Most leaders can tell you their revenue targets. Many can recite their growth strategy or name their most profitable clients.

But ask them what actually holds their team together and their silence tells you everything.

That’s where The One Question Every Business Must Answer™ comes in:

What will it really take to leverage your people-potential + expertise, get real results, and transform your business to maximize profit?

Whenever I ask this question, the answers usually start with strategy or revenue. Rarely does anyone start answering the question with people — with the possibility that maybe we’re not fully leveraging their potential. And deeper still: is it even possible to do that without first understanding who they are, what drives them, and how they work best?

Where the Real Leverage Lives

Behavioral scientist Jon Levy, in his book Team Intelligence: How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius, calls this the hidden power of the glue player — the person who holds everything together, often without a title, spotlight, or formal recognition.

They’re not loud but are the very reason things don’t fall apart. They bridge teams, translate intent, resolve friction, and quietly make collaboration work.

When they’re absent, you notice. Perhaps not immediately — but eventually, when projects lose rhythm, decisions slow, and the energy of the group starts to fade.

Levy’s research confirms what many leaders feel but rarely articulate: the strength of a team isn’t just in its talent — it’s in its connection. But connection is only half the story. The other half is alignment — when people operate from their Zone of Genius, not just their job description.

Because real glue isn’t personality; it’s purpose in motion.

The Missing Metric

Every organization says our people are our greatest asset. But assets depreciate when they’re disconnected — and they’re often undervalued when their genius isn’t understood.

You can have high performers in every seat and still lack team intelligence — the capacity of a group to collaborate, trust, and create as one.

That’s where alignment either thrives or breaks. Because every system fails exactly where people stop seeing each other’s genius.

When I ask The One Question™, I’m not testing ambition — I’m diagnosing connection and clarity.

What will it really take for this group of humans to work in rhythm — to recognize not only each other’s skills but the deeper motivations that make those skills come alive?

Because you can’t scale process until you first scale trust. And trust grows fastest when people feel seen for who they are, not only what they do.

The Invisible In-Between™

In every team I work with, there’s a moment when data stops explaining the story. The numbers look fine, but the energy tells a different truth.

That space — between metrics and meaning — is what I call the Invisible In-Between™.

It’s where alignment either deepens or dissolves. It’s where your glue players live — the ones who sense tension before it surfaces, who check in after a hard meeting, who remind the group of its shared purpose when things feel heavy.

They’re the heartbeat of culture. When they’re supported, you see fewer breakdowns, fewer missed cues, and far more initiative.

Because underneath every efficient system is a network of people who care — about the work, about each other, and about getting it right.
That caring is genius expressing itself through connection.

Beyond the Star Model

Levy challenges a popular myth: that if you fill a room with high performers, performance automatically improves. It doesn’t. It fragments.

Too much individual brilliance without connection creates friction, not flow.
That’s why systems, recognition models, and rhythms have to evolve.

If you only reward visible output, you’ll keep overlooking the people who make that output possible. And if you never examine the fit between genius and role, you’ll keep burning out the very people who hold your business together.

The irony? Glue players make things look so easy that their contribution becomes invisible. We mistake ease for simplicity, forgetting that what looks effortless often requires deep emotional and systemic intelligence.

That’s what Levy calls team intelligence. And it’s what I call alignment in motion — when people, process, and purpose move as one coherent rhythm.

The Leader’s New Work

If you’re leading today, your role isn’t control — it’s conditions.

Your job is to design environments where intelligence can emerge naturally:

• To build rhythm instead of routines.
• To measure what happens between meetings, not just in them.
• To cultivate steadiness — the kind that keeps the team grounded even when outcomes are uncertain.

When you ask The One Question™ with real curiosity, you stop chasing quick fixes and start studying your own system.

• Where does information stall?
• Who bridges silos?
• Who turns ideas into motion?
• Who holds the emotional weight no one’s naming?

When you identify those people — your glue players, your anchors, your unspoken leaders — you invest in them. You give them voice, space, and support. You design around their rhythm instead of expecting them to keep holding it all together unseen.

That’s how alignment lasts.

So, What Will It Really Take?

To leverage your people-potential? To unlock the collective intelligence that drives growth and profit?

It will take:

• Seeing differently — noticing who actually keeps things working.
• Redistributing recognition — valuing connection as much as performance.
• Protecting rhythm — making space for reflection, not just reaction.
• Expanding leadership — allowing influence to rise from within, not just the top.

When you do that, profit stops being the goal and becomes the proof of alignment.

Strategic Reflection Prompt:

Before you look outside for talent, pause and scan the acres of diamonds already in your team. Do you truly know the people you lead — beyond their roles, titles, and performance metrics? Have you explored the full reach of their genius, or only the part that fits your current system? What untapped potential might be waiting for recognition, rhythm, or the right alignment to shine?

About Giselle

I’m Giselle Hudson — writer, possibility thinker, musician, Organization & People Development Sensemaker™, and MCODE Legacy Coach. I help leaders and soul-driven professionals decode the deeper patterns shaping their business, work, identities, and results especially when it look like a performance issue but it’s really misalignment in disguise.

If something in your life or business feels off and you can’t quite name it, message me. Sometimes one conversation is all it takes to see what’s really going on.