I've been thinking about the kind of work that rarely shows up in a job description - but makes or breaks a team. The invisible load of informal leadership.
It's moving when you see the gap, not waiting for permission. Picking up threads others aren't holding.
It's being the connective tissue - linking leadership vision, team execution, and customer reality.
It's defending and enabling the strategy, giving it coherence, carrying it in conversations, making sure others can see it and act on it.
It's showing up when others don't. Or asking the difficult inward questions no one else wants to raise.
It's a steady hand in moments of drift - nudging things forward so tension resolves and momentum doesn't stall.
None of this gets tracked in metrics. It isn't on the JD. It rarely shows up in dashboards or all-hands updates. The team feels it - in clarity emerging from fog, in progress that doesn't stall - but the organisation doesn't always see it.
And that's the paradox. This kind of work is one of the best ways to grow quickly, to stretch, to learn what leadership really feels like. But if it keeps happening without support or systems to make it sustainable, the weight builds. Energy gets stretched thin. Even the most high-agency people begin to hesitate.
Because invisible work compounds - until it doesn't. Recognise it, and it strengthens trust and culture. Ignore it, and it quietly drains the people carrying it.
What I keep coming back to is this: teams don't just need people willing to step in. They need structures that make that work visible - and leaders willing to back the people doing it.
The invisible load doesn't have to stay invisible. With the right systems, it can be shared, recognised, supported. And when it is, the impact isn't just on the individuals carrying it - it multiplies across the whole team.
So here's the real question: in your team today, who's doing this work - and how are you making sure they don't carry it alone?
The strength of any team isn't just in what's visible. It's in how deliberately you notice, value, and share the work that holds everything together.
If your team is feeling this invisible load - or you're figuring out how to make it sustainable - I'd love to hear how you're approaching it.
