#9: The Real Reason Your Team Feels Stuck (And How to Move Them Forward)

The Real Reason Your Team Feels Stuck (And How to Move Them Forward) 

 

 

It’s one of the most frustrating experiences for any leader: your team isn’t progressing the way you hoped. Deadlines are missed. Initiative is lacking. Team members seem stuck—spinning their wheels, underdelivering, or repeatedly asking for help. And you start to wonder, Are they just not cut out for this? But what if the real problem isn’t a lack of talent or motivation… but a misalignment in how they’re being led?

In this game-changing episode, Eric Pfeiffer teams up with leadership strategist Dawn Neldon to unpack one of the most overlooked dynamics in organizational performance: the disconnect between a person’s stage of development and the type of support they’re receiving. They introduce the Development Square—a powerful, visual framework that maps out the four distinct stages every individual moves through when learning a new skill, role, or responsibility.

From the early stage of Unconscious Incompetence—where someone doesn’t even know what they don’t know—to Conscious Incompetence, Conscious Competence, and finally, Unconscious Competence, this episode sheds light on what your people are likely thinking, feeling, and needing at each level of development.

You’ll learn:

• Why team members can look unmotivated when in reality, they’re just overwhelmed

• How to recognize subtle cues that indicate someone is ready to be stretched—or needs more structure

• Why leaders often swing between micromanaging and neglecting, and how to strike the right balance

• What specific actions, communication styles, and expectations are most effective at each stage

• How to create a growth environment where people feel safe to fail, encouraged to learn, and empowered to thrive

Whether you’re onboarding fresh talent, coaching high-potential team members into leadership, or trying to break through a plateau with your current staff, the Development Square gives you a blueprint to lead with precision, empathy, and impact.

If you want to stop guessing what your team needs and start growing them with intention, this episode will transform how you lead from day one to day 100—and beyond.

 

🎧 This episode will transform how you lead growth—so your people don’t just stay busy… they get better.

👉 Like what you heard? Follow the podcast, leave a review, and share with your collegues and networks!

 

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Are you ready to unlock your full potential and lead with purpose, clarity, and conviction?

The MPWR Podcast, hosted by Eric Pf

Episode Transcript

eric (00:00):
We are recording. Alright, episode nine, the trust code. If your team doesn't trust you, nothing else matters. You can have the best systems, the sharpest strategy, the clearest roles, but without trust, your team will stall out. And most of the time, trust isn't lost in one big moment. It's lost when people stop feeling seen, heard, and valued.

(00:01):
Mm-hmm. But through simple, consistent actions that connect us to other human beings.
That's such a good question and a big enough question that requires more time than we have to talk about it. But I'll try to put my finger on one of the main reasons I think and it holds true in my experience, and you can let us know whether this holds true in your experience. Okay. I think for us, whether it's entering into a new relationship, right, because all of these principles and tools we've been talking about apply in every dynamic of human engagement that we have in our lives at work and in our personal lives.
There's that initial excitement. Around. Wow, man. We all seem to like each other and there's enough chemistry and connection, but the reality is we are human beings and so give us enough time and we will begin to step on each other's toes. We will begin to operate in ways out of stress, anxiety, fear, resentment, bitterness, and a whole host of other personal experiences that will lead us to behave in ways that will break trust with others.
Because we're carrying around all of the woundedness and the trauma and the pain from our past, the risk begins to increase. And all of us as human beings, we have a risk tolerance, right, of how much we're willing to entrust ourselves to others based on how likely we are to experience injury. And I think for that reason, I know that's a long-winded answer, but for that reason, I think in order to get on with the business of business or the business of marriage and family because family is a business, right?
But I know what you and I have experienced both in our personal lives and in our professional lives and in working with, you know, now hundreds and thousands of clients is that ultimately I think what people feel is an incredible vacuum.
And I think because we are social creatures and we require connection with others, and especially to accomplish anything, you know, bigger than ourselves. We know. We know it's important, and yet I think we all feel this really deep sense of sorrow and sadness that we don't know how, or we think others don't know how to build the quality of relationships that allow us to feel safe, secure, and to be able to weather the necessary storms.
I actually give That's right in this space.
It usually amounts to people, like you said, operating in very self-protecting territorial mindsets. People unwilling to take personal responsibility to own their mistakes for fear of being exposed, right? Because that's what a lack of trust drives people toward fear and insecurity. A lack of people's ability to have hard conversations, a lack of people's ability to resolve.
I think the antidote really is the solution is that we can learn how to, what I like to call, prioritize human connection in such a way that we give others and ourselves an opportunity to build or rebuild trust. Yes. So that we can enjoy all of the benefits of human partnership.
I would love to. So I'm gonna, we're gonna unpack it in simple form. Obviously in our show notes, people have access to the diagram that gives, brings this to visual life. Mm-hmm. I, I wanna say before we jump in, this is probably the simplest tool that we have in our toolkit in terms of there's only three ingredients.
They're not trustworthy. They broke my trust. They broke my trustes, they stepped on my toes. They cheated, they lied. They gossip behind my back. But how often are we slowing down to ask the question? But are other people experiencing us as trustworthy human beings? Yeah. Alright, so the trust code is very simple.
Anyways another podcast for another time. We'll talk about that another time, not another podcast. So all significant human endeavors requires partnership with other people. And the challenge with that is, is that we then have to engage in a way that says, I'm prepared to entrust myself to you, and you're prepared to entrust yourself to me, to some degree.
And for that reason, as we get older, we become more highly sensitive to the fact that to partner with another human being requires that we engage a significant risk and the greater the partnership, the greater the risk. I tell my clients all the time, this is why when you want to get married, you go to the alter and you exchange these very.
We're entrusting so much to this other person. Yeah. That it requires this kind of level of trust. We make vows commitments to one another. It's no different than when we enter into contracts with vendors or customers. No different than when we entered into business contracts with partners to do business together.
The, the higher the risk, the greater the fear and insecurity. And most people. If they feel insecure standing on a bridge, they will quickly retreat back to the side of security. Yes. And this is what happens in our relationships. So we've distilled, like there are loads of books and podcasts and so many resources on building trust between human beings.
And so when all three are overlapping, that's where you have the conditions with, in which trust can be built, and to the degree that one or more is missing or weakened. It weakens our ability to experience trust with one another. So the three ingredients are very simple, and for those who have listened to a previous podcast when we talked about, you know, emotional intelligence and others' awareness, how we engage other folks, this will be reminiscent if anybody's read our book Leadership Gravitas.
What is my ability to engage them in a way that I'm able to see and appreciate life from their perspective. Right, because so often as human beings, we come to life kind of with our view, our perspective, our beliefs, our convictions, our values. And I tend, we tend to impose those on other people to expect that other people will see the world the way we see it.
Yeah, right. Their view, their understanding their particular interpretation of their experiences. And too often, especially in the workplace, we're in a rush to make decisions. We're in a rush to solve problems, so we don't take the time to slow down and to actually show interest in others. Right. The, the exact, the worst opposite of what we're talking about would be forms of prejudice, racism, bigotry where, you know we've kind of drawn these negative conclusions of other human beings based on, their preferences, their background, their political views, maybe they're economic or social views.
So, for example if I'm in a rough patch with my wife, or I feel like we're not connecting and communicating well. Yeah. It's amazing how quickly I start to develop a negative bias toward her so that when I come home, it's almost, I'm looking for her to do something that's gonna upset me. I'm looking for a way that she's not treating me well, or I look for a way that she might be neglecting me, or I look for a way that might be communicating, you know, my, my feelings of her judging me, or, being critical.
The opposite is true. We develop. For lack of a better word, phrase, shit colored lenses, right? Where we just start to all we, all we do is we interpret the worst possible thing from other people. And it actually diminishes and minimizes our ability to engage with them. It diminishes their feeling of being seen for who they really are.

dawn (00:21):
that. I, it, I just wanna remind everybody listening that our brains are meaning machines. And so we are constantly seeking to create when we, when there's a lack of understanding, our brain is creating that bridge. So it's a really important reminder that if you are seeking to build a trust bridge, the bridge of trust.

eric (00:22):
Yeah, it's a great question. Like how do we communicate to others that we see them? And I, I'll say a couple of things. Number one it's recognizing, like verbally recognizing those qualities in others that are valuable.
Because our emotions and things are we experience are valuable. So what I would encourage people is to think, how do I communicate and call out? The value in other people. And the challenge is that oftentimes we don't see value in others except the value we see in ourselves. And so, as leaders, we have to push beyond our own comfort zone of what's familiar to us and to ask the, and really press kinda the bounds of what we value.
The next ingredient. So I said this very important phrase. Human beings have a fundamental need to feel seen, and I'm gonna come back to that for each ingredient.
Mm-hmm. Right, so it's inviting people to make their voice heard, especially when their voice may be contrary to popular opinion, when their voice may be antagonistic to what our perspective may be. Again, making others feel heard does not mean we have to agree with them. It does not mean we have to see eye to eye with them.
People feel heard. I only feel seen now. Now they start to feel heard. The other way people need to feel heard is human beings communicate 70% of what's going on non-verbally. And we often miss, we often miss this, right? We're not paying attention to people's body language. We're not paying attention to.
They must be thinking about something else. They must be busy. They must be stressed about school. And so we don't ask, we don't inquire, we don't get curious. And so I would suggest at the practice. Of making other people feel heard is the practice of curiosity. Tell me more. Help me understand. Explain to me.
Yeah.
That's right. A hundred percent. And I tell, you know, we work with leaders all the time who are struggling to figure out a way forward with their team on a particular decision. It's a matter of business. The leader oftentimes will feel threatened by disagreement. Yes. By different viewpoints.
Yeah. So I tell people, if you want to create ownership in your team, even with your kids, about a big decision that your family's making, it's to bring them into a conversation to make them feel seen and heard and to appreciate their perspective. Even if you as the leader make a decision that is different.
Because they are essentially a budget of our time. What we value most is where most of our time is gonna go. And that was a freebie for our listeners. Most people don't think about that. Okay? So here's what I want us to think. If we want other people to feel valued, then we have to invest our value into them.
What about our energy? We can partner with other people, we can come alongside of them and we can brainstorm with them. We can offer them our energy, we can offer them our resources, right? Mm-hmm. We may have, you know, like for example, I have this client that I mentioned that I'm gonna be going and staying for a few days in a particular area, and the client said, Hey, I've got a house out there that nobody's staying in right now.
Right? Time, energy, money, the words, our knowledge, our skills. There's so many, our relational cap, capital R, reputation. Mm-hmm. So to simply ask this question, if I want to communicate value. To somebody else. It requires that I invest one of those capitals my value into that person. Yes. And when we do that and they feel valued, this is what happens.
We will build trust with other people based on these three ingredients, whether we realize it or not, whether we like it. Or not, and I can tell our listener, whether it's in my marriage with my children, with you, Dawn, as one of my team members, with our clients, with the person at the grocery store. When I'm checking out from Starbucks, it doesn't matter what I'm doing in every relationship of my life, the more that I pay attention to the level of trust that I need with the other individual to be able to partner in some activity.
A great way we can invest our value in other people is through our connections. Yeah. So when we, especially the business, when we can introduce people to people that we are connected to, that's a really valuable way that we can. Share our value with them. That's why we're, we're opening, that's why they
The bridge is already halfway completed for them because we are offering, we're loaning them our credibility, our relational capital that we've built with them. So I just wanted to touch on that really quick, but that's great. I wanna ask you this question. In your experience, you've worked with countless leaders in teams.
And so we've had to work really hard over the years to regularly in these times, wrestle with what's missing in our relationship. Mm. Mm-hmm. And I can tell you. Without question, every single time is boiled down to a lack of reciprocation. Because what happens is once we feel our toes are stepped on, somebody's broken, a little bit of trust, guess what?
And I think so often we think it's something else. It's some mystery. It's, well, you know, we just weren't meant to be, oh, we're just not, you're not my soulmate. Oh, whatever excuses we wanna make. But at the end of the day, we're, we have different passions and ambitions. We have, we've grown
I was not operating in a trustworthy fashion. I was not investing these ingredients into the other party. And so my part in that bridge was it grew too weak and the other part, the other party felt like, Hey, this is, does not feel stable for me. And who am I to judge somebody else for their risk tolerance?
We started working with an organization some years ago, and when we first started working with them they revealed. All of the possible indicators, at least the ones that I'm familiar with, that trust had been sufficiently eroded to the point where an entire executive team was siloed, fragmented. They had all basically hunkered down into their.
And all of these relationships, but then their willingness to own it at some point, and just to recognize, wow, not only have other people broken trust with me, but I've broken trust with them. That was a massive turning point. Yeah. And then we together began to work on the simple three ingredients that we're talking about today.
You have this incredibly healthy expression of an executive team who all is responsible for different divisions and departments, but who really, genuinely not only see one another on the executive team as their first team, but also regularly invest these ingredients, build trust with each other and win trust is broken 'cause it's gonna happen.

dawn (00:43):
Negative. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. We were starting from a deficit, but f. With these practical steps and with their commitment to engage in the process, they were able to build trust to the point where not only is the business more profitable, but it's a more enjoyable experience for the people on their teams, which cannot be undervalued.

eric (00:44):
Yeah, so let's give our listeners a few things that they can reflect on and it's good for our listeners to know that this is, these are the questions we ask in our coaching calls with our clients.
Roommates. How good are you, do you think, at communicating? See here in value to other folks? That's what question one. The second question, this is a, we're gonna take a little deeper here. How do you think those same people would rate you on a scale of one to 10 in terms of how they experience you communicating?
Hey, what are some areas that you think I might be able to work on? That takes a lot of courage to go to anybody and ask that question about yourself because they're gonna give us feedback, some of which may be really encouraging, and some of which may expose some potential blind spots. Now, for our advanced listeners, our advanced application, the last question and we get into this in our coaching.
Danny's situation, like we have a full blown relationship in the same way we do with others. We have it with ourselves, and the moment we wake up to that, we can ask this question, how good are we at building trust with ourself? How do we communicate, seeing ourselves, hearing ourselves, valuing.

dawn (00:48):
Absolutely. And it's the this last application, yes, it's advanced, but it's also important because what do we say all the time? You can only lead others to the extent that you lead yourself. So if you cannot see, hear, and value yourself, you are not going to be doing it very effectively for others.
And I think one of the things we determined is that these podcasts are gonna be as long as they need to be. And if they're 18 to 25 minutes, great. If they're 25 to 45 minutes, great. If they're longer, great. Our goal is not to make these bite size or really lengthy podcasts. It's just simply to share as much value as we can in a shorter a period of time as we can to make sure that we honor these conversations.
And as Eric said, if this episode hit home for you, or if you'd love to kind of dig deeper with some key people in your life, share this episode with them because it's going to give you a common language that you can, begin to excavate some of these truths here together. So go ahead and share this podcast.