Speaking of cliches, one was on prominent display during the frenzied ending of the USAs college basketball season, namely, stepping up. That overused term applies just as well to the workplace.
Stepping up alludes to the notion that if a team or organization is not having a successful year, then they just need to “step up”, as if the player has a hidden, tappable, reserve.
This admitted cliché insinuates that players and workers are holding back.
More likely, stepping up is shorthand for a complicated situation and narrative.
Too little credit is given to an opponent’s skill or strategy (yes, the opponent might be a whole lot more talented than your team). Or it could be that players are being overly cautious or careful to avoid mistakes.
Or, the opponent is having a very good day statistically and your team is having an off day statistically.
If the coach’s game plan is a bust and he/she has failed to adequately prepare you for this opponent, exhortations for you to step up are not going to make much difference.
And, then there’s Lady Luck, the least predictable of all the factors that go into a game, or for that matter, how one’s careeer outside of sports unfolds over the decades.
In one of my jobs, I recall an organization’s leadership demanding – with some evident frustration over past failures – that productivity improve. It was a call for a corporate stepping up to reduce ever increasing backlogs and processing times.
Not unlike sports, we ran into multiple barriers to “raising our game”. One department head who was told to do less with more, was the same department head who had imposed hours-long delays in the workflow, all in the name of “quality control”. Those opposed to any changes to speed up work (do more with less) always criticized these efforts as sacrificing Quality over Quantity.
The workplace culture figures in as well. Does it promote workers taking initiative and thinking about what they are doing? Is it fear-free or inhibited? So asking the department to step up and excel can be just like asking a losing team to do so.You want the staff to go all-in, get fired up, and juiced but if the boss’s game plan is stuffed with inhibiting “rules and regs” the change effort may go nowhere.
It would be far better for the boss to have candid – no-fault – talks with the people doing the work and asking for their ideas on what can be simplified. Most important is that you, the boss, implement most, if not all, the actionable ideas.
Sports metaphors have their limitations when we try to apply them to the workplace. Sports teams change every year; in most workplaces, you have to work with the staff in place, an accumulation of good or poor choices over a number of years.
In sports, the player who persists in not sharing the ball is soon benched and, if they are a good athlete, soon eyes the transfer portal as a way to get to a team where he or she will be truly appreciated. Good luck on that happening if you continue being a ball hog. Alas, in the workplace, the selfish and uncooperative worker is often protected from being fired. Those H&R rules to protect minions against capricious bosses, are used by the ball hog worker to keep his job. Getting rid of a saboteur worker will take much patience and persistence. It’s why sidelining or demoting a problem employee or deadwood are more often used than firing.
So, in sports, just like in the workplace, you derive great value from the glue-player
Glue Players, Lovable Clowns, Jerks, Stars, Schmucks, et al.
who assures teammates and coworkers the feasibility of doing something and why it is important to try. Doing so, the glue player counters the saboteur (the alienated follower).
N.B. For other essays on numerous topics on leadership and literature and fables go to my Nucleus archive from 2010-early 2025.
© Copyright all text by John Lubans 2026