By John O’Sullivan, founder of  Changing the Game Project

This article is written to athletes. It is something you can share with them to help motivate them to set their goals high.

The extra mile is a lonely place, but it is the only path to greatness.

There are no fans lining that mile. No cameras. No bright lights.

Most of your teammates won’t join you there, because your dreams belong to you, not them.

Many of your “friends” will tell you that you are wasting your time, because how could they know how badly you want it? They have no idea.

Your coaches and parents may inspire you, but they can’t do the reps. Only you can.

It’s easy to say “I want to be a college athlete” or “I want to be a pro,” because the dream is free. But the hustle? That will cost you. What are you willing to pay? How long are you willing to struggle? Are you willing to experience the pain, the disappointment, and go toe-to-toe with failure? That is what it will take to achieve your dream.

When Steph Curry had to change his shot technique in high school, do you think his friends cared how late he stayed up practicing? How many of his friends were willing to show up an hour early to practice, or stay after, waiting for him to swish five straight free throws before calling it a day? When does your practice begin? When are you satisfied enough to call it quits for the day?

When 2x world and olympic decathlon champion Ashton Eaton takes to the track, he isn’t the favorite because he was born an elite track star (just look at his first pole vault). He made a decision. He decided to become a decathlete and he refuses to let anyone work harder than him. Are you outworking everyone you compete against?

Michael Phelps could have stopped at 19 gold medals, but he wanted more, and he wanted them bad enough to be at the pool day after day at 4am. “I can’t remember the last day I didn’t train,” he said. Can you?

No one would have blamed Heather Dorniden for quitting when she fell flat on her face with one lap to go in the Big 10 600 meter Championship, but she got back up and finished. She hadn’t run so many extra miles simply to give up. Have you?

Greatness require sacrifice.

You must embrace the struggle.

You must embrace it when it makes you smile.

You must embrace it when it makes you cry.

You must embrace it when it tears your heart out, and makes you question everything.

You must embrace it because you are on that lonely journey to the top.

The struggle is a privilege.

You have the privilege of working your tail off when everyone else has called it a day.

You are in the arena. You are spending yourself on a worthy cause.

At best, you may become a champion.

At worst, said Teddy Roosevelt, “at least you will fail while daring greatly, so your place will never be among those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

The Context and Culture Make a Difference in Developing Your Team Leaders

By Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

As a result of this work I decided to take a closer look at how student-athletes learn in a team setting, and in particular how the context influences the perceived risk involved in learning to lead one’s teammates. Upon closer inspection it became obvious that many of the risks involved in team learning in the corporate world are mirrored in the athletic world. Likewise, learning to lead in a team environment is risky business.

So, how do you get student-athletes to learn together? There are no simple answers. However, knowing that the context greatly affects learning is a step in the right direction if you’re serious about your athletes learning how to lead.

Leadership Development and Psychological Safety

When a student-athlete takes on a leadership role it’s important to understand that he or she will learn primarily through trial and error (which is why I firmly believe in deliberate practice—scrimmage—as a way to reduce perceived risks). If a student is learning physical geography he or she will learn in private with no one else aware of his or her mistakes. However, learning to lead in a team setting requires learning by trial and error in interpersonal interactions. Learning this way is certainly not learning in private and the consequences of actions always involve one’s teammates. Therefore, team leaders perceive risk in appearing ignorant and or incompetent in front of their peers.

Because most student-athletes have little experience at leading, which includes making mistakes in front of teammates, such fears as embarrassment and rejection are always present. And many student-athletes are reluctant to take actions or to speak up or speak out for fear that their actions may be held against them by teammates. To neutralize such fears it’s in your best interest to create a psychologically safe environment.

Let’s start with what I mean by psychological safety. It is a shared belief by all team members that the team is an environment where everyone has a sense of confidence that others will not embarrass, disrespect, disregard, or punish someone for taking action or speaking up or speaking out. All members understand that a supportive learning environment is necessary to build a psychologically safe team context.

The central idea is that a psychologically safe team environment will produce higher performing team learning and team leadership. Expressed as a formula it looks like this:

At the heart of the growth of a team leader is the leader as a learner, the learning process, and the context which together form the cornerstone of leadership development. Always keep in mind that the team leader is engaging in learning a new mind-set as well as a new skill-set. That is, the student-athlete as a team leader is undergoing a tremendous transformation and that is why creating a psychologically safe environment is necessary.

Creating a Psychologically Safe Learning Environment

Years ago, during a seminar the late Peter Drucker asked an elite group of executives “How many of you have deadwood in your organization?” referring to those employees that had retired on the job. The hands of every one of the high-profile CEOs went skyward. He then asked “Were they that way when you brought them into your organization?” The implication was obvious, if they were then the leader was at fault for hiring them, and if they weren’t then something inside the organization “caused” the employee to basically give up on improving and become organizational deadwood. The point is that the context has a much more profound effect on how people behave than most leaders
realize.

The question, then, is what can you do to create a psychologically safe environment for team leaders learning to lead? The first step is to understand your team environment as it is and how it interacts with the internal achievement drive of your team leaders. To do this, use the model below.

Hopefully the matrix above can provide a window into your current team context and how it is affecting the development of your team leaders. Psychological safety is an important component of creating an effective learning space for you and your team. The purpose of this brief article is to provide an introduction into the practice of developing a team leader’s capacity to lead through the process of team learning. When you involve all members of the team in the learning of leadership you’re more likely to create an effective learning environment.

Let me issue a quick reminder that leadership is a social influence process in which team leaders work to motivate or persuade teammates to achieve specific individual and team goals. As such, the norms, beliefs, and values that emerge from team member interactions will create team dynamics that will influence the social structure and social processes that will either enhance or inhibit team learning. Your goal as the chief architect of the environment should be to create a psychologically safe learning zone.

Ultimately, you have more to do with a team leader’s learning to lead—or not learning—than you probably thought you did. If you’re not growing team leaders, then it’s likely the problem is not the seed, it’s the soil.

To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

About the Author

A former basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. While coaching, he researched and developed the transformative Becoming a Team Leader program for student-athletes. Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs and high schools teaching leadership as a part of the sports experience and education process. Cory cut his teeth as a corporate leader with Fortune 500 member, The Dial Corp. As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with such organizations as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet.

Cory has taught a variety of courses on leadership and change for the following universities:

Northern Arizona University (Graduate Schools of Business and Education)

Ohio University (Graduate School of Education / Management and Leadership in Sport)

Grand Canyon University (Sports Marketing and Sports Management in the Colangelo School of Sports Business)

Visit www.corydobbs.com to read Cory’s leadership blog.