Cheer For The Whole Team

‘Team’ means bringing it all, together.

Being CEO of a company like M3 has its perks. Above all, there is the calling – the calling to build and be a part of something bigger than yourself. There is also the satisfaction of working with your colleagues and watching them succeed – both personally and professionally. There is even the strengthening that comes from failure – or at least in recognizing the impermanence of failure – and learning to be resilient through the not-so-easy times. What Teddy Roosevelt said in 1910 about being “in the arena” still holds true today; and for better or worse, the work of being in the arena gets under your skin. It engrains itself to the point where you can’t help but see parallels throughout your entire life.

I coach youth sports and am a parent of kids who participate. Parents’ involvement in youth sports has been the subject of countless articles, reports, and conversations (in my world and probably yours). Most of the lamenting and frustration I’ve read or experienced has had to do with parents being too vocal, too involved, and/or too intense… but what gets me is the silence.

We have to lead by example by cheering for the WHOLE team. The other kids out there aren’t strangers. They’re growing up alongside your children. They may have even been to your house for dinner. At the very least, you know their names. So cheer for them. Cheer for them because their success is in line with your own child’s success… as a part of the team. Cheer for them because your children are watching and, just as in every other aspect of their lives, they’re learning from you – how to be gracious, what it means to be part of a team, and why it’s important to celebrate the success of the whole team.

And, of course, in my mind this extends to my M3 story. The culture we are endeavoring to build at M3 ties to abundance, not scarcity. This means cheering when someone else receives a promotion or wins a new client. I want the kind of people on our team who cheer for their colleagues’ success.

We all have different levels of talent, learned abilities and, yes, luck. Our collective value lies in our differences. The success of one person doesn’t detract from that of another but, in fact, does quite the opposite – because we’re all on the same team and when one of us wins, we all win. So if a person on your team gets a raise, or a promotion, or wins the game at the buzzer – stand up and cheer. We’re all in this together.

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