Be the Glue

This post has been a long time coming. I originally wrote parts of it back in 2017. It was then a reflection of my rugby career and the lessons I learned from being a good/great player that never found the spotlight or showed up on the scoresheet. And I was never that player, my role, my job became one that was rarely noticed unless I wasn’t doing it. I was the glue that put the pieces together and gave us and edge over the opposition.

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Being a glue guy is a thankless role, whether in sports or professional settings or somewhere in between. You have to perform you’re job at a high level and no one notices but when you don’t do it for a second everyone notices and you become in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

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Usually, in sports, I’ll touch on what it looks like in professional or real world settings in a second, but the glue guy is a support player, utility specialist who can help the team get to that next level. They are the guy willing to go to the dirty areas of the field or do the mundane and forgotten tasks so a more skilled player can focus on what they do best. This is mainly what my role was when I played in college. Do the gritty, underappreciated, unnoticed things so our stars could focus on being stars and get us to winning games.

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Seth Davis, basketball columnist for Sports Illustrated and the Athletic, has described glue guys as “one in recognition of his versatility, guile and grit -- the very ingredients that help good teams stick together.” Like I mentioned about it’s the things that don’t land on the stat sheet. It’s the things that get forgotten. Glennon Doyle accidently described it in her book Untamed when talking about her daughter as:

“a leader now. She has learned that there are great athletes and there are great teammates, and they are not always the same people. She watches her teammates and she decides what each needs. She knows who is hurting and who needs encouragement”

That is a sign of high sports IQ. Your best player doesn’t need to be your captain or leader. Sometimes that needs to come from the guy grinding it out and doing the things no one else wants to do so the elite athletes have space to operate and make their mark. Knowing how to push your teammates or what levers to pull to get them to fully show up is a skill, it is a gift.

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To be able to recognize what others need in a competitive, fasted pace sporting setting so your team can function at its highest level is incredibly difficult to do. First it requires a sacrifice and killing of the ego. By doing this you can fully assess and see what your team needs and what you need to do in a given moment. You can see who on your team needs the extra push or the ones that need the extra love and appreciation. In a competitive sports environment that focuses a majority of the time on scoring and success, being one to buck the trend on glory and power and just doing the little things right is what separates good teams from great.

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Moving on, so how does being a glue guy apply to life and other situations outside of sports. First it is recognize what is needed from you in a given situation. If you look at friend groups, there is usually one friend that brought everyone together and they are more or less the focal point. Outside that there may be someone who feels a bit on the outside of the group and recognizing that and bringing that person in is what the glue guy does. They make people feel included. They make them feel seen, heard, and appreciated. They do the little things on the fringes on the group to make the group an actual friend group and not a collection of people who know someone.

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Furthermore in a work or professional setting it is the person that recognizes when someone has been working hard to hone their craft or improve on something and giving them the recognition that they deserve for that work. It is being the leader and taking on the less glamourous tasks or roles so that the rest of the team can focus on the more celebratory work. It’s the one who takes the extra time to fix a mistake and show them how to improve it in the future and not just berate them and scare them into trying to be better.

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It’s about doing the little things right, again and again. It’s an extension of leadership that never truly gets acknowledged or recognized. Leadership isn’t a title but it is actual an action. Leadership is showing those around you what you expect from them. No one is going to follow a leader that doesn’t follow their own instructions. Leadership isn’t telling someone to do something, it is supporting them in doing it and recognizing what their shortcomings are and covering them so they can focus on what they bring to the table. It is being selfless and making people know they have value.

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Being a glue guy is a type of leadership. It is the ability to know what everyone around you brings to the table and having the wherewithal to know what you need to focus on so the team can perform at its best. It’s not just something applied to sports, it’s something that exists in our everyday life that allows people to fully be themselves.