Crushed Goals, Broken Team: Why High Performance Isn’t Always Enough

You’ve hit every target this year.  You celebrated milestones.  You secured bonuses for your team.  You’re getting ready to do it again in 2025.  It should feel like victory. But instead of high-fives and celebrations, you’re hearing whispers about favoritism, noticing low morale, and sensing fractures in trust.

How can a team that performs so well feel so… broken?

High performance, or even flawless execution, doesn’t guarantee a thriving team.  Without a strong structure and the right rituals, even the most celebrated results can feel hollow.  

The Hidden Costs of Favoritism

Even with the best intentions, leadership decisions can sometimes appear unfair, leading to perceptions of favoritism. These perceptions often arise when opportunities, recognition, or standards seem unevenly applied.

Where Favoritism Takes Root:

• Uneven Opportunities: When certain employees consistently receive high-profile projects, others feel sidelined.

• Recognition Gaps: Praising only visible contributors alienates those working quietly but effectively behind the scenes.

• Exclusive Relationships: Informal cliques or frequent casual interactions with certain team members can create the illusion of bias.

• Inconsistent Accountability: Holding some employees to stricter standards undermines trust in fairness.

• Opaque Decisions: A lack of transparency in promotions or rewards breeds suspicion and resentment.

The effects of perceived favoritism can ripple through your team, causing lasting damage:

• Eroded Trust: Employees lose faith in leadership and the organization.

• Lower Morale: Feeling undervalued saps motivation.

• Higher Turnover: Disengaged talent often looks elsewhere.

• Weakened Collaboration: Resentment and fractured relationships hinder teamwork.

By addressing these root causes and fostering equity through intentional rituals and a strong leadership pyramid, you can mitigate the fallout and build a culture of trust and collaboration.

The Functional Pyramid – The Backbone of Leadership

Think of leadership focus areas as a pyramid. Each focus area, or layer, depends on the strength of the one below it.

1️⃣ Corporate Strategy: The top of the pyramid—where long-term goals and vision align the team.

2️⃣ Design and Incubation: The strategic space for ideas, planning, and innovation, ensuring you work on what matters, not just what’s urgent.

3️⃣ Transactional Excellence: The execution layer—getting the day-to-day work done with precision and consistency.

4️⃣ Governance: The relationships layer—building accountability and trust among stakeholders, including directors, investors, and the community.

5️⃣ Operations: The foundation—clear systems, effective processes, and team dynamics that enable everything else.

All five layers need to operate at once – I think of each level as a set of gears.  The gears in one level are interconnected with those on other levels.  When they’re balanced properly, the function is biased to positive action.  

Rituals: The Gears That Turn the Pyramid

Even the strongest pyramid can’t function if the gears don’t turn. Rituals are the energy that moves those gears—everyday practices that ensure alignment, consistency, and trust. Even a well-structured pyramid loses momentum without them.  I’ve listed some examples of rituals below. 

• Recognition Rituals: Consistently acknowledge contributions from all team members, not just the most visible ones.

• Transparent Decision-Making: Clearly explain why opportunities, promotions, and rewards are given.

• Alignment Rituals: Revisit team goals and values frequently to keep everyone moving in the same direction, and accountable for results.

• Motivation Mechanisms:  Use the right motivators at the right time to shape how the team understands what to do and how to do it to achieve results.  

Building a Sustainable Leadership Model

To lead a high-performing, thriving team, you need both: a solid pyramid and the rituals to keep it running.

Start Here:

1️⃣ Audit Your Pyramid: Are your layers balanced and operating as they should?  Are you dedicating the right time and effort to each one? 

2️⃣ Establish Rituals: Focus on practices that strengthen trust, collaboration, and fairness.

3️⃣ Communicate Continuously: Share decisions, explain processes, and invite team input.  Share the “why” behind decisions on promotions, raises, or assignments. Clear communication fosters trust.

5️⃣ Model Consistency: Apply rules and accountability fairly across the board. Consistency builds trust.

Turn Complaints Into Opportunities

Challenges like favoritism perceptions or low morale can be opportunities to learn and grow. One board director summed it up best: “You can hide under the table, get defensive, or listen and learn.” Growth takes courage, humility, and a commitment to improvement.  

Great leaders build trust, create inclusivity, and ensure every team member feels valued.  That’s the key to sustainable success. 

Real Talk

Seriously, what is the word for that moment when you thought the team was ecstatic . . . but they hated everything, even you? Asking for a friend who’s very open to learning!

🦋  I'm Delida, and I help great lawyers become powerful executives and legal teams build capacity to shift from perceived cost centers into indispensable assets within the C-suite and boardroom. If you're a team of one or 400, in-house or Big Law, reach out to schedule a meeting.