Growth Edge
The Team Reality Check
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Shaping Your TeamFind out what's holding your team back — and get practical actions to fix it.
If your team isn't performing as it should, the problem is rarely effort, attitude or talent. Something else is getting in the way.
Take a moment. Which of these sound familiar?
When confronting these familiar issues, thoughts often turn to familiar solutions: give feedback, clarify accountability, arrange training, address behaviours. And often this leads to personality profiles, communication workshops — or the occasional afternoon of bowling, balloons, and forced fun.
Sometimes these help. More often they don't.
The real problem is rarely behaviour, relationships, or personality. The real problem is the way the team is set up to work.
Most team leaders assume performance problems are caused by capability, motivation, relationships, or communication. These are visible, easy to talk about and feel actionable — but they are rarely the root cause.
Sometimes these help, but often they don't — because the underlying conditions remain unchanged.
High-performing teams are not just lucky. Nor are they always made up of extraordinary individuals. Their winning formula is that they operate in the right conditions — and those conditions can be designed.
The Six Conditions framework shifts focus away from personality, trust, or communication — and onto structural conditions that leaders can actually design. Research shows these six conditions can predict up to 80% of team effectiveness.*
* Hackman & Wageman, 2005
The conditions fall into two groups — each playing a different role in team performance.
The foundation. Without these, no amount of effort or goodwill will compensate. They must exist for teamwork to function at all.
The accelerators. When the essentials are in place, these conditions amplify performance and help the team sustain results over time.
The Six Conditions framework — based on research by Hackman & Wageman
You don't need to master the model before using it. Simply ask: which of these conditions are strong — and which are holding us back? The next section provides a quick diagnostic to find out.
For each condition, rate your team from 1 to 5. Don't overthink it — just go with your first instinct. This is a snapshot, not a full diagnosis.
How to interpret your scores: A score of 3 or below on any condition signals a meaningful constraint on your team's performance — and a likely priority for action.
"A bad system will beat a good person every time."— W. Edwards Deming
You've identified where the pressure points are. Now the question becomes: where should we act first?
Focus matters more than effort. Most teams try to fix everything at once and end up fixing nothing. Look for small, meaningful actions with the biggest positive impact on team effectiveness.
| Biggest Risk | Which condition is most likely to limit performance if left unchanged? | |
| Quickest Win | Which condition could improve performance quickly? | |
| Strategic Priority | Which condition matters most for long-term success? |
From your priorities, choose the two conditions you will act on first. Start with whichever sits at the intersection of biggest risk and quickest win — the condition that is both holding you back and within your power to improve.
For each priority condition, choose one action to test out. Just a small, deliberate change. The next section provides practical moves to help you get started.
Use the ideas below as starting points. Test one or two, observe what happens and adjust. Small structural changes often create the biggest performance shifts.
Many leadership teams are teams in name only — work stays individual, updates are shared, decisions are deferred, and the issues that matter most fall between the gaps.
Many teams are busy. Few are truly purposeful. A team can go through the motions of meeting, reviewing progress, and solving problems — yet the bigger reason for its existence remains vague, too small, or disconnected from what actually matters.
Performance improves when the team is united around a purpose that is clear, challenging, and consequential — work that is important enough to inspire genuine attention and effort.
👆 Tap any move below to select it as an action for your team
Most teams are formed around roles, history, or availability — not around the demands of the work. The result is a team that copes rather than excels.
In the Six Conditions model, Right People means having the right skills to deliver effectively — including teamwork skills — and the right diversity of perspective to make good decisions. Performance improves when the team has both.
👆 Tap any move below to select it as an action for your team
Many teams work hard but struggle to make progress. Meetings feel crowded. Decisions take longer than they should. Responsibilities overlap — or fall between the gaps.
The problem is rarely effort. It is often structure. In the Six Conditions model, Sound Structure means the right task design, the right team size, and clear team norms — applied consistently. Performance improves when the way the team is designed makes teamwork the obvious, natural way to get things done.
👆 Tap any move below to select it as an action for your team
Many teams know what needs to be done — but can't get the support to do it. Progress slows. Priorities compete. The burden falls on individual effort rather than organisational backing.
The problem is rarely capability. It is often the system around the team. In the Six Conditions model, Supportive Context means rewards and recognition that reinforce teamwork, information that is usable and timely, and resources available when the work demands them. Performance improves when the organisation actively works for the team — not against it.
👆 Tap any move below to select it as an action for your team
Most teams review results. Fewer stop to examine how they achieved them. As a result, the same problems repeat, meetings drift, and decisions take longer than they should.
The issue is rarely capability. It is the absence of deliberate attention to how the team works. Performance improves when someone has both the responsibility and the skill to notice what is happening — and to intervene at the right moment, before small problems become bigger ones.
👆 Tap any move below to select it as an action for your team
You've done something most teams never do — you've stopped to look at how the team is actually set up, not just what it's producing.
That's the beginning of something useful.
The conditions you've just examined aren't fixed. They can be changed. Small structural shifts — done deliberately — create real differences in how teams function.
The practical moves in Part Four are a starting point. Pick one or two that address your lowest-scoring conditions. Try them. See what shifts.
If you want to go further — and get a view from the whole team rather than just the leader — the Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS) does exactly that. It gathers input from all team members and produces a shared, evidence-based picture of the Six Conditions. Because the data comes from everyone, the responsibility for improvement shifts from the leader to the team.
If any of this surfaced something worth exploring — you can reach Dustin at growth-edge.co. No preparation needed.
