Finding A Reason To Be Motivated

    

      Muhammed Ali illustrates one of my favorite stories about motivation. When he was growing up in Louisville, he got a job sacking groceries. He didn’t make much money, but he saved enough to buy a secondhand bicycle. He loved that blue bicycle. He was proud of it. He had worked hard for it and earned it. One day someone stole his bike. He was heartbroken.

      

      “I walked all over Louisville that summer, looking for that bicycle,” Ali said. “I waked and looked, looked and walked. Never found it to this day. But every time I got in the ring, I looked across at the other fighter and told myself, ‘Hey, that’s the guy who stole my bicycle!’” 

From "Mind Gym" by Gary Mack and David Casstevens 

9 Ways To Be A Great Team Member

One of my favorite authors and favorite follows on twitter is Jon Gordon. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't learn something from him. He quotes invoke so much personal reflection. They make you think about the person you are and want to become. 4 months to the day, he shared his 9 Ways to Be a Great Team Member piece on his blog. This is a must read for anyone who is part of team, whether in a business or a sports related field. The list and full explanations of each can be found here. 

1. Set the Example - Decide to set the example and show your team members what hard work, passions, and commitment looks like.

2. Use Your Strengths to Help the Team - Without your effort, focus, talent, and growth the team won't accomplish its mission. Be selfish by developing you and unselfish by making sure your strengths serve the team.

3. Share Positive Contagious Energy - When you share positive energy you infectiously enhance the mood, morale and performance of your team. Remember, negativity is toxic.

4. Know and Live the Magic Ratio - Teams that experience positive interactions at a ratio equal or greater that 3:1 are more productive and higher performing than those with a ratio less than 3:1.

5. Put the Team First - Whatever it takes to make the team better. Your ego must be subservient to the mission and purpose of the team.

6. Build Relationships - You can be the smartest person in the room but if you don't connect with others you will fail as a team member.

7. Trust and Be Trusted - Trust is earned through integrity, consistency, honesty, transparency, vulnerability and dependability.

8. Hold Them Accountable - Don't be afraid to hold your team members accountable. But remember to be effective you must build trust and a relationship with your team members.

9. Be Humble - If we are not humble we won't allow ourselves to be accountable. There's tremendous power in humility that makes us and our team better.

Sacrifice For Your Goals

Follow your goals and not the crowd. Former Olympic swimming champion Janet Evans said, “Sometimes I feel envious when my friends go to parties, and I have to go to bed. But my friends always tell me that the parties really aren’t that much fun anyway. Whatever I’ve miss, I’ve made up for. Most kids don’t get to go to the Olympics and win three gold medals. Its definitely been worth it.”

As a teenager, basketball star Kevin Johnson went to the gym every evening to practice. One evening the janitor said to him, “Kevin it’s Saturday night. Why aren’t you out at parties, like everybody else?” “Parties,” Johnson replied, “wont take me where I want to go.” 

From "Mind Gym" by Gary Mack and David Casstevens 

Action vs. Inaction

The ultimate goal of the QBQ is action. All QBQs focus on action. Only through action is anything accomplished. Taking action may seem risky, but doing nothing is a bigger risk. 

• Action, even when it leads to mistakes brings learning and growth. Inaction brings stagnation and atrophy. 
• Action leads us toward solutions. Inaction does nothing and holds us in the past.
• Action requires courage. Inaction often indicates fear.  
• Action builds confidence; Inaction, doubt. 

From "QBQ! The Question Behind The Question" by John G. Miller 

Self-Motivation

"Motivation is something nobody else can give you. Others can help motivate you, but basically it must come from you, and it must be a constant desire to do your very best at all times and under any circumstances. "

 - Joe DiMaggio 

Positional Leadership

Yesterday I posted John Maxwell's 5 Levels of Leadership: Position, Permission, Production, People Development, Pinnacle. Throughout the book, Maxwell writes about the Upside & Downside of each leadership level. The following is about the Upside & Downside of Level 1: Position 

The Upside

• A leadership position is usually given to people because they have leadership potential
• The best leaders promote people into leadership based on leadership potential, not on politics, seniority, credentials, or convenience.
• Your initial goal should be to show your leader and your team that you deserve the position you have received.
• No man is a leader until his appointment is ratified in the minds and the hearts of his men.
• If you want to lead, you need to grow. The only way to improve an organization is to grow and improve the leaders.
• Good leaders are always good learners
• What kind of leader do you want to be?
• Do you want to be a tyrant or a team builder?
• Do you want to come down on people or lift them up?
• Do you want to give orders or ask questions?
• You can develop whatever style you want as long as it is consistent with who you are.
• Leadership is much less about what you do, and much more about who you are. – Frances Hesselbein
• Good leadership begins with leaders knowing who they are.
• Your values are the soul of your leadership , and they drive your behavior.
• Before you can grow and mature as a leader, you must have a clear understanding of your values and commit to living consistently with them – since they will shape your behavior and influence the way you lead.
• People with different personalities, different approaches, different value succeed not because one set of values or practices is superior, but because their value and practices are genuine.
• If you want to become a better leader, you must not only know yourself and define your value. You must also live them out.

The Downside 

• Just because you have the right to do something as a leader doesn’t mean that it is the right thing to do.
• “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln
• The position does not make the leader – the leader makes the position
• Good leaders leave an organization when they have to follow bad leaders.
• When people follow a leader because they have to, they will do only what they have to. People don’t give their best to leaders they like least.
• Success demands more than most people are willing to offer, but not more than they are capable of giving.
•  “If you don’t invest very much, then defeat doesn’t hurt very much, and winning is not very exciting.” – Dick Vermiel 

Always Being Prepared

The following comes from a small piece on ESPN.com about the Greatest Coaches in NFL History. This caught my attention, not only because I am an avid Giants fan, but because I have tremendous respect for Coach Coughlin and his coaching philosophy. Eli Manning talks about his Coach and what he has learned from him. The full article can be found here.

After the second Super Bowl, Coach Coughlin and I had kind of a unique moment. I hadn’t seen him right after the game with the hoopla and then doing interviews. So now I’m dressed and I’ve done all my interviews, and I’m leaving the locker room and realize I haven’t talked to Coach Coughlin. So I knock on his door and go into the his office, and right away we both start analyzing what we should’ve done in that last minute [against New England].

So after the game, Coach Coughlin and I started analyzing it. We knew they were going to let us score. Do you take a knee? Do you kick a field goal? Do you try to score? We start dissecting that, thinking into it. I threw in my theory. He gave me his theory. What’s the best possible way? It was a unique situation. You’ve got to score. You don’t want to settle for a field goal in that situation. How do you possible handle that situation if it ever happens again? We do situations on Saturdays. That would be a good situation to think about and go over. It was second down, and they’d just taken a timeout. We were thinking they have one timeout left, we’ll run it again, let the clock run all the way down, then kick a field goal to take the lead. But on second down they let us score, saved a timeout and got the ball back with 50 seconds rather than getting it with 15. Of course, they needed a touchdown now to win the game instead of a field goal.

And I think he’s ingrained that in me, to always be planning, always be thinking, and to be prepared for every situation. You watch things happen, whether it happens to you or another team, and you learn from it and you can be prepared for it. He wanted to talk about what happened at the end of the game, but I did, too.