Losing (Egos, Attitudes, and Leadership)

[icanthearyou 4,409]

Having played on many bad teams in my life, this is one subject I feel qualified to discuss. Why do talented teams underachieve? The answer almost always lies in egos, attitudes, and leadership. Adversity exposes fragile egos, poor attitudes and a lack of leadership.

Fragile egos stop thinking about team goals and start looking at personal stats. Fragile egos blame teammates for not performing and coaches for not allowing them to play to their strengths. Fragile egos stop playing for the team and play only for themselves.

Bad attitudes destroy teams. Bad attitudes give up on the coaches, then their teammates, and finally on winning. Bad attitudes blame everyone but themselves. They feel self pity rather than experience self awareness. Bad attitudes use adversity as a reason to quit rather than motivation to try harder. Bad attitudes stop believing in effort and desire and start looking for excuses and scapegoats.

Leadership is what holds teams together in the face of adversity. Leaders refuse to lose. They put the team on their backs. They make a play. They don’t fear failure and hold themselves accountable. They make their teammates better than they really are. They are quick to accept blame for failure and always give the credit to their teammates when they experience success. They make people want to follow them.

I have no idea what is going on behind the scenes with our team but I do believe that what we are missing is not the talent of Cam, Nick, Kodi, and Josh, but their leadership. If I were the coaches, I would start making sure that every recruiting class had 4 or 5 guys that may not have 5-star talent but were 5-star leaders. Leaders will find a way to get on the field. They will find a way to succeed, just like Kodi did. They make themselves and their teammates better. They create synergy. The total talent of the team becomes greater the sum of the individual talent of it’s players. We have talent. We need leaders.

[AUbritt 606]

I agree.