If you think leading a high-performing sales team is about pushing harder or setting bigger targets, you’re missing the point and the opportunities for real growth.
This month, working alongside dozens of top executives and sales managers in our program, we surfaced a deeper leadership truth: Leadership is about helping your team think differently about who they are and what they can achieve.
Here’s what the best leaders are leaning into right now and what might be missing from your leadership playbook.
Motivation Is Personal, Not Positional
Too often, leaders try to "motivate" people using external rewards or pressure. The truth is that motivation doesn't stick unless it relates to a person’s core identity.
This month, we had our clients dig into the distinction between identity and role. If your team connects its self-worth to its quota or title, it will crack under pressure. Great leaders help their people understand that who they are is bigger than what they do. That’s what fuels resilience, creativity, and risk-taking.
Leadership Lesson: Challenge your managers to separate role performance from personal worth in their coaching conversations. Help your people build their self-esteem and internal motivation.
Trust Is Built in the Smallest of Moments
Leaders are often obsessed with the big moments, quarterly reviews, deal wins, and major meetings, but trust isn’t really built there. Your team expects you to pay attention to the big things
Trust is built in the 1:1 debriefs, coaching conversations, and little interactions when you invite honest conversations about where a rep feels stuck and when you make it safe for someone to say, "I don’t know how to do this." It is built when, instead of fixing a problem for them, you coach them through it.
Our best clients realize that discipline and trust aren't opposites. They’re partners. Setting clear expectations and holding people accountable is an act of trust.
Leadership Lesson: Audit your response when your team misses expectations. Are you building a culture of safety and learning or fear and excuses?
Comfort Zones Are the Real Growth Killer
Every leader says they want their people to grow. Few are willing to confront the real enemies: comfort and complacency.
We asked our clients to reflect on their own leadership comfort zones. Unsurprisingly, many of them realized they were avoiding hard conversations, stepping in to "save the deal," or tolerating mediocre performance because they didn’t want to lose a team member.
High-growth leaders are modeling discomfort. They’re openly asking for help when they need it. They’re showing vulnerability. And they’re teaching their teams that growth never feels easy, but that’s exactly how hard it should feel. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
Leadership Lesson: Take a hard look at where you’re avoiding discomfort. Your team will see it and mirror it.
Preparation Without Authenticity Kills Performance
Many sales teams are swinging too far into "prep." They research the buyer, script the call, rehearse every objection, and then show up stiff and transactional. Reading off the slides instead of connecting with the buyer.
Our clients worked through this tension this month. Preparation is essential, but when it becomes a shield to avoid vulnerability or real discovery, it backfires.
Great leaders aren’t just pushing for more prep. They’re coaching how to prepare the right way. That means focusing on why you’re preparing: to ask better questions, to listen more deeply, and to stay curious when things don't go as planned.
Leadership Lesson: Stop coaching to "perfect" calls. Coach to real calls, the messy, human ones where preparation meets presence.
Stop Fixing Problems. Start Fixing Thinking.
One of the most transformational realizations this month? You can't outwork bad thinking.
If your team sees every buyer objection as a rejection, no amount of technique will fix it. If they see recording a sales call as "spying" instead of improving, they’ll resent the opportunity for feedback.
Leadership isn’t about solving tactical problems. It’s about changing the way your people see the problem in the first place.
Leadership Lesson: In your next debrief, don't just ask, "What happened?" Ask, "What were you thinking at that moment?"
Final Thought
The leaders who will build the next generation of world-class sales teams aren’t the ones who yell the loudest or push the hardest. They’re the ones who are willing to do the work themselves, to think differently, to lead differently, and to help their people see themselves differently.
If you’re ready to stop playing small with your leadership impact, we’re here to help. We’re running advanced leadership sessions this quarter to build your leadership muscles. Reach out if you’re ready to get to work.
