You’re promoted. No training. Your job? Unblock people. Deliver outcomes. What does that even mean? Here’s how I think about it: you’re the glue that holds people together and the grease that stops them seizing up. It’s the stuff that makes a team function instead of fester.
This toolkit helps you smooth friction, name blockers, repair meetings, and reconnect people to purpose and each other.
Surface what’s really slowing the team before it festers into retro rage.
Meetings curdle like milk. Check the expiry date before serving.
Capture recurring aches and pains before they calcify into “just how we work.”
Stop connecting tasks to owners, start connecting humans to humans.
When the glue holds and the grease works, no one notices. Make it visible anyway.
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Closing Thought
The paradox of glue and grease is invisibility: when you’re doing it well, it looks like you’re doing nothing. Other managers will call you “lucky” for having such an easy team. They don’t see the furious paddling beneath the surface. Your job isn’t to chase credit, it’s to make the system hum. But don’t let that work vanish into the ether: name it, celebrate it, spread it.
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