Gutters

I thought everyone was in a bowling league.

How could I not? My mom bowled in a ladies’ league. My dad bowled in a men’s league. They bowled together in a mixed league. And every Saturday morning, I was on a kids’ league. It didn’t occur to me until I was older that not every family spent their weekends in rented shoes under fluorescent lights, drinking fountain Coke and tracking scores on an overhead monitor.

Bowling is where I learned what it meant to be part of a team. Five people. Three games. Add up the scores and the high series wins. Some Saturdays I couldn’t find the pocket between the 1 and 3 pin to save my life. Someone else usually could, and they carried us. The days I carried the team were good days. That’s the deal with team sports. You cover each other.

Then came softball. I pitched. My dad was one of the coaches, and it never once occurred to me that those two facts might be related. A new coach took over the following season and pulled me off the mound. The spot went to another girl who was, I’ll admit, annoyingly better. The coach was right. I wanted to win, so I was fine with it. Someone more capable got us to victory. That’s the job.

Then I became a cop.

The ultimate team sport — except the stakes were occasionally life and death. A look to your partner and a head nod communicated everything: I heard something in the backyard. You go left. I go right. We move together. Trust built in silence. You also quickly learned who would roll up on a call and pitch in on the paperwork, and who would find somewhere else to be. Those people eventually found themselves very much alone when they needed an assist. Karma, it turns out, has a long memory.

I was on that team for 30 years.

I know teams. I’ve been on them my entire life, and I am a good teammate. I contribute willingly. I will sit the bench without complaint if someone more capable can get us to victory. That is not false modesty. That is just true. I am also aware I have never achieved a single goal without an assist from someone else. I love being part of a team.

Which is why what happened next was so deeply offensive to my soul.

At 52, I went back to school. A PhD program in organizational leadership, because apparently, I enjoy reading research articles and citing sources and having my assumptions systematically dismantled by people with longer CVs than mine. The pursuit of a doctorate is not a team sport. The reading, the writing, the grades — those are mine. The finish line (if I make it) has my name on it.

And then I was assigned a group project.

Four classmates. One shared digital workspace. One PowerPoint presentation.

Now. I should tell you something about myself. I am bossy. This is not a recent development. It started when I was eight years old and organized a full Mandrell Sisters concert on the picnic table in my backyard with my friends. I was the oldest. I was Barbara. This was not up for debate. Marcy and Heather understood this. Over the next several decades, that bossiness was professionally rebranded as “command presence,” and I was literally trained — at the academy, in the field, as a chief — to take charge the moment I arrived on scene.

So when the group was posted, I did what I always do and got to work. I researched my teammates, identified the one with a healthcare background, noted the article we’d been assigned had a direct healthcare application, and within 24 hours I had a full roadmap posted in our shared workspace.

I also said, clearly: “If anyone wants to go a different direction, I am not married to this.”

Two teammates responded immediately. Love it. Let’s go. They were my kind of people. We scheduled a Zoom, divided the slides, assigned the research, and built in a three-day buffer before the deadline. Efficient. Decisive. Done.

One teammate did not respond.

Not to the initial post. Not to the availability question. Not to the Zoom invitation.

He did show up to the second Zoom — fifteen minutes late, unannounced, using a number with no name attached. So for several minutes, three doctoral students in organizational leadership stared at a black square on their screens and asked it to please identify itself.

It did not.

We tried again. Still nothing. I was actively googling “how to remove someone from Zoom” (a skill I now have, so the project was not a total loss) when he finally unmuted.

To yell at us.

For scheduling the meeting during his work hours.

Let me remind you that he had not responded to the availability question. He had not attended the first Zoom where we landed on the time. He couldn’t find the link, he said. I had posted it in three places. I briefly considered posting it a fourth time directly into his cerebral cortex, but I understand that technology isn’t quite there yet.

When it came time to submit his portion, he sent it in the wrong format. I figured out how to embed it. He then informed us we had deleted one of his slides. We had not. He had submitted an MP4 — a video — and did not understand that his second slide existed inside that video.

I built the slides for him. Sent him a template. Asked him, clearly and kindly, to submit a PPT file.

He submitted another MP4.

We included it anyway. We had reached the end of what we had. We submitted the assignment early, buffer intact, and I considered the matter closed.

Then one of my teammates called me, panicked.

He had gone into the submission portal and overridden our work. Replaced a finished, formatted PowerPoint presentation with a Word document containing the text of his slides.

I contacted our professor. Not because I am a tattletale, but out of necessity. My grade was at stake. The professor said to repost the original file.

Here is what I know, because I am pursuing a doctorate in organizational leadership and I am supposed to know these things.

A great leader identifies the weak link and strengthens it. You ask what barriers exist. You offer support. You find out if it’s a technical issue, a personal crisis, a skill gap. You carry the teammate who is throwing gutters until they find their form.

I did all of that. I asked the questions. I offered the support. I built him a template, walked him through it, and gave him every opportunity to contribute.

And then I submitted without him and never looked back. The second part of the assignment was to evaluate our teammates, and I wrote a scathing review of him.

I have searched myself for regret.

I haven’t found any.

Which brings me to you.

If you are a leader, you have someone on your team right now who is quietly seething. You may not know it because they are professionals. They show up, they deliver, they cover the gaps — including the ones left by the person who doesn’t. They have been doing this for longer than you realize, and they have never once complained, because that is not who they are.

That is also exactly why you’re going to lose them.

We have been taught to develop people. To invest in the struggle. To believe that with the right coaching and the right patience, everyone can get there. And sometimes that is true. I believe in people. I have watched officers grow into leaders I couldn’t have imagined when I first met them.

But there is a difference between someone who is struggling and someone who is costing everyone around them. One deserves your investment. The other is spending it without your permission — depleting from the account your best people filled.

At some point, the question is no longer how do I develop this person. The question is why are they still here?

Your best people stopped asking that a long time ago. They already know the answer.

The only one who doesn’t is you.