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Choose to Lead:Teamwork
by Jim Shoff (Jim's bio)
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When fall comes our thoughts are often filled with college football, the NFL and the World Series. As two seasons start and another comes to a close each team knows that in order to succeed they have to find a way to work as a team.
In 1979 the Pittsburgh Pirates erased their disappointment from the previous season by winning both the pennant and the World Series. Though their comeback effort came up short in 1978, the Pirates learned that when they worked as a team they could come back from almost anything, including being fifteen games behind, and come within a game of winning the pennant.
A big part of the Pirates 1979 success can be attributed to Willie Stargell's determination that the team play not just as a team but as a family. He wanted to create an attitude that when one of the team failed, they all failed and that when the team succeeded it wasn't because of the effort of one star player but the family succeeded. The attitude spread from the locker room to the stadium and throughout the community culminating with the adoption of the Sister Sledge song "We are Family" playing on radio stations across the Pittsburgh area.
Two other sports franchises learned that it doesn't take star players to win championships but rather great teamwork. Pat Riley's Magic Johnson teams and Phil Jackson's Chicago Bulls were unable to win despite their stars' success until the stars learned to share the fame and work as a team to eventually win ten championships.
We are members of God's team working to glorify and serve Him as we go about living our every day lives. In Proverbs 3 God encourages us to
Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
don't try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
he's the one who will keep you on track. The Message, Books of Wisdom.
In I Corinthians 15 Paul encourages the Corinthian church to be diligent about their work
With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don't hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort. The Message, New Testament.
Paul reminds the Corinthians that despite the reality of sin, guilt and death in our lives God's grace allows us to overcome all of this and permit us to throw ourselves into the work of the Lord. Those efforts will not be in vain.
Just as Willie Stargell encouraged every team member to succeed as a team as well as share each other's failures as a team, let us each commit to encourage each other in our successes and failures and concentrate our efforts as a team to serving those whom we are chosen to serve with everything we have.
Copyright 2001, Jim Shoff. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.
| About Jim Shoff: Jim is married and the father of three teenage daughters. Through his work in sales in the technology sector for the last twenty years, Jim has developed a desire to provide personal development advice for Christian business leaders through his www.leadershipresource.net web site. E-mail Jim |
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