How to Encourage Your Team to be Humble and Hungry

Managing the roller coaster of highs and lows can leave some teams prideful or depleted. Yet the best teams in sports find a way to maintain a healthy respect for their competition and a insatiable drive to get better. In short they choose to remain humble and hungry.

Humble and Hungry, How to Stay Humble and Hungry, Humility, Drive, Commitment, Get Better Everyday, 1% Better, Character, Narcissism, Generation Y, Generation Z, Thoughts Drive Performance, Sport Psychology, Coach Education, Coach Development, Coaching, Mental Toughness, Resilience, Team Culture, Culture Development, Team Cohesion, Motivation, Personal Development, Mental Conditioning, Cognitive Performance, Mental Training, Mental Game, Mindset, Clarksville Sport Psychology, Clarksville Mental Training, Nashville Sport Psychologist, Nashville Sport Psychology, Nashville Mental Training, Nashville Sport Science, Nashville Sport Performance

The Best are Humble and Hungry

Top teams in any sport at every level demonstrate two uncommon characteristics: being humble and hungry. This is no easy task for coaches, staff, or players. Below we’ll explore real-world barriers that make these two characteristics difficult to maintain for today’s athletes. We’ll also explore several strategies about how to be humble and hungry, including a few examples from a team who learned the hard the way.

Be Humble

This isn’t easy in today’s social media spotlight of selfies and me, me, me. Studies show that narcissism is on the rise. According to Dr. Jean Twenge, nearly 1 in 10 twenty-somethings experience narcissistic personality disorder.

While self-esteem and confidence are important, being self-absorbed is counterproductive to being a good teammate and even a top performer.

Instead, help your athletes develop a healthy self-concept and a growth mindset.

How to Encourage Humility

The New Zealand All Blacks have instilled two concepts which promote humility within their team:

Sweep the Sheds

They describe this principle as, “Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done.” The team leaders model humility as they literally sweep up after the team, using brooms to collect the mud, tape, and gauze left after a game.

Related to this, their “Black Book” states plainly that “No one is bigger than the team.”

For your team: In an effort to keep pride and narcissism at bay, ensure your team members do the little things like picking up the locker room and taking out the trash so that (as the All Blacks say) “no one else has to.”

Create a Learning Environment 

All Blacks promote a lifestyle of personal and professional development. James Kerr, author of Legacy, tells us, “They are curious and innovative when it comes to seeking out stimuli, knowledge, and insights from other people and organizations.” They consistently seek input from experts and other winning organizations to inform and refine their performance.

For your team: To promote learning within your team, encourage your athletes to pursue continuous improvement, share mistakes, and learn from others. This buffers complacency and fosters an environment of innovation as players search for ways to be better today than they were yesterday.

Be Hungry

You might think that all athletes are competitive and you’d be right. However, as you know, some are willing to work harder and longer to truly compete.

According to the work of Tim Elmore, author of Generation iY, the SCENE surrounding our young athletes has led to several unintended consequences.

Their World is Full of:
Consequently, They Can Assume:
S – Speed
Slow is bad
C – Convenience
Hard is bad
E – Entertainment
Boring is bad
N – Nurture
Risk is bad
E – Entitlement
Labor is bad

If your athletes adopt these underlying beliefs it will inevitably squander their efforts to fulfill their potential. Elmore points out that the words slow, hard, boring, risk, labor, are the very makings of success.

Consequently, many athletes don’t demonstrate the effort, motivation, or commitment necessary to perform at a high level.

Refute these beliefs by helping your athletes believe they can get better everyday. Teach them to pursue excellence and get 1% better today.

How to Encourage Hunger

The New Zealand All Blacks have instilled two concepts which promote hunger within their team:

Go for the Gap

The All Blacks know that it is hard to become the best, but harder to stay the best. Therefore they’ve adopted the belief, “When you’re on top of your game, change your game.”

Kerr sums this mindset up for us in this way: “It isn’t just reacting to what’s happening in the moment, it is being the agent of change.” All Blacks have a continuous process for evaluating and adapting to stay ahead of the competition.

In recent years, the New England Patriots, Golden State Warriors, and Chicago Cubs have been great examples of this.

For your team: Whether you’re striving to become a winning program or you lead a title contender, encourage your team to bring observations, insights, and feedback they believe can help the team get better to the table.

Embrace Expectations

“Aim for the highest cloud,” captures the essence of embracing expectations for the All Blacks. They claim that their humility enables them to continuously ask, “How can we do better?”

It isn’t enough to be a good All Black. All Blacks strive to become a great All Black. They hate coming in second. Therefore the team sets its sights on the highest cloud (to be the best) and works their tail off to achieve it. Jim Collins, in his foundational book on organization success, Good to Great, called this a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (B.H.A.G.).

Some teams wish they could be the best. Others commit whole-heartedly to the task, relentlessly pursuing it with optimism, belief, and a double dose of effort.

For your team: Get your team to believe in themselves. Empower them to set lofty goals. Then equip them with the physical, tactical, and mental skills they need to reach those expectations.

Teams who remain humble and hungry will inevitably rise to the top.

Click To Tweet

Humble and Hungry People

In a time when it’s expected that Millennials will take 25,000 selfies in their lifetime and instant gratification is feeding the dopamine addict in your athlete’s brains, you’ve got your work cut out for you. However, encouraging your team members to be both humble and hungry will not only make them better athletes – it will make them better people, better citizens. Or as the All Blacks profess, “Better people make better All Blacks.”

Question: What are others ways you instill these principles in your athletes?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter.

Links:

 

Posted on
Categories: Leadership, Sports
Just so you know, some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. If you use those links and purchase an item, I may get a small affiliate commission. That said, I only recommend stuff I use personally and believe will add value for you too. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”