Being the Glue is Costing You the Game
I spent too much of my life worrying about everyone but me, myself and I. My blessed Mom didn’t want a spoiled only child. So she taught me that I had more than my fair share. I was bright and talented…. what they called gifted back then. So Mom taught me that since I had more than my fair share, God expected me to help everyone else. The implications was do that or he wouldn't love me.
So I did just that. in more ways than I can even begin to tell you, from convincing my next door neighbor kid with polio to walk our hill with me to saving broken winged birds. The human kind as well as feathered and furred.
I tried to save companies too. My investors would put me into companies that they were questioning,to see what I could do. The more broken they were the harder I fought, and the more they pushed back. I made myself sick, frazzled and a total Head Case more times than I can count. So focused on saving them that I sacrificed myself. Fighting to save a male-driven business where I really wasn’t welcome.
I look back and it makes me nauseous. Literally. Yet I still catch myself triggering to pick up the slack, do more to save whoever or whatever is in front of me.
It’s deep training for so many women. When it imprints itself on our minds, already designed for nurturing and communicating and soothing, it turns a master skill into a mis-directed drive that sets us up to be willing servants in the bro club game.
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You felt it this morning. Before the first meeting even started. You walked in and something was off with one of your team.
You check in. Of course you do. Ask the subtle questions. Make the coffee run that was really an excuse to give someone five minutes of your attention. Counsel now, offer to help him later.
It didn't even occur to you not to offer a caring shoulder.
We do this all day long. The admin who's having a rough morning, the colleague still rattled from losing an account. We naturally step in to offer a supporting presence. That new guy who's drowning and trying so hard to hide it? We just know what’s happening, throw him a quiet lifeline. We sense our boss's mood, adapt our tone, before he ever says a word.
We feel every single person around us. All of them, all at once. It's not a conscious act. It’s how our minds are designed. We process everything and everyone simultaneously, connecting signals far below the conversation. The tension in his voice, the shift in her posture, the thing that was said in last week's email that doesn't line up with today’s news. We weave it all together beneath our conscious thoughts. What surfaces is a knowing. Something's wrong with him today. She needs space. He's about to blow.
We act on that knowing. Without really recognizing it’s subtly there.
At home, we walk into the kitchen and we know which kid needs attention, which one needs to be left alone, which one is hiding something. We don't think about it. We don't wring our hands in angst. We just move through it, responding to what we feel, caring for others, soothing the unspoken wounds.
The subtle glue that holds everyone together.
It's a beautiful thing. Our ability to sense a room full of people and know exactly what each one needs.
It's one of the most sophisticated things a human mind can do.
We bring every bit of it to work. Where we use it to take care of everyone around us. All day. Every day. For free.
We don't question it because it feels right. It felt right at home. It feels natural at work as well.
It’s who we are.
Should it be who we are at work?
At home, taking care of everyone IS the point. At work, it's not.
At work, nobody's tracking who steadied the nervous new hire or who read the boss's mood, adjusted the whole meeting's energy so things could actually move forward. Nobody's writing that in a performance review. Nobody's building a promotion case around it.
Meanwhile, the guy who spent that same hour building a relationship with the VP just moved his career forward. Not because he's smarter. Because he aimed his energy at the game. He played the game as we glued the broken pieces.
We have this superpower. What we do with it is extraordinary. We just use it in business the same way as we do at home.
Shifting that is how we begin to master the game.
What we do with all that sensing and knowing and feeling is extraordinary. Being the glue holds everyone together. It's also costing us the game.
Turns out the woman holding everyone together is also the most powerful player in the room. We simply forgot to play for ourselves.