# The quiet hero: why every team needs a Bob

- **Episode:** [230](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/230.md) (2025-09-09)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** team-player, recognition, unsung-hero
- **Time:** 19:46–23:26 (start 1186s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/230?t=1186](https://truthliesandwork.com/230?t=1186)

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[19:46] Leanne Elliott: I think I'd add to that as well, as a manager, it's, it's being open and gracious to the people that aren't delivering it on time, the ones that do always miss the deadlines, and having that conversation as to why that is. And not in an accusatory way, in a, is this something that you find difficult to fit in your day? Are you overloaded in other places? Do we need to go through the process again? Are you not sure about it? We know that colleagues who have, um, who are neurodiverse benefit from these types of administrative tasks by, um, what we call body doubling. So sitting with somebody else, whether that be on Zoom or person to person
[20:16] Al Elliott: Yeah
[20:18] Leanne Elliott: To actually set aside a time to do this task with a colleague. So it's finding out whether, oh, actually that, that could be a barrier to this task being done. Very few people actually just want to do a bad job and just do it to be annoying. Some do. And that's where we see, you know, that workplace incivility. That's a great example of workplace incivility. Somebody intentionally not meeting a deadline just to irritate you, John. But typically, unless the, you know, there's something in the culture that's going that, and you'd feel that as a, as a a larger collective of the team, I think. If it's just a couple of people here and there, it could be something that just isn't clicking rather than they just necessarily are choosing to miss the deadlines
[20:56] Al Elliott: We're gonna have more of the conversation with Nick and John from the Nerd Journey podcast after this very quick break
[21:12] Al Elliott: We actually have a lot in common. We We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work
[21:33] Leanne Elliott: The audio destination for business professionals
[22:14] Al Elliott: It can
[22:22] Leanne Elliott: But come back
[22:23] Al Elliott: Yeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in. I think it's probably important in those situations to assume good intentions. I don't know that I ever thought that people were doing that just to annoy me. Actually, it just never even occurred to me. So maybe I've internalized that, assume good intentions. If one senses that that is going on, then, then there's a whole other set of issues that are, that are probably inherent there, including, you know, just Hostility in the environment in general or instability or other problems going on. So I really do like the idea of grace. The job of the manager isn't to come down on people and yell and scream, you know, or do the equivalent, right? Because that probably isn't really that helpful. You know, take that opportunity to coach and ask if there's something else going on. Is there something underlying this behavior