Steven OnanaWhen a team loses momentum, we usually know who gets the call.
The manager.
Engagement is down? Fix it.
Performance is slipping? Fix it.
People aren’t collaborating? Fix it.
But here’s something I’ve been wondering after years of managing teams:
How much of a team’s momentum can a manager actually control?
A manager can set direction, clarify expectations, and create opportunities for collaboration.
But can they force people to trust one another? To share what they know? To care about each other’s success?
And what happens when the conditions making work difficult are outside the manager’s control?
Maybe team momentum isn’t something a manager creates.
Maybe it’s something a team generates when the right conditions exist.
And maybe understanding that distinction changes how we think about leadership.
What Is Team Momentum?
Think about a team you’ve been part of where things just seemed to click.
People understood where they were going.
They knew what mattered.
Problems still happened, but the team could work through them without every issue becoming a crisis.
Information moved. People supported one another. Progress created confidence, and that confidence made the next challenge feel more manageable.
There was a sense that the team was moving forward together.
That’s what I think of as team momentum.
My working definition is this:
Team momentum is a collective state in which people share a sense of direction, make meaningful progress, and have the confidence and capacity to keep moving forward together.
It’s not simply motivation.
A team can feel motivated but struggle to coordinate.
It’s not the same as productivity.
People can be extremely busy without making meaningful collective progress.
And it’s certainly not a state in which everyone agrees, everything runs smoothly, and nobody experiences stress.
Momentum is about the team’s ability to move forward together, even when the work is difficult.
You can often recognize it in everyday behaviors.
Problems are surfaced early. People follow through on commitments. Knowledge moves between teammates. Difficult conversations happen before frustration turns into resentment.
The team isn’t necessarily moving faster every day.
But it has developed a way of moving forward.
Does Every Team Experience Momentum the Same Way?
I don’t think so.
Consider a clinical team working in an emergency department.
Its rhythm might depend on rapid coordination, reliable handoffs, mutual support, and the ability to respond when circumstances change without warning.
Now consider a customer success team.
Its momentum might come from shared customer knowledge, clear priorities, dependable follow-through, and the ability to solve complex problems without every decision going through the manager.
A software engineering team may experience momentum differently again.
It might depend on focused work, clear technical decisions, fast feedback, and the ability to resolve dependencies before they become bottlenecks.
These teams operate in different environments, with different constraints and different measures of success.
So why would we expect momentum to look identical?
Even two teams doing the same kind of work may need different rhythms.
One might benefit from frequent coordination. Another might need more uninterrupted time and fewer meetings.
Momentum isn’t about making every team operate the same way. It’s about helping each team find a sustainable way to move forward together.
How Does a Team Lose Momentum?
Sometimes the cause is obvious.
A trusted colleague leaves. A major project fails. Leadership changes. A sudden increase in workload overwhelms the team.
But often, momentum disappears gradually.
A concern gets dismissed.
Someone carries more than their share of the workload.
A decision is made without enough explanation.
A teammate stops asking for help because previous attempts went nowhere.
One missed expectation becomes two. Two become a pattern.
Eventually, people begin adjusting their behavior.
They share less. They hesitate before speaking. They focus more narrowly on their own responsibilities.
The team may still appear functional from the outside.
Meetings happen. Tasks get completed. Reports get submitted.
But something has changed.
The sense of shared progress has weakened.
Research on psychological momentum offers an interesting perspective here. Studies in competitive sports have examined how positive and negative momentum can influence behavior and shared psychological states.
Workplace teams are obviously not the same as athletic teams, and we shouldn’t transfer those findings directly.
Still, the underlying question is worth exploring: how do people’s perceptions of progress or setbacks influence what happens next?
In my experience, momentum is partly shaped by the stories teams begin telling themselves.
"We can figure this out together."
Or:
"Nothing ever changes around here."
Those beliefs don’t appear out of nowhere.
They develop through repeated experiences.
Can Team Momentum Be Sustained?
Perhaps a better question is whether momentum can be continually renewed.
I don’t believe momentum is a permanent state.
Teams change.
People join and leave. Priorities shift. New technologies alter workflows. Organizations reorganize. Personal circumstances affect people’s capacity.
Even excellent teams go through difficult periods.
So if we define momentum as a state where everything is always working, we’ve created an impossible standard.
What matters more is how a team responds when its rhythm is disrupted.
Can it recognize what has changed?
Can people talk honestly about what isn’t working?
Can the team adjust its habits instead of simply pushing harder?
Can it recover trust after a setback?
The strongest teams may not be the ones that never lose momentum.
They may be the ones that develop the ability to recognize, rebuild, and renew it.
Can a Leader Create Momentum?
This is where I think the conversation becomes particularly interesting.
We often treat managers as though they’re personally responsible for every dimension of team performance.
And managers do carry significant responsibility.
They influence priorities, expectations, resources, communication, accountability, and the way people experience leadership.
But there’s a difference between influencing the conditions for momentum and controlling momentum itself.
A manager cannot force genuine trust.
They cannot order people to care about one another.
They cannot manufacture honest collaboration simply by putting it on a performance scorecard.
And they cannot always solve structural problems such as chronic understaffing, conflicting executive priorities, or organizational policies outside their authority.
What they can do is influence the environment.
They can make expectations clearer.
They can create opportunities for people to solve problems together.
They can respond constructively when someone raises a concern.
They can recognize contributions, address unfairness where they have authority, and remove unnecessary obstacles.
Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams offers a useful foundation for understanding why these conditions matter.
When people feel able to take interpersonal risks, teams are better positioned to engage in learning behaviors such as asking questions, seeking feedback, and discussing mistakes.
But even supportive leadership doesn’t guarantee that every team will automatically develop strong working relationships.
A leader can create conditions that encourage momentum. The team must participate in generating it.
Momentum Is a Shared Responsibility
One lesson that stayed with me from managing teams was how much could change when I stopped trying to be the source of every solution.
When teammates brought difficult customer situations or operational challenges to our discussions, I often encouraged them to work through the problem together.
People shared experiences, questioned assumptions, and proposed approaches I might not have considered myself.
The expertise was already there.
What we needed was a way for it to become collective.
That experience reinforced something I believe strongly today.
Teams need opportunities to own the way they work.
But shared responsibility doesn’t mean equal responsibility for everything.
A manager may have the authority to change priorities or allocate resources.
An employee may have valuable knowledge about where a process breaks down but no authority to redesign it.
A senior executive may control staffing levels or organizational policies that neither the manager nor the team can change.
These distinctions matter.
It would be unfair to ask a team to take ownership of a problem while denying it the authority, time, or resources to do anything meaningful about it.
Similarly, it would be unfair to hold a manager solely accountable for conditions created far above their level.
Shared responsibility works when people understand both their contribution and the limits of their control.
The goal isn’t to distribute blame more evenly.
It’s to understand who can influence what, and how people can work together to improve it.
Can a Team Regain Lost Momentum?
I believe it can.
But rebuilding momentum usually requires more than another motivational speech or a renewed push for results.
If trust has been damaged, the team may need to address what happened.
If people feel overwhelmed, adding another initiative may only make things worse.
If knowledge isn’t moving, the answer might be a simple change in how teammates share what they’re learning.
The first step is understanding what interrupted the team’s ability to move forward together.
Was it a loss of direction?
A breakdown in trust?
Unmanageable workload?
Repeated disappointments?
A sense that people no longer have a voice?
Different causes require different responses.
And the most useful change may not be a dramatic transformation.
It might be one agreement that the team actually follows.
One recurring conversation where difficult issues can be raised.
One small improvement that removes a persistent frustration.
One visible commitment that helps people believe progress is possible again.
Small wins matter, not because they magically solve complex problems, but because meaningful progress can help rebuild collective confidence.
Of course, some problems require organizational intervention. A team cannot solve chronic understaffing or harmful policies through better communication alone.
But where people have room to act, small shared changes can be a practical starting point.
Momentum Is Not a Destination
I’ve come to think of team momentum less as a finish line and more as a state teams move toward, experience, lose, and rediscover.
Sometimes momentum is strong.
Sometimes it’s fragile.
Sometimes a team has to slow down, reassess, and find a different way forward.
And that’s normal.
The point isn’t to create teams that never struggle.
It’s to help people develop the conditions and habits that allow them to work through challenges without continually losing their collective capacity.
This also changes how I think about leadership.
Rather than asking managers to somehow generate motivation, trust, and collaboration on demand, perhaps we should ask how organizations, leaders, and teams can each contribute to the conditions that make those things possible.
Because momentum isn’t something a leader gives to a team. It’s something people build together when the conditions allow them to do their best collective work.
So here’s a question worth considering.
Think about the best team you’ve ever been part of.
What gave that team its momentum?
And if that momentum eventually disappeared, what changed?
References: Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Den Hartigh et al. (2014). Psychological and Behavioral Team States During Momentum.
One More Thing...
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about.
We spend years working toward becoming managers. So why do some of us eventually choose to walk away from management altogether?
I did. And I know I’m not the only one.
That’s a conversation for another day.
Follow me on LinkedIn for more questions and honest conversations about the human side of work.
Less Blame. Better Work.