The Game-Changing Technique That Will Transform Your Team’s Performance

Stop chasing numbers. Start leading from the inside out.

How Many Times Have You Wanted to Change a Number?

Your bank account balance. Your department’s monthly profits. Your team’s customer service scores.

We’ve all been there—staring at a number, willing it to change, thinking, If only I could get that score up…But this is where most leaders get stuck.

The number isn’t the goal. It’s just the indicator. The real magic isn’t in the metric—it’s in the root cause behind it.

The Mistake We Keep Making

When we want a different result, we focus outside of ourselves. We push harder, control more, hustle endlessly. A single woman wanting to get married will jump on dating apps, change her hair, and exhaust herself "searching" for someone. A boss trying to hit performance scores will assign more tasks, talk about the numbers every day, and throw money at “fixes.”

The problem? We’re treating the number like the goal instead of understanding what creates it.

When You Stop Chasing, Everything Shifts

Have you ever had this happen?

You work relentlessly toward something, and as soon as you stop trying so hard—it finally shows up.

🔸 After seven months of nonstop job applications and interviews, you finally surrender, take a trip to decompress… and that’s when the job offer comes in.

🔸 You try for years to have a baby. Nothing works. You finally start the adoption process, and suddenly, you’re pregnant.

This isn’t luck. It’s the energetic shift that happens when you move from forcing to flowing. When you stop operating from lack and start operating from wholeness.

You cannot create from desperation. You can only attract from fullness.

What’s Standing in the Way? Your Shadow.

So how do you make this shift?

You start by looking at the parts of yourself you’ve been hiding—what psychologists and leadership experts often call your shadow. The patterns you’ve developed to be accepted, liked, or successful.

By the time most of us reach adulthood, we’ve spent 30, 40, 50 years layering on masks:

• To make our parents happy

• To avoid being teased

• To fit in at school or at work

• To meet societal expectations

  
  

And in doing so, we bury the very qualities that make us magnetic, remarkable, and creative.

My Personal Journey: The Power of Self-Trust

For most of my life, I was teased for being “too emotional.” I believed it was a flaw. I tried to hide it. But over time, I learned that my emotions weren’t my weakness—they were my superpower.

One powerful example: Recently, my intuition kept telling me to reach out to an ex-boyfriend. I ignored it at first (because who calls their ex out of nowhere, right?).But the feeling wouldn’t go away. It nagged at me for two days until I finally called him. It turns out, he had just lost his best friend in a tragic accident.

My emotions sensed something my brain couldn’t. That’s the power of learning to trust yourself.

Another example happened at work. I felt overwhelmed, anxious, misunderstood. I shut myself in my office, drowning in tasks, trying to be the “fixer” and the “doer”—believing that if I could make everything run perfectly, people would finally see me and appreciate me.

But my instincts were screaming at me to stop, to speak up, to share what I knew. After all, I’d spent nearly two decades studying human behavior and team dynamics. When I finally gave myself permission to use my voice instead of just checking off tasks, everything shifted. The pressure lifted. The energy changed.

Why the Numbers Aren’t Moving

Let’s bring this back to leadership and team performance.

Say you’re hyper-focused on customer service scores. You’re reminding your team every day about the number. You’re micromanaging, setting new protocols, even spending money on improvements—but nothing is really changing.

Because the number isn’t the root. It’s the reflection.

The guest survey scores don’t create themselves. They are the direct result of your team’s actions, which are driven by your team’s beliefs, which are shaped by the experiences you create as their leader.

The Results Pyramid: The Missing Link

There’s a powerful model used in organizational leadership called the Results Pyramid, developed by Partners In Leadership. It’s been around for decades, and it breaks it down like this:

Experiences → Beliefs → Actions → Results

Your guest survey score is a result. That result is shaped by the actions of your employees. Their actions are driven by their beliefs—about themselves, their team, their leadership. And those beliefs are created by their experiences, which you, as the leader, influence every day.

📊 Research backs this up:

• Gallup found that highly engaged teams see 21% higher profitability and 20% higher customer ratings.

• Companies that foster strong, people-centered cultures are 3 times more likely to outperform competitors (McKinsey & Co.).

  
  

When humans feel good about themselves, they perform. When we try to force people to meet numbers instead of nurturing the environment that drives them, we face resistance.

How to Start Changing Results—Today

If you want better numbers, stop looking at the number.

Instead, ask yourself:

✅ How supported does my team feel?

✅ Do they feel seen and heard?

✅ Am I modeling self-trust and authenticity—or am I performing to meet someone else’s standards?

✅ Are we creating space for uniqueness and human connection—or are we forcing systems that squash creativity?

Final Thought

The service your team gives your customers is a direct reflection of the service you give your team. When you shift how you show up—when you start honoring yourself, trusting your instincts, and creating an empowering environment—you unlock the very thing you’ve been chasing.

The magic isn’t in the metric. The magic is in you. And when you tap into that, everything changes.

✨ Ready to lead differently? Follow Ciao Bella Leadership for more transformational leadership insights—and learn how to build teams that thrive from the inside out.