By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC, Humance Senior Executive Coach
On paper, it should be working. You raised the bar on hiring and brought in stronger talent; people who’ve operated at a high level, who aren’t easily rattled, and who get results. You expected lift, and fast!
I've heard versions of the following from leaders through my career: “We upgraded the team… and everything got slower. We need to do a better job recruiting the right people.” That 'diagnosis' sounds reasonable in the moment, especially when results don’t match expectations. But often, it isn’t the recruitment process that’s dropped the ball.
See if any of this sounds familiar: after an infusion of top talent, decisions take longer, time or resources get wasted as work circles back around, and conversations multiply. It can feel like the team got smarter and the work got stuck. This is often the point where the story starts to drift in the wrong direction, as leaders revisit hiring choices or question whether the new talent is as strong as it looked in the interviews.
How is it possible to have less momentum when there’s more intelligence and experience in the room? Well, intelligence and experience aren’t usually the issue, even though this is the first place most leaders tend to look. In fact, hiring rock star talent doesn’t automatically improve performance; it reveals the limits of the systems that they are stepping into.
When capable people enter an environment where priorities aren’t consistently clear, where decision paths shift depending on who’s involved, and where expectations move midstream, the cracks become visible. They’re strong enough to feel the friction and unwilling to pretend it isn’t there.
Less experienced teams often push through messy systems without questioning them, assuming it’s 'just how things are done around here'. Strong talent does something different; they notice what’s off, they test assumptions, and they slow down when something doesn’t add up. Their hesitation is worth paying attention to, because what you may experience as a slowdown is often a system being exposed, which can feel frustrating until you see what it’s pointing to.
A team isn’t just a group of skilled individuals operating independently; it’s more like a busy airspace. You can have the best pilots in the world flying planes in and out, but without clear signals, defined flight paths, fueling and food service systems that keeps everything moving safely and efficiently, things start to circle, delay, and back up (or worse).
I've observed leadership teams full of smart, seasoned people spend an hour circling a decision that should have taken ten minutes, simply because ownership wasn’t clear and no one was quite sure who had the call. Even with highly capable people in place, an unclear structure will create bottlenecks.
This is where leadership habits begin to show up, especially when things feel messy. The instinct for many leaders is to tighten control by adding another checkpoint, getting more involved in decisions, and increasing oversight. It just feels responsible and accountable in the moment.
But what it often does is force high-performing people to adapt to outdated systems that were never designed for how they think or the high level they're used to operating at. You can almost feel their energy drop when that happens, which is where performance stalls and engagement begins to erode well before it becomes obvious. People still contribute, but with less conviction. They start conserving their energy instead of investing their discretionary effort, and they hold back valuable input and ideas when what's really needed is their best thinking and fresh perspectives.
The better leadership move is to examine the systems and processes those people are working within, rather than managing them more closely. Get curious about:
• Where work slows down for reasons that no longer make sense
• Where decisions are delayed because ownership is unclear
• Where approvals add time without adding value
• Where caution is rewarded more than thoughtful contribution
• Where leadership steps in, when stepping back would actually move things forward
High-performing leaders encourage strong talent to question the systems they inherited, even the ones that once worked well, then simplify decision flow so ideas can flow and influence. They remove unnecessary steps instead of layering unnecessary oversight, and they create space for testing and refinement, knowing that good ideas rarely arrive fully formed.
They also invite challenge and stay in those conversations long enough for something better to emerge. This is where alignment actually develops, through people engaging with each other’s thinking and circling back to a shared understanding of what matters. The role of the leader starts to shift as they spend less time evaluating individuals and more time seeing their team as part of a system that is producing the results they’re getting. When different results are needed, the system itself must evolve.
If the environment isn’t set up to leverage the thinking, experience, and judgment of the new people you’ve hired, you aren’t fully leveraging the investment you’ve made in that talent, and you end up carrying the cost of capability without getting the benefit of it, which is a frustrating place to sit when you know how much potential is there.
So if you’ve raised the bar on talent and you're not seeing the lift you expected, look at the system, because that’s where the real leverage sits. If the airspace feels crowded and slow, don’t coach the pilots to fly harder; upgrade the system of signals, communications, and flight paths so air traffic can move efficiently.
YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE
Set aside 30 minutes this week and take a close look at how work actually moves through your team. Think of your team like a busy airspace. Your goal isn’t to fly every plane. It’s to make the routes, signals, and handoffs clear so everything moves without circling.
Choose one recent decision or project that felt slower or heavier than it should have, then write out how it unfolded step by step, noticing where it paused, where it looped, and where it required rework.
Then reflect on the following questions in a single sitting so you can see the full pattern rather than isolated moments.
Where did the system make this harder than it needed to be?
Where did I step in, and what impact did that have?
Where did someone hold back when they could have pushed forward?
What would’ve needed to be different for this to move with more clarity and pace?
You aren’t trying to fix everything in one sitting. You’re experimenting with looking for what’s slowing things down, and once you see it, you can clear the path. That’s how you keep the airspace moving the way it should, to create real lift for your rock stars.
If you notice this pattern in your own team, reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.