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April 5th, 2023
Have you ever had the opportunity to witness the power of truly being part of a team? I’m not talking about random people thrown together: I mean a real team. In this Pocket Sized Pep Talk, I’ll share with you what makes up a real team, what a real team can accomplish, and how to create a team that will almost always overachieve.
Rob Jolles (00:00):
Not so long ago, I witnessed the power of truly being part of a team. I’m not talking about random people thrown together, I mean a real team. Let’s have ourselves a pocket sized pep talk because I want to tell you what makes up a real team and what a real team can accomplish.
Intro (00:20):
A pocket size pep talk, the podcast that can help energize your business and your life with a quick inspiring message. Now, here’s your host, Rob Jolles.
Rob Jolles (00:34):
It amazes me how often we throw around the word team. Some people think that just because you formed a group, you formed a team. In sports, our teammates are often others who are selected from a pool of players. But the moment we show up and are handed a jersey or labeled a team, what we really are is a team that goes to work for a company and often it’s one of the first things we’ll hear. Welcome to the team. Our teammates might simply be strangers with cubicles near ours, but based on proximity and perhaps job assignment, they magically become our teammate. Does that make us a team? I’ve always felt there was more to it than that. I love playing on teams and when I was 21, I coached my first team. It was an awkward group of seventh graders from Sligo Junior High School in Maryland.
(01:34)
They learned a lot from me and can assure you I learned a lot from them. The players played for themselves and I coached for myself. All I wanted to do was win so I could show these parents what a great coach their kids had. We lost our first game and then our second and our third and our fourth, and the parents were frustrated with their young coach and their young coach was frustrated with themself, but had decided to take them all out to dinner and talk about our predicament. For the first time, the players actually socialized with each other, smiled, laughed and enjoyed each other’s company. We never talked about our predicament. We just started to care about each other. We won our next 10 games in a row.
(02:27)
Over the next few decades, I went on to coach 52. More teams never held a first practice without a dinner together, and we usually added multiple social events throughout the season. Players cared about each other and the wins seemed to just keep coming. My theory has always been a simple one. If people who are brought together to complete a task care more about the success of the team than they do about their own personal successes, the team overachieve. Always. Recently, I saw my theory play itself out again. Only this time I wasn’t coaching. I was competing. My University of Maryland dormitory Garrett Hall, decided to reunite, enter a race together. It was a 200 mile 12 person relay race from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Washington, dc. Forget the fact that no one on the team was under 54 years old, and half the runners, including myself, had run for quite some time.
(03:33)
We made a commitment and saw that commitment through, and one of the requirements was we had to provide an accurate reading of how fast each of us could run six miles in this race. Each of us was responsible for running about three times that distance over a 33 hour period of time, but what happened was astonishing. Oddly enough, there wasn’t a single person on the team who did not exceed every expectation they had set for themselves and break every record they had set in practice, every single person. Surely that must have been some sort of anomaly. I say no. In fact, I think in hindsight, it was actually predictable. During my senior year in college, I lived with an extraordinary group of people. We took trips together, laughed together, cried together, and most importantly, cared about each other. Even though we each individually had to train to get ready for this race, there was a shift when we saw each other and began to operate as a team.
(04:48)
When we met to run this relay race and we broke into two vans, we were no longer running for ourselves. We were running for each other. When we handed the baton from one to another, we realized that we were a team. The experience once again reminded me of the remarkable feats a true team can accomplish. Being called a team is not a phrase that should be taken lightly or merely used to describe a group of individuals thrown together by circumstances. It takes work, strangely enough, work that usually has nothing to do with the actual task that the team must undertake. When people truly care about each other, they become a team and a real team can motivate teammates to do great things, and that’s because the success they seek is no longer for themselves. It’s for those around them.
Outro (05:52):
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy today’s show, please rate and recommend it on iTunes, outcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also get more information on this show and rob@jolles.com.