The Strategic Leader Who Needs Their Team to "Step Up"
by Nicki McLeod
Apr 14, 2026
According to a Grammarly-Harris poll and SHRM - poor communication can cost organizations between $4,200 to $12,500 per employee, per year. Understanding how to effectively communicate with your team starts with understanding the design of each team member.
Picture This.
A division leader in a large manufacturing facility.
He's new to the role - smart, driven, and highly strategic. He can clearly see where the business needs to go. The company is moving faster than ever. Priorities are shifting constantly. And he knows:
"We have to produce more results, faster, and differently."
But his team?
They're solid. Reliable. Experienced. And they keep doing things the way they've always done them.
THE FRUSTRATION
So he pushes.
He asks for more ownership. More initiative. More adaptability. He "empowers" them to make decisions so they can move faster.
But nothing changes.
Deadlines slip. Priorities don't shift. And he finds himself frustrated and thinking:
Your business doesn’t need another operating system. It needs leaders who know how to align people to strategy, plans, and execution of work… ultimately impacting results.
Most businesses assume their growth problems are operational.
So they implement systems:
EOS
Scaling Up
Scorecards
Quarterly planning
Meeting rhythms
Accountability charts
And to be clear, operational systems crea...
Gallup has spent decades studying employee engagement, and one of the most important questions they ask employees is surprisingly simple:
“Do you know what is expected of you at work?”
Only about half of employees strongly agree they can answer that question.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Half of the people in our organizations may be operating without complete clarity around what is expecte...
Research in neuroscience suggests that when people experience high levels of uncertainty, ambiguity, or perceived threat, the brain allocates fewer resources to higher-level thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving.
In other words, when people feel overwhelmed by the future, their capacity to think strategically often decreases rather than expands.
Picture This
A visionary leader stands ...
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