Be A Better Teammate
– Monday Mindset –

Today’s Monday Mindset: Be a Better Teammate

The world desperately needs more of this from all of us right now. And we don’t have to look any further than the world of sports.

Every good team is full of good teammates. Every good team has players who have each other’s backs, who are willing to trade off their own self-interest for the benefit of the team, teammates who are willing to help each other, support each other, encourage each other.

Here’s my challenge to you right now. We each have the opportunity to be a good teammate or a better teammate to those around us. And you may just be thinking of things from a sports context, because I’m using the example of being a teammate, but we’re all teammates.

We’re teammates to our family members, our siblings, we’re teammates to our parents. We’re teammates, for those of us who are married, to our spouses, in your work environments, in your school environments. If you’re a student, in your classroom, they’re your teammates. In your work environment, those you work with are your teammates. And I even think in our communities, our neighbors are our teammates.

In this divided world we live in presently, I think it’s more important now than maybe ever before for us to step up our game in being a good teammate to others.

Let me give you two quick ways you could be a better teammate to those around you in every context.

Encourage your teammates. Something we do at PGC in our organization, and we call them celebrations, is we look for opportunities every day to uplift those around us, to see the good in others and to actually call it out and say it. My challenge to you, number one, encourage those around you. Find somebody to encourage every single day.

Express gratitude. Find those around you that you can express gratitude too. You can do it in the form of a text, a letter. I’ve spent this year writing a thank you card every single day. You can just tell somebody how much you appreciate them, tell them what you appreciate about them as well.

Here are two things to avoid.

Avoid criticizing your teammates. You could jump on social media and see people everywhere just criticizing those around them.

Avoid judging those around them. Criticism and judgment does not help any team be successful and it’s certainly not doing much good in this world.

When I think of everything related to vaccinations and everything we’re going through with COVID, I think a lot more acceptance and grace is needed.

That’s what our world needs, not judgment, not condemnation.

Encouragement and gratitude requires us to learn about other people’s perspectives, step into other people’s perceptions and truly hear others. Recognizing other people may land at different places than we land, on a whole variety of topics, but acceptance and grace will always go a lot farther than calling somebody an idiot, writing them off and judging and criticizing them.

My challenge to each of you today is to join me. I need to step up my game as well. I want to encourage you to join me.

Let’s step up our game. Let’s be better teammates to those who we live with, to those in our communities, and even those that we interact with online.

Let’s be better teammates together.

GET STARTED:
• Quit Sitting Quietly on the Bench
• How to Coach Your Teammates