Leading Winning Teams

8Four Losing Behaviors and the Quadrant of Death

WE HAVE DISCUSSED many ways to build your winning team and strategies and techniques employed by athletes who transition these skills to leading business and organizations. But there is a killer inside your organization—four, in fact—and it is destroying the foundation of your team every day. You can stop it! You must be aware of these four killer behaviors that seem so innocent but prevail inside your organization already.

This is about gaining awareness to know how much your foundation is possibly eroding and how quickly the organization you built will crumble when your foundation can no longer hold the team and structure it's built on.

In this chapter, we will explore the behaviors that are working at destroying your team and organization from within: excuses, blame, quitting, and ignoring the data.

Excuses

You've heard about my affinity toward leaders who take responsibility and step up. Excuses are the opposite of saying, “I will.” Excuses undermine the very thing that keeps your processes and productivity so high—accountability.

Each excuse brings more elasticity to the boundaries of accountability that have been established. It is a slow shift to a culture where “responsibility” is no longer valued and projected as one of the key attributes to being a successful team.

It's a bad look. Many people have been given a pass on these excuses; teachers, coaches, parents, and other authority figures in your life have allowed ...