Babe Ruth
“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”
We recently took my oldest son to a basketball camp. The camp wasn’t local and he was placed on a team with kids he didn’t know.
During one of the first scrimmages my son missed a pass coming to him. One of his new teammates yelled out in frustration and I instantly saw something change in my sons engagement during that game.
He became more tentative. His confidence shook, he didn’t push back when the coach wanted to substitute him out.
After the game he confirmed what I had seen during the game. The negative feedback from his teammates had impacted both his desire to play and his confidence.
I wish I could say that this was one of those great Father/Son teaching situations, however in one of my not so proud parenting moments I said, “Your Mom & I paid a lot of money to send you to this camp so you are not quitting”.
The Importance of Team
I don’t think I need to convince any one of the importance of a team. There is plenty of literature out there to support that. If you are currently working with a great team, you know the value of that. Those of you currently working on a bad team, know the pain of this.
We All Miss Passes
Like my son in his basketball scrimmage, members of our team are going to miss passes at work. Some of these passes are going to be huge lofty floaters that they should have caught one handed. In these situations, the effectiveness of our team will be defined how we respond to our teammates
“Come on Man!”
To respond negatively implies that we think they meant to make the mistake. We often wrongly attribute our frustration with the outcome to the person.
A hallmark of a good team is trust. If trust is there then you should have no reason to believe that your teammates intentionally missed a deadline, let an error slip by or made some other misstep.
If your team is healthy you know they are human and with this comes the natural tendency to make mistakes.
Criticizing or belittling your teammates does nothing to help the situation, only makes it worse.
“I’m Quitting”
If the script is flipped and you are the one who made the mistake, how you react is equally important. As an adult you no longer have the parent scolding you about how much money they paid.
You are human as well. You will screw up. You can’t control when this will happen, but you can control how you respond.
If after every mistake you are hit with an immediate desire to throw in the towel and call it quits, it may be time to re-evaluate things
If after a mistake members of your team become upset and call you out, it may be time to re-evaluate your team.
Quitting rarely is the right answer.
First of all you have given in to your inner voice telling you that you couldn’t do it, so your confidence is impacted.
Secondly, you have given the critics on your team the satisfaction of seeing you go.
Stick it Out.
So after the inspiring, motivational speech from his Dad (and threats to take his allowance for the next year), my son hung in there.
On the trip home he said, “I’m glad you made me stay. I’m glad that I saw I could do it.”
So how are you impacting your team? Are you creating an environment where they are glad they stayed? Or are you creating an environment of eggshells?
How is your team impacting you?
Are you confident that if you screwed up they would have your back?
Are you confident enough that one mistake won’t make you throw in the towel?
Get back on the court. Support your teammates when they miss a pass and they will support you when you miss yours.
