This post was provided by InnerDrive, a mental skills training company.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore once remarked “that if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”. So what are the benefits of building a good team of people around you? Why is teamwork important? How exactly does it help?

Author Jim Rohn suggests that you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. If you look at any successful person, in every walk of life, they often have a team around them. One classic example of this is the team at Microsoft. Most people associate Microsoft with just Bill Gates. But as he has said many times, he couldn’t have created it all by himself.

After reviewing the psychological research on the effect of others on personal performance, we highlight 7 main benefits below:

 

1. Enhances Your Effort

Legendary American football coach Vince Lombardionce commented that “confidence is contagious”. It turns out, the same is true for effort. That was the finding of a recent journal which found that if the person next to you is working hard then it increases your work ethic. Interestingly, this impact was found to be consistent regardless of whether they were doing an easier or more difficult task then you, or whether the task is similar or unrelated to yours.

As well as improving work ethic, another studyfound that teenagers who had to perform a problem solving task together “engaged in more exploratory behaviour” and “learnt faster from positive and negative feedback” than compared to when on their own.

2. Social Support and Advice

One of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, Phil Jackson once said that ‘the strength of the team is the individual. The strength of the individual is the team’. We think this is definitely true. A team is comprised of individuals. If we help each individual maximise their talents, then the team gets stronger. However, it is the support, advice and guidance of the team that can help the individuals develop their skills.

Having access to a supportive network of individuals who can offer you social support has been found to act as a stress buffer and improve coping. It has also been found to have a positive impact on your mood and well-being.

Social support comes in many forms; it can be someone giving you advice, some making you feel better about the situation or simply listening to you vent. All three are important. Finding people who can help you satisfy each of those needs is key to building a good team around you.

3. Helps to Develop Resilience

Having people around you and asking them for support and advice has been found to be a key way that Olympic champions develop their resilience. A problem shared really is a problem halved. It is not just Olympic gold-medallists who get this advantage, a growing body of research suggests that social support can be a powerful predictor of resilience to stress for everyone.

Social support plays a key role in helping students develop their resilience, and self-esteem. All too often, and especially in teenagers, people think that asking for help is a sign of weaknesses. In fact, the opposite is true. Asking for, and actually using, feedback is the hallmark of a mature learner.

4. Enhances Motivation

Motivation is known to be enhanced by a variety of different things. These include a sense of purpose, choice, mastery and personal belonging or relatedness to a group. For university students in a randomised control trail test, being part of a peer-network helped increase participation in physical activity. These peer networks were more successful than promotional messages in motivating students to participate.

In elite sport, rugby player Jonny Wilkinson talks in his autobiography about the realisation that if he gave himself to the team, then he would get that support back 15 times more, as each player would support him. This realisation helped propel him to international stardom and ultimately winning the World Cup in 2003.

5. Improves Your Self-View

A fascinating study in education found that how teachers spoke to their students impacted how the students then spoke to themselves and on how they viewed themselves. The authors of this research state that ‘positive statements made by teachers were found to be directly related to positive self-talk and to maths and learning self-concepts’

How other people talk to us has an impact on us, even at a very young age. Researchers have found that the type of praise that we are given age 1-3 years old, can predict our mindset up to 5 years later. We talk more about the importance of praise and the different types here.

6. Help Deal With Stressful Situations Better

Having a trusted network of individuals who you can turn to can be an extremely helpful coping mechanism for dealing with life stresses. This is why the NHS urge people to connect with others in order to improve their well-being. Other techniques to improve wellbeing include being open to learning, being physically active and giving to others (all of which can be done with other people). This is something we have written about in more detail here.

7. Can Improve Performance

In arguably the first ever study in sport psychology, researchers found that simply having to perform a task in front of other people made people work harder.  Fast forward a hundred years and we see the same benefit in the work-place. In a study of over 300 people, researchers found that having a deep and meaningful relationships with the people you work with can improve your performance. They found that colleagues who had good personal relationships had more trust, support and pride in their work.

That is not to say there are no potential drawbacks, the authors note that it can be draining having to offer social support to others whilst also doing your work, but on the whole, the benefits to work performance outweighed the costs.

This article can also be found on the Coaches Toolbox, a collection of free resources for coaches of all sports.

By Scott Rosberg

Individual vs. Team (Post 1 of 5)

I hate the title of this post. “Why?” you may be asking. “You created it. Why would you create a title that you hate?”

I hate it because of one word – “vs.” (Is that even a word?!) The word “vs.” (or the actual word “versus”) automatically indicates an adversarial relationship between the two things on either side of it. It means there is a battle going on. The Chicago Blackhawks vs. the Minnesota Wild. The Dallas Cowboys vs. the New England Patriots. The United States vs. Russia. Republicans vs. Democrats.  Cowboys vs. Aliens. And the list goes on and on.

In every statement with a “vs.” in it, there is a competition where two entities are competing against one another. In sports, it is a key component. Teams and individuals compete against each other to try to win a contest, supposedly to see who is the best. (The competitions themselves, of course, do not always determine who is the best team/individual. On a daily basis around the world, you have upsets, where the better team/individual loses to the weaker one. It’s just that they were better or played better in that particular moment.)

In all of the instances above, “vs.” is a good thing. It creates the interest, the work ethic, the dedication to improve, the desire to perform, and the determination to overcome and succeed. I don’t have a problem with competition. If I did, I wouldn’t have stayed in coaching for the last 35 years.

“Can’t We Both Just Get Along?”

My problem is the “vs.” that is created in the concept of a person being an individual vs. being a great teammate who puts the team first. Why can’t someone be both? Why does that have to be an adversarial relationship? Why can’t they co-exist? Can’t the two just get along?!

Of course, they can. People can be themselves as individuals with their own personalities, style, and goals, while at the same time sacrificing and putting the needs of the team ahead of their own. Coaches ask players to do this all the time. This kind of sacrifice is at the heart of any team experience. It is critical for team success.

And yet, it is not always easy. I am no behavioral psychologist, but it seems to me that human nature is to be focused first on self and second on others. Yet, we see people all over the world who are “other-centered,” especially those in team settings. Selflessness and being focused on others seems to be more of a learned thing, although some people seem to be more prone to it naturally than other people do.

Selfless Competition

If selflessness is a learned behavior, though, then it is imperative that we as coaches, teachers, and leaders do all we can to stress the importance of it. We must continually focus on the importance of sacrifice for others, for team. Statements like “We over me,” “TEAM – Together Everyone Achieves More,” “Give up the Me for We,” and the myriad of other “team-first” statements are all made to help people remember that we are capable of so much more when we focus on being selfless and helping the entire group before we focus on helping ourselves.

However, in many places, this is a difficult message to instill. For instance, here in America, we are a society that loves competition. We compete against others to rise up and become our best. The image of the individual struggling against adversity and rising up after overcoming obstacles in life is revered as one of the greatest elements of the American spirit. And that is a good thing. It is good to have pride in one’s own work ethic, dedication to improvement, and the success they acquire.

However, it can also make it difficult to get people to completely buy in to the idea of having a “team-first attitude.” We tell players on our teams all the time that for us to have team success, they need to put the needs of the team ahead of their own in every decision they make. Imagine the level of success that a team could rise to if every player did that.

But that is not in every player’s mindset and makeup. From their own innate personalities, to the way they were raised by their parents, to the focus on individual development at their schools and within their friend groups, to the prevailing attitudes of the country in which they live, it is hard to get people to completely give themselves over to others and to team.

The Importance of “Communism” in Sport

I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine who is a fellow coach. We talked about the variety of “-isms” in our lives, and how they often taint a lot of really good concepts and ideas. One of those is “communism.” On the surface, communism would be a great thing, perfectly in line with what we as coaches want with our teams – everyone giving of themselves for the good of all. It is the ultimate in team-first attitude.

However, the concept of communism has been altered, adapted, and tainted through the years by so many leaders, people, and countries, that it carries very negative connotations for millions of people around the world, a terrible thing that we need to not only avoid but destroy, according to many. Because we have carried this feeling about communism for so long, it is hard for people to wrap their minds around the idea that some of the basic foundations of the word are actually good things for people to follow. (It is such an emotional topic that some of you reading this right now have probably lost a little respect for me or are feeling your blood pressure rise a bit because I even suggested this.)

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not advocating that we become a communistic society. I am merely trying to illustrate that one of the reasons it so hard to get kids/people to completely buy into the concept of team-first is that some of our feelings are deeply ingrained in us as people because they have been ingrained in us in our families, in our social groups, and in our society.

So what do we do? Do we just throw up our hands and say, “Well, I guess we will never get all of our kids to buy in completely to team, so why bother?” Of course not. We must keep working to instill in them that the best chances for success on our teams are when we all understand the importance of focusing on what’s best for all instead of what’s best for the individual. Teams work best and succeed the most when everyone works together in pursuit of the success the team seeks over the success the individual seeks. When we do that, the sky is the limit for where we can go as a team, as a business, and as a country.

My next post will take this concept a step further and look at the importance of stressing Team Goals vs. Individual Goals and how to balance those as an individual.

About the Author of this Article

Scott Rosberg has been a coach (basketball, soccer, & football) at the high school level for 30 years, an English teacher for 18 years, and an athletic director for 12 years. He has published seven booklets on coaching and youth/school athletics, two books of inspirational messages and quotes for graduates, and a newsletter for athletic directors and coaches. He also speaks to schools, teams, and businesses on a variety of team-building, leadership, and coaching topics. Scott has a blog and a variety of other materials about coaching and athletic topics on his website – www.coachwithcharacter.com. He can be reached by email at [email protected].

Scott is also a member of the Proactive Coaching speaking team. Proactive Coaching is dedicated to helping organizations create character and education-based team cultures, while providing a blueprint for team leadership. They help develop confident, tough-minded, fearless competitors and train coaches and leaders for excellence and significance. Proactive Coaching can be found on the web at www.proactivecoaching.info. Also, you can join the 200,000+ people who have “Liked” Proactive Coaching’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/proactivecoach. Scott can also be reached through Proactive Coaching at [email protected].

This post was contributed by Youth Ice Hockey Coach Karl Norton.

These are Coach Norton’s comments:

We will also be combining this (His 3 on ice objectives for his team) with our culture and compete objectives that we will ask the players to develop. I attended a coaching conference in June hosted by The Way of Champions and Changing the Game Project. There were about 60 coaches involved with a wide range of experience. This was one of my biggest take-aways and I’m looking forward to combining these ideas with my focused goals. The other element is the inclusion of the parents in the team culture so that they know what to support and encourage. This will be quite a challenge!

The intent of the process is to end up with 3 main points for Culture and Compete. A lot of words and phrases are synonymous so they will lend themselves to grouping of key ideas. The really big point is that it comes from the players!

I want to acknowledge where the underlying ideas come from. James Leath, Dr. Jerry Lynch, John O’Sullivan, and Reed Maltbie, as well as many others have been a major influence on my thought process. My own thoughts have melded with those who have ideas that I am attracted to!

Team Culture

At the start of the season, when we have all the players together, I would like to start working with the them on developing their Team Culture and their goals for competition.  What is important to them?  How do they want to play?

Objective #1: Players establish a set of team values.  What is important for your team?  What do you want to be known for?

Divide the players into 2 groups and ask each group to list 5-10 specific things that are important to how they want their team to be.  Combine the groups, discuss the ideas, and establish their team values.

Core values should be inspiring, believable, hold everyone accountable, things that will be rewarded daily in practices and games.

Words that describe great teammates and culture:

Grateful
Team player
Caring
Giving – what can I give for the team effort
Encouraging
Helpful
Good Sportsmanship
Supportive
Respectful
Great attitude
Fearless
Communicator
Positive
Focused
Kind
Gives all-out effort
Loyal
Listener
Trusting
Never gives up
Never loses confidence
Is never defeated – the other team cannot take away their mission

 

 Objective #2: Players define what it means to Compete.

Establish a Warrior Culture

Internal focus – not immediate outcomes
Process driven
Self-less attitude
All effort
Every day excellence
“When you compete, you’re difficult to beat.”

Divide the players into 2 groups and ask each group to list 5-10 specific ways that, when executed, demonstrate what it means to compete.  Don’t focus on winning, focus on competing “like crazy with your hair on fire!”  Combine the groups, discuss the ideas, and establish how they wish to compete.  This is their Mission.  The “exceptional execution of extraordinary excellence”.

For example:

Scrap for puck
Sprint hard on back checks
Play In-Your-Face tenacious defense
Be “present” on defense
Defend together
Attack together
Identify your man
Head up, feet moving
Communicate
Reaction to mistakes – move on quickly
Work hard
 

All tasks that are controllable, doable and easy to accomplish.

Combine groups and create a master list “This is how we will compete!”

Show up to compete!

Focus on competition – do the little things brilliantly

Controllable
Calm, Relaxed
Focused
Extraordinary performance

 

 

 

These articles were written and contributed by Scott Rosberg

Standards and Goals (Post 5 of 5)

This is the final post in this short series on “Individual vs. Team.” If you missed those first four posts, go to the “Blog” page of the Coach with Character website – www.coachwithcharacter.com – and scroll down to the posts – “Individual vs. Team, “Individual Goals vs. Team Goals,” “Aligning Individual & Team Goals,” and “Process & Habits for Achieving Goals.” Although the original intention of what became this series of posts was to focus on the concept of the struggle for team members to maintain their individuality and uniqueness while being focused on their team, the recent posts veered into some thoughts on goals and goal-setting. Today, I will finish up on a thought that I started in the last post on the idea of burning your goals.

Now I am not advocating that people don’t have goals. In the last post, I echoed some thoughts from Joshua Medcalf and Jamie Gilbert from their book Burn Your Goals in which they talk about focusing on the commitment to daily habits that will help you achieve your goal, rather than focusing on the outcome of the goal. Today I want to talk about the importance of focusing on committing to your standards even more so than committing to your goals.

Present or Future?

Don’t get me wrong. Goals are important to have, and they give people something to shoot for in the future. But that is where goals live – in the future. Standards live in the here and now. Committing to living by your standards is committing to doing things every day that are focused on the moment.

When we commit to a standard, we are saying we stand for something, and so these are the actions that people will see from us as we live our standards.  We are not saying that we are committed to something in the future (goal), and we hope to be able to achieve it. We are saying that this is how we are going to live our life right now (standards) because this is what we believe is the best way achieve the goals we seek.

Behavioral Standards Lead to Success

Standards and goals can work together to help teams achieve what they seek. Most teams have a goal to win some type of championship. How do they keep the goal in front of their teams in a positive, meaningful way that doesn’t get old, but that also doesn’t put too much pressure on them?

One way is to focus less on the championship itself and more on the behaviors that will lead them to the championship. This is where standards come into play. Teams need to discuss what behaviors and standards they must exhibit that will lead to the success they seek and then decide which ones are most important to their success. When they live by those standards, they have a better chance at achieving their goals.

While they are not placing all of their focus on winning a championship, by focusing on living by their standards, they have a much better chance of achieving that goal. So while it is good for teams to have goals because they give them something to shoot for, it is even more important for teams to have standards because they are guidelines for how they need to live in order to achieve their goals.

If you like the ideas in here on focusing on your standards more than on your goals, I have a couple of “must-reads” and “must-sees” for you. Go to the Proactive Coaching website and pick up Bruce Brown’s booklet “First Steps to Creating a Successful Team ” and his books Teaching Character through Sport and Proactive Leadership. Also, pick up the DVD Captains & Coaches’ Workshop to see the workshop that helps teams start the process of developing their culture by creating their standards. Click on any of the blue titles above to be taken right to that page on the Proactive Coaching website. Better yet, schedule one of us to come out and do a presentation or the workshop for your team/school in person. You and your teams will be glad you did, and you will be on your way to creating the culture you seek.

Thanks so much for reading this short series on individual vs. team. What started as an idea to talk about the difficulties of balancing individuality with team spirit, branched out into some really important ideas on goals, commitments, habits, and standards. I hope you enjoyed reading these posts as much as I enjoyed exploring each of the topics within them.

If you like these types of posts, I have many more like them on “Blog” page of the Coach with Character website that I think you will like, too. I send them out once a week to all the people who have signed up to receive them. When the red box pops up on the site, just enter your name and email address, and you will start receiving them each week in your Inbox.