Thought of the Month

I've spent a lot of this month renovating our house. Some of those renovations included yard work. Now weeding is not a passion of mine by any stretch, and I wasn't too thrilled when he weeds decided their home between the paving was something they were willing to die for. It became a monumental battle, but finally, after much toil and sweat, human conquered weeds.

Pulling up these weeds got me thinking. Look at the picture and you'll see the enormous length of the roots of these weeds. They went very, very deep.

Perhaps you've seen the cute images of the iceberg theory, demonstrating that the person on top of the iceberg achieved their title through all the hard work and character displayed on the bigger portion of the iceberg under the water.

But what about weeds? We need to think about those in our team or environment who are not flourishing; those who are toxic. Now it is sometimes easy to fix a problem by pulling at the stem, and solving the immediate issue. But what happens? The weed comes back. Instead, we need to remove the root.

What am I saying here? In your environment or team, there may be weeds. Weeds needed to be removed by getting to the root of the problem. We need to understand that what is exhibited (e.g., bad behavior, laziness, apathy) is not the real problem; it's just a stem. Something else is going on. It could be a family issue, a bad experience, a personality issue, or many other things. Your job is to get to those roots, whether through talking to the athlete, working with an assistant or captain, or even recommending counseling or some other mental health professional. If you don't, the roots get longer, deeper, and ultimately will become harder and harder to remove. 

Let me conclude by asking you this: do you have weeds in your life? How deep are their roots? Please contact me if you'd like to learn more about strategies that might help remove the weeds in your life and the lives of your athletes.

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