When someone on the team makes a visible mistake, what usually happens?

Someone gets quietly blamed, and people remember it

It's smoothed over in public but picked apart in private

It depends entirely on who made it

It's discussed openly, though it still feels uncomfortable

It's treated as information — we fix the cause, not the person

How comfortable are people admitting "I don't know" or floating a half-formed idea?

Almost nobody does it — you're expected to arrive with answers

Only the most senior people can get away with it

Some people do, some never would

Most people do, in the right setting

Routinely, at every level — rough thinking out loud is normal here

How often do teammates ask each other for help before a problem becomes urgent?

Almost never — asking early looks like weakness

Only once something is already on fire

Occasionally, and usually to the same one or two people

Fairly often, across most of the team

Constantly — asking early is just how work gets done

If you asked five teammates what the single top priority is this quarter, how similar would the answers be?

Roughly three or four different answers

Mostly the same, with different emphasis

Essentially the same answer, in the same words

How clear is it who owns what?

Unclear — things fall through the gaps regularly

Clear on paper, ignored in practice

Clear for core work, murky for anything new or cross-team

Mostly clear; occasional overlaps get sorted quickly

Every significant piece of work has one named owner and everyone knows who

Does the team share a definition of what "good work" looks like?

No — "good" means whatever the loudest reviewer says that day

It exists informally; newcomers have to guess

It's written down for most work and mostly followed

It's explicit, shared, and we actually hold work to it

When someone misses a commitment they made to the team, what happens?

Nothing — it's absorbed silently and resentment builds

The manager handles it privately; the team never hears

It's raised only if it caused visible damage

It's usually named and re-planned openly

It's flagged early by the owner themselves, before the deadline slips

How do peers handle it when a teammate's work isn't up to standard?

They complain to each other and to the manager, never to the person

They quietly redo the work themselves

They escalate to the manager and let them deal with it

Most will say something directly, though it takes them a while

Peer-to-peer feedback is normal, direct and expected — no escalation needed

What share of decisions made in team meetings actually get executed as decided?

Very few — decisions get quietly reopened or forgotten

Nearly all — decisions leave the room with an owner and a date

How does the team handle genuine disagreement on an important decision?

It turns personal, or someone shuts it down

People go silent in the room and vent afterwards

Only a couple of confident voices ever push back

We debate it, though it takes effort to get everyone in

We argue the substance hard, stay respectful, and get to a better answer

Once a decision is made, how do the people who disagreed behave?

They undermine it or slow-walk it

They comply on the surface and keep relitigating in private

Most get behind it once they've said their piece

They commit fully and say so out loud — disagree and commit is the norm

How much of the real conversation happens in the meeting versus in DMs and hallways afterwards?

The meeting is theatre; everything real happens elsewhere

Most of the real talk is in back channels

Mostly in the meeting, with some side chat

Almost all of it in the room — side channels are for logistics, not positions

Which of these describes you best?

I'm a senior leader above this team

I'm an external coach or consultant assessing a client's team

I'm in HR / People and supporting this team

How Strong Is Your Team? The Team Health Scorecard 🤝

Most teams don't fail because people lack talent. They fail because trust is thin, priorities are fuzzy, commitments quietly slip, and the real conversation happens after the meeting instead of in it.

This team health scorecard scores your team across four dimensions that decades of team-effectiveness research keep pointing at: Trust & Psychological Safety, Clarity & Alignment, Accountability & Ownership, and Conflict & Communication. Twelve questions, about four minutes, and you get a radar chart showing which dimension is dragging the others down.

Best used with the whole team, not alone. One person's answers give you one person's view. Send this to everyone on the team, have each of them answer separately, then lay the radar charts side by side — the questions your teammates answered differently from you are the most valuable conversation available to you. Put the same team name in the last question so the results line up.

Answer as the team actually behaves on a normal week — not how it behaves on its best day.

A diverse team collaborating around a table in an office