“The strength of the team is each member. The strength of each member is the team.” — Phil Jackson
As I’m sure you are all aware by now, the Rams won the 2022 Super Bowl. I’m hoping you are not just now finding this out as you are reading this blog! If so, your love for football may be even smaller than mine! While I’m not much of a fan of professional football, I do have so much love and respect for the way the teams are coached and led. Who in leadership doesn’t appreciate that? And there are so many great examples of leadership and how talent, paired with a great team, can lead to winning a championship.
Last night, at the end of Super Bowl 56, Matthew Stafford with two of his daughters on his lap stood on the winning podium with a glow of victory on his face. His wife, right behind him holding their third daughter around the waist. After 12 NFL seasons playing with the Detroit Lions, and one in Los Angeles, Stafford had finally reached the mountaintop of his profession! Stafford led the Rams on a go-ahead scoring drive to give Los Angeles a 23-20 lead with less than two minutes remaining in the Super Bowl, then was forced to watch his defense attempt to preserve it against a Cincinnati Bengals offense that came one yard from midfield in the game’s last minute.
Stafford said in his speech, “I love playing this game. I love playing this game for the competition, for the relationships, for the hard times, for the good times, all of it,” Stafford explained when asked if he’d thought he might never have a shot at a title. “This game can teach us so much as people. I get to go to work with people from all walks of life, come together and go for one goal. For 12 years, that goal wasn’t reached. It tore me up inside, but I knew I could keep playing and try to find a way. The fact we reached that goal today is so special.”
In all my years of studying what makes a team great, I have found that extraordinary things repeatedly happen when people show up not to work for a paycheck from an employer, but to serve other people and causes they believe in and feel passionate about. It holds true in business just as much as it does in sports. It’s NOT easy to achieve. It doesn’t just happen. Instead, it falls upon leaders to find ways of building purpose and service into their company’s culture. When they succeed, they have the power to unleash a different kind of energy among their team. A commitment and passion like that that turns “meeting expectations” into “exceeds expectations,” many times over!
A team isn’t meant to be a collection of people being exploited by one person for self-seeking profit. Team participants must have jointly advantageous common targets. They must be inspired to act collectively, not be controlled by someone for personal triumph. If you didn’t know Stafford’s backstory, it would be easy to give him all the credit for the win. But the reason that the Rams brought home the ring is because they have great talent, led up by a great coach that saw how to bring it all together. Like the quote I used above, “the strength of each member is in the team”. The result of a game is fast and quantifiable – That is why it’s simple to see when a player is acting only for his own glory and not pursuing the common aims and ideals of the team.
Coach Bill Belichick once stated, “There is an old saying about the strength of the wolf is the pack, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. On a football team, it’s not the strength of the individual players, but it is the strength of the unit and how they all function together.”
Remember this… Winning is ENTIRELY about a great TEAM! Successful teams have players who position the team’s well-being in front of their own. They like to play in their sweet spot, but they’re willing to sacrifice it all to lift up the TEAM.
Whether or not the Bengals would have brought home the trophy, or the fact the Rams did, we all still have to go to work leading our people today! And we need to do it well. Be sure you are utilizing every single player on your team for the right mission and goals, and taking the time to listen to them as to ways the team can play better together. There is a championship ring waiting just on the other side for you when you coach your people well!
Congratulations, LA Rams on your Super Bowl victory!