Swapping out emotional labor for “glue work”

If you work on a team and it feels like you’ve been consistently busting your ass but have a hard time naming a lot of “tangible” checklist achievements that you sure feel like you should have , there’s a huge chance you’ve been doing a ton of glue work — and probably undervaluing it (or getting undervalued for it). 

It’s a term coming from this slightly old deck/blog post Being Glue, which was originally a talk (you can watch a video of it here) given by Tanya Reilly, a Google engineer at the time. When this post came back across our radar over the weekend, we realized that the concept of doing tons of work that hold a team/company together — “glue work” — translates pretty well for every other industry, including media, of course. 

Maybe you know it better as “emotional labor” or just good old fashioned “management,” but as Reilly points out...this kind of work can trip your career path up when it’s not a de facto expectation for your role (or, let’s be honest, when you’re in the minority — anyone else just looooove being the only woman on the team mysteriously in charge of handling everyone’s birthdays/existential crises???). Anyway. Just a Monday reminder to think about all the valuable work you do on a daily basis, and whether it’s getting ~recognized~ enough.