If your team keeps missing deadlines or struggling to make progress, it might be time to ask yourself this hard question. 👉 Is it me?
It’s easy to blame project delays on a lot of external things. “It’s my team! They don’t have the skills or bandwidth.” “Everytime I turn around there’s some emergency that comes up, and it slows us down.” “Argggh…These platforms and tools just don’t work for me!”
And while all of those are most certainly valid reasons, let’s eliminate one other possibility. Take a few moments to look and see what might be showing up for you, or how you may be showing up, to ensure that you are not the problem. Then, you can take a look at some of the other potential issues.
1. Are you a bottleneck?
One of the top reasons projects stall is because you’ve created a culture where everything is waiting on you. Your approval, your input, your decisions, and you taking action on your own tasks that only you can do.
If nothing moves forward without your sign-off, you meeting your own deadlines, and your plate is already full, the whole thing backs up.
2. Is your team clear on their priorities?
If the team isn’t sure what success looks like, they hesitate. Lack of clarity around scope, timelines, or shifting expectations leads to confusion. Progress slows. Teams move faster when they know exactly what they’re aiming for and how to get there.
3. Are you saying “yes” to too much?
I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t suffer from at least the temptation of shiny-object syndrome. However, it can seriously detrail things.
If your team is juggling too many projects at once, nothing gets finished. Overcommitting without checking capacity leads to burnout and long delays. You can’t do it all at once. Neither can they.
4. Are you keeping yourself too involved?
It’s important to checkin regularly, to make sure the team is on track and to course correct before potential problems get out of hand. However, micromanagement slows things down, dramatically.
It might feel like support, but when you regularly jump into the details, the team will second guess themselves. Instead of creating momentum, they wait. And wait. And wait.
5. Are you really communicating well?
You may think you’ve explained the plan, but if the team keeps circling back with questions or misses key expectations – please check yourself first. If this is happening, especially when it’s more than one team member, then your message didn’t land.
And a big hint. If your clients are also doing this, then look at your communication to them. Is it clear, consistent and frequent enough?
6. Are you hesitant to delegate?
Letting go may not be easy for you. Few people think it is. However, if your business is going to grow, it’s necessary. Two of the biggest reasons why you may be holding onto tasks is because you don’t fully trust the team, or because it feels quicker to do it yourself. This keeps you stuck!
There’s definitive actions that can be taken if its because you are struggling to fully trust your team. If you are stuck in the mindset that it feels quicker to do it yourself, then that is literally a mindset problem, so you may have to talk to your coach about that.
7. Are you sending mixed signals?
Do you, by chance, find yourself pushing for faster delivery but then penalize small mistakes. You say you want ownership but override decisions. If that is something you recognize that you may be doing, that kind of inconsistency is going to cause your people to freeze up like a deer in the headlights.
People start second-guessing, and forward motion stops. I think we’re all guilty of that to some degree, and there’s no shame in it, as long as you look to improve upon it.
_____________________________________________________________________________
So what now?
The good news is that every one of these is fixable. It doesn’t take a full-blown overhaul. Sometimes just a small shift in how you lead, communicate, or delegate can get things back on track. But first, you have to be willing to look in the mirror.
If you’re ready to pinpoint what’s slowing you down and get a plan in place to move forward, that’s exactly the kind of work I do.
