Who is on your team?

Who is on your team?  It is a very simple question that provoked some funny answers from my former 9th graders: "I'm not on a team."  "Me, myself, and I."  "Nobody, I was cut, remember???"  It almost always took me a good 10-15 minutes to get them to understand what I was getting at with this question.  I wasn't talking about athletics, nor was I attempting to give them a hard time about being cut during tryouts for some athletic team.  Rather, I was attempting to to get them to think about who was on their team in life.  Who was invested in their future?  Who could they count on when the going got tough?  Who loved them enough to tell them when they were on the wrong track?  These were the teammates I was referring to with my original question.  This very simple question never failed to provoke very profound and meaningful conversations with the young people I was so fortunate to serve.  Throughout the course of these conversations the past 9 years, we discovered that good, positive teammates have at least three readily identifiable benefits.

Good teammates will help you find a Starbucks in Cairo, Egypt!  Thanks, Benjamin, Sam, Jeff, and Christy.

Teammates help you to navigate life's challenges.  Life is far too tough to go it alone.  We need people willing to walk with us from time-to-time.  We need people to lean on (thank you, Bill Withers!).  We need a helping hand and a listening ear, along with the wisdom of others to make sense of our trials and tribulations. Put simply, we need help!  And contrary to popular opinion, there is absolutely no weakness in acknowledging this and reaching out to others for this help.  It takes strength to ask for help.  Be strong.

Abdullah Idilbi  and Stephan Kleynhans--two of my best  friends and wonderful teammates!

Teammates help you to accomplish great things.  John C. Maxwell said, "Nothing of significance is ever accomplished alone."  Truer words have never been spoken.  I get irritated when I see someone affix "self-made" to their Twitter or Facebook ID--what a crock of crap!  There is not one single person who ever got to where they are in life solely as a result of their own efforts.  To think otherwise is the height of arrogance and foolishness.  We all, each and every one of us, have benefited from the assistance, support, or guidance of another.  Personally, I am not sure I could even begin to thank all of the people who chose to invest in me over the past 43 years; in fact, I am quite certain I would run out of future years before I recognized past support!  If we can get there alone, it is probably not a very desirable destination.

Abdullah Idilbi, Dylan Luna, Zahra Sarfaraz, and Jeff Londraville--four teammates who work to make me a better person!

Teammates love you enough to tell you the truth.  One of the most difficult responsibilities we have as good teammates is to tell one another the truth, even when we know it is going to hurt.  People invested in our future success and our current well-being will let us know when we are wrong, or on the wrong track, precisely because they care about us.  This is perhaps the greatest responsibility of being a good teammate.  I challenge you to work to surround yourself with quality people invested in your success, but who care enough about your well-being to keep you on the straight and narrow.  We need people in our life willing to call us out on our behavior.  We cannot rely upon ourselves because humans are peculiarly wired to engage in self-delusion, that is we have the unique ability to justify our thoughts, words, and behavior even when it goes against what we know to be right.  This is why we need those good, positive, high-quality teammates in our respective lives to keep us on the path to success.

Teammates like these make life better!

Build your team.  Build your team continually, at all times.  Reach out to others who have made it to where you want to go and ask them for help.  Search out strong, positive mentors and recruit them to your team.  Surround yourself with positive people, people invested in your future success.  Build relationships with people willing to tell you when you are wrong, people who love you enough to say what needs to be said even when you are not open to hearing it.  Build your team as if your future depends upon it, because, in fact,   it does!  So, I ask you, who is on your team?