The Team Leadership Report

Donna Fargo is a country singer-songwriter from Mount Airy, North Carolina who is best known for a series of Top 10 country hits in the 1970s including Happiest Girl In The Whole USA.   Look at life as a journey and enjoy the ride.  Get the most out of the detours and realize they're sometimes necessary.  Do your best, but if what you're doing has caused you discouragement, try a different approach.  Be passionate about the process, but don't be so attached to the outcome. Wish the best for everyone, with no personal strings attached.  Applaud someone else's win as much as you would your own. Trust that there's a divine plan, that we don't always know what's best for us.  A disappointment now could mean a victory later, so don't be disappointed.  There is usually a reason. Ask no more of yourself than the best that you can do, and be satisfied with that.  Be compassionate towards yourself as well as others. Know your calling, your gift, and d

Tom Izzo thinks we have taken aways the crucial formative years from the ages 12-21 and distorted them. "We obsess over career paths; play one sport, study one subject, focus on one goal," he says. He would rather see athletes play three sports and play fewer games in the summer. "You’re not getting quite as good maybe, but you’re more well-rounded. We’re putting so much pressure on these kids. And it’s not just athletes. I saw a TV segment on a 15-year-old who went to Harvard and I felt bad for her. How will she ever have a life? " --Adapted from sportsillustrated.com   Getting to Us: How Great Coaches Make Great Teams

Passion may hurt you more than help you in your next disagreement.  Passion, often highly prized by leaders, may actually work against that leader if he or she is trying to reach out to someone who may not agree with them. That’s a conclusion of new research into persuasion by a pair of university academics and reported by Shankar Vedantam of NPR. This new research into persuasion really is confirmation of what all good leaders do when seeking consensus; they first seek to understand what the other is thinking and why they are thinking it. To become more persuasive consider these three questions: How does the other person see the world? This question addresses the other person’s value system. How can I frame my argument in terms my opposite understands? Relate your values to the others. When you scratch the surface many people can agree on what is good for others – love, security, opportunity and integrity. How can we find common ground? Know what you know about the other per

Design practice environments that stretch athletes just beyond their comfort zone.  Some reports suggest that placing athletes in activities that are 4% beyond their current skill level is just the right amount of ‘stretch’. Ensure the proper amount of stretch by making workouts ‘hard fun.’ A hard fun practice includes novelty, unpredictability, and complexity, and strikes the right balance between an athlete’s current skill level and demands of the training activity. Training that includes these characteristics prevents complacency, boredom, and off-task thinking and behavior. Arrange high failure, pressure training conditions that increase athletes’ pattern recognition and decision-making ability. It is normal for athletes to fear failure. Yet, it is widely recognized that failure is a normal and critical ingredient for achieving long-term success. The most successful coaches deliberately create training environments where failure is inevitable. Steven Kotler, in his book Th