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Nathan Whitaker: Own Your Role · Uncommon Impact

• 0:01
  Speaker: Hi, welcome to Uncommon Impact.
• 0:04
  Speaker: I'm Nathan Whitaker.
• 0:05
  Speaker: Yesterday I had a chance to speak to school leaders from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, on the topic of The Soul of a Team.
• 0:15
  Speaker: We talked about team building and the principles of high-performing teams.
• 0:19
  Speaker: And I want to share one of those principles with you today, as well as just a little story about the book itself.
• 0:25
  Speaker: This was my eighth or ninth book with Tony Dungy, and we had written a number of books before, including a 365-day devotional that was, I think, our fifth book with 365 different stories, all short, but all unique stories.
• 0:42
  Speaker: And so when the publisher, Tyndale House, who was a great partner, came back to us around year eight or nine or ten of the process and said, Hey, what about a book on teamwork and team building?
• 0:54
  Speaker: Would you do a book like that?
• 0:55
  Speaker: We said, sure.
• 0:56
  Speaker: But Tony said, We've written so many books that I don't really have anything unique.
• 1:00
  Speaker: And the publisher said, Well, you're now broadcasting and doing stuff like that.
• 1:04
  Speaker: Certainly you've got stories from that.
• 1:06
  Speaker: Tony thought he did have a few team building stories.
• 1:10
  Speaker: So we went off and wrote 60,000-word manuscript, turned it in, and for the first time, for us, or for me, maybe it's probably my fault, we had the book rejected.
• 1:21
  Speaker: And the publisher said, There's only three or four new stories here.
• 1:24
  Speaker: The others we've heard in other books, and the readers will want something new.
• 1:29
  Speaker: So Tony was saying, Well, let's not worry about it.
• 1:34
  Speaker: I guess that's all we can do.
• 1:35
  Speaker: There's really no other alternative because I don't have any other stories that I can share on this.
• 1:40
  Speaker: And I said, Well, let me try something.
• 1:42
  Speaker: And so I ended up writing a fable and then getting Tony's input.
• 1:45
  Speaker: And so we wrote about the Orlando Vipers, a fictional NFL team that brings Tony in to consult.
• 1:52
  Speaker: They've got all these team-building issues, and we took stories that we had seen from other teams in the league where Tony never wanted to embarrass anybody.
• 2:00
  Speaker: And so we fictionalized those and wrote about them and talked about these dysfunctions of effective teams.
• 2:06
  Speaker: And we narrowed it down to four attributes that we think are important to teams that perform well.
• 2:12
  Speaker: Because at the end of the day, the goal for having a team that performs well is that you want the sum of the parts to be greater than everyone would be on their own.
• 2:22
  Speaker: That is, if I'm in a team at work, if I'm in a team at school, whatever, the goal will be to have us supplement each other, to fill in gaps that we have, and to make the whole group stronger than we would be on our own.
• 2:32
  Speaker: Now, of course, we've all been a part of group projects where everybody goes off and does their separate things and it's a dysfunctional group.
• 2:38
  Speaker: But the goal is to have a team that performs well and is greater than the sum of its parts.
• 2:44
  Speaker: Easier said than done.
• 2:45
  Speaker: But we narrowed it down to four things.
• 2:47
  Speaker: It was really fun to sit there with Tony and to brainstorm and to think of ideas.
• 2:50
  Speaker: And we came up with four things.
• 2:52
  Speaker: First, was this idea of selfless.
• 2:54
  Speaker: What does it mean to not worry about who gets the credit?
• 2:58
  Speaker: To make sure that we're working together.
• 3:00
  Speaker: Second, owning your role.
• 3:03
  Speaker: We all have a job to do on a team.
• 3:05
  Speaker: We all have something we need to master.
• 3:07
  Speaker: How good can we be at what the team needs us to do?
• 3:11
  Speaker: Thirdly, being unified.
• 3:13
  Speaker: To us, that was slightly different than just being selfless.
• 3:17
  Speaker: And that is this idea: can I help make everybody around me better?
• 3:21
  Speaker: Can I help them improve?
• 3:23
  Speaker: Can I help them grow?
• 3:23
  Speaker: Can I put them in a better situation down the line for the good of the team?
• 3:27
  Speaker: Are we unified in what we're doing and pulling together?
• 3:31
  Speaker: And then finally, this idea of our purpose.
• 3:33
  Speaker: But we talked about it in terms of a larger purpose.
• 3:36
  Speaker: That is, it's not always enough to just say we need to win games or we need to earn a bunch of money or whatever it may be.
• 3:42
  Speaker: That if we're going to have a team where people are going to make at least some sacrifices of some of their individual goals and fold those into the team, and how can I make everybody around me better?
• 3:51
  Speaker: I may not always get credit and I may be helping other people perform better, owning my role.
• 3:58
  Speaker: What is it that I'm going to need to rally around in order to have that purpose, that larger purpose, something bigger, I think, than just making money or just winning games?
• 4:08
  Speaker: And so that became the whole idea behind the soul of a team.
• 4:11
  Speaker: And Tony helps the Orlando Vipers get to a place where they're doing all that better.
• 4:16
  Speaker: The thing I wanted to talk about today is this idea of owning your role.
• 4:21
  Speaker: What does it mean to own our role?
• 4:24
  Speaker: And I think it's different than merely accepting our role.
• 4:28
  Speaker: I spoke one time to a college basketball team, and afterwards the coach came up to me and he said, you know, I talked to our guys about accepting their role.
• 4:37
  Speaker: And he said, the only problem with that, when I hear you say it and talk about owning your role, accepting almost has like a grudging aspect to it, like, hey, you gotta just live with it, you gotta accept it, as compared to owning it, embracing it, making the most of it, and doing the best you can.
• 4:55
  Speaker: And I think there's real power in the word owning.
• 4:58
  Speaker: The other thing that's worth thinking about is this idea of our role.
• 5:01
  Speaker: What is our role?
• 5:02
  Speaker: Sometimes we're not clear on that, and sometimes that causes some friction because either there's a conflict in what I think I'm doing versus what you think I should be doing, or then maybe it's not a role I want.
• 5:14
  Speaker: So I don't really fully embrace it, or I don't kind of stay in my lane, and not that we need to necessarily have blinders on and always do, but but there is something we need to be doing and doing well.
• 5:24
  Speaker: And am I embracing that and doing well at it?
• 5:27
  Speaker: Couple of thoughts here.
• 5:29
  Speaker: One is the late Stacey King, great player at the University of Oklahoma, fantastic basketball player, was with Michael Jordan on the first of the Chicago Bulls' three Pete teams.
• 5:42
  Speaker: Pippen, Jordan, Paxson, others, Stacey King.
• 5:46
  Speaker: 6'10, really big guy.
• 5:49
  Speaker: Stacey became a broadcaster for the Chicago Bulls for the next 20-something years before passing away last year.
• 5:55
  Speaker: And there's a story about Stacey playing for the Bulls and Michael scoring a Bulls record, which still stands, 69 points against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
• 6:05
  Speaker: And after the game, the reporters were in the locker room to ask Michael about the 69 points.
• 6:10
  Speaker: One reporter went up to Stacey and said, Stacey, tell me about today.
• 6:13
  Speaker: Tell me about tonight.
• 6:15
  Speaker: Tell me about Michael scoring 69 points.
• 6:18
  Speaker: And Stacey said, Oh my gosh, I will never forget that tonight is the night that Michael and I combined to score 70 points.
• 6:27
  Speaker: We had 70 points together.
• 6:29
  Speaker: Stacey had one, Michael had 69.
• 6:32
  Speaker: And when I met him a few years ago, I asked him about that story, and he said, Oh, absolutely true.
• 6:36
  Speaker: And I said, Well, let me ask you this.
• 6:38
  Speaker: Did you have an agent?
• 6:40
  Speaker: Did you have friends?
• 6:41
  Speaker: Did you have family?
• 6:42
  Speaker: Who told you that you needed to score more?
• 6:45
  Speaker: He averaged five points a game in his NBA career, which lasted over a decade.
• 6:50
  Speaker: I said, certainly, did they tell you to shoot more, to score more?
• 6:53
  Speaker: And he said, Absolutely.
• 6:54
  Speaker: There were times when people said, You absolutely have to score more.
• 6:56
  Speaker: You'll get paid more, you'll be around more, other teams will want you.
• 6:59
  Speaker: And he said, I had to tell them, I don't think that's true.
• 7:03
  Speaker: The Bulls need me to play defense.
• 7:06
  Speaker: The Bulls need me to rebound.
• 7:07
  Speaker: The Bulls need me to get the ball back to Michael and Scotty and our scorers.
• 7:13
  Speaker: If I end up scoring, something's wrong with the Bulls.
• 7:17
  Speaker: And the team won't be better if that's what I'm doing.
• 7:20
  Speaker: Phil Jackson's not going to be happy if I start shooting.
• 7:24
  Speaker: Even if I'm scoring.
• 7:25
  Speaker: He knew his role and he embraced it.
• 7:28
  Speaker: And that gave him a long NBA career.
• 7:31
  Speaker: But sometimes roles are harder to embrace.
• 7:34
  Speaker: I joined the Jacksonville Jaguars.
• 7:36
  Speaker: I was an attorney, I'd been practicing law at a large firm, great firm, and had gotten this opportunity to join the Jaguars to do salary cap work, contract negotiations with coaches, with players, hopefully down the line, maybe even evaluate some players and work on scouting.
• 7:51
  Speaker: But when I got there, they said, okay, we need you to handle team travel for this year.
• 7:56
  Speaker: Our team travel person left.
• 7:58
  Speaker: And so we need somebody to oversee our 20 games: 10 at home, 10 on the road, buses, equipment trucks, airplanes, everything that we need to get to the games.
• 8:10
  Speaker: That's not my skill set.
• 8:12
  Speaker: I'm not as organized as a lot of people.
• 8:15
  Speaker: And so that was a challenge for me.
• 8:17
  Speaker: Thankfully, they had spreadsheets and other things that they had used in the past, and I was able to follow those.
• 8:21
  Speaker: And I think it went reasonably well.
• 8:23
  Speaker: But it wasn't really what I was dying to do, and it wasn't something I was totally comfortable in.
• 8:29
  Speaker: And so I had a conversation very early on with my boss, basically saying, I'll do this if you need me to do this.
• 8:36
  Speaker: But let's not plan on this being long term.
• 8:39
  Speaker: Hopefully I'll become very good at it, very proficient, and I'll take the pressure off everybody, hopefully.
• 8:46
  Speaker: But I don't want to become so good at it or have you think that, oh, he's got it taken care of.
• 8:51
  Speaker: We'll just leave him in that role.
• 8:52
  Speaker: And I think that was an important conversation to have because there are times in my life, and I know with others, where across our minds, like, hey, if I'm really good at this and everybody kind of, this issue just goes away because I take care of it, I'm gonna be stuck in this role forever.
• 9:06
  Speaker: And I think those conversations are important and they're worth having.
• 9:09
  Speaker: Hey, I will do this.
• 9:11
  Speaker: I'm gonna own it, I'm gonna be really good at this.
• 9:14
  Speaker: But let's figure out if there's a way I can grow into the place I'd like to be and have a role that's maybe different from this one.
• 9:21
  Speaker: But I'm gonna own this one and I'm gonna be good at this one.
• 9:24
  Speaker: Because one of the things that I've learned along the way is if people can trust us in one role, they're more likely to trust us in another role.
• 9:31
  Speaker: So owning the role is good for us down the line, even if it's not exactly what we want to do.
• 9:37
  Speaker: But it's important to have open communication and figure out those things as we go.
• 9:43
  Speaker: I'm sure you've seen people that either don't want their roles, don't like their roles, or just kind of go through the motions because they want to do something else that's more interesting.
• 9:52
  Speaker: And the challenge then is, of course, the team is not as effective as it could be because something is falling through the cracks, that somebody's paying attention to something else, somebody's really not wanting to do whatever it is.
• 10:03
  Speaker: Always important to be having those conversations about what our role is and how we can best own it and be very good at it.
• 10:10
  Speaker: Appreciate your time today.
• 10:11
  Speaker: Have a great rest of your week and own a role.