What if the most valuable person on your team isn’t the one making the big plays… but the one quietly setting them up?
We often celebrate the star performers—the high achievers, the bold communicators, the “10x contributors.”
But in Episode 14 of Leadership Explored, we shine the spotlight somewhere else:
👉 On the glue people.
👉 The assist-makers.
👉 The ones whose absence is only noticed after things start breaking down.
Why This Topic Matters
Leadership isn’t just about vision or execution—it’s about what happens between the plays. And often, the people holding teams together aren’t flashy or visible.
They’re steady.
Emotionally grounded.
Consistently competent.
Quietly supportive.
And frequently overlooked.
These “glue people”:
Translate between teams
Connect colleagues to the right resources
Draft documentation others build on
Make intro emails that get projects unstuck
Lower the temperature in tough meetings
Remember what didn’t work last time—so it doesn’t happen again
They’re not a role. They’re a behavioral function.
And when they’re gone—everything slows down.
What’s in the Episode
In this conversation, we explore:
🧠 Research from sports and psychology showing how assists, not just points, predict team success
📉 The quiet cost of visibility bias and attribution errors
⚠️ How organizations accidentally burn out or lose their most collaborative contributors
🔍 How to spot glue behavior in your team—and build systems that value it
💬 Personal stories about being the glue (and being invisible)
One of our hosts shares a story of receiving the worst performance review of their career—despite working late nights and weekends to help everyone else succeed.
That’s the risk: when we only track visible output, we fail to reward the people creating the conditions for success.
The Big Takeaway
✨ Assists win games.
✨ Glue people build culture.
✨ And recognition doesn’t need to be loud to be powerful.
This episode is a call for leaders to pay attention to the invisible labor that makes high performance possible—and to stop relying on a few steady hands to carry the emotional and logistical weight of the team.
🎧 Listen to Episode 14: Assists and Glue People:
Available now at www.leadershipexploredpod.com or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Substack, and YouTube.
Weekly Leadership Challenge from the Episode:
✔️ Name the assist out loud in your next team meeting
✔️ Add a small bit of glue yourself—start a checklist, write a quick follow-up, unblock a colleague
✔️ Ask quietly: “Who helped you most this week?” Then look for the unsung names
We’d Love to Hear From You
Have you ever been the glue?
Or lost someone on your team who was?
Hit reply, or email us at leadershipexplored@gmail.com—we’d love to hear your stories.
And if this resonates, share it with a teammate who deserves more credit than they get.
Thanks for exploring leadership with us.
— Ed & Andy
Leadership Explored