Teammates

Today, my buddy Tommy and I are beginning play in a three day golf tournament.  We play as a team and I can’t imagine a better example of what a team should be about.  Each of us can play golf reasonably well.  When we go bad, it’s because either something has changed in our swing or something has changed in our heads.  The challenge, as a teammate, is to spot it when it happens and help correct it.  While it’s true that either one of us, in theory, could post a great score on our own, the reality is that each of us has to contribute to the scoring as well as to the karma if we’re to do well.  We need to recognize changes in conditions (wind, green speed, etc.) and alert the rest of the team.  We need to make adjustments in our game plan based on observation, feedback, our own mental states, and what our competition is doing.

Vince Lombardi said that “people who work together will win.”  It’s always surprising to me how little attention is paid in many businesses to that.  In speaking with folks who reported to me over the years I always tried to help them understand that their development and success was tied to the growth and success of the team.  Over the years, that notion seemed very distant from the attitudes of the newer staff.  I don’t know if that was a generational thing but it became something that I looked for when hiring: how well will this candidate play with the other kids?  Do they speak in “we” when talking about their past accomplishments?  As Casey Stengel said, “Gettin’ good players is easy. Gettin’ ’em to play together is the hard part.”  I always found that you can make it easier if you define part of “good” as knowing how to play as a team.