The glue that holds the team together

Motivated by progress, not attention, glue employees may be more valuable to high-performing teams than their star talent

WHAT MAKES YOUR favourite sports team good? Their star performers, maybe. Or perhaps it’s their glue players — the ones on smaller contracts who are holding everything else together?

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Same goes for workplaces, say behavioural scientists. “A glue player is the team member who multiplies everyone else’s results, helping the team win,” said Jon Levy, author of Team Intelligence: How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius. “Imagine a new employee who feels invisible in meetings. A glue player notices, draws them out privately and then highlights their ideas in the next group discussion. Suddenly, the newcomer feels included, their perspective strengthens the team and the company gains value faster.”

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But the plight of the glue employee is a tough one these days. They may be the connective tissue holding an organization together, but they’re also not the star performers with the killer performance metrics, and are at risk of getting caught up in some of those forever layoffs. Many of them are also likely part of middle management layers, among the hardest hit by AI-related job cuts.

Folks like Levy suggest this is the wrong path for firms to go down. “Most evaluation systems measure what is obvious: sales closed, code shipped, campaigns launched. Glue work doesn’t show up in those metrics, so it goes unnoticed,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

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“At a certain point, the only way an employee can make sure they stand out is by other people failing around them. When only the top 10 per cent get a giant bonus or a promotion, the corporate hierarchy has incentivized people to fight rather than collaborate and perform at their best.” Kieran Delamont