Something’s Got to Break (Hopefully Not You): 5 Very Real Reasons Campus Leadership is Such a Pressure Cooker These Days
December 20, 2022
Leading people and systems have always been pressure cookers.
Add a global crisis, rapid change, and constant uncertainty into the mix, and what was barely sustainable before has become almost untenable to thousands of leaders.
Recently in one of my
Lead Team Institute cohort conversations, a campus president shared that she did not believe she held the authority of the office of the president, only the title.
This high-capacity leader was on the ropes of her campus culture war for power. Can you identify with her reality?
- Being the campus CEO
- Inspiring the Vision
- Engaging all Voices
- Partnering with the Community
- Planning for Contingencies of the budget shortfall
- Strategically managing Change
- Holding the language of Hope
- Building Team Trust
- Managing all post-pandemic protocols
- Mentoring Emerging Leaders
- Managing the Flood of Email
- Nursing the Wounds of Regular Surprise Attacks
- Presenting thought leadership
- Keeping the Marriage Together
- Attending the Kids’ Events
Oh, and Exercise and Eating Clean…
Impossible? Perhaps for some, but the most incredible opportunity for others called into the role.
➜ It’s a ton of pressure.
➜ It’s lonely.
➜ It’s a healthy paranoia at the top.
- Who do you let in?
- Who can you trust as a friend?
- Who can you push to improve?
- Who you are just going to be stuck with.
I fear that the mishmash of the current crisis and the chronic pressure campus leaders are under will see more leaders burned out, failing morally, and calling it quits.
Our educational mission isn’t broken, but too many leaders are.
For the record, I’m a fan of everyone charged with leading our k-12 and higher ed systems. Private and public alike. I am a product (1st generation college educated) with much love to give back to the institutions that changed my life.
So, if you’re pursuing to beat up on campus leaders or the current education system, please stop reading this and read something else.
But for those of us committed to each other and the mission of optimizing the potential of others, you know the toll fee is great.
Often too great.
With all this in mind, something’s got to break. The chronic pressures of genuine leadership won’t change unless we change our expectations around those leading our systems.
Here are five sobering reasons why campus leadership will continue to be a pressure cooker long after the global crisis disappears.
If something doesn’t break, our leaders will.
1. The Pretender
It’s so easy to believe your boss has it all together, but of course, anyone who’s been in leadership for more than ten minutes knows that’s not true.
A few leaders put themselves on a pedestal, and they get what they deserve.
Most leaders don’t try to put themselves on a pedestal. Their people put them on it without asking permission.
I’m fortunate to have a small HPG team and community of clients who accept us for who we are, not for who they want us to be.
I’ve also been quite transparent about my leadership failures and shortcomings. Self-preservation has a smell that diminishes influence and repels your best people, right?
Leaders must come to terms with the fact that the heroes on whose shoulders we all stand were flawed people.
This gives me hope, and I’m encouraged by the quote, “The universe (God) doesn’t call the equipped, instead equips the called.
Genuine influence flows best through broken (real) people.
2. The Lone Ranger
When almost everyone you know is someone you’re serving or trying to engage, who can you talk to?
➜ I’m their boss, yet they also want to be my friend.
➜ There is always more going on than they know.
➜ I can’t be 100% transparent about all things.
Leaders get pinned regularly with the statement, “Well, why don’t you just share everything with everyone?”
Great principle but a terrible practice.
As a wise mentor told me, “When it comes to public sharing, let people see your scars, not your wounds. Share your scars publicly. Process your wounds privately.
The extremes of telling nobody or telling everybody are both highly dysfunctional.
Somebody needs to help you process your wounds.
Two things will help with that. Professional counseling (I’m a member) and a couple of friends who don’t work for you, who you’re not trying to “lead,” and who may not even live near you.
These have been life-giving lifelines to me.
Joe, how about your spouse? Of course…share everything. But leaders, your spouse isn’t designed to bear the full weight of your pain.
At the end of 2023, what would it feel like to have all your open positions and your momentum reclaimed?
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”Wow! I didn’t realize I was in desperate need of this talk and these tools in my life.”
“This message so profoundly impacted us. We are now beginning to edit out the unhealthy team behaviors interfering with our performance.
“The timing of this message could not have been better for the health of our team.”
Without a new focus and approach, it's easy to continue to:
➜ Sacrifice self and family on the altar of work.
➜ Overcommit and underdeliver.
➜ Be busy but no longer brilliant.
➜ Juggle more priorities than what we can complete.
Worst of all, other people — other tasks, jobs, and projects — will continue to hijack your life.
It’s time to change that by implementing a proven practice that works.
Reclaim Your Momentum {LIVE} is a two-hour keynote for campus/district leaders and their teams.
This interactive session will inspire, challenge, and equip your team to accelerate healthy team culture and overall team performance.
Your team will leave this session with the following:
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3. Living for Likes
You lead in an era where everything is measurable.
Some of that’s good, and some of that is devastating. It’s a daily discipline for me to keep the proper perspective.
While growth is essential (I don’t know a single leader who wants things to decline), the pressure you feel to see the number of likes, comments, shares, and views of your personal brand can be devastating.
Too much of your successes or failures can affect your identity.
I must remind myself constantly that when work is your idol, success goes to your head, and failure goes to your heart.
Leaders have always looked at spreadsheets and reports. The difference between fifteen years ago and today is that most of those metrics were private and occasional: for staff, board, or annual reports.
Today your brand scorecard is public and daily. Ugh!
4. The Do All
Many educational systems define the success of their leader according to how available, likable, and friendly their leaders are.
It’s as though campuses want a puppy, not a president.
You need to be competent at everything, available 24/7 and have a great family life.
Since when did that become the criteria for effective leadership?
By that standard, everyone will fail the test.
The goal of campus leadership is to lead people, not to be liked by people.
That’s no excuse to hold your authority above another to overpower (or disempower), but still, leadership requires that you drive from principles, not preferences.
If a campus is going to grow, we have to let go of the expectation that its leader will be available for every smoldering issue, each political twist, every campus function, and every crisis.
That’s a tough sell, but if a campus is going to grow, the leader should be more brilliant than busy.
The leader who attempts to do everything will often become incapable of doing anything.
Burnout does that to you.
And while everything rises and falls on leadership, not everything must rise and fall on a single leader.
Make 2023 Your Most Productive Year Yet.
If, as a campus leader, you have ever wondered...
- “How can I become a far more effective team leader?”
- “How do some leaders get so much done?”
- “How do I get ahead?”
- “How can I realize a dream I’ve been holding onto for too long?”
Then it might be the right time to follow a plan that works.
Leadership teams become stale and ineffective without a proven system, a community of practice, and a guide.
That's why I created...
➜ The Lead Team 360™ - To Diagnose your current leadership team health.
➜ The Lead Team Institute {LTI} - A 12-workshop series to optimize Higher Team Performance.
Looking to get a snapshot of your team's overall health?
Lead Team 360™
Diagnose your current leadership team health in the Lead Measures of Culture
Looking for monthly workshops for your people leaders?
Lead Team Institute {LTI}
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Two lists exist in every cabinet meeting. What you don't control: State funding. Board dynamics. Demographic shifts. Competitor success. Generational attitudes. What you do control: How much time you spend on the first list. Do this math: 4.7 hours of uncontrollable discussion × 8 cabinet members × 42 working weeks × $140/hour = $221,060 per year. That's not strategic planning. That's expensive therapy without the breakthrough. The leaders who thrived post-pandemic weren't dealing with easier circumstances. Same enrollment pressures. Same board dynamics. Same funding constraints. The difference? They stopped cataloging what they couldn't change and started obsessing over what they could. You are ridiculously in charge of your institution's future. You've just forgotten which levers you actually pull. THE DIAGNOSIS: HOW BRILLIANT LEADERS LEARN TO FEEL HELPLESS Let's talk about this like adults who've survived at least one budget cycle that made you briefly reconsider your career choices. There's a neuroscience phenomenon called learned helplessness — and it doesn't happen to struggling leaders. It happens to brilliant ones. Here's how it works. Scientists put dogs on a mat with a small fence. Mild shock, but the dog could hit a lever to stop it. The dog learned: I have control over my circumstances. Then they disconnected the lever. The dog tries, still gets shocked. Tries again. Eventually stops. The brain literally changes — goes inactive. Depression sets in. Here's the devastating part: they removed the fence. The dog could simply hop off the mat. But it didn't. Because the brain had learned that action is useless. Monday, 7:30 AM. Your CFO wants to "preview concerns" before the 9 AM cabinet meeting. You're discussing the demographic cliff, declining birth rates, economic pressures facing your student population. None of which you control. Tuesday, 2:15 PM. Your Provost wants to "debrief" yesterday's board meeting. You're discussing board member personalities, their unrealistic expectations, their fundamental misunderstanding of higher ed economics. None of which you control. Wednesday, 10:00 AM. Cabinet meeting. Agenda item: "Enrollment Strategy." What actually happens: 90 minutes lamenting Gen Z work ethic, competitor pricing models, and the state funding formula. None of which you control. By Friday, your brain has learned: The lever doesn't work. Action is useless. Nothing I do matters. Psychologists call this the Three P's Personalization ("I'm not good enough") Pervasiveness ("the entire system is broken") Permanence ("this is the new normal") Once these three patterns solidify, you don't need actual constraints to feel powerless. Your brain manufactures helplessness even when the fence is gone. Here's what nobody says out loud: the most expensive line item in your budget isn't salaries. It's the cognitive and emotional energy your leadership team spends every week on variables they cannot influence — while the controllable levers that would actually move your institution sit untouched in the corner like the gym equipment you bought with great intentions and excellent guilt. Comment "FRIDAY" if this was literally your last week. THE FRAMEWORK: THE CONTEXT EXCUSE TEST Call this the Context Excuse Test . Or don't. It'll still explain why your strategic plan died somewhere between "approved by the board" and "implemented by the deans." Last semester, I worked with educational leaders in two different cities. Los Angeles area: "Enrollment growth would be easier if we were in a stable Midwest market — where people have roots and extended family networks." Chicago area, two days later: "Enrollment growth would be easier if we were in a market like LA — where there's constant population influx and people are actively seeking new opportunities." Different contexts. Identical excuses. Same helplessness pattern. Here's the reality check: if your context theory were true — that your specific circumstances make success impossible — then Apple wouldn't sell iPhones in your market. Netflix wouldn't have subscribers. Starbucks wouldn't have locations. But they do. Because while tactics must adapt to context, universal human needs remain constant. Your students need education. Your faculty need purpose. Your community needs the outcomes your institution provides. The question isn't whether your context is hard. The question is: are you adapting your tactics while everyone else is cataloging their constraints? And here's the deeper truth the Context Excuse Test reveals: when you keep asking "why is that?" about any organizational problem, you eventually land at the one person who can actually do something about it. That person is usually you. A global CEO once explained to his executive coach why his company missed quarterly targets. "We brought in this executive from a competitor, and he infected the culture..." Coach: "Why is that?" CEO: "Because he came from a different organizational culture..." Coach: "Why is that?" CEO: "Because I didn't properly vet cultural fit during hiring..." Coach: "Why is that?" CEO: "Because... I guess I am ridiculously in charge, aren't I?" Coach: Not always. Legitimate external constraints exist. But far more rarely than we pretend. THE CASE STUDY: THE QUARTER MILLION DOLLAR CONVERSATION Let me tell you about a superintendent I'll call Mark (not his real name, but Mark, your former CFO definitely knows this story is about your first six months together, and he's smirking right now). Mark led a mid-sized district — 8,000 students, six buildings, an eight-member cabinet, and an average of 19 years in leadership. Combined credentials that could stock a regional conference. Combined ability to stop discussing constraints and start building solutions? Roughly equivalent to a committee asked to agree on lunch while honoring everyone's dietary restrictions, philosophical beliefs about food systems, and strong opinions about parking. His cabinet meetings broke down like this: 45 minutes on state funding cuts, 30 minutes on board behavior patterns, 20 minutes on competitor enrollment trends, 15 minutes on staffing shortages. Controllable variables got 12 minutes — squeezed in at the end when everyone was already mentally ordering lunch. Mark kept going to conferences. Kept getting better at being a superintendent. Kept paying the translation tax trying to implement what he learned with a team that remained fundamentally unchanged. Then he did something radical. He recorded three consecutive cabinet meetings, counted the minutes, and calculated the annual cost. $247,000. He presented the data to his cabinet with one question: "Are we okay with this?" The room went silent. Then his Director of Curriculum said what everyone was thinking: "We're spending a quarter million dollars per year complaining. That's... actually insane." That single sentence changed everything. Not a consultant's recommendation. Not a conference framework. Just the data, held up to the light, in front of the people who created it. Here's what Marcus built over the next three months: a meeting protocol where the first 90 minutes covered controllable variables only — decisions, execution, systems. The final 30 minutes became an "Environmental Scan" where constraints could be named, but only to identify tactical adaptations, never to vent. He implemented a "3 Why's Test" — any problem brought to the cabinet had to answer why it was persisting and why they were the right people to solve it. If the answers kept pointing to uncontrollable externals, it didn't belong on the agenda. Six months later: cabinet meetings dropped from 3.5 hours to 90 minutes. Decision velocity tripled. Implementation completion went from 42% to 78%. Annual complaint cost dropped from $247K to $27K. Same people. Same board. Same funding challenges. Same enrollment pressures. Different system. What you focus on expands. Mark's cabinet was expanding helplessness. Now they're expanding agency. BEFORE THE APPLICATION: WHY MARK'S SHIFT STUCK The shift didn't happen because he attended another conference or hired another consultant. It happened because he built a team operating system that made agency automatic — not a one-time intervention, but a sequential change in how his cabinet thinks together. This is the pattern The TEAM INSTITUTE was built to eliminate at scale. While most leadership development gives you frameworks to translate back to your team alone, we build the operating system that makes the shift from helplessness to agency structural — through 8 monthly sessions that develop from trust to empowerment to collaboration to breakthrough results. We don't fix people. We multiply systems. But whether you ever join The TEAM INSTITUTE or not, here's what you can implement Monday morning... THE APPLICATION: YOUR CONTROL AUDIT Here's what to do Monday morning (assuming you're not in crisis mode — in which case, bookmark this and do it Tuesday): STEP 1: RUN THE COMPLAINT AUDIT (45 minutes across two meetings) Have someone track — with timestamps — time spent on controllable vs. uncontrollable variables. Three columns. Tally the minutes. Calculate the annual cost using Marcus's formula. Then ask your cabinet Mark's question: "Are we okay with this?" Don't editorialize. Don't present solutions. Just hold the data up to the light and let the room sit in it. What this reveals: if uncontrollable discussion outnumbers controllable action 3-to-1, you have a learned helplessness crisis, not a strategy problem. And if nobody wants to track this in the first place — your team already knows what the numbers will say. STEP 2: RUN THE CONTEXT EXCUSE INVENTORY (30 minutes) Put this question on your next cabinet agenda: "What would have to be true for us to succeed despite our constraints?" Have each person list the three constraints they cite most frequently, then — this is the part that matters — what they would do differently if those constraints never changed. Go around the room. Read answers out loud. Watch what happens when every "if only..." statement reveals a corresponding "but we could..." action that's been sitting right next to it, ignored. If answers keep pointing to external changes needed, you're waiting for rescue. If someone says, "There's nothing we can do until X changes," they've adopted learned helplessness as a professional identity. That's a different conversation, but a necessary one. STEP 3: THE 30-DAY CONTROLLABLE SPRINT (Ongoing) For 30 days, 80% of cabinet meeting time covers variables your team directly controls. Track two numbers weekly: Complaint Ratio: Uncontrollable discussion ÷ Controllable action time Implementation Velocity: Days from decision to execution start After 30 days, measure whether the ratios moved. If they didn't, someone on your team is invested in the current story — and that's worth a very direct conversation. OBJECTION: "We don't have time for this" You're currently spending 245 hours per year generating helplessness. You're underwater BECAUSE your team invests energy in uncontrollables, not despite it. What feels like "we're too busy" is almost always "we're afraid of what the data will reveal." OBJECTION: "My board keeps demanding answers about uncontrollables" Your board is asking about uncontrollables because you haven't given them confidence in your controllables. Boards don't micromanage competence. They micromanage uncertainty. When you shift from "here's why we can't..." to "here's what we're doing about what we CAN control," the temperature in the room changes. Your board is paying you to exercise agency — not to be a sophisticated narrator of external circumstances. Which of these objections is your system's default? Drop it in the comments. THE MATURITY SHIFT Immature leaders think: "If only our context were different, we could succeed." Mature leaders think: "What can we control that creates success despite our context?" Immature leaders collect constraints like Pokemon cards — gotta catalog 'em all, display them in meetings, occasionally take them out to admire how impossible everything is. Mature leaders acknowledge constraints once, then obsessively focus on controllable variables. Immature leaders wait for circumstances to improve. Mature leaders improve their response to circumstances. The difference is the difference between a superintendent who survives until retirement and a superintendent whose district becomes the model everyone else studies. One explains to the board why demographic shifts make growth impossible. One shows the board enrollment growth data despite demographic shifts. The Three P's aren't permanent. The lever might not have worked yesterday. But the fence is gone. You can hop off the mat anytime you choose. Your turn: what's one constraint you've been citing for the past year that — if you're honest — you've been using as an excuse to avoid action on controllable variables? Drop it in the comments. Naming it is the first step past it. Tag a cabinet member who's ready to make this shift. Or screenshot this and text it to your CFO with the message: "We're spending 4.7 hours complaining. Let's calculate our actual number Tuesday." IF YOU'RE TIRED OF TRANSLATING INSIGHTS ALONE You just diagnosed the gap — a cabinet spending a quarter million dollars annually on variables no one in the room can change, while the controllable levers sit untouched. That pattern is the symptom. The cause is operating at 60% capacity while funding 100%. Research shows that most leadership teams perform at only 60% of their potential — not because they lack talent, but because brilliant individuals never learned to multiply their intelligence together. If your cabinet costs $1M annually, the 40% gap represents $400K in annual burn. When 100% workload hits 60% capacity, you rotate through three bad options: Lower Standards Burnout Public Failure Most teams cycle through all three while the market decides. The problem isn't your people. It's the model. You're trying to multiply intelligence using addition. Multiplication requires a different system. THE TEAM INSTITUTE: 8 Months From Helplessness to Agency The TEAM INSTITUTE is a sequential developmental journey that transforms your cabinet from individually brilliant to collectively unstoppable — not through episodic workshops forgotten in 30 days, but through capability building applied directly to your actual challenges. Month 1: Base Camp — Team Profile and {BEST FIT} framework Month 2: Building Trust — The foundation that makes honest problem-solving possible Month 3: Empowerment — Distributing authority over controllable variables Month 4: Collaboration — Multiplying intelligence instead of fragmenting it Month 5: Broadening Influence — Leading beyond positional authority Month 6: Managing Change — Transformation without casualties Month 7: Managing Conflict — Using friction as refinement Month 8: Developing Others — Multiplying agency across your organization Each 2-hour monthly session builds on the previous foundation. You can't skip trust and jump to empowerment — that's abandonment, not leadership. What's Included: Team {BEST FIT} assessment and mapping. Team 360 baseline and follow-up. Type-specific protocols for your team's configuration. Monthly expert facilitation on your actual challenges. Between-session accountability. Executive coaching for senior leaders. The Results: 3x performance improvement. 29% higher engagement. 27% better organizational outcomes. Zero burnout increase. The Requirement: Full leadership team participation. Partial engagement produces partial results. If you're ready to stop explaining why things are impossible and start demonstrating what's controllable — let's talk. Schedule a 30-minute consultation to explore whether The Team Institute is the right intervention for your context. We'll discuss your team's current patterns, explore readiness, and determine whether this produces the systematic agency your institution requires. This isn't a sales pitch. It's a conversation between people who refuse to accept that learned helplessness is permanent. [LEARN MORE] [SCHEDULE CONSULTATION] FOUND VALUE IN THIS? Help other educational leaders discover it: → Repost with your calculated complaint tax — 4.7 hours × your team size × 42 weeks × hourly rate. Drop your number. → Tag a leader who's paying the learned helplessness tax right now → Comment with the constraint you've been using as an excuse — your honesty helps others feel less alone. The more leaders who shift from learned helplessness to ridiculous agency, the better our educational systems become. Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group for weekly Team Intelligence insights.
Last semester, I watched the same thing happen: The boss announced a major initiative. Everyone nodded. Three weeks later? Eight separate executions masquerading as one strategy. Your cabinet doesn't have a dysfunction problem. You have a pronoun problem—and it's costing you $400K in wasted capacity each year. Count how many times someone in your last meeting said "myself" instead of "me." Then count how many times anyone said "we." That ratio? It predicts everything about your team's performance. Here's the pattern: "The board and myself decided..." "Between the Provost and myself..." "My cabinet and myself are aligned..." Two syllables instead of one. Grammatically incorrect. Functionally revealing. We've inflated from "me" to "MYSELF"—and in that linguistic upgrade, we lost the only word that actually creates multiplication: "we." Your cabinet has a multiplication problem. Eight talented leaders who've mastered individual excellence but haven't built the collective infrastructure that turns good performance into breakthrough performance. That gap between good and great? It's about shifting from "myself" to "we." And most leaders never learn how because "myself" has been rewarded your entire career. THE DIAGNOSIS: GOOD AT ADDITION, MISSING MULTIPLICATION Let's talk about this like adults who've led talented teams that perform well but wonder "what if?" Tuesday, 9 AM cabinet meeting. Everyone's prepared. Updates are thorough. Questions are smart. The meeting runs professionally. (Everyone nods in agreement. The strategic plan gets approved. Then eight people leave the room and interpret it eight different ways. This is what we call "alignment.") But when you announce a major initiative, you can see the mental calculation behind eight sets of eyes: "How does this affect MY area? What do I need to protect? How much can I delegate vs. do myself?" Three weeks later, the initiative moves forward. Sort of. Everyone executes their part. Professionally. Competently. But it feels like eight separate projects that happen to share a name , not one integrated effort multiplying collective intelligence. Or this: Your CFO and Provost are both brilliant. They collaborate when required. They're not territorial. But they've never called each other just to think through a complex problem together. They coordinate. They don't co-create. (They schedule "sync meetings" to align before the actual meeting. Then debrief after. That's not collaboration—that's collaboration theater with intermission.) Here's Why This Keeps Happening You hired for individual excellence. You measured individual performance. You rewarded individual achievement. Then you put eight individual high-performers in a room and expected them to spontaneously operate as a multiplied "we." They can't. Because multiplication requires different infrastructure than addition. Here's what nobody admits at leadership conferences (because we're all performing competence for each other): You hired people whose entire identity is built on being individually exceptional. Then you put them in roles where their primary job is to make OTHER people successful. That's asking Olympic sprinters to suddenly care more about the relay team's time than their individual split. They'd rather protect their reputation as "the smart one" than risk looking average by actually multiplying with others. Your "good" cabinet is actively choosing addition over multiplication because multiplication requires vulnerability they've spent careers avoiding. The real problem? You've built a cabinet optimized for individual excellence in roles that require collective multiplication. The Team Intelligence Formula: TQ = IQ × EQ × PQ Notice it's multiplication, not addition. Any dimension near zero collapses everything. IQ: Individual competence. You hired for this. Your cabinet is brilliant. EQ: Common language for communication and culture. This is where "myself" performers fragment—eight people fluent in different languages trying to have strategic conversations. PQ: Understanding how each person is wired and how roles multiply. Your CFO doesn't have to lead innovation just because they're smart. When any dimension is low, multiplication collapses to addition. Your cabinet isn't broken. It's just never been built to multiply. THE FRAMEWORK: THE A/50 VS B+/3 PATTERN Your cabinet is full of A/50 performers —people who earned A grades by investing 50 hours of effort. Grinding. Perfecting. Out-working everyone. The formula that built their careers: More effort = Better results. A/50 performers struggle with collective multiplication. (And yes, they're exhausted. Which they mention. Frequently. Usually in the context of explaining why someone else's approach won't work.) They've been rewarded for individual excellence through heroic effort. They don't know how to operate in "we multiply together" mode because they're still counting contributions. "I stayed until 8pm Tuesday." "I sent three emails over the weekend." "My section is more thorough than yours." This is why your high-performer cabinet operates at 60% capacity despite 100% effort. Because A/50 performers can't multiply—they can only add and compare. B+/3 performers? They earned B+ grades with just 3 hours of effort. Not the highest grade, but remarkable efficiency. Smarter strategy beats harder grinding. Here's what they figured out: Study groups beat solo grinding (collaboration multiplies understanding) Asking the right questions beats reading everything (leverage others' knowledge) Good enough on time beats perfect too late (execution matters more than perfection) Who gets credit doesn't matter if the team wins (ego takes back seat to results) B+/3 performers default to "we" because "I alone" was never enough. They say things like: "What if we combined your approach with mine?" "Who else should be thinking about this?" "This got better because of what you added." They've developed the one skill A/50 performers never needed: multiplication instinct. (Your A/50 performers secretly think B+/3 people are lazy. Your B+/3 performers know A/50 people are inefficient. Both are right. Neither is winning.) "A/50 performers earned success by grinding harder. B+/3 performers earned it by thinking smarter. Your cabinet is full of A/50s trying to multiply. That's why good stays good instead of becoming great." If your entire cabinet is A/50, you've built a team of individual excellence that underperforms collectively. That's why multiplication feels impossible. THE 60% CAPACITY CRISIS Research shows leadership teams typically perform at 60% of their potential. If your cabinet costs $1M annually, that's $400K burning every year. Not from incompetence. From interference. High IQ leaders who lack common language (EQ) and understanding of how each person is wired (PQ). Here's the good news that changes everything: Your cabinet isn't broken. They're not resistant. They're not incompetent. They're operating on addition infrastructure while attempting multiplication work. That's a design problem, not a people problem. Design problems are solvable through architecture, not heroics. You don't need different people. You need different infrastructure. The talent is already there. The potential is already funded. You're just missing the multiplication system that turns "good" into "great." Your turn: The Multiplication Audit Think about your last three strategic initiatives. For each one: Did it fragment into eight separate executions? (+1 for each YES) Did anyone call someone ELSE just to think through a problem together? (+1 for each YES) Did results feel like stapled-together work or genuinely integrated thinking? (+1 if integrated) Score: 0-2: Addition mode. $400K+ burning annually. 3-5: Transitioning. Some multiplication happening. 6-9: You've cracked the code. You're multiplying. Drop your score below. THE APPLICATION: BUILDING MULTIPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE STEP 1: The Pronoun Audit (15 minutes, solo) Open your last three cabinet meeting notes. Count pronouns: How many times: "I," "me," "my," "myself" How many times: "we," "us," "our" "If 'I/me/myself' outnumbers 'we/us/our' by more than 2:1, you don't have a team. You have a meeting where individuals report progress on separate projects that happen to share a budget." (If this exercise makes you defensive—"but context matters!" "But nuance!"—that's data too. Multiplication doesn't require defending yourself from your own meeting notes.) STEP 2: The Monday Morning "We" Ritual (20 minutes) Start every cabinet meeting with this question. You answer first. "What's one thing happening in your life—work or personal—that you're genuinely excited about OR struggling with? Real answer. Not your portfolio update. Something true about you as a human." Go around the room. Just listen. Don't fix. Don't problem-solve. After everyone shares: "Thank you for trusting us with that." Do this for 8 weeks. Watch your pronouns shift from "myself" to "we." STEP 3: The Multiplication Question (30 minutes in the next cabinet meeting) Put this on your agenda: "How do we shift from coordinating excellence to multiplying it?" Ask: "Was our last initiative eight excellent individual executions that got coordinated? Or one integrated effort where the whole exceeded the parts?" Then: "What would need to be true for us to multiply intelligence instead of just adding it?" Write down 3-5 agreements. This becomes your multiplication infrastructure. THE MATURITY SHIFT: FROM ADDITION TO MULTIPLICATION Immature leaders think: "My team is good enough." Mature leaders think: "Good is the enemy of great, and multiplication is how we get there." Immature leaders accept professional collaboration. Mature leaders architect collective multiplication. Immature leaders think "we" happens naturally among talented people. Mature leaders know "we" requires intentional infrastructure. "Immature leaders accept professional collaboration. Mature leaders architect collective multiplication. The difference is the difference between a cabinet that works hard and a cabinet that works exponentially." One produces solid results through heroic individual effort. One produces breakthrough results through collective intelligence. Your cabinet is good. The question is: Are you ready to build great? Real talk: Which of your cabinet members is an A/50 performer (heroic individual effort) vs. B+/3 performer (multiplication instinct)? Don't name names publicly—but if you counted and your entire cabinet is A/50, that's not a people problem. That's a hiring-for-the-wrong-variable problem. Comment below: How many of your cabinet members have multiplication instinct vs. addition mindset? Your honest answer reveals whether you're one hire away from transformation or one system away. Tag someone on your team who defaults to "we" before "myself"—they've earned the recognition. THE TEAM INSTITUTE : FROM ADDITION TO MULTIPLICATION IN 8 MONTHS Your cabinet just diagnosed the gap between addition and multiplication. That gap? It represents every strategic initiative that fragments, every decision that requires three follow-up meetings, every brilliant idea that dies in translation. This is the pattern The Team Institute was built to eliminate. While most leadership development teaches YOU frameworks to translate back to your team (hello, translation tax), we build the multiplication infrastructure WITH your entire team—through 8 monthly sessions that develop from trust to empowerment to collaboration to breakthrough results. We don't fix people. We multiply systems. The 8-Month Architecture: Month 1: Base Camp - Understanding your Team Profile Month 2: Building Trust - The foundation of multiplication Month 3: Empowerment - "We" distribute authority Month 4: Collaboration - "We" create together Month 5: Broadening Influence - "We" lead beyond hierarchy Month 6: Managing Change - "We" transform without casualties Month 7: Managing Conflict - "We" use friction as refinement Month 8: Developing Others - "We" multiply talent What's Included: Team {BEST FIT} assessment revealing addition vs. multiplication patterns Team 360 baseline measuring current EQ and PQ Monthly expert facilitation applied to your actual challenges Between-session accountability that embeds multiplication Executive coaching for senior leaders The Results: 3x performance improvement. 29% higher engagement. 27% better organizational outcomes. Zero burnout increase. The Requirement: Full team participation. You can't build multiplication with "some of us." YOUR NEXT MOVE If you're ready to transform addition into multiplication—if you sense your good cabinet could be great—let's talk. Schedule a 30-minute consultation to explore whether THE TEAM INSTITUTE will build the multiplication infrastructure your organization requires. This isn't about selling you something. This is about whether you're ready to build multiplication. [SCHEDULE CONSULTATION ] Found this valuable? Help other leaders discover it: → Repost with your honest answer: "Does my cabinet add or multiply?" → Tag a leader building multiplication infrastructure → Comment with your Multiplication Audit score The more leaders who shift from addition to multiplication, the better education becomes. Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group