A former swim coach started having athletes write their goals on a visible wall 26 years ago. When Steve struggled, John pointed to his posted goal and offered support. The team won five state championships after adopting this practice of shared accountability.
I had the fortune to coach high school athletics 26 years ago. And my team, what we would do is we'd say, what's everybody's goals in the room? And then we put them on the walls. This was a swim team at the time. So they get in and they hit the end of the decks right here. The water's right here. The deck's right here. The wall's right there. All their goals are on the wall. Hey, here's John's goals. Here's Steve's goals. And here's what they did with those goals. When Steve was having a rough day, John said, Steve, look at your goal. Look at your goal. We got to get you there. And they'd pump each other up and they cheer each other up because they knew each other's goals. That was the team that won their first ever state title for that school. That group would never lose a state championship. 4 straight state titles. They had never won one. What they learned, it was about the power of the group building each other up, mutually pursuing the goal versus I just got to get my achievement here.
