Nobody remembers their coach’s win-loss record. They remember the one sentence that made them believe.

Numbers fade because they were never the thing that landed. What stays with a person is a moment when someone with authority saw them clearly and said so out loud. A sentence like that can hold for decades, long after the season it was said in has been forgotten.

If you lead anyone, even informally, look for the specific true thing you could say about them and say it. Be precise rather than encouraging in general terms. And if a sentence like that was once said to you, consider telling the person it stuck.