How Do You Know When It’s You?

Diagnosing team ineffectiveness is a common topic in Teacher-First Management, but there’s one chapter that many leaders find especially uncomfortable: diagnosing ineffectiveness in themselves.

Leadership demands confidence—it's the foundation for guiding a team. However, while confidence is essential, it must be balanced with humility, empathy, and service. These qualities are the backbone of authentic leadership. The challenge arises when things go wrong. In these moments, leaders face a critical choice: lean on their confidence to push through or take a hard, honest look in the mirror.

True leadership involves self-reflection, and doing it well requires a clear strategy. In Teacher-First Management, I lay out practical approaches for assessing, or even better, self-assessing, a leader’s performance. Here are some of the key indicators that point to leadership as the source of team inefficiency:

1. Performance Comparison with Similar Teams

   If your team consistently underperforms compared to similar teams, it’s time to question whether the leadership might be the cause.
   

2. Declining Performance Over Time

   Has the team's performance dropped after you stepped into the leadership role? A downward trend in performance is often a red flag.
   

3. Excessive Justifications

   When faced with data showing poor results, do you find yourself explaining it away with external factors—market changes, new staff, or curriculum shifts? Constant deflection instead of accountability is a sign of trouble.
   

4. Inability to Articulate Problems

   If you’re struggling to clearly define the team’s challenges or can’t pinpoint the root causes of underperformance, the problem might be leadership itself.
   

5. Uncertainty in Addressing Underperformance

   Uncertainty about why the team is underperforming, or what needs to be done to fix it, is a significant leadership issue.
   

6. Ineffective Solutions

   Even when you’re certain about the problem and its solution, if the team continues to struggle despite sincere efforts, the issue likely lies with the leadership.
   

7. Persistent Failure

   Hard work doesn’t always equate to success. If failure becomes a pattern despite your best efforts, it’s a strong indicator that leadership is the root cause.

   
   

No single factor here should make you immediately point the finger at yourself or another leader. All leaders, even great ones, will encounter some of these issues from time to time. But when several of these indicators consistently appear together, it’s a clear sign that the leader’s performance needs to be addressed.

Still, the most straightforward way to diagnose leadership ineffectiveness?

Ask your teachers.

There’s a belief that you can’t trust team members to evaluate their leaders accurately - that they’re biased, looking to undercut their bosses, or don’t have the experience to judge objectively. But this thinking contradicts a teacher-first management approach. In my experience, teachers usually recognize leadership problems long before the leaders themselves.

No, you’re not likely to get the raw truth in a large meeting or group setting. However, through one-on-one conversations, surveys, and a policy of open feedback, you’ll quickly find out if the leader is part of the problem.

The truth is: teachers know. And if you ask, they’ll tell you.