bcg blog

Where You Belong

It’s early November, which can only mean one thing: high school basketball season is here. Even after twenty-five years, the start of the season still feels like opening your most anticipated birthday present. The anticipation never gets old.

As great as the excitement around the start of season is, it also carries with it my least favorite part of coaching - making team cuts. Nothing in the profession comes close to it. Some are certainly easier than others, but delivering the news to a fifteen or sixteen year old that desperately wants to be a part of your team is never enjoyable. More often than not it’s downright awful, yet necessary.

Of course, back in the day, these tough conversations were avoided by simply posting a list of the players who made the team. Everyone else was left wondering if their name had just been forgotten. It’s a cowardly approach that disregards a young man’s efforts and courage. I suppose the effort required may depend on the standards of the program, but the courage to tryout is a direct reflection of the makeup of that young man. 

That courage needs to be honored. Society does the best it can to beat it out of us - stay between the lines, play it safe, don’t rock the boat. Regardless of whether a player makes the team or not, as a coach I have a responsibility to recognize the risk taken to attempt to make a team of twelve in a school of three thousand. If maintained and fostered, that is a trait of a successful person regardless of the result of a high school basketball tryout.

The other aspect of the risk these young men are willing to take that beckons my attention is always a simple question: why? Why do these guys keep trying out? Why do they keep coming back? Our entire fall preseason conditioning program is grueling, our weight room sessions three days per week are exhausting, and our breakfast club workouts every morning will make the most dedicated weary.

While the struggle and challenge drives some away, it draws others in.
Our desire to belong to something runs much deeper than we know.

Why Should We Care?
Understanding and appreciating the significance of belonging is a powerful leap for a leader. It will change the way you organize meetings, interact with colleagues in the hallways, make promotions, celebrate wins, welcome people onto the team, and communicate off-boarding news. But, more than anything it will allow you to fully value the people you are leading. 

You can find plenty of books out there talking about evolutionary history for the need to belong to a group or tribe. I’m not disagreeing with any of them - they all make sense. I mean, I wouldn’t want to get eaten by a sabertooth tiger either so being a part of a group where I’m not the slowest one seems like a pretty good life choice.

In today’s world you almost have to try to not belong to a group. Your family, your place of employment, your Thursday night softball league team, your stamp collecting chapter, your dog walking club, your motorcycle gang … the list could go on forever. Even going out of your way to be different will likely align you with a brotherhood of misfits that satisfies your unknown desires for belonging while rebelling against it.

Now the calling is more about discovering where you want to belong. And, from a leadership perspective, creating an environment and a set of standards that is appealing to those you want to belong to your team. All aspects of your culture are at play - your words matter, your actions matter, your vision matters, your values matter.

Culture has become such a buzz word that we’ve lost sight of the functionality of it. This is one of the primary roles of our culture in our organizations. Our culture should be drawing in the people we want to belong to our team and expelling those we don’t want.

REAL TALK - Action Steps
Of course, people wanting to be a part of our team is a good thing. Some motives will naturally be impure or self-promoting. In the best organizations those driven by their desires for prestige or money will be washed out by the standards that drive the teams success. Ideally we can avoid those self-seeking individuals and get right to the people that want to be with us for pure reasons.

Here are a few ideas to consider when trying to create a culture that will do just that:

• Make Your Standards High. Extremely High. 
  
  • People want to belong to something special. Average isn’t special. Easy isn’t special. Set extremely high standards and do not waiver. The right people will want to belong. The wrong people won’t. Both are great. Be prepared for resistance. People will try to pull us back down to society’s average. We’ll have to fight for our standards daily.
    

• Make Your People Feel Special. Because They Are.
  
  • Only special people choose to operate under consistently high standards and have the tenacity to accomplish it. Make sure they know they’re special. Tell them, show them, and celebrate them often. Our people are far and away our most valuable asset. Don’t forget it, and more importantly, don’t let them forget it.
    

• Make Your Future Together Known. It’s Life.
  
  • Leadership is not a job or even a position. It’s a life choice. We know this as teachers and usually as coaches. I’m not so sure we make this connection as well in the corporate world. When someone is on your team, they are on your team forever. Be sure they know that your future will always have room for them.
    

We all want to belong to something. Leading with this understanding will allow us to create a culture that gathers ‘our’ people together. 

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