Success Requires Support

This post is a guest blog post from Chad Pfister. Thanks Chad! We are always looking for guest bloggers. If you are interested, send a sample blog to tricia@aflv.org.

When I am thinking about examples to use for successful teams for organizations to model themselves after two teams come to mind, Manchester United and US Postal Service Cycling Team. These two teams are perfect at demonstrating how distinct individuals each with their own unique talents can come together for a common good. Even better is the fact that both teams include the stars of their respective sport but without the daily support of their teammates their greatness was almost unachievable. In fact, Lance Armstrong never could have won seven Tour de Frances without the support and effort that his teammates put in for him.

All too often in our organizations we forget about this basic premise that our leaders and stars need our support on a daily basis. Instead we tend to support our leaders at the beginning of their journey and then at some point along the way we make the determination that they are doing a good enough job and that they do not need our full attention and support anymore.

How wrong that assertion is. Regardless of how good of a job you might think a particular leader is doing, there is always room for improvement and improvement can only happen when the entire team is on the same page supporting their leader and each other.

Imagine what would happen if after the 3rd stage of the Tour de France Lance's team stopped helping him or if the Ryan Giggs or Paul Scholes decided after 15 minutes that they didn't need to pass the ball to Wayne Rooney anymore. As a fan you would be livid and screaming at the television for everyone to work together. But how come when we see this same sort of situation in our own organizations we sit by the wayside. When we see this going on we should be standing up and pointing out the lack of teamwork, so as to not fail our organization and our fellow members and leaders.

We all join organizations for a reason and that normally is because we want to be part of something bigger that believes in the same ideals as our own. So each time we fail to support our leaders and stars of our organizations we fail our organization and ourselves. The only way that an organization can truly have success is for the members to support one another in everything that they do.