Episode 183: Are You a Team Player?

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero, and I want to talk to you about being a team player. The concept of being a team player. Let me ask you a question, and this is so important. Are you a team player? Do you even know what that means? I guarantee you right now, let me ask you a question again. I want you to answer it with pride. Are you a team player? You are, right? Mm-hmm. You're nodding your head inside like, yeah, yeah, I'm a team player. Okay, let me ask you some questions and prove you wrong. I have been coaching for years, men, women, kids, I have been a leader for years. I've been ahead of projects. I've been ahead of startup companies. Ah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I know people. Let me ask you, how much self-sacrifice do you put into your personal existence? How often and how many times during the day do you put the betterment of others so that the whole team can succeed and you aren't seen? How often are you willing to let somebody else take all the glory, make all the money, and you just stand there, or you sit there in the back room and nobody sees you, and you know that you put in all this time and effort so that somebody else could shine. Is that you? No, you're not a team player. Self-sacrifice is the fundament of being a team player. I have seen Kids, kids, little kids, right? Remember kids in kindergarten where they have a toy and they don't know how to share the toy? What's the number one thing you learn in kindergarten? What's the number one thing you hear in kindergarten? Share your toy. You have to learn how to share. This is the thing as human beings, we don't— we're not born with that. We have to learn that. But so many people, just because they're 40, 50 years old now, they think they're part of a team and they know how to share. They don't know how to share. They never learned the concept of sharing. If you played in a team sport, you learned how to share. You understood that the betterment of the entire team, that the team would excel and win that game if you shared the ball. If you, during practice, if your teammate could not finish a push-up, you crawled over to your teammate and said, come on, I'm gonna do the push-up with you, I'm gonna do the sit-up with you. Somebody got tired, you said, I'll do this extra lap for you. Self-sacrifice is the fundament of team success. And yet in business and in school and in projects and everywhere, people want to succeed and be the glory and get all the attention. That's not self-sacrifice. Team— team is we. Team is that everyone crosses the finish line together. Team is that before we even get to the finish line, the work we have to do before the competition even starts, the work we got to do before the project starts, the work we got to do before we get on stage and do the presentation. We're doing it together. If one person's lacking, then we stop what we're doing and we help that person. A person needs help in a spreadsheet and I'm doing really well on my written speech, I stop my written speech, I go and I help that person with the damn spreadsheet. Team is self-sacrifice of your individual goals, your individual attention. For the betterment of the whole. I don't see this. I see people only focusing on themselves today. I see people saying, 'I'm a team player.' Yes, we have to be a team. They have no concept of the word team. Do you know how to be a team player? Are you truly a team player? Is it all about you? Is everything about you? I know when I team player because the person answered the question about we, about us. How do you answer the question? How do you answer any question? Is it about you? Or is it about us? Being a team player goes well beyond sports. It goes well beyond the damn presentation and the spreadsheet. It goes beyond— it is going clearly into who you are as a person on this damn planet. Being a team player is directly proportional to the amount of love that you give to others and the amount of love you get. And if you're not happy with the amount of love you get, it's because you haven't given enough love to everyone else. You're not a team player. But if you are truly a team player, then you don't worry about if you're getting promotion. You're not worried about how much money you're going to make. You're not worried about how anybody sees you, because you see the big picture, and that all of us, 8 billion people on this planet, we're not going to succeed unless we go to we and stop, and stop thinking about me. Are you a team player? Go forth and spread beauty and light. Go forth and think about the we. Implement the we and forget about the me. Think about how can I take care of everyone? How can I love people more and more and more? How can I make my neighbor look better? How can I make my girlfriend feel better? How can I make my husband feel better? Everyone else's needs, everyone else's prosperity is your priority and not you. Now you're a team player. But how much money do I have? My brand new car, my brand new house, blah blah blah blah. No one cares. No one really cares. You want to be an idol, you want to be a legend, to focus on everybody else but you. Life is long, really long, but at the same time, life is short. Life is intense, life is magical, and life is painful. But life should not be about loneliness. Love as many people as you can. Incorporate as many people into your life as you can. Forget the concept of me and only breathe the concept of we. And you'll have so much love. You'll have so many moments of tears, so many moments of joy, so many moments of escalation, and so many moments of depression, and it's all part of it. But you on Team Earth, we're all in this together. When I prosper, you prosper. But when you prosper, I don't prosper. Get it? I'm Thomas Anglero, talking about something insanely important, talking about your happiness, talking about how you can find love in a moment just by focusing on everyone else and loving everyone else. You, you'll find love for yourself like you've never felt before. Take care. Until next time. Thank you for listening to that episode. If you want to contact me, you can contact me on my website at anglero.com, and you can also subscribe to the newsletter. Or you can find me anywhere on social media with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Thank you so much, and I hope to hear from you very soon.