When something goes wrong in your business, who gets the blame? If your answer is “the team,” brace yourself – this might sting.

Let’s start with a simple truth: we get the employees we deserve. If someone isn’t performing, who hired them? Who trained them? Who manages them? The finger almost always points back up the organisation chart.

Who’s really at fault?

If your employee isn’t great at their job, maybe they shouldn’t have been hired. If they were great when they started, but now they’re average, that’s a management problem. If they’ve been “average” since day one and nobody’s dealt with it, that’s a leadership problem. In other words, you.

You can’t expect A-Players to show up and thrive in a system designed for mediocrity. And if you attract A-Players but turn them into B- or C-Players through poor management, what you’ve really built is a performance suppression machine.

So, when you catch yourself muttering about how your people “just don’t get it,” pause for a second. Maybe they do get it – they’ve simply learned that excellence isn’t rewarded, initiative isn’t recognised, and accountability isn’t enforced.

The Maths Doesn’t Lie

If you hire well, train well, and manage well, you don’t complain about employees. If you do complain, something in that chain is broken – and it’s not them.

A mediocre manager, hiring mediocre people, and providing mediocre training will never build an exceptional business. The absolute best you’ll ever achieve is… mediocre success. Which, frankly, sounds like an awful way to spend a career.

So what’s the fix?

Become a better manager. Invest in yourself the way you expect your employees to invest in their jobs. Read, listen, learn – it doesn’t matter how you do it, but it absolutely matters that you do it.

If you’re a business owner, ask yourself:

  • Do my senior leaders have personal development goals?
  • Do they think learning is for everyone else?
  • Have I modelled growth, or just demanded it from others?

The performance of a business is basically the average quality of its leadership multiplied by the average quality of its team. So if you’re not happy with your results, stop blaming the denominator. Start improving the multiplier.