1. “What does winning look like for this team?”
Why it works: Our research finds only 1 in 7 teams share a definition of winning. Each person optimizing for a slightly different goal is why individual excellence stops adding up to a collective result.
Listen for: count the different answers. Three or more versions from ten people means effort is radiating outward, not compounding.
2. “How do decisions really get made around here?”
Why it works: Fewer than 1% of teams have explicitly agreed how they'll work together. Everyone is reading from a slightly different script, and nobody wrote either one down.
Listen for: “it depends who's in the room,” “officially or actually?” or a laugh before the answer.
3. “What gets said after the meeting that never gets said in it?”
Why it works: The real issues live in the hallway. When honest conversation happens one to one after the meeting instead of inside it, the team is paying an alignment tax on every decision.
Listen for: a pause, then “honestly?” The length of the pause is a measure of psychological safety.
4. “What have you stopped raising, because nothing changed the last time you tried?”
Why it works: This is the one that predicts more than the other four combined. It measures learned silence: the accumulated resignation that precedes quiet exits and busy-but-stuck delivery. People rarely leave over a problem; they leave after concluding problems don't get fixed here.
Listen for: how fast the answer comes. An instant answer means the list is long and rehearsed. This is your retention risk register, read aloud.
5. “If you ran this team, what would you change first?”
Why it works: It surfaces the backlog of friction everyone can see but nobody owns, and it shows you who still has energy invested in this team versus who has already checked out.
Listen for: overlap. If four people name the same change, you've found your first 30-day win, pre-endorsed by the team.
What the answers add up to. Fragmented definitions of winning, unwritten rules, post-meeting honesty, learned silence, and a shared but unowned fix-list have a name: Teamitis™, the gap between what a team could deliver and what it does. Left alone, it quietly costs up to 80% of the outcome a team is capable of. It's treatable, and treatment starts with measurement.
Want the measured version? The free Co-Exponential™ team assessment takes two minutes and shows you where your team sits on the dimensions behind these five questions, instantly. When you want every team member's answers, measured and costed, that's the Teamitis™ Diagnostic: your baseline for the first 90 days.
Want this in your inbox?
We'll send you the PDF so you have it for your next round of 1:1s.
Thanks. We'll email you the brief shortly.
Something went wrong. Please try again, or email [email protected] and we'll send it to you.
Taking over a team or stepping into a new mandate?
Book a 25-minute call to talk through what the answers tell you.
Pick a time