EP41 Mindset Monday - Be the Best Team Player

This is the empowered athlete podcast Mindset Monday. 10 minutes with Kari Schneider to learn new mindset tactics and tricks to optimize your performance in sport, business and life. Let me take you back to the summer of 2008. It was my first summer not playing for the national team. I had it off and I got to train the entire summer with Kari on a specifically made program that was tailored to me, my injuries, my body and my goals for that next upcoming season. And I was 34 years old. Well, the result went back over to Turkey and won a European cup in incredible physical condition. Thank you to that program setting me up for the perfect season. Well, now you have access to the exact same thing. Hit email ksempowerconditioning.com that's KS for Kari Schneider and get started on one of Kari's incredible online training programs. The program is tailored to you. It has video of each exercise you're doing so you know what you're doing. Your reps are laid out, the sets are laid out. You can't go wrong. Reach out now to reach your best.

So how to be a best or top team player? So, number one. Well, first of all, before I go into number one, I just want to grab or gather your awareness around being a really high performing team. If you think of what a high performing team is, it's this group, whether it's a small group or a larger group of people who can really, really pinpoint what's going on for the other person, mesh well together. There's that elusive quality that coaches call the team chemistry, and you really feel the team chemistry. When you've got a unit of people functioning really well, so much so they can read each other, they can pick up on the deficiencies, they can perform higher, they elevate each other. There are so many qualities that come from being a really high quality team and one that has amazing chemistry and one that performs really well together. So as an individual, though, what can you do to contribute to the best possible team scenario? And this could be for anything. This could be for a family dynamic, a sports sports team, a career unit, or a group that works together on a regular basis. Think of how many times a family that's a unit and they're all together and one person kind of starts the ball rolling to have everything crumble and fall apart. The exact same thing happens on a sports team. The exact same thing happens in a work environment. Think of teams that are critical to work together, say a firefighting unit or a paramedic unit, where people have to function at the highest possible level as a team, or lives are on the line, or championships are on the line. So what can you do as an individual to really perform in a way that optimizes the function of an entire team and thereby your performance as well? So number one is awareness of what is occurring for your teammates. And this is a really, really, these three things are really important, but this is extremely important awareness of what is happening for the people around you, whether it's on a sports team, in a work office, in a family. But when you take a look at thinking and understanding and really knowing what is happening for another person that you are working in conjunction with, that is a critical component to how you end up performing and how you end up acting. What do you do to maybe elevate a teammate or a family member who is down? What do you do to make that difference for that person? So that, number one is the awareness of what is occurring for your teammates. Number two, know your effect and use it wisely. Everybody has an effect. Every single member of whatever team it is, everybody has an effect and they have a ripple effect. So when they think or they bring themselves down enough to think that, oh, what I just did doesn't impact other people, that happens all the time. But what really is going on is any little thing they do, whether they show up late, whether they do the extra thing for the team, or all of that has a ripple effect on the rest of the group, whether they're aware of it or not. So know your effect on the rest of the group and use it wisely. Are you the team clown or the group kind of humor injector to the scenario? Are you the one that has the crazy work ethic? Know your effect because that's the thing that's going to elevate you as well when you understand your effect on other people and how it ripples across the rest of the group. So number two is know your effect and use it wisely. Number three is become your absolute best. For years I have coached in team environments and also individual sport athletes and individuals in high performing work environments, whether it's CEOs or lawyers or physicians. And in that environment, being your best is so critical to the contribution of what happens to a team. So many times when I've worked with teams, the way I coach is such that if you're in a team environment, you train like you're an individual sport athlete. Individual sport athletes train like there's no one else accountable. Because at the end of whatever that race is, whether it's a swim meet or a track meet, they are the only ones that can say that they went too slow or they got the the personal best or whatever the time is. There's no one else to blame. So I've always coached my larger team athletes to train as though they are an individual sport athlete because that's the only thing that's going to get the results that that team needs. So from an individual, become your absolute best, keep working for that personal best. Find those measures that will become your best to contribute to the larger group. Now look at this on another level. So years and years ago I worked with a national level team and on this team there's a player who was likely the best player on the team. And yet that team suffered because of that player. Because that player would be inconsiderate of the other players, would often show up late, would often have an attitude of entitlement as though they deserved more or better or different than the rest of the players players. And ultimately, even though from a skill standpoint that player was the best on the team, that player got cut because the coaches, the sports psychologists, the performance enhancement team, felt that player was causing too much damage for the unit as a whole. And ultimately they were. And if we look back on these three things, number one, the awareness of what is occurring for your teammates or well, this particular athlete wasn't. They were so into themselves, they weren't aware at all of what was going on for other people around them. So that was not there at all. Number two, knowing your effect and using it wisely. I think this person had a pretty solid awareness of their own effect, but they didn't use it wisely. They didn't use it to motivate other people or to elevate other people. They used it to enhance their own experience or only themselves. So it just didn't work for the entire unit as a whole. And then the last one, becoming your best, this person was very interested in becoming their best, but done so in a way that wasn't contributing to the rest of the team. It was in a way that was very self serving. So they, in a way they were almost forgetting that they were in a team sport. Had they been in an individual sport, it might have served them much better, but in this situation it just wasn't. So when I look back on that, I can see in these three particular tips as to how to be a team player, it simply didn't work. And when that person was cut from the team, the attitude, the performance, the overall mentality and feeling of the team. Everything changed. That team got so much better once that player player was gone, even though that player was so much more skilled than everybody else. So it's an amazing thing to see how the chemistry shifts. And that same thing is true for a family unit. That same thing is true for a work environment. It happens over and over and over. So again, just to recap the three things, the awareness of what is occurring for the people around you, even coaches, your teammates, your coaches, what is occurring for them, what's going on for them? Is it a good day? Is it a bad day? Are they suffering? Are they injured? What are you doing? Are they having trouble at home? Are they having trouble with a work project? Number two, know your effect. Know what you bring to the group and use it wisely. Use it to benefit others. Use it to benefit yourself. Use what your skills, your strengths, use what you bring really to benefit the entire situation. And number three, become your best. Keep elevating, keep growing on a personal level. If you it doesn't even have to be relevant to the team. It can be a separate thing, something completely personal, a hobby. But keep growing and becoming your best in so many different areas, your progress will make a huge difference on the progress of the entire unit. So I hope that helps you today for Mindset Monday. Don't forget that this will be on. I'll do this next week as well. We've got lots of good topics and don't forget to listen to our podcast podcast, the Empowered Athlete podcast. We've got some phenomenal interviews coming up. It's on itunes, it's on Spotify and Podbean as well. So have a great day, guys. Have a wonderful week. I hope this sets a tone for your week that has you perform your best and also really impacting your team around you.