5 habits that separate growing teams from stagnant ones

Why this story matters: In this feature, we move past the sensationalism to look at a genuine success story—one that emphasizes collaboration over conflict and results over rhetoric.

Quick summary: This story highlights recent developments related to high-performing leaders, showing how constructive action can lead to meaningful results.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM

The strategy is fine. The team is capable. But at the end of the quarter, the needle hasn’t moved. Julie Turpin, Chief People Officer at Brown & Brown, says this pattern almost always traces back to the same thing: habits.

“Results that stick are built by habits that stick over time,” she writes. The gap between leaders who outperform and those who don’t isn’t talent. It’s what they do, day after day, when no one is watching.

One data point that tends to land hard: knowledge workers spend 60 percent of their time on “work about work,” chasing status updates, sitting through unfocused meetings, switching between tools. That’s not a strategy problem. That’s a habits problem that compounds.

1. Audit your habits before you overhaul them

Most organizations measure outputs. Few are honest about the inputs: the daily behaviors that produce them, or steadily undermine them.

Start with yourself. How do you spend the first 30 minutes of your workday? Do you follow up when you say you will? Then look at your team and engage in the same process of mapping what’s working and what’s not. Pick one behavior to shift.

2. Question the habits nobody’s questioning

Most professional habits weren’t chosen. They were absorbed. Meeting formats, decision processes, or how teams communicate often operate a certain way because nobody stopped to ask why.

“The habits leaders never question become the habits their teams inherit, whether productive or not,” Turpin writes. Find which ones, if changed, would speed up decisions and cut unnecessary friction. Then make the new behavior the default, not the exception.

3. Tie habits to who you’re becoming, not what you’re chasing

Leaders who block time for development conversations are saying something about who they are. That kind of behavior carries itself. Quarterly targets don’t.

When a habit connects to the leader you’re actively trying to become, it becomes self-reinforcing. The honest question: do your daily habits match that person, or do they match whoever is just getting through the week?

4. Design the environment before you need the willpower

High-performing teams don’t rely on discipline to keep good habits going. They build environments where those habits happen automatically.

Block strategic thinking time before the week fills in. Set standing check-ins so important conversations stop getting bumped. Schedule weekly reviews so reflection is built in, not dependent on someone remembering. “Consistency and discipline aren’t always character traits,” Turpin explains. “They happen when leaders ensure the right structures are in place.”

5. Use accountability before something breaks

Most organizations reach for accountability after a failure. The leaders who consistently outperform use it proactively, before the work is done.

Declaring a goal to someone whose judgment you respect changes the odds. “Find one person whose judgment you respect, tell them what you’re committed to building, and ask them to hold you to it,” Turpin suggests. “That single act changes the odds considerably.”

Habits are the one thing you can actually control

Market conditions shift. Good people leave. Habits don’t have to follow either. “Habits, unlike talent or market conditions, are entirely within your control,” writes Turpin.

The gap between teams that grow and teams that plateau is almost always the distance between what leaders intend to do and what they actually do. That’s fixable.

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