The Power of a Team
For just about as long as I can remember, I have been on teams. Some were great (my college track team was the best in the history of our conference), others were not so great (my 8th grade Parks and Rec basketball team, for instance). Those who know me know that I was never a particularly gifted athlete and no team was ever made instantly more athletic just because I was on it- I was usually bringing the average down in that regard quite frankly. That being said, I like to think that while I may not have made my teams better because of my results, I always found a way to make my teams better, and the team made me infinitely better! Here’s a few ways in which the power of a team has helped me personally.
When I started running in high school, I joined a pretty decent cross country team. The team had not been good for a long time as I recall, but we had a group of juniors and seniors that were all very talented and they propelled the team forward. After that first group of seniors graduated, the team started to go downhill a little bit. Distance running was not considered a particularly cool thing to do in my high school, and our small team did the best we could. As I became an upperclassmen, the team seemed to fall apart. As a junior I was the number 2 runner on the team and as a senior I was the top guy on a team of about 12 guys. We did not have a lot going for us in the fall of 2003 and I didn’t do a great job of elevating the team with the one other senior that hung around for one more season.
Fast forward a year to the start of college when I was way behind the rest of the team… Same person, same sport, but boy oh boy were the results different! When I was surrounded by a team of people that didn’t just care about our sport, they adored it like I did, I was made instantly better. There was the time my friend Kevin refused to allow me to drop off the pace on an easy run, or when my upperclassmen buddy Pat showed me how to use the whirlpool, or when my best friend Andy and I vowed to not let another teammates fear of the hardest workout of the year prevent us from doing our best. Great teams make everyone on them better.
Now that I have 15 years of coaching under my belt, I see how important it is to set the tone for teams to be a multiplier of talents, not a divider. Team culture can either be the tide that lifts all boats, or the storm that sinks them. The teams that have made me the best athlete I could be were the most positive and filled with the people who wanted to get the best out of everyone. Positive warriors want their teammates to achieve every bit as much as they want to achieve themselves.
As a leader, you have to look at the culture you’ve created and ask yourself quite seriously: is my culture the tide lifting my teams’ boats, or is it the storm sinking them? If you are sinking, it may be time to look towards some coaching and bringing in an outside perspective.