Why leading with soul is essential to building a high-performance team

Every great team begins with soul, writes Brad Giles.

Soul is the spark that makes people care and the shared sense of purpose that gives work meaning. When a team has soul, energy flows easily. People trust one another and take pride in what they achieve together.

But over time, that soul can fade. Teams drift towards toxicity if leaders do not keep working on them. Small misalignments grow into frustration and disconnection. Communication becomes guarded. What once felt united starts to fragment.

That is drift, and it happens in every organisation. The longer leaders ignore culture, the faster it erodes. Working on the business, not just in it, is how we fight drift. Culture is not fixed; it requires constant attention to stay healthy. When we work on culture, we protect the soul of the team.

Growth makes this even more challenging. As a company expands, communication lines lengthen and systems multiply. The faster the business grows, the faster the drift towards toxicity accelerates. When people, layers, and pressure increase without equal focus on quality and values, the organisation begins to lose parts of its soul. Growth for growth’s sake magnifies the problem and can push a team into what I call the Bigger Team Doom Loop.

The Bigger Team Doom Loop

A Doom Loop is a downward cycle where one negative action triggers another, creating a self-reinforcing pattern of decline. Each step makes the next more likely, and over time, the organisation loses momentum, quality, and morale. In the Bigger Team Doom Loop, the problem begins with pressure to grow and ends with dysfunction that fuels the very pressures that caused it.

It begins when leaders feel pressure to scale and respond by hiring B and C players to fill roles quickly. Those hires reduce capability and form dysfunctional, unproductive teams. As dysfunction increases, efficiency drops, and people focus on low-impact work rather than what matters most.

The result is poor performance. Leaders misinterpret those poor results as evidence that the business needs to grow even bigger to recover. They push for aggressive growth to solve problems, hiring even more people at speed. Each addition compounds the original issue: more people, more noise, less alignment.

Eventually, culture weakens, frustration rises, and the business becomes harder to lead. What started as an ambition to grow becomes a cycle of low efficiency, poor results, and disengagement. The harder the company pushes, the faster the Doom Loop spins. It is a predictable descent that trades soul for size.

This is how drift accelerates. When leaders chase growth without discipline, they trade quality for speed and lose the very essence that once made their team strong.

The Better Team Flywheel

The way out of the Doom Loop is to focus on building better, not bigger. The Better Team Flywheel shows how strength compounds through deliberate action.

It starts when leaders select A players infused with passion, people who share the organisation’s values and energy. Those people build high-performing, productive teams with soul, where trust and collaboration thrive.

Aligned teams create higher efficiency and focus on high-impact work. That focus produces outstanding results, which enhance the reputation of the organisation as a great place to work. A strong reputation replenishes and grows the talent pipeline, attracting more A players infused with passion.

Each turn of the Flywheel strengthens the next. Passion drives performance, performance builds pride, and pride attracts more passionate people. Instead of draining energy, the organisation compounds it. This is how teams grow stronger while preserving their soul.

Reclaiming the soul of the organisation

Soul gives work meaning. It binds people through trust, pride, and care. When it fades, culture drifts and toxicity fills the space left behind.

For HR leaders, protecting that soul is essential. As technology automates more of what we do, meaning, trust, and connection become the ultimate competitive advantages.

Watch for signs of drift early. If communication slows, if decision making drags, if people start saying “they” instead of “we”, that is drift taking hold. The solution is always the same: build better, not bigger.

When you invest in people who care, build teams with purpose, and protect the culture that unites them, the soul of the organisation grows stronger with every turn of the Flywheel, and that is what keeps a business truly alive.

Brad Giles is a leadership team coach and author.