at pace, or sharpen execution, the team at the top becomes the critical multiplier or bottleneck.

What I’ve learned through applying this work with clients is:

• You don’t need months of coaching to fix things.

• You do need targeted, insight-led interventions that treat the team like a living system.

In 12 hours over 6 months, you can identify and remove the invisible blockers, the metaphorical "foot on the brake" and get your team performing at the speed your strategy demands.

Why This Matters to You

If you’re leading a business through transformation, growth, or complexity, you already know that the biggest risks (and the biggest unlocks) live in how your team operates, not just what they do.

I use this work to help my clients align leadership effectiveness with performance outcomes whether that’s tighter execution, faster strategy shifts, or simply getting more lift from the team already in place.

If this raises questions for you, about your team’s dynamics, pace, or potential… It's worth exploring.

Not because something’s broken. But because the best teams I’ve worked with are the ones that constantly ask, how can we go further, faster, together?

So ask yourself:

• Are we just reacting, or are we shaping outcomes?

• Are we aligned on purpose and impact?

• Are we pulling in the same direction or just occupying the same meetings?

The teams that thrive are the ones brave enough to ask these questions and honest enough to act on the answers.

If you’re curious where your leadership team sits, whether there’s hidden drag or untapped horsepower, I’m always open to a conversation. You might not need a restructure. You might just need to release the brake.