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# The Team in Front of You
- URL: https://www.mikebakerhq.com/podcast/the-team-in-front-of-you/
- Published: 2026-09-16T10:12:25.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-23T09:37:06.000Z
- Description: Good leadership means noticing how much work people do just to make their own work possible. A Sunday in the goalie crease, four beer-league games, and what changed when I trusted the team in front of me.
- Author: Mike Baker
- Tags: Human First, Podcast, #hero-uncropped

Season 2 · Episode 16 · September 16, 2026 · 31 min

[Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIdPV5Pzbwg) [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1hkrz7yIkeGgBGxd8IITtS) [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-team-in-front-of-you-what-hockey-taught-me/id1826938874?i=1000790009799&uo=4) 

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## Show notes

![Ink illustration of Mike Baker in a goalie mask and red jersey, teeth bared, in front of a hockey net and a red circle.](https://www.mikebakerhq.com/content/images/2026/09/goalie-the-team-in-front-of-you.jpg)

*Good leadership means noticing how much work people do just to make their own work possible.*

There is someone on your team who knows which assignments need a second reminder, which handoffs need checking, and which unanswered questions will become a problem by Friday. They probably do not describe this as a separate responsibility. They simply know that if they stop paying attention, something will get missed.

You may think of that person as dependable. You may regularly tell them how much you appreciate them. You may also keep giving them more work because they always seem to find a way to get it done.

I think leaders need to spend more time looking at what that dependability costs.

A Sunday in the goalie crease brought this into focus for me. I played four beer-league hockey games with different teams, and one of those games felt remarkably different. I could concentrate on the shot because I trusted someone to cover the extra player and respond to the rebound. I think I only let in two goals. In the other games, there were several more. I remain a mediocre goalie, and four games do not qualify as a scientific study, but I could feel how much more attention I had available when I trusted the people around me.

The other teams were trying too. They had different skills, experience, and familiarity with one another. What interested me was how the same person could work just as hard and have a very different experience of the job.

It left me wondering how often we evaluate people without understanding how much of their effort is going into compensating for everything around them.

## The work nobody assigned

Most organizations have a visible version of how work gets done. There are responsibilities, deadlines, meetings, and people attached to each step. Then there is the version people actually live with.

In that version, someone sends the reminder because the deadline alone will not be enough. Someone attends a meeting because they are afraid an important detail will disappear if they are not there to repeat it. Someone checks the handoff, rewrites the instructions, or stays available after their own part is finished because they know there will be questions.

Some coordination is necessary. Working with other people will always require communication and adjustment. The problem develops when the same people repeatedly absorb the same uncertainty, and the organization begins treating their extra effort as the normal way things work.

From the outside, the process looks successful. The deadline was met. The customer received an answer. The project moved forward. From inside the process, one person may have spent most of the week making sure six other things did not fall apart.

That work is easy to overlook because its success leaves so little evidence. The crisis never happened. The missing information arrived before anyone noticed it was missing. The person who caught the problem quietly moved on to the next one.

Then we ask why they are having trouble concentrating on a new assignment.

## When being dependable becomes a burden

I understand why leaders rely on the people who consistently follow through. I do it too. When something matters, you naturally turn toward someone you trust. There is nothing wrong with recognizing competence or giving capable people meaningful responsibility.

But there is a point where trust can become an excuse for leaving a broken process alone. We know someone will catch the missed step, so we never fix the handoff. We know someone will stay late, so we avoid an honest conversation about workload. We know someone can sort through an unclear request, so we stop taking enough care with the request itself.

Eventually, being good at your job starts to mean inheriting the consequences of everyone else’s unfinished work.

Praise can make that arrangement harder to question. If a person’s value has become tied to being the one who always handles things, asking for relief may feel like risking the very reputation they worked hard to earn. They may keep accepting more long after the work has stopped being reasonable.

As a leader, I need to be willing to ask whether someone’s apparent capacity is partly the result of effort I have failed to see. When a dependable person looks tired, another conversation about time management may be the wrong place to begin. I may need to understand what the rest of us have allowed them to carry.

## Following through gives someone their attention back

This gets personal quickly, because I know my own intentions. I know when I care about something, and I know when I am trying hard. Neither tells me everything I need to know about what it is like to work beside me.

If I agree to handle a task but leave someone wondering whether I remembered, they are still carrying part of it. If I introduce a new idea without explaining what happens to the work already underway, somebody has to sort through the consequences. If I say something is important but never clarify what can wait, I have handed people a priority decision without admitting that I handed it to them.

My enthusiasm can be sincere while the extra work it creates is equally real.

That is why the ordinary details of teamwork matter so much. A realistic commitment, a clear handoff, or an early warning about a delay gives another person useful information. They can make a decision and move on. They do not have to keep checking whether the situation has changed.

Trust grows through those experiences. Over time, people learn that when you take responsibility for something, you will either complete it or tell them what has changed. They can turn their attention elsewhere because they have a reasonable understanding of what to expect from you.

Imagine what that frees up across an entire team. People still work hard. They still help each other. But more of their attention reaches the work itself because less of it is spent wondering whether someone else will follow through.

## Lead the people who are actually there

None of this means that individual performance stops mattering. I still have to make the save. If my positioning is poor or I leave a rebound in a terrible spot, I have something to work on. Having support does not remove my responsibility to improve.

The same is true at work. Someone may need coaching, more practice, clearer feedback, or a different assignment. Sometimes a difficult conversation has been avoided for too long. Looking at the environment should help us understand the problem well enough to respond, including when the response requires holding someone accountable.

It should also make us more honest about our own part in the situation. Have we explained the expectation? Have we given people enough time and information? Are we asking them to own decisions and then reversing those decisions without discussion? Have we allowed one person’s repeated failure to follow through to become another person’s permanent responsibility?

Those questions bring us back to the team in front of us. We lead actual people with different abilities, histories, pressures, and ways of understanding the work. They will need different kinds of support. Wishing they were a more experienced or perfectly coordinated group does nothing to help them become one.

What helps is noticing where the work becomes difficult and staying with that problem long enough to improve it. Sometimes that means teaching a skill. Sometimes it means simplifying a process or changing who owns a decision. Sometimes it means admitting that a leader’s own habits have made everyone else’s job harder.

That last one deserves more attention than it usually gets.

## A useful place to start this week

Choose one recurring piece of work that always seems to require more effort than it should. Ask the people involved to walk through what actually happens, including the reminders, checking, waiting, and repairs that never appear in the official description.

Listen especially carefully to the person who usually makes it all come together. They may know exactly where the trouble begins. They may also assume everyone already knows, because they have been living with it for so long.

Then change something specific. Give a decision a clear owner. Agree on when someone needs an update. Explain what information must accompany a handoff. Remove a duplicate approval. Address the commitment that repeatedly goes unmet. The improvement should be concrete enough that the people doing the work can tell whether it helped.

And when someone produces a strong result, look around them before deciding who deserves recognition. Notice the person who caught the error early, supplied the missing information, or created enough stability for someone else to concentrate. Those contributions are part of the result too.

I came away from that hockey game proud of how I played and grateful for the people who helped make it possible. I want to bring that same attention to the teams I work with. I want to understand who is quietly covering too much, where we are making one another’s jobs harder, and what I can do to give someone a little more room to perform well.

There may be more ability in the team in front of you than its current results reveal. It is worth finding out how much of that ability is busy holding everything else together.

## Transcript

Read the full transcript 

Auto-generated from the audio, lightly corrected. It may contain errors.

Welcome to Still Here, Still Trying. I’m Mira, and yes, Mike is finally back. The North Idaho flu kicked his ass. Work has been nonstop in a good way, and life has not left him much room to catch his breath. So naturally, his recovery plan was to play four beer league hockey games in one day. Most people would hydrate and get some sleep. Mike put on 40 pounds of goalie equipment and volunteered to have frozen rubber fire to end. Rest remains a concept he supports in theory.

Mike is the first to admit that he is a mediocre beer league goalie, although he owns enough expensive equipment to look convincing from the parking lot. But across those four games, something interesting happened. It was the same goalie, giving the same effort with very different results. In one game, he only let in two goals. They communicated, covered for one another, cleared rebounds, and allowed Mike to focus on his own job. Today, Mike is talking about what that can teach us about trust, leadership, and the conditions that help people perform at their best.

Because hockey is supposed to be a hobby. But Mike has never met an experience he couldn’t turn into a leadership lesson. Here’s your host, Mike Baker, with the team in front of you. Take it away, my friend. And next time, maybe start with one game. Well, thank you, Mira. And yes, starting with one game probably would have been the more responsible choice. Hello everyone, welcome back to Still Here, Still Trying. I’m your host, Mike Baker, and I am genuinely glad to be back with you.

Uh Mira already gave you the broad version, but I do owe you an apology for missing the last few weeks. Man, the North Idaho flu, because we don’t have COVID here, it just knocked me down harder than I expected. Uh, work has also just been insane, but in a really good way. There’s so many beautiful things happening, and life has just been moving fast, and something eventually had to break. And for a few weeks, I’m so sorry, but that something was just the podcast.

Um, I did not love stepping away from it. I felt this immense guilt every week, and I appreciated the messages that I got from so many of you. Thank you for caring, thank you for making this just worth it. Um, I really appreciate it. But look, sometimes keeping going just does not mean forcing every part of your your life to keep operating at full speed. Sometimes keeping going just means recognizing that you cannot give everything the same amount of attention at the same time.

It’s a lesson I’m learning. I’m trying my best. Something has to rest so the rest of your life does not collapse between beneath the weight of just trying to maintain all of it. So the podcast took a break, I took a breath, and now we are back. I’m so excited to be back. Look, before we get into today’s story, I have two quick things to share. First, Mike Baker, HQ.com. Dude, that’s a beautiful thing. You need to go check it out. It has been completely updated, and it finally feels like a real home for everything I make and care about.

So go check it out. Look, the books are there, the podcast is there, the music, art, advocate, advocacy work, and writing are all there. Um, I’ve got a subscription that it’s a free thing, but you can sign up for uh a letter every week called Just an Ordinary Tuesday. And it’s just it’s where I write about family and grief and leadership and healthcare and creativity and just like all the ordinary moments that usually turn out not to have been ordinary at all.

Uh, I’ve been getting great feedback on it. We’ve got several hundred subscribers now. Um man, I think it’s it’s great, and thank you all for your soul for your support with that. Um so go to mikebakerh.com, check it out, and subscribe so that the next ordinary Tuesday message lands in your inbox. Look, it’s free. And while you are there, I hope you will get lost for just a little while. Uh read the first chapter of a book. I’ve got a first chapter of every single book I’ve written on there.

You can listen to a song, you can find other things I’ve written, you can look at some art, you can explore the advocacy work. There’s a lot there because, as Mira has correctly observed, I still do not know how to only have one hobby. Again, that is MikeBakerHQ.com. Go get lost in there and find something amazing. Let me know what you find. And second, this episode is supported by Shocker Electric Co., my son Jake’s new electrical company. Shocker Electric is licensed and insured and built around three things that matter in any kind of work character, competence, and communication.

I will tell you more about what Jake is building later in the episode. But if you need electrical work in the Quarterlane area, visit ShakaelectricCo.com. Alright, well, look, we’re gonna talk about hockey tonight, and everybody loves my hockey episodes because they can just see the energy that I have when I talk about hockey. But Sunday was the beginning of our beer league season up here in North Idaho, and somehow I ended up playing four games. I was supposed to play three, uh, something happened, and they needed an extra goalie for an extra game.

So, hey, four games. And look, at my age, that was probably not the smartest decision I have ever made. I’ve I’ve done it before. I’ve actually never played four beer league games in a row. Um I think three is my most. So four was pretty solid, and I would love to tell you that it happened because I am in extraordinary physical condition, and hockey teams across North Idaho are fighting for access to my elite goaltending ability. That is just not what happens.

Sometimes I’m just the only person there that’ll agree to show up. So I want to establish something clearly for the first of several times. I am a mediocre beerly goalie. Look, I’ve been playing a long time, I I know where I’m supposed to be. I’m not saying this to instill a sense of false humility. Like, I’m I’m good, I can stop some pucks, I love what I’m doing, but I’m just I’m a mediocre beerly goalie. I am not secretly waiting for someone to discover me.

There are no scouts hiding behind the glass, and nobody left the ring wondering how I had slipped through the cracks. So I am an average beerly goalie who loves playing the position, who competes hard, owns too much equipment, and continues to believe five minutes of stretching represents responsible physical preparation. Sometimes I play well, sometimes the puck goes into the net with an enthusiasm that I do not appreciate, and that, my friends, is beer league hockey.

So the four teams I played with on Sunday had different skill levels. Some players had been together for a long time, some had not, some of the you know, the mixture of teams were were different. Some understood positioning at a level that had become almost instinctive, while others were still figuring it out. And I want to make something else extremely clear. This is not a story about bad teams or bad players. Every person out there was trying. Everyone wanted to contribute, everyone wanted to play well.

These were groups of people with different experience, different chemistry, and different shared habits. That is all. This is not about deciding one group of human beings was good and another group was bad. It is about what happened to the same goalie on the same day under different team conditions. One of those teams was made up of the I don’t know, the most incredible hockey players in North Idaho. And they knew where to be. Look, goalie is a strange position.

You are part of the team, but you experience the game differently from everyone else because almost everything is happening in front of you. You can see the play developing, you can see the person coming down the weak side, you can see the player standing alone near the back door, which is always bad. Defenders, you gotta catch those guys. Look, you can see when a defenseman gets caught too far forward, you can see a screen developing in front of the net.

And sometimes you can see the rebound opportunity before the first shot has even arrived. And when the team is not completely connected, you start trying to watch everything. Like in lower division brand new hockey players, I talk about how I am playing against 10 other people, right? I mean, it’s just how the game goes when people are just starting out. You are watching the shooter, but you’re also watching the player who might receive the pass. You are wondering whether someone will cover the extra attacker.

You’re wondering whether somebody will tie up the stick in front of the net. You’re wondering whether anyone will be there to clear the rebound because mediocre goalie gives up rebounds, it and then they go in the net again. It’s not great. Look, you’re trying to read the shot while also preparing for the pass, the screen, the deflection, the rebound, and the person standing alone on the other side of the ice, which is something we never want to have happen.

Eventually, you stop doing your own job particularly well because you are mentally trying to do everyone else’s job too. Look, sometimes your feet are not set because your attention is somewhere else. You cheat toward a pass that may never come. You drop early because you do not trust that somebody will help with the second opportunity. The rebound, for those of you that don’t know hockey. You are not simply responding to what is happening. You’re preparing for every possible thing that might go wrong next.

And that is exhausting. And it’s not limited to hockey. A lot of people go to work that way every single day. They are trying to do their job, but they are also trying to remember whether somebody else will follow through. They are checking whether the important email was answered. They are wondering whether the person who agreed to handle something is actually going to handle it. They are preparing to cover the extra assignment. They are building backup plans for the backup plans.

They are sitting in meetings saying, yes, I’ve got it, while mentally tracking 16 other things that may fall apart if they stop watching them. And then leaders look at those people and wonder why they seem distracted. Why are they hesitant? Why are they tired? Why are they not performing at the level everyone believes that they can reach? And sometimes the answer is not that they lack ability. Most of the time it is not that. Sometimes they have been asked to play their position while also worrying about every uncovered person on the ice.

The game with that experienced team felt just completely different. If somebody moved forward, another player recognized the opening and covered it. If the puck went into the corner, they knew who should pursue it and who should protect the front of the net, which I love so much. They took away passing lanes, they tied up sticks, they cleared rebounds, and they gave each other information. Look, they still made mistakes because every team makes mistakes, but they recovered together.

And because of that, I could focus on my job. I could get square to the shooter, I could set my feet, I could track the puck and read the release. I could make the first save without devoting half my attention to the four disasters that might follow it. I trusted that if there was a rebound, somebody would be there. I trusted that if there was an extra player, somebody would cover them. And I trusted that the team in front of me could see and respond to the same game that I was seeing.

And man, the game was different. It almost felt slower, but that’s not the case because these players were incredibly fast, so good. The puck was not literally moving more slowly, and the other team was not taking it easy on us. The game became clearer because my attention was no longer fractured. And I need to care and and I did not need to carry every responsibility in my head. I could focus on the puck in front of me because I trusted the team in front of me.

And I played really well. Like I mean, like really well. Maybe one of the best games I’ve ever played. And again, mediocre Mike, Beerly Goalie. Just excited because it was a cool game. And because this story could easily get away from me, I again I want to emphasize this is not like Mike saying, Hey, I’m a badass goalie. I’m a mediocre beerly goalie trying my best. I didn’t acquire new abilities between games, I did not suddenly become faster, I did not receive divine knowledge about rebound control.

I was also a little tired because four games is a lot of hockey. But anyone who knows me knows that I give a hundred percent of whatever at whatever I have every time I play. But my 100% does not always look impressive because I compete every game. So being tired is not really an excuse and I do not need it to be one. My effort remained the same, the conditions around that effort changed. The effort was mine, but the result belonged to the team, and that distinction matters in leadership.

We often assume different results must indicate different levels of effort. Someone performs well, so we assume that they cared more. Someone struggles, so we assume that they did not work hard enough. Sometimes that is true, like that happens, but effort matters, accountability matters, and results matter. But sometimes the same person can give everything they have and produce dramatically different results because one environment supports their effort, while another forces them to spend half their energy compensating for everything happening around them.

Look, I made the saves and I’m proud of that. But those saves began before the puck reached me. They began when somebody forced the shooter toward a worse angle, they began when someone took away the passing lane, they began when somebody moved a screen. They continued when a teammate cleared the rebound. The person who completes the final action is often only the last person in a chain of people doing their jobs well. We love individual performance stories.

Those are the ones that we make movies about. We celebrate the salesperson who closes the deal, the physician who recognizes the diagnosis, the employee who rescues a project, the leader who turns the organization around, or the goalie who makes the save. We place one person at the center because it makes the story easier to tell. But performance almost never happens in isolation. Before we decide someone cannot perform, we should ask what they are being forced to carry.

Before we call someone unfocused, we should ask how many other responsibilities are they monitoring. Before we say someone lacks confidence, we should ask whether we have given them any reason to trust the system around them. And look, before we praise one person as a superstar, we should notice the people who created the conditions that allowed them to shine. And sometimes what looks like an individual performance problem is actually a team design problem.

Now, I want to pause for a moment to thank Shaka Electric Co for supporting Still Here, Still Trying. Shaka Electric is my son Jake’s new company, and yes, I am his dad. I am not even going to pretend to be objective. I am so incredibly proud of him, but I also believe in what he is building. Shaka Electric is licensed and insured and grounded in character, competence, and communication. They work on residential and commercial projects, including troubleshooting, remodels, electrical panels, lighting, EV chargers, and backup power planning.

What I appreciate most is that they begin understanding how people actually use a space before recommending what should go into it. Electrical work should not begin with cutting holes in walls. It should begin with listening, it should begin with understanding the problem, and it should begin with a plan. And then it should end with safe, clean work and clear communication. If you are in the Cordelane area and need an electrician or you are planning a project and want the electrical thinking to happen before the work begins, visit ShakaelectricCo.com.

That is ShakaelectricCo.com. Character, Competence, and Communication, a company built to take care of people. Alright, now back to the team in front of us. And hey, by the way, I’ve I’ve been told I’ve got a great announcer voice for commercials. So, you know, if you want to sponsor, you know, this show and you want your name right out there, give me a holler. But anyway, look, back to the team in front of us. So the first leadership lesson from the game is simple.

Clarity creates capacity. When people understand their role, they have more attention available to perform it. When responsibilities are unclear, people spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to determine what everyone else is doing. They duplicate work, they miss work, they hesitate, they step on one another, or one dependable person begins covering everything because experience has taught them that somebody has to. And that person may look incredibly productive for a while, they may even become indispensable.

But being indispensable is often just a respectable form of exhaustion. A highly functioning team is not one where everybody tries to do everything. It is one where people understand their responsibilities, recognize when a teammate needs help, and trust somebody will be there when the play changes. Supporting one another does not mean permanently carrying everybody else’s job. It means knowing your own position well enough to recognize when the team needs you to adjust.

Look, good teams create enough clarity for people to focus and enough flexibility for people to help. One of the greatest gifts a leader can give someone is the ability to concentrate on the work only that person can do. Not because they should ignore the rest of the team, right? But because the team is functioning well enough that they do not have to live in a constant state of defensive anxiety. Trust does not make the work easy, but it does make the work clearer.

When I trusted the team in front of me, the puck did not slow down. It process I processed the game differently. My attention was not constantly jumping toward the next possible failure. I could stay with the moment in front of me. And that is what trust does in an organization. When people trust one another, they make cleaner decisions, they speak sooner, they take appropriate risks, and they recover faster. They don’t spend half their energy documenting every conversation so they can protect themselves later.

They don’t have to interpret silence. They don’t have to wonder whether asking for help will be used against them. And they don’t have to perform certainty when they are unsure. They can focus on the work because they trust the team to help with whatever come comes next. A lot of leaders say they want people to take ownership, but then they create environments where people must keep one eye on their work and one eye on whether the organization will support them.

And look, that’s that’s not ownership. That is, I don’t know, I’d call it survival with some version of a job title. Trust changes the speed of the game, right? It gives people room to think because they are not spending all their attention protecting themselves. And this may be the biggest lesson. Great teammates make the next person’s job easier. That doesn’t mean that they do the job for them. The players in front of me cannot make every save. I still have a responsibility, I still need to be ready.

Look, if I let in a shot that I had I should have stopped, look, I I have to own it. I need to own it. But a great teammate is constantly asking, whether consciously or instinctively, what can I do right now that gives the next person a better chance to succeed? Can I take away the pass? Can I communicate what they cannot see? Can I cover the open person? Can I clear a rebound? Can I recover? Quickly after making a mistake, can I make the next play more manageable?

Imagine if that became the standard at work. Not only did I complete my task, but did the way that I completed my task help the next person succeed? Was the handoff clear? Did I share the information someone needed? Did I raise the concern early enough for the team to respond? Did I leave the project more understandable than I when I found it? Did I make the next person’s job easier? Or did I quietly transfer my chaos to them? Teamwork is not a motivational poster.

It is hundreds of small decisions that reduce unnecessary difficulty for the people around us. And I want to pause and say this for the second time. This is not about bad teams or bad players. Some teams have played together longer. Some players learned the game at a higher level, some groups have developed shared instincts, and some people are still learning where to be. Some teams are made up of people trying to remember one another’s names while chasing a puck around late on a Sunday night.

Everybody is somewhere on the learning curve, and that is true at work too. Most struggling teams are not filled with bad people who woke up planning to disappoint everyone. They are filled with people trying to succeed inside systems that may not have given them enough clarity, trust, practice, communication, or support. I’ve done that in my career for sure. That does not eliminate accountability and it does not mean that every effort produces the same result.

But it means that we become curious before we become judgmental. What does this team understand? What have they practiced? Where are the gaps? Do people know their responsibilities? Do they know what they can expect from one another? When someone makes a mistake, do they recover together? Or does everyone stop playing and begin searching for someone to blame? Look, those questions teach us far more than dividing people into good and bad. Imagine evaluating me only during a game when I am worried about every uncovered player, every rebound, every screen, and every cross eyes pass.

You might conclude that I am slow, undisciplined, distracted, or out of position. And some of that criticism might even be accurate, it happens. The puck still went into the net. Impact matters regardless of intention. But look, you wouldn’t have the complete picture. And then you might watch me play behind a coordinated team and think that I had transformed into a different goalie. I had not. I was operating under different conditions. People can be accountable for their performance while we remain honest about the environment influencing that performance.

And those ideas can coexist, they have to coexist. Accountability without context becomes blame, context without accountability becomes excuse making, and good leadership holds both. We ask the individual what they can improve, and we ask what conditions we have created around them. Do they need coaching? Do they need clear expectations? Do they need more practice? Do they need somebody else to follow through? Are they in the wrong role? Or have we placed them in front of a net, left three people uncovered, and started questioning why their save percentage is dropping?

Look, I love the title of this episode because it means two things. One, for a goalie, the team is literally in front of you. They influence what reaches you, they influence what you can see, they change the kind of save that you are being asked to make. But as a leader, the team in front of you is also the actual group of human beings that you have been asked to lead. Not the imaginary perfect team in your head, not the fictional roster where everybody communicates like you do, possesses every skill you wish they had, and understands expectations that you never clearly expressed.

You lead the team in front of you, these people with their current skills, their experience, their strengths, their gaps, their confidence, their fear, their good days, and their lives outside of work. Leadership begins with seeing those people clearly. And then you help them become more connected than they were yesterday. You create clarity, you build trust, you practice communication, and you make it safe to identify a missed assignment. You teach people how to recover together.

You notice the person covering too much ice and ask why. You notice the person who appears to be struggling and become curious about what they are carrying. You help everyone understand that their work affects the person standing behind them. And sometimes if you do that well, an ordinary person gets to have an extraordinary game. So here are the questions that I carried home from the rink and that have just been bouncing around in my head since I played that game.

Can the people around me focus on their jobs or are they constantly worried about whether somebody else will do theirs? Do people know where they are supposed to be? Are we communicating before something goes wrong, or are we only assigning blame afterward? When somebody makes the first save, are we there to help with the rebound? When someone gets out of position, does another person cover the opening? Do our strongest people make everybody else better, or do they simply collect the credit?

Do people feel supported enough to me to remain present? And maybe most importantly, what version of the people around us does this team bring out? The person who seems hesitant in one environment may become decisive in another. The person who appears average may be spending half their energy compensating for a broken system. And the person receiving all the praise may be standing behind an entire group of people whose name nobody mentions. Performance is personal, but it is also relational.

It is shaped by the team in front of us. So, one final time. I am a mediocre beer league goalie. This is not false modesty. If you watched all four games, you would have more than enough evidence to support that conclusion. And for the third time, this is not about bad teams or bad players. I loved playing every single game that I was in. I love playing with those people. I love working with people that are brand new, right? I love watching new leaders develop.

I love watching teams gel and form. Look at that hockey uh at those hockey games, everybody was trying, everybody deserved respect. Each group was simply at a different point in learning how to support one another. And that is precisely why this matters. You do not need flawless people to create a better team. You need people willing to communicate, people willing to learn their responsibilities, people willing to cover an opening without keeping score.

You need people willing to accept coaching, recover from mistakes, and understand that helping somebody else perform well does not diminish their own contribution. You need leaders who understand that their job is not to become the hero of every play. Their job is to create the conditions in which fewer heroics are necessary. Look, I played one of the best games of my life on Sunday, and I am so proud of that. But it was not mine alone. The team in front of me allowed me to focus on the puck in front of me.

They did their jobs, they trusted one another, they had fun, they made my job clear. And for a little while, a thoroughly mediocre Beerly Goalie got to discover how well he could play when he was not worried about everything else. Look, my effort was mine, the result belonged to the team. We all deserve the opportunity to discover who we can become inside a team like that. And we all carry some responsibility for helping to create one. Thank you again to Shaka Electric Co.

for supporting this episode. Again, if you need electrical work in the Quarterlane area, visit Shakaelectricco.com. And hey, visit MikeBakerHQ.com. And while you’re at it, subscribe to just an ordinary Tuesday. Read something, listen to something, find a corner that feels like it was made for you because it was. Just get lost for a while. Look, I’m Mike Baker. It’s so nice to be back. This is still here, still trying. Take care of the people in front of you and make the next person’s job a little easier.

And when the rebound comes, and it always does, just be there for each other. I’ll see you next week.

## Hear the story behind the essay

In this week’s episode of Still Here, Still Trying, I get into the four-game Sunday that started this conversation, the difference I felt in the crease, and what it taught me about leadership. [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1hkrz7yIkeGgBGxd8IITtS) or [watch the full episode on YouTube](https://youtu.be/AIdPV5Pzbwg).

I would love to hear your experience: what does someone on your team do that allows you to stop worrying and focus? Leave a comment on the YouTube episode, or share this essay with the person who came to mind. They may have no idea you noticed.

For more essays like this, subscribe to Just an Ordinary Tuesday at [MikeBakerHQ.com](https://www.mikebakerhq.com/#/portal/signup). While you are there, explore the books, music, art, and advocacy work. Get lost for a little while.

This episode is supported by my son Jake’s new electrical company, [Shaka Electric Co.](https://www.shakaelectricco.com/) I am proud of him and grateful for his support.

Still here. Still trying.