June 11, 2025
When a founder says, “We have a people problem,” what they usually mean is: “My team isn’t doing what I need them to do.”
And when HR gets called in to “fix” it, the real root often isn’t miscommunication, low engagement, or a broken hiring process. It’s leadership.
Most “people problems” are just symptoms. And symptoms, if you pay attention, point somewhere.
At Polaris Pathways, I’ve seen many “people problems” dissolve once we named what was really going on: unclear priorities, inconsistent delegation, or reactive shifts. Fix the leadership pattern, and the team often recalibrates on its own.
Let’s unpack what they’re really telling you.
1. We have a communication issue.
You probably don’t. You have a clarity issue. Or a courage issue.
If your team isn’t aligned, it’s not because they haven’t had enough all-hands meetings or Slack updates. It’s because the decision-making loop is muddy - or worse, centralized in one person’s head.
Communication follows structure. And the structure starts at the top. If expectations shift constantly, or if priorities are reshuffled weekly based on vibes, your team is reacting, not operating.
2. My team isn’t stepping up.
That’s not a performance problem. That’s a trust and ownership problem.
Ask yourself:
Leaders unintentionally train their teams to be passive by being too available, too vague, or too reactive. If everyone’s waiting for your green light, you’ve accidentally made yourself the bottleneck.
3. We’re hiring good people, but still getting stuck.
You might be—but the way decisions are made hasn’t scaled with the team.
When an early-stage company grows from five to twenty to fifty people, the number of decisions increases exponentially.
But if all major choices still route through the same 1–2 people, bottlenecks form and frustration builds.
The team isn’t failing. They’re waiting. For context. For priorities. For clarity on what they own and what’s still held at the top.
4. We’re burning people out.
Burnout isn’t just about workload. It’s about meaninglessness and misalignment.
If your team feels like they’re sprinting in circles, it’s usually because:
Burnout often signals poor leadership clarity, not just workload.
A study published in Leadership Styles, Emotion Regulation, and Burnout found that leaders experiencing role ambiguity and conflicting priorities suffer higher emotional exhaustion.
That means “people problems” driven by burnout often start with unclear leadership structures.
You don’t need a meditation app. You need a plan - and the discipline to stick with it long enough for people to see their progress.
5. They’re missing deadlines.
That’s not just a productivity issue. It’s likely a sequencing issue.
When deadlines start slipping across the board, it’s easy to assume people are inefficient. But often, it’s the order of operations—not the effort—that’s broken.
Teams are juggling priorities that weren’t defined to one another. They’re blocked on dependencies that no one named.
When everything is marked “urgent,” nothing gets finished. Missed timelines are often just missed coordination at the leadership level.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Every people issue is also a leadership mirror.
And if you’re willing to look at what’s being reflected—not just at what’s being said—you can fix the root, not just the symptoms.
6. No one’s bringing up issues.
That might sound like harmony. It might actually be fear.
When teams stop raising concerns, it’s rarely because they’ve disappeared. It’s because they’ve decided it’s not safe or useful to speak up.
Maybe feedback gets ignored. Maybe decisions get reversed without explanation. Maybe no one knows how disagreement is handled here.
Silence isn’t always agreement. Sometimes it’s self-protection.
And if no one’s challenging your thinking, you may have accidentally built a culture of cautious compliance instead of engaged ownership.
7. We’ve got a culture problem.
You might. But cultural problems usually start as leadership contradictions.
It’s not the off-site agenda. It’s the gap between what you say and what people see.
You talk about trust, but decisions happen behind closed doors. You talk about balance, but reward overwork. You roll out values, but model the opposite under pressure.
Culture isn’t breaking down. It’s responding to inputs. And most of those inputs start at the top.
Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person, not just an employee, are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. - Anne M. Mulcahy, CEO, Xerox
—Michelle
Before you go, a few questions to sit with: