In the fourth quarter of this nail-biter, Aaron Rodgers threw the ball away.
From the stands, it looked awful. Careless. People groaned. The guy next to me booed.
Then the replay came up on the Jumbotron.
What looked like a bad decision was actually a smart one.
Rodgers had seen something most of us couldn't see from our seats (defense jumped the gun, resulting in a late flag). He understood the situation unfolding around him and made the least bad choice available.
The same action. Completely different interpretation. Fans now cheered.
That struck me because I see versions of this play out in organizations all the time.
We watch a leader make a decision. We observe a colleague handle a situation. We see a top performer approach a customer very differently than we would.
And from our vantage point, it's easy to conclude:
"That doesn't make sense!"
"Why would they do that?"
"That's the wrong call."
But expertise often looks strange when you can't see what the expert sees.
The longer I've worked with high performers, the more I've learned that the most important behaviors are often the hardest to recognize from the outside.
Sometimes what appears to be a mistake is actually judgment. Sometimes what appears to be luck is pattern recognition. And, sometimes what appears to be obvious was only obvious after the replay.
That's why curiosity is usually more valuable than criticism. The best coaches know this.
My takeaways?