I hate that I even have this story to tell. It’s been years, but as I type these words, I feel angry and disappointed that this moment ever occurred.

I was still a college coach, and one of our players had a lingering injury.

Our head athletic trainer came by the office and shared that he believed the only path to recovery would be for this student-athlete to go to the hospital, but at this point, she was refusing to do so. He asked if I would speak with her about this, which I was glad to do.

As a college coach, I took a strength-based approach to leading our team. I believed our job wasn’t to fix everything about a player, but to help them do what they do best — and then build a team where those strengths fit together like puzzle pieces.

This approach to developing people and teams has stayed with me for decades.

When I think about skills, I often divide them into three simple categories:

First, I believe over time, most people will learn to identify their superpower. It’s not always glamorous, but it’s consistent. It’s the thing you can rely on when the moment matters most.

I was seated in a circle with a group I had worked with many times before. They had committed to the long haul of team development, the kind of work that isn’t solved in a single workshop, but over time, layer by layer.

When I first met them, things weren’t good. You could feel it in the room. If something didn’t change, people were going to lose their jobs.

But session after session, they began to grow. They started naming the hard things. They brought unresolved conflict to the surface.