The Introvert Leader

How to Turn Around a Low Morale Team

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In this episode, I’m sharing exactly how to turn around a low morale team. I’ve led teams where people were quitting, the vibe was heavy, and performance was tanking—and I’ve helped those same teams become top performers. Whether you’re leading a struggling team or just want to be ready for the challenge, this episode gives you the mindset, strategies, and real-world examples to turn things around fast.


Timestamps:
0:56 - What Does Low Morale Look Like: How to spot the early signs of low morale, from disengagement to survival mode.

3:10 - Identify the Root Causes: Three ways to dig deeper and uncover what’s really driving your team’s morale issues.

8:01 - Set The Vision/Create the Culture: What to do once you’ve diagnosed the problem—and how to rally your team around a new direction.

14:10 - Rebuild Their Confidence: Actionable ways to help your team believe in themselves again and re-engage with the work.

17:44 - Get Team Wins: Why small wins matter—and how to start building momentum when your team feels stuck.

21:53 - Story Time: A story about leading a struggling team and watching them transform into rock stars.

25:22 - Challenge For Listeners: One thing you can do this week to build confidence and boost your team’s morale.



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 Hello, this is your host, Austin Hopkins, and welcome to the Introvert Leader Podcast.

You've just taken over a 15 person team with super low morale. People are quitting left and right. Nobody wants to stay on the team. It's falling apart. What do you do? Do you fire everybody? Do you start over? Do you come in hot? Do you come in kind of quiet? What do you do? How do you navigate it? Well, that's what we wanna talk about today.

In my decade long leadership career, I turned over multiple low morale teams, and it's not the easiest thing to do, but you can do it. And so today I wanna break down how I've done it in the past. Share with you some strategies, give you the insights on how to take a low performing, low morale team and turn 'em into some rock stars.

So I wanna kick things off by kind of breaking down how to spot a low morale team. What does it look like? And low morale gives clues, right? It's obvious if you know how to look closely. So there's a couple of things that come to mind when I think about the low morale teams that I managed in my career.

The first one is teammates aren't engaged. So you're gonna see people with their head down. They're not speaking up during meetings. They may be not responding emails at all. Or if so, super slowly. Uh, they're not willing to try new stuff. They're not willing to give ideas or suggestions or just participate.

They're just disengaged. Another one is negativity. So you may notice that like when you start on this new team, people are just negative. Any new idea is fought with resistance because it's not gonna work. And we've tried this before and why even bother negativity left and right. Everywhere you look, nothing is positive, nothing's gonna work.

It's all bad. Another one is you might notice people are in survival mode. This is a bad place for employees to be in, and I've been in this place myself. But survival mode is basically, I'm not worried about trying to be my best. I'm just worried about surviving. How do I not get fired? How do I make it through the day?

How do I just get to five o'clock? That's what the vibe is for those kind of employees, and it's gonna feel heavy as well. And the last one is the team is only focused on their own needs as opposed to the entire team. So in the teams that I've taken over the low morale teams. Everybody's in it for themselves.

It's what's in it for me. It's not, how can I help? And so decisions are made for themselves. The actions they take are made for themselves. They're not thinking about anybody else but themselves because why would they? The team sucks. The team's going nowhere and there's no value in caring about others.

So if you come into a new team and you see any of those kind of things. Boom. You can tell yourself right away, you've just taken over a low morale team. But don't worry, don't cry about it. I got your back. We're gonna walk you through it. I'm gonna give you everything I've learned on how to turn those low morale teams over.

And here's what I'll say kind of just as an off subject thought is I. A low morale team is not a death sentence, just a challenge for you to work through. So maybe you haven't managed a low morale team before. Maybe you've only taken over highly performing teams, but that's okay. You can do this, and it just is gonna take some time, some patience, and really just focusing on helping the people in your care.

I. Okay, I wanna transition slightly and I wanna break down how to identify the root causes of a low morale team. So if you just go in there and try to fix it without actually knowing the root cause, you're not really treating it. So just think of yourself as like a doctor, right? So if a doctor, you go to see them and they just say, Hey, how are you feeling?

You say, my back hurts. And they say, great. Let's do surgery. They don't really know what's going on. They're just taking a guess, and they may do a surgery and may fix nothing. So really, at the end of the day, think of yourself as a doctor who's in that first session with their patient, and you're asking questions and you're figuring out what's going on, and you're asking for medical history, and you're digging deep to know what led to where we're at today.

So that's really the vibe of this section. So a couple of things that I've done in the past that have really helped me to really figure out what the root cause of morale issues are. So the first one would be. Ask for feedback from the teammates. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to meet with every single teammate, one-on-one.

Pull them aside for a one-on-one, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, whatever you decide. And I want you to just hear 'em out. I want you to ask 'em questions like, what's been going well? I. What hasn't been going well? What's been stressing you out? What is the one thing the team could do better? Really dig in to find out what's not going right, and they may not be super willing to share that with you in the very beginning because you're their new boss and they're nervous and they may be holding back.

But it's your job to get them to let their guard down, to create that safety and to show them it's okay to be honest, as long as we're not being negative and complaining, but we're just sharing what's not going well so that we can then actually make some changes. So that would be the big. First thing that I would do is I would meet with everyone individually, one-on-one to get a sense of where they're feeling.

And the reason you do it individually instead of as a group to begin with, is that some folks, they're just not comfortable sharing in group settings. They may be introverted, they may be shy, they may be worried that they're gonna get fired, they. There may be lots of reasons why they're not comfortable to share that stuff in a group setting, but if you do it one-on-one, folks are way more likely to share that with you.

Now, don't just accept their answers at face value. Dig deeper. So if they say nothing, I want you to double click on that question. So. Go in twice and ask again. So are you sure there's nothing that we can be doing better? Are you sure that there's nothing that's been maybe not as great as it could be?

Right? And again, you're trying to figure out what's really going on. What's the root cause of this low morale? And you may be surprised to hear some crazy stuff. It may be the last boss that sucked. Or it could be just the company culture, or it could be that the goals are unrealistic. It could be that there's a bad apple on the team.

It could be millions of different things. But until you ask, you don't know. Okay, next one. I want you to start to observe the team in action and then identify those themes. So it's one thing to ask everybody what's going wrong and what can we improve on. It's another thing to actually watch people. So how do you do that?

You can look at the emails they send when you're CC'd on those. You can see how they show up to client meetings when you maybe shadow them. You can see how they interact with partners. You can see how they interact with other team members or how they show up during meetings. I want you to start to observe those things.

And so a lot of times that will be you not talking so much and maybe just letting them kind of do their thing while you observe quietly. But that's a really good way to kind of find out what's going on is just to observe, to shut your mouth and, and just literally look and see what's going on. Why is the morale low?

There's gotta be a reason for it. People don't just want to be bad at their jobs and not be high performers. They wanna be high performers, but there's something getting in their way and you gotta figure out what that is. Another one that really works. Well, in this situation is. Figure out what the perception of the team is from the outside.

So I said a second ago, observe how they interact with partners. Here's where I want you to actually go talk with the different partners in your company. So who are the different teams, people, um, departments that interact with your team on a daily basis. Find out what their perception of the team is, what, what do they think is going well, what do they think is not going well, and actually schedule those meetings and meet with some of those key stakeholders.

Now, I wouldn't expect them to be as honest as the people on your team, right? Because they're worried about saving face or maybe they're worried about this new relationship. Um, and, and honestly, they just aren't close enough to the situation to know everything. But they're gonna give you some insights.

And I remember lots of times where I would meet with other partners and say like, Hey, what has my team been doing? Well. You know, before I came on border, what's something do you think that we could kind of tighten up? And I got some good feedback. And it's funny by even asking for feedback to those different partners, I built better relationships with them.

'cause it showed that like our team had humility. I had humility as a leader. I didn't think I was perfect. And then I genuinely wanted to improve the team, their performance and how they interacted with other folks within the company. So again, three things you can do. Ask for feedback from each of the individual teammates, one-on-one.

You can kind of observe them in action. Identify those different themes. And then another one is to really figure out what the perception is within the company, what others think about your team. So try those three things. I think that will definitely get you set up in the right direction to figure out what the root cause of those morale issues are.

Okay. I wanna transition slightly. So you first spotted that it's a low morale. Team things aren't going well. Then you did your research, you identified what the root cause is. So you got a couple of things that you know that you could change, that you could fix, that the team can improve to get that morale where it needs to be to get that engagement where you want it to be.

So the next step, the next super important step is. It's a refresh time. So whatever happens in the past is what's happened in the past. It's now starting from this day forward, your job, your responsibility to collaboratively set the vision and create the culture that you wanna see from the team. So when you.

Take over that new team. There's gonna be some bad habits and some things that they've done wrong and maybe standards that they really haven't upheld, and there may even be some people that shouldn't be on the team. And it's your job to set the tone, create the culture, and really set the vision with the team.

So three things you can do to really facilitate setting the vision, creating the culture. So the first thing is you gotta collaboratively set that vision. It can't just be you saying, Hey, this is what I want our team to be known for. Let's go. Go get to it. People aren't gonna do that. A vision is something that gets set collaboratively with everybody on the team.

Everybody agrees, everybody's on board. Everybody holds each other accountable. If it's just your vision, it's never gonna get the traction that you really want. It needs to be everybody's vision. So here's how I would do it. I would meet with the whole team and I would discuss exactly with them what they want the future of the team to look like.

What do they want their job to feel like? What do they want the vibe to be like within the team, within the department? What do they wanna be known for? How are they gonna get there? What will it take? And then I want you to draw a line in the sand that day. Really during that meeting let 'em know that like, Hey, I appreciate that things were not so good in the past and that maybe, you know, you're not super happy with where you're at right now, but that's in the past and starting today.

Things are new, things are getting changed. We're coming in with a brand new vision and it's gonna be better. And make sure that everyone in the room is on board with that. Now, if you're finding that some people are just not on board with that. They may be bad apples, and I'm not telling you to fire them, but it may be time for you to have a talk with them, or in some cases it may make sense to transfer 'em to something else or get them a new opportunity because they're just not a good fit for your role.

So keep that in mind. The next one, and this is really the key for any culture, is it starts with a leader. You've heard that before. Maybe I've said it, maybe you've heard it in a book or heard it on a podcast, but at the end of the day, everything that your team does is a reflection of you. So if you show up with humor, your team's gonna show up with humor.

If you demonstrate follow through, they're gonna follow through. If you demonstrate curiosity or humility, or confidence, or helping others, whatever it is, whatever you demonstrate, they're gonna pick up. Monkey see, monkey do. You've heard that, right? So at the end of the day. That's a little bit of pressure, but it's on your shoulders and it's definitely doable, but you just have to make a commitment to yourself that you.

As the leader are gonna hold yourself to a higher standard. So even when no one's looking, you're gonna do the things that you want your team to do and what you wanna be known for. So for me, I had like a, a list of core values, and I think I've shared it with them with you before, but literally there was like a, a pyramid of maybe five to seven things that I wanted us to be known for as a team.

And I literally just shared that with the team. And then I told myself every day when I got in the work, I need to act these out. So I would literally try to look at that thing a couple of times a day, would write on my screensaver, and I would just make sure that I was living that out. And so if I showed up one day and I, I wasn't really being humble, I was kind of being a little cocky, a little too confident, I'd check myself and say, Hey, Austin.

Do you want the rest of the team to do this, or do you not want them to show up this way and then I would readjust. So again, it starts with you and they're gonna pick up what you're doing. If you're buying into this new culture, if you're buying into this new vision, they're gonna buy in and they're gonna be a part of it.

The next one is create psychological safety. So I think this may be one of the most underrated ones is at the end of the day, if there is low morale, that usually means, in my experience, that the team didn't feel safe. They didn't feel safe to take risks. They didn't feel safe to push back when things didn't make sense to give feedback.

They didn't feel safe to get creative. They just didn't feel safe. So when people shut down and they don't feel safe, bad shit starts happening. You have to create psychological safety. So how do you do that? Couple of easy ways. Encouraging risks. So like literally, I would tell people like, I want you to try new stuff, stuff you haven't tried.

If you have a cool idea that you think might work, I want you to pick it up and I want you to try it. And then I want you to tell me how it went. That builds psychological safety. I want you to show them it's okay to make mistakes. So how do you do that when you make a mistake? Apologize for it. Don't make it a big deal When somebody else makes a mistake, you don't yell at them.

You don't berate them. You, you obviously give feedback when you need to give feedback, but let 'em know. It's like we're humans and perfection is not the goal. It's our best work. That's the goal. I think the last way you can really give them some psychological safety too, is autonomy. So a big problem I see with low morale teams is a lot of times the previous leader was a micromanager.

They had control. Over every little aspect of the team. And over time, the team started to feel their autonomy go away. And they started to realize like, I really can't do anything without checking with my manager. I can't cough without asking my manager's permission. I can't take a sip of water without my manager's permission.

And so what happens at, at the end of the day is people start to shut down so they don't feel safe, and your goal is to turn that around. So again. Super, super important. The low morale stuff that's happened in the past is in the past, and your job is to set the vision and create that new culture. And how do you do it?

You collaboratively set the vision, you demonstrate what you want from them, and then you create that psychological safety. If you do those three things, you are gonna get a fantastic start in turning around that team and the big way to turn around a team. Obviously to rebuild their confidence, right?

When they have low morale, their confidence is down. They're not performing their best, they're not showing up the way they should at work, and you're getting kind of a hollow weakened diversion of each of your employees. So there's a couple of things that I've done time and time again that have helped rebuild confidence.

So I wanna go through each one, give you some examples, and kind of break those down. The first one is, and I've already kind of alluded to this, which is keep the past in the past. So it's so easy when you're in one of those low morale teams, and I've been there to talk about why everything sucks. Oh my gosh, our boss sucks, and the goals are unrealistic, and I hate this and I hate that.

And this sucks and it's not going well and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can just spend all your time ruminating. And thinking about the past and staying in the past, but that's unhealthy and that does not help anybody. Now, what I'm not saying is to ignore the past, right? The past is important, and to just discount people's feelings and not have empathy.

No bueno, but keep the past in the past. Acknowledge it, but let people know like, Hey, I, I get it man, that sucked that you were going through that, but it's not who we are anymore. And I understand that in the past you had to work way more hours than you'd like because your boss wasn't good at scheduling.

But that's not gonna happen anymore. I got your back. And so really what it is, is just I. Checking people when they're spending too much time in the past, because we don't want to spend any time in the past. We wanna look at the future and the brightness of what's happening in the future. Speaking of brightness, this is a big important thing for you.

You gotta recognize those bright spots. So when a team is in low morale. Everything they look at is through a negative lens. I've said that, right? And it's your job to show them. Not everything is bad. In fact, in their team, in the bad low morale team, there are bright spots already. There are people doing amazing things.

There are new ideas that have happened, and people have just had these blinders up of negativity. They can't even see it. So it's your job to open those blinders and say, Hey, look around. There's some cool stuff, like we're doing actually cool stuff. Not everything's perfect, but like, let's not make everything negative.

Let's look at what's actually working. So recognizing those bright spots, super, super important. Again, it might be a person, it might be a thing, a process. A project they've done, I don't know what it is, but look for those bright spots, looks for the cool stuff that's actually going well already, and it will start to rebuild people's confidence and be like, oh my gosh, maybe we're not as bad as we thought.

Or, oh my goodness, there is stuff that's going on. That's good. Another one that I think can really rebuild confidence is creating autonomy and empowering your team to make decisions. So most likely, like I said, a moment ago, your team was micromanaged, and so over time they start to shut down. They start to be less.

Willing to take risks, get outta their comfort zone, empowered to make decisions. And so you may find that like when you take over a new low morale team, they may come to you way more than you'd expect for every little thing. Like, Hey, what do you think we should do here? How do I respond there? How do I do this?

And these are all things that you're confident they can handle, but because they've been beaten down over time and been told that it's not okay to make decisions on your own, it's not okay to take risks to do all this kind of stuff. They start to doubt themself. Their confidence gets down. So your job is to show them you're smart, you can handle this.

I give you the permission, the empowerment to go make decisions. I trust you, and if it doesn't work out, we'll figure it out. It's not a culture of you come to me before you make a decision. That is the opposite of what you want for a high morale team. You want it to be the exact opposite You want it to be where everybody is doing their own thing and you're just kind of there making micro adjustments.

You're not necessarily making all the decisions and doing all the things. That's really not your job as a leader. I think the last one that's super, super important to rebuild confidence is get them some quick wins. So find a way. To help your team get quick wins. This changes how the team sees itself. So the next section is a perfect transition and it's all about getting wins.

So. Usually with a low morale team, they haven't had wins recently, like I've said before, performance isn't good. Reputation maybe isn't good, people aren't happy, and so they're not getting wins, right? Because if we're getting lots of wins and everything's going well within the team, we probably don't have low morale.

So here are a couple things that I think you can do. To start getting your team some wins. So four things. So the first one is help your team get some easily attainable small wins. So it may be tempting to like say, okay, we wanna change the world, we wanna change the whole way our company does business, and try to pick some big, huge goal to get a win with.

And I would recommend that you don't do that. I would recommend you start with something small. Something may be even that they're already doing right, but they don't realize, or people haven't noticed yet. So pick something very, very small. And I'll give you an example. When I was taking over a low morale team, something I remember one team was doing really well that they didn't even know they were doing, which was they had amazing follow up with their customers.

I took over this team, and I'll tell you more about 'em later, but they had amazing follow up. They were following up with all their customers. Their customers loved it. They were getting great recognition from their customers, but they didn't even realize that was special, and no one else in the company knew that that was happening.

So sometimes all it is is just highlighting the things that they're already doing. And so that's the next one is recognize and celebrate wins. I want you to. Basically tell yourself that your new team is going to be flooded with recognition. I want people to get so stink and tired of being recognized and talking about recognition that they maybe start even rolling their eyes.

I say that all in a joking manner, but at the end of the day, recognition is a fantastic way to get the team where they need to be and start recognizing those wins. And it's not a one-time thing. And it's not just during meetings, it's during one-on-ones. It's every interaction you can think of to.

Recognize someone for something they're doing, cool, do it. They're gonna feel better. And those wins, like I said, it's gonna build their confidence. And guess what? Maybe they start recognizing others within the team. Now, another thing that I think is really interesting, so we're kind of focused on internally what we can do with the team, but I also think as a leader who's taking over a new team, it's your job to manage the perception and how that team is perceived within the company.

Right? So here's what I would start doing, is I would start marketing those wins externally. So how do you find ways to. Highlight what your team's doing well with other partners. Maybe it's when you're interacting with other partners. Maybe it's on all team calls. I don't know how you wanna do it, but if you can start getting the perception to change that your team is getting wins outside of your team, your team's gonna feel that.

And then you're gonna start shifting that perception, like I've said within the company. And that's gonna do amazing things. Team's gonna start feeling good. Other partners, business units are gonna start looking at your team in a different light. All good things come from this. And the last one I touched on earlier, which is focus on the small wins.

Do not go for the big wins. Do not try to change everything at once. Don't swing for the fences in the first month. I just need you to start small, just like a kid, right? They crawl first, then they walk, then they run. Same thing with getting big wins, which is focus on little stuff, then medium stuff, then bigger stuff, and it builds.

You'll find that there's momentum. You get enough small wins, you get a couple medium wins, you get enough medium wins, you get a couple of large wins. You get a couple of large wins. You're doing some cool stuff at that point. So that was usually my focus, is just finding small little wins. It could be turning projects in on time.

It could be tightening up organizational procedures. It could be your communication standards within the team. I don't know what it is for you, but find something small that can give the confidence to your team that, Hey, this is a winning team. Because guess what, when you start winning. More of that happens and more of that happens and more of that happens.

It's so weird how it just snowballs and gets bigger and bigger and bigger the more you go on. So today we talked about how to turn around low morale on the team. We talked about how to spot it, how to identify the root causes. We talked about the different strategies to turn around, to build confidence, to get the team outta their comfort zone, to get them doing cool stuff.

I wanna transition and I wanna tell you a story about a time I took over a team who had some of the lowest morale. You could ever imagine. So it was a small team of three, and they were a non-client facing team. They sat in an office somewhere and they processed applications, and that's all I really knew about the team.

So I remember going into that team for the first time and meeting with everybody individually and then having a team meeting, and I just could get the sense right away, these girls were beat down. First off. No one knew what they did, so they had no. Reputation within the company. Literally, I don't think anyone knew what they actually did except for the three people on the team.

So number one, that was a, a challenge, right? Number two is I could just tell that this team was given zero autonomy and zero empowerment previously from their old manager. So little things like, Hey Austin, I need to go to the bathroom. Is that okay? Or, Hey, Austin, can I send this email? And I thought to myself.

My goodness, you are adults and you have been made to feel like you don't have any value to make decisions like what is going on here so quickly? I had to meet with them and let them know, Hey, whatever's happened in the past is happened in the past. We're starting fresh today. I have got your back. I think you're intelligent.

I think you're smart. I think you can do these things even if you don't believe you can right now. I know it's in you, and I wanna see what you guys have, and it's funny. Slowly but surely, I started to see each one of those folks on the team grow into complete bad asses. I watched the supervisor become a manager.

I watch the employees. Take on new roles, get outta their comfort zone. I literally watched these three women turn into absolute rock stars right before my eyes, and it was almost kind of hard to recognize them. From the six months prior when I first met them, I mean, these were people that could barely make eye contact with me in the beginning, and by the end they were making jokes.

I felt comfortable around them. They felt comfortable around me. They were actually proactively selling stuff, which is like the scariest thing in the world for them, and it's just ghost to show. You can literally turn around any team that you could ever imagine. It doesn't matter if things have been bad, it doesn't matter if they've been beat down, if they had a bad manager, if the company culture's not good, if they don't think they can do it, it can be turned around.

It just takes you to believe in them and it takes you to give them the space, the confidence, to really show up and be the best version of themselves. Because here's the truth, every single person is capable of cool stuff. It just takes someone to believe in them and to say, Hey. I think you can do this. I think you can turn around what's been going on.

So I share that story with you today to kind of just show you that like even small teams, even of the worst of teams, can literally turn around and do some really cool stuff. Now, before I give you a challenge today, maybe you have a team that's struggling. Maybe they don't have good morale. Maybe the performance isn't what you want it to be.

Maybe you have some bad apples. Maybe you just have some problems with other partners within the company. With your team. I don't know what it is for you, but if you were facing some serious leadership issues, I'd love to see if I can help. I literally have built my coaching practice, helping leaders get through this kind of stuff, how to turn around their teams, how to make sure that every single person that shows up.

Is the best version of themselves. So if that's something you think you might need help with, I want you to click the link in the description, or it's gonna be right here on the screen, sts-coaching.com, and I'd love to see if we'd be a good fit to work together. So to wrap things up, here's the challenge for today.

I want you to take a look at your own team. I want you to look for any of those key signs of low morale. Are any of those things starting to creep up? And if so, I want you to find one small win that you can give your team this week. What's one thing you can do to help get their confidence up? Because here's the key to everything, when your team is confident.

They're performing better. There is no morale issues. You're gonna be happier. They're gonna be happier. So I hope you found some value today. I wanna say thank you so much for listening. Make it a great day.

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