Introduction
I believe that in every walk of life, in every activity we participate in, there are valuable life skills learnt that can be applied to all other areas of life. In every experience, we have the opportunity to transcend these skills to our lives. This March marks the end to a 6 year University basketball career, and possibly a 15 year career in total. These years have brought a wealth of experience, growth, and learning in many areas of life, but I want to focus on leadership for the next couple of posts.
During my years of playing basketball, I have captained two high school teams to provincial championships, two NCAA Division 1 teams to Conference Championships and Tournament Appearances, and this past year, helping our team make it to the Canadian National Championship Final Game, unfortunately losing to a worthy opponent.
Over the next couple weeks, I will discuss some of the most important leadership skills and practices that I have taken away from my years of basketball and most importantly this past final year. I will begin with more broad, foundational leadership practices, and follow with more specific examples as we go!
Members of the TWU Spartans Basketball Team arm-in-arm, One Collective Unit
1) The Ultimate Goal – What is Your BHAG?
BHAG stands for Big Harry Audacious Goal, it is used within businesses and teams and defines a goal that will take absolutely every effort and commitment from a team to achieve. An ultimate goal that stands above all others!
This year, our basketball team had a clear BHAG, win a National Championship. As one of the captains and leaders on the team, it was my job to earn the buy-in of every player to our BHAG, and make this the backbone of our team. This would be the driving force for the team, deeper than any individual pursuit, selfish motive, or smaller accomplishments. This process of goal setting, and setting the ultimate goal is so important to uniting a group of individuals under one vision. This is the same in any situation, whether in a business, church, volunteer group, or otherwise – individuals need a goal that they can strive, unite, and work towards.
There are many different ways to go about setting and communicating your ultimate goal, and I would challenge you to spend time thinking about what would be the most effective way do this in your team. We decided to spend a night at the end of our first training camp to collectively make a team meal and talk a bit about why we were all on this team and what we wanted to accomplish. As a part of this time together, we all took part in a small exercise to help verbalize and affirm our goal of a National Championship.
Each player was given their own notebook- on the first page, they had to write their name, and our ultimate goal: 2010/2011 CIS National Champions, with the date the game would be played on, March 13th, 2011 (Writing down and making SMART goals helps increase effectiveness of goal setting). Then on the pages that followed we had to write headings of “Areas that I can improve to help us win a National Championship”, and “The strengths I bring to this team”. Players were asked to spread out and leave their notebook somewhere in the general area. As we ate dinner, each player was asked to go around and write in everyone elses book, it could be long or short, but positive and specific to this season and our ultimate goal. At the end of the night, the players took their books, now filled with encouragements, advice, and insights from the rest of the team home to read and reflect upon.
This process helped us accomplish a few foundational things that would set the tone for the entire season.
- We verbalized our goal, wrote it on paper, and made it a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound), studies have shown that these characteristics of goal setting create a higher success rate.
- We reflected on this goal and how we would accomplish this as a team, then offering feedback and encouragement to every player on how they could help the team reach this specific goal.
- We did this all in the context of a team activity, each teammate being responsible for a different part of dinner, collectively creating a great meal!
- Each player had something to take home, something to remind them of the statement that we made collectively, for the rest of the season.
What is the ultimate goal that your team or organization are working towards? Have you verbalized it, wrote it down, and spent time collectively thinking and talking about how you will get there?
I challenge you, as a leader, to think about the ways in which you can create awareness, buy-in, and excitement about you/or your company’s vision, ultimate goal, and BHAG. Intrinsically motivate team members by making them a real part of the process and experience, because they are!
