A Lesson from the
Battlefield
He listened as I walked him through my typical day. Then he nodded
slowly and said, "I see the problem."
He had served as a medic in the armed forces. He described landing by
helicopter after a ground battle, and the impossible decisions that followed.
In those moments, his team had to sort people into three groups:
Those who would live
regardless of their help.
Those who would die
regardless of their help.
Those who would only
survive because of their help.
The third group got the attention. Not out of cruelty to the others —
but out of clarity about where effort would actually make a difference.
"Andre," he said, "your team works the same way."
The Three Groups on Every
Team
He explained it like this. In any team — in any organisation — the
distribution holds with striking consistency:
The top 20% are your high
performers. They're self-directed, self-motivated, and they'll thrive
regardless of what you do. They don't need much from you.
The bottom 20%
are your persistent challenges — the people who resist growth, drain energy,
and consistently underdeliver, often despite your best efforts.
The middle 60%
are everyone else. Competent, capable, and waiting — whether they know it or
not — for someone to invest in them. Without that investment, they drift. With
it, they fly.
He called it the 2-6-2 Rule. And I have never forgotten it.
The Trap I Had Fallen Into
When he held up the mirror, I saw it immediately. I was spending my
time with the top 20% — my go-to people, the ones who made me look good, the
ones whose company I genuinely enjoyed. There was an ease to it that I'd
mistaken for productivity.
And I was spending my mental energy — the invisible, exhausting kind —
on the bottom 20%. The difficult ones. The ones who pressed all my buttons. I
wasn't necessarily doing anything useful with that energy. I was just consuming
it.
The result? The 60% in the middle were getting the leftovers.
The brief check-ins. The assumed competence. The benign neglect of
someone who isn't a problem. And that's exactly the problem — because those
people would only thrive because of me, and I wasn't showing up.
What It Looks Like When You
Get It Right
I've carried the 2-6-2 Rule with me through every leadership role
since. And I've watched what happens when team leaders genuinely shift their
focus to the middle 60%.
People move. The capable become confident. The hesitant become
decisive. Some of that 60% step into the top tier — which means your 20% grows,
your bench deepens, and the whole team lifts.
That's the leverage point. Not the people who are already flying, and
not the people you're hoping will finally turn a corner. It's the ones in the
middle, quietly waiting for someone to notice them.
The Audit I'm Asking You to
Do
Here is the challenge I leave with every leader I work with, because
it was the challenge left with me:
Sit down — today, this week — and do an honest audit of where your
attention actually goes. Then ask each of your team leaders to do the same. Not
where they intend it to go. Where it actually lands.
Then ask the harder question: who on my team would only thrive because
of me — and are they getting enough of me?
If the answer is uncomfortable, that's a good sign. It means you're
asking the right question.
The 2-6-2 Rule doesn't ask you to abandon your high performers or
write off the difficult ones. It asks you to be deliberate. To recognise that
your most powerful investment — as a leader of leaders — is in the people
waiting right in the middle.
Be that person. And teach your team leaders to be that person too.
