Eventually, we capture the attention of our adult caretakers who direct us toward organized physical activities like ball tossing, block stacking and body tagging.
Those of us who display exemplary talents for throwing and chasing after balls often get promoted into organized team sports like soccer (i.e., futbol), baseball, basketball and football (with its American, Canadian and Australian versions).
The majority of us who play these organized sports do not progress to the next level of play, moving on to something else in which we excel. That is, a large population of youth may play football in secondary school but only a portion of those with superior football skills will continue playing football in primary school and even fewer will play the sport on college or semipro teams.
Therefore, the further the player progresses, the better we presume the player has become. Also, the player's value to society increases, giving the player the option to convert the combination of talent and skill into a usable trade in the open marketplace of job opportunities, including the amateur "job" of college scholarship-funded student-athlete.
For the past 19 years, my wife and I have watched American-style football from the same seats in Neyland Stadium on the campus of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. We have enjoyed the drama of the game as well as the increasing maturity of the players as they grow from boys to men in their three to five-year college stint. We continue to marvel at the ability of the players to take bruising hits week-in and week-out while still finding a way to attend college classes, study class material after or in-between classes and improve their ability to play football the next game through weight room training or team practices.
Most importantly, we appreciate the players who understand the team concept, putting egos and superior talent aside in the drive to win football games.
During this football season, we have observed the inability of the group of players to overcome talent shortcomings or poor individual efforts on the field in order to win each week's game. Many theories regarding this year's team have been touted by fans, boosters, former players, current players, former coaches, current coaches, news media and current athletic administrators. We watched as the most common consensus among this diverse group of people coalesced into the desire to get rid of the head football coach, the adult who has personal responsibility for attracting the players' attention in primary school to come play football for him in exchange for a college education. The coach was forced by the director of the athletic department to resign last week. No matter what people thought about the man himself, they now face a future without him coaching and leading the football team. The football players responded by proclaiming they would win the rest of the games to show their respect for the coach and prove the athletic director's decision was wrong. However, they lost their next game, 13-7, while hosting a typical "weak" homecoming team, an opponent favored to lose to the Tennessee football team by 27 points.
In business, we use group dynamics to make our company move forward toward a set of common goals. Every person in the company has a set of job duties that contribute in part to those goals. When the employees fail as a group to perform their duties in a way that makes the company successful, how long should we wait to place the blame for their failures on the company's CEO, president, or department VP? This question follows a CEO or president every day, whether employees, stockholders and the board of directors consciously think it.
Not every adult gets to play professional sports on a team but every one of us participates in team activities, no matter what we do.
So, when you work with others, observe the team's group dynamics and ask yourself these questions:
- Am I tuned in to the team and the individual efforts of the team's members?
- Can I put aside my ego to assist a member of the team I do not like personally but needs my help in order to get the team to succeed?
- In the depth of misery (i.e., the team is collapsing from loss of control or intense conflict), can I use humor to pull the team back together again?
HINT: You should respond, "Yes!," without hesitation. After all, the chances that your team is sitting on a field in front of 100,000 screaming fans are fairly slim. More than likely, you're sitting in a room with less than 10 people where team decision-making is easy. Therefore, no matter what your team struggles with, remember the sports teams that have to make decisions in front of thousands or even millions of people -- they practice team continuity on a daily basis in order to achieve their team-based goals -- like the successful sports teams, no matter how great your talent, you should always put the team first and be the one to show others how to achieve the team's goals by disregarding ego-driven or externally-initiated conflicts. Don't wait for a leader to get fired for you to be the one to make a difference.
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