With school soon upon us our family took an adventure out to the city of Boston. As we explored the Freedom Trail it seemed there was a historically significant monument or site around every corner. The rich history of where so much of the U.S. was first fought for and shaped. While I appreciated the flashbacks to history class, admittedly one of my favorite monuments was one more aligned with a guilty pleasure of mine, the game of basketball.
In the city plaza stood a statue of the late great Bill Russell. To get an idea of who Bill Russel is, he has more championship rings than fingers, was the first black coach to ever win an NBA title, and his list of MVPs, all NBA teams, and various Hall of Fame inductions would make you scroll for quite some time.
Around the statue of Bill were landscaping rock benches with some of his famous quotes etched in stone. For all the success tied to Russell, this quote stands out as my favorite to represent how he chose to compete.
“The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I made my teammates play.”
Over the years many have had the incredible stat lines, but no one will ever come close to the 11 championships. You don’t happen to fall into this type of luck – you instead make it happen with a mentality of finding ways to help take your strengths to elevate others on the team.
Russell has given us endless leadership lessons that transcend well beyond his passing but in my opinion, none more important than the mission of helping elevate our teammates. So, a question for leaders out there…what do you do to help promote the behavior of elevating the team over oneself?
It’s easy for individual rockstars to stand out. The ones who sound the best to a client, come up with great ideas, or showcase their extensive knowledge. This should be celebrated. But what should be celebrated more and challenged to these rockstars is how they take individual success stories and make them a team success. Success for one individual in a vacuum can create positivity for that single situation. But taking that success and helping others in their journey is something that can impact an entire team or organization.
How do we uplift a team? How do we uplift a community? It’s not through the voice and action of one. While one may start the wave of progress, one cannot do it all. But that one that breathes energy and vision into another and then another for those to find their way to making an impact starts the power of compounding. The willingness to bring others along on the journey now takes the change of one and turns it into a change of 10 which then turns into 100 ready to make a positive impact.
I challenge all of us leaders to reflect on whether we are rewarding the one that shines or the one that shines a wider light and brightens up the entire team. We all are in a different part of our journeys but one opportunity we all have is to pull others forward with us. When we empower ourselves to make an impact and along the way prioritize others in their journey for making an impact as well, we go from impacting one situation to impacting an entire organization or community.
Take your step: the next individual success moment you have, celebrate it. As you celebrate the win, take extra time to think about how you could take this success story to reach back and help bring someone else along in their journey. Be an Accelerator for others by taking your success and sharing it with others to propel them forward.