What are we missing?

The training was a hit. Six months later, the problem was still there.

I once worked alongside a leadership team that genuinely cared about their people and wanting to get things right. Their frontline team members were saying supervisors didn’t know how to give feedback. Senior leaders were seeing accountability challenges. So, they did what thoughtful leaders often do: they invested in training.

The room was energized. People learned a clear feedback process. Everyone left committed to doing things differently. But the weeks passed. Then the months. And very little changed. Leaders felt they had made a meaningful investment. Team members weren’t experiencing much difference. And everyone was understandably frustrated.

If you’ve ever invested in development and later wondered, Why isn’t this changing anything? you’re not alone. Sometimes nothing is wrong with the training. Sometimes we may simply be trying to solve the wrong problem.

What this leadership team did next took humility. Instead of assuming the training had failed – or that people simply weren’t applying it – they paused long enough to ask:

What are we missing?

Through a Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team assessment and honest conversations about how the team was working together, something became clearer. The primary challenge wasn’t feedback skills. It was trust. People didn't feel consistently safe speaking candidly, challenging one another, or receiving correction without becoming guarded. And when trust is thin, even a very good feedback process has a hard time taking root.

So, the team changed course. They began investing in the conditions that would make better feedback possible – trust-building conversations, facilitated micro-learning, coaching, and opportunities to practice new ways of working together. Over time, their people began to experience something different – a new culture of care.

I keep coming back to that part of the story. These leaders didn’t need to care more. They already cared deeply. They needed a clearer understanding of what their people were experiencing.

Sometimes the most caring – even loving - thing we can do for our people is resist the urge to fix too quickly. These leaders paused, listened and got curious. When that step is skipped, leaders can end up believing the issue is resolved (or at least addressed) while their people are experiencing something very different. The real issue was aiming at the wrong target.

Stories like this are a gentle reminder that good intentions matter, but awareness helps us turn those intentions into impact.

 Before your next leadership class, program, or initiative, it may be worth asking:

·      What are our people experiencing?

·      What might we be missing?

·      Are we addressing the root of the issue, or the part that is easiest to see?

Awareness comes first because our people deserve the care of being understood before we decide what they need. And helping leaders create that kind of awareness is work we feel privileged to do alongside our clients.