Circumstances tend to tell a story about the quality of a team. How a team responds to good times and bad times reflects the actual state of a team. This does not always match the professed or believed state of a team. Good teams can struggle with pride. Bad teams can allow insecurity to dominate their decision
There is reality and then there is what we want and choose to see. We all have ideal circumstances that we aim for. I have learned that ideal is rare. Very rare. It’s best to see the world as it is and not how we imagine it should be. This is a key to a much more
Fitness is usually attached to visions of the gym and dieting. Fitness is simply the state of being fit. It is actually a spectrum and we are always in a state of fitness. We are always in shape, out of shape, or somewhere in between. We are always the before and after picture of the standard that
Maturity can be such a breath of fresh air when we are used to leading people through their constant cycles of drama. It’s like finding an adult to talk to on the playground of an elementary school. Mature people are easy to be around and tend to be reliable solution-makers. They can also be trusted to deescalate
Maturity is an often underrated attribute that every great teammate shares. It may even be the root cause of why a great teammate is so effective. Some might call it experience but maturity is more than experience. Experience tells us what to expect while maturity tells us how to respond. People with the same experience but different
There are always going to be times that require extra effort. Great teammates know when to rest but they also know when to kick their mindset into a different gear and power through a situation that doesn’t allow for the normal routine. This different gear requires a mindset that refuses to be entitled to business as usual.
Growth is something we all hope for as a great teammate. I have found that the greatest limiter of growth is immaturity. Knowing the difference between a big deal and a little deal is the mark of maturity. If we lack that discernment, we will struggle to grow because we will ultimately focus on the wrong things.
Sometimes opportunities to improve were present all along and the team just needed a reason to look under the hood to find the source of the thing that just doesn’t sound right. It’s better to address those small warnings early than to abide the sound that plants a “something is wrong” alarm in the back of your
Teams that like their favorite way become predictable and rely too much on a narrow window of circumstance to succeed. The inflexible decision-maker can fall into the trap of believing so much in their “tried and true” way that if it doesn’t work in every circumstance, it wasn’t meant to be. As the favorite way becomes more
When a team or teammate’s limit is set, the achievements beyond that set limit are not only seen as unreachable but perhaps even morally questionable. This is because the ease of their job has become what governs their decision-making. These are the people that wait all week for the weekend and dread Mondays. They look at success