GREAT TEAMS HAVE GREAT TEAMMATES
There’s no disputing that great teams are made up of talented performers. Your team can’t be a great team unless it’s comprised of highly skilled, highly competent people. That’s an important reason why everyone who’s part of a successful team is responsible for learning and improving each day - for making themselves stronger and smarter. But I also want you to see today that while skill and competence are important to a team’s success, they aren’t the only determining factor. In fact, there have been plenty of talented teams who’ve never come close to reaching their potential. There are plenty of them out there underachieving right now, and each one serves as proof that great teams aren’t just made up of talented performers. Great teams are also made up of great teammates.
Great teammates are defined by their love for each other. Now, I want to clarify that I’m not talking about love here as some soft and cushy feeling. I’m talking about love in action - the tough kind of love that’s committed and dedicated and disciplined. I’m not talking about simply saying you love your teammates. I’m talking about the choices you make and the action you take to prove you care deeply about being your best for the team, and to prove you care about bringing out the best in those around you.
Doing what champion teammates do - putting love into action - means honoring the commitments you’ve made to your team, regardless of the circumstances you’re facing. It means being accountable for bringing your best and working to get better every day. It means sacrificing your own desires for the good of the group. It means taking more than your share of the responsibility when things go wrong, and giving away more than your share of the credit when things go right. It means cheering for, encouraging, and uplifting those around you, no matter what you may be facing personally. It means going the extra mile, even when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient, to show your people you care. Love in action is real, and rare. It requires our time and our toughness, our attention and our intention. It takes a big-time commitment, and it’s anything but soft.
Loving like that isn’t easy. Especially if those you’re working with aren’t good teammates themselves or don’t recognize the important role it plays in success, it can be easy to feel a sense of indifference about your own responsibility as a teammate. But remember, we’re talking about what great teammates do, not how great teammates feel. It’d be ideal if love for one another always flowed from our hearts, but sometimes love is demonstrated instead by the decisions we choose to make with our head. When we come to recognize that talent alone isn’t enough for our team to achieve the things we say we’re after, it clarifies for us that doing the hard work that love requires is the only option we’ve got, even if it doesn't feel as comfortable or as convenient as we’d like.
Plenty of teams out there will never reach their potential, not because they aren’t talented enough, but because they don’t love each other enough. The individuals on those teams will bail on the commitments they’ve made when things start to get tough. They’ll justify giving less than their best and won’t do the hard work that improvement requires. They’ll push the responsibility onto others when things go wrong and work to hoard all the credit when things go right. They may hide it outwardly, but inside they’ll be driven by jealousy and maybe even hoping for their teammates to fail. If this describes you or the people who make up your team - if you possess the skill and competence to perform at a high level, but just haven't been able to put it together? Then maybe it's time to recognize that it's not more talent you need, but more love. Maybe it's time to start doing what champions do.
That's what teams who reach their potential, who build something special, and who win at a high level are deciding today. They are choosing to love each other - not just in words, but in action. They are proving, again and again, that they care deeply about being their best for the team, and proving they care about bringing out the best in those around them. Why? Because they recognize that great teams are made up of more than just of talented performers. Great teams are made up of great teammates.