Fresh Start Surgical Gifts

When I was young, I developed a habit that would eventually influence the way I approached just about everything in my life. I paid attention to people. I watched the decisions they made, how they treated others, how they approached their responsibilities and, perhaps most importantly, what happened to them afterward. I didn’t necessarily recognize it as a philosophy at the time. I was simply observing the world around me and beginning to understand that the choices people made often had a great deal to do with where they eventually ended up.

There’s an old expression in sports that you’re only as strong as your weakest player. I’ve heard some version of it for most of my life, and the longer I’ve spent building teams, the more I’ve come to believe there’s a lot of truth behind it.

When we think about a weak performer, we tend to focus on that person’s individual production. Are they doing enough? Is their work good enough? Are they meeting expectations? But I’ve learned that those questions don’t capture the real cost because performance rarely exists in isolation. The way one person operates affects the people around them.