With Q4 just a few weeks away, now is a useful time to take stock. The final quarter can bring renewed focus and added pressure, as teams work toward year-end goals. Taking time now to reconnect your people, strengthen your leaders and address any gaps helps everyone enter Q4 with greater clarity and a shared sense of direction.
For many organizations, the year so far has brought changing priorities, new hires, heavier workloads and the everyday challenges of getting different people to work well together. Some teams may be carrying unresolved tensions. Managers may be feeling stretched. And goals that looked clear at the beginning of the year may need renewed focus.
Rather than waiting for Q4 to arrive, now is the time to ask: What do our people need to finish the year well?
Managers play a significant role in how employees experience work, but they are under pressure too.
A 2025 survey showed that two-thirds of managers surveyed were struggling with heavy workloads, with some spending up to three-quarters of their working day in meetings. The accompanying article noted that manager wellbeing affects “productivity, employee satisfaction and business success.”
More recent research also points to a gap between how managers believe they are performing and how employees experience their leadership. An American Management Association study found that while 59% of managers believed their engagement had increased over the previous year, 80% of employees said their managers’ engagement had stayed the same or declined. As AMA President and CEO Manny Avramidis put it: “Closing this perception gap requires sharper communication, stronger coaching and more intentional collaboration.”
Ahead of Q4, that makes it worth asking: What support do our leaders need for the months ahead?
The McQuaig 360 Leadership Review helps to answer that question. By gathering feedback from managers, peers and direct reports, it gives leaders a broader view of how their behaviors are experienced by others. It can highlight strengths, uncover potential blind spots and provide a clearer starting point for focused development.
This isn’t about judging leaders. It’s about giving them useful information to build self-awareness, understand their impact and decide where adapting their approach could help.
Read more: Growing Leaders from Within: How the McQuaig 360 Unlocks Potential
Teams evolve throughout the year. Priorities change. New colleagues arrive. Pressure builds. And small misunderstandings can become persistent frustrations if they aren’t addressed.
Some conflict is healthy. Different perspectives can challenge assumptions, improve decisions and spark innovation. As leadership professor George Kohlrieser wrote in People Management, workplace disagreements, when handled well, can “strengthen relationships, unleash innovation, and build more resilient teams.” The issue isn’t whether people disagree. It’s how they understand and respond to those differences. That’s where behavioral insight helps.
When people understand their own natural working style and the styles of the people around them, differences can become easier to interpret. A colleague who wants to move quickly isn’t necessarily being impatient. Someone asking for more information isn’t necessarily resisting change. They may simply approach decisions differently.
McQuaig TeamSync brings individual behavioral insights together to provide a visual picture of the team. It helps teams explore their collective strengths, potential gaps and differences in working style, giving managers and employees a shared language for better conversations.
Combined with McQuaig team effectiveness training, those insights can help colleagues reconnect, refresh their understanding of how they work together and address friction constructively before the additional demands of Q4 arrive. And that matters. People Management reported that 44% of UK workers surveyed by Acas had experienced some form of workplace conflict during the previous 12 months. Almost half of those experiencing disputes reported a drop in motivation or commitment.
Understanding behavior won’t remove every disagreement and nor should it. Constructive challenge can help teams innovate, question assumptions and strive for better outcomes. But understanding the behaviors behind different approaches can help people manage that challenge productively, keeping the focus on the work rather than making differences personal.
Watch the Webinar: Great Teams Don’t Happen by Accident!
Preparing for the final quarter should also include a practical question: Do we have the right people in place to deliver our year-end priorities?
If there are gaps, recruitment may need to move quickly. But moving efficiently doesn’t mean hiring on a hunch. Before you recruit, get clear about what the role actually requires. Benchmarking the behavioral demands of a position gives hiring teams a consistent reference point for evaluating candidates. Instead of relying primarily on instinct or an impression formed during an interview, you can explore how an individual’s natural behaviors align with what the role and working environment require.
This kind of clarity helps you focus your search, ask more relevant interview questions and make better-informed hiring decisions, helping you use valuable recruitment time more effectively.
Download: The Quick Guide to Improving Your Hiring Process with Assessments
A strong Q4 doesn’t have to begin with a major transformation. And you don’t have to wait until Q4 arrives to start preparing for it. Begin with better conversations.
Help leaders understand how they are experienced by others. Give teams an opportunity to revisit how they work together. Address unhelpful conflict before pressure increases. And if you need to recruit, define what success in the role looks like before you start selecting candidates.
Behavioral insights provide a common thread through all of these conversations. They help us understand ourselves, understand the people around us and make more informed decisions about how we communicate, lead, collaborate and hire.
There are still a few weeks before Q4 begins. Use them well, and you can give your teams and leaders greater clarity, stronger connections and a shared focus on finishing the year together.
Ready to put these ideas into practice? Join our upcoming McQuaig webinar to explore practical ways to strengthen team effectiveness, build greater self-awareness and help people understand how different working styles shape collaboration. You’ll come away with ideas to help your teams communicate more effectively, navigate differences constructively and head into Q4 better prepared to work together.
Register here for Wednesday September 16 at 3pm BST \ 10am ET with Jo Emmerson and Danielle Ableman.
Register here for Tuesday September 29 at 3pm AEST with Teresa Romanovsky.