10 ways to become an excellent team player

It is a great day, full of great things in stock for all of my readers. Today, I felt an urge to write about how you can become an excellent team player.  Are you a team player, tired of low performance and looking for a way out? Guess what! This post is for you. It’ll draw your attention to some important issues and help enhance your effectiveness and productivity on your team?

Here are some tips you should consider.

1. Collective and personal goal: No matter what your personal goals may be, ensure you are working towards the team’s goal which is the collective goal. Your personal goals should take its bearing from the team’s goal. Understand this; you can’t achieve anything without your team. Your team fails, you fail. So be committed to your team. Your personal success depends on your team’s success.

2. Take responsibility: If you want to be excellent player in any team, be prepared to take responsibilities.  In clearer words, you are responsible for writing your own story. After you must have done your own part of the task, be ready to cover up any lapses that may want to mar the success of your team. Give attention to little details because they have the power to enhance or mar the success of the whole project.

3. Know your strengths and weaknesses:  Being an excellent team player starts with you knowing yourself. How much do you know about yourself? You have to know your areas of strength and weakness. When you are aware of your strong points, it helps you select tasks in those areas. Wouldn’t it be unwise for me to operate in an area I have little or no skills? Knowing your weak points, helps you build yourself in those areas.

4. Stay enlightened:  To remain relevant to your team, you have to stay enlightened. You become irrelevant to your team at the point when someone on your team can perform ‘your own stunts’ better than you. Get my drift right; you need to continually stay in shape. Be the best at what you do. Bring something of value that nobody else brings to the table, and then you’ll be relevant and excellent. Research and discover new and better ways of achieving your personal goals and the team’s collective goals.

5. Have a work plan: To be excellent at what you do, work with an action plan that is time bound. It keeps you from being distracted. The truth that many people would have being more effective and productive if they had a plan of action. Ask yourself, ‘what sequence will the task take?’ Write it down! There is need for you to do the right thing at the right time. Your team should have a set time to achieve the common task. Don’t fix a time that is close to the team’s deadline; fix a time is quite behind to allow for evaluation and improvement.

6. Learn to communicate with other team players: It is so important that you communicate with other team players on how far you have performed your quota of the team’s project. Tell them about your successes and your challenges. Allow your team mates to input their suggestions on how the challenges can be surmounted (a man is never an island of knowledge.) Inform them about any adjustment or change in plan. Know that failure on your part to inform your team mates about a perceived loophole may mean failure of the team’s project.

7. Don’t procrastinate: Permit me to adopt the words of John C. Maxwell. He said, “Tomorrow will be a good tomorrow, if you do the right things today.” Don’t postpone what you ought to do today to a future day. Procrastination results stress. Plan your own part of the team task and act when you ought to. When you do, you save yourself from stress and likely embarrassment from disappointing people.

8. Get refreshed: Many people work tirelessly to achieve a goal, they often forget to rest. Nothing of great value can be achieved when you are tensed. Long hours of work take a great deal of energy. You have to take a break to get refreshed and to resume work with great enthusiasm. All work and no rest make you a dull, tensed and tired team player. Have a time to rest.

9. Appreciate yourself: When you achieve a task within the set time, don’t forget to appreciate yourself. Tell yourself wonderful things- well done, good job and so on. Better still; prepare a special meal for yourself.

10. Have an excellent mentality: Know that you are what you think you are. Your feelings and actions stems from your thoughts. When you are positive in your thinking, your feelings and your actions shows positivity. It has being well said that you can’t go beyond the level of your thinking. Enhance your thinking. Let thoughts of excellent standard spring out from you.

Hope this very post profit you? If yes, don’t hesitate to drop by next time. You can also leave your honest comment. Thanks.

Challenges are Necessities.

I was in a gathering where every hand was high up when asked this question, ‘who would want to be successful?’ Everyone wants success but of a truth not everyone would achieve it. Not everyone has got the gut to attain greatness. The process to achieving success scares off the chicken-hearted. If the same audience was asked this question, ‘who loves challenges?’ I’m quite certain that people’s mindsets about their present challenges will not allow their hands to return up.

How you perceive a thing determines how you react to it. It is true that your reaction at the beginning of a life process will have huge influence on the outcome of the process. Your emergence as a ‘victor’ in the face of challenges greatly depends on the way you see and react to your challenges. Running away from one’s challenges will not remove them but will only postpone your success. Challenges are necessities in the process of attaining greatness. For every success ‘panthers’, challenges are ‘must-haves’.

The place of greatness is never meant for those who hide in the face of challenges but for those who are ready to give what it takes to overcome those challenges. Challenges are to be overcome.  They are not meant to keep you down. The fact that you encounter an event of failure does not mean you are a failure. What you need do is to change your strategy. You might just not be doing something right. Try something new! The man in the parable of the sower sowed four different times before he got the real harvest of his dream. His challenge in his first three attempts was loss. Yet, he didn’t stop at the first unsuccessful attempt but continued with different approaches until he hit it well in his fourth trial.

In getting to your dream place, problems are in the way for you to solve. Challenges are ahead in the process of attaining your goal. Are those challenges going to get you discouraged or what? You don’t have to lose hope because of the unfavourable events of the past. Why don’t you get up and try again (strategically). It might just work well this time around. Oh, you say if otherwise! There you go again, you don’t have to allow that negative thought dominate your thought line. Get rid of it now and fill yourself with positive thoughts. You can make it and you will make it.

Challenges like ladder steps must be climbed to reach your goal. Thanks for your attention. God bless you. Share this with a friend.

Who is next?

What a great day! A day the lord has made, we’ll rejoice and be glad in it. Today, I’m continuing in the process of satisfying my curiosity on how David was able to move from his poor background to the height of greatness. Join me as I build on the previous posts.

I was just wondering if David was the only skilful harp player in his region then! And this is certainly impossible; he couldn’t have been the only one who’s got great prowess in this aspect. There could have been people who could play better than he does, and yet he was chosen. Why? Well, I’m of the position that the David’s selection was enhanced by the testimony of Saul’s servant. The king wouldn’t have had knowledge of David less employing him if this servant had kept quiet. This testimony was of great importance to David’s coming to the palace.

You never can imagine how far people’s testimony can take you. This servant was able to introduce David to the king because he knew him (I Samuel 16: 18). If I may ask you, what do people know you for? Is it not surprising that you’ll find in a gathering of people who’ve being together for quite a long period of time fellows who don’t know each other’s line of business? What is your work? Do you seek to be great at it? People have to know about it; they have to be aware. If that servant wasn’t aware of David’s skills, he wouldn’t have spoken to the king about it. Let people be aware of your skills, if you intend to make something great out of it.

Again, if you’ll share the same belief with me that David and this servant must have had at least an encounter in past. As the case may be, I want to believe this encounter which probably culminated into a relationship was properly nurtured. May I ask you- how do you treat the people you encounter? You treat them like somebody or nobody? You never can tell who will help you to your well desired great height. Treat everyone well not because you have something to gain.

What if David had misused the relationship? After a first encounter, would people want to ever meet you again- would they want to have anything to do with you again? In business, great profits are made as a result of repeated purchases. Would customers want to ever patronize you again based on the quality of service you offer? Have you got any desirable character that would make people want to call back for you? Can you be recommended for a greater task after the first on the basis of your character? Are people not afraid to trust you with their resources? Do you ever leave a good impression in the mind of people? This servant couldn’t have recommend David if David was sick character-wise.

Your skills/abilities would bring you into the corridor of greatness but what would keep you there is your character. Your character has the ability to make or mar you. Someone once said, ‘No amount of riches can atone for poverty of character.’ You’ve got to possess a worthwhile, strong, desirable and enviable character if you desire to reach great height and stay there for long. Like someone said that greatness begins with a single step in the right direction. Today, I enjoin you to desire and decide to invest greatly in your bank of character. Fill your jar of character with goodness so that when people drink from your jar, they’d find it irresistible.

Thanks for reading. You are the next person whose skills/abilities will bring to great height and whose character will keep there. Stay in touch.

The Gift of a Man

Just this morning, I was considering how David got to the palace. It became clear to me that even before he was made the king, he’s been around Saul. And still pondering over it in my heart, a question came to me and which was- ‘How did he get access to the king (Saul)?’ It then struck me there was a need in the palace awaiting someone to meet it. And here is David with all that it takes to meet this need. His ability to play harp! This post will be focusing on how your abilities can carry you to your well desired great height.

No one under the heaven is without ability. The fact that you don’t know it doesn’t mean it’s not there, present in you. It is given different names, varying from skills to talents. Whatever the name you want to give it, it is your responsibility to discover your ability. I want to believe you know yourself, so you should know the answers to these questions. What have you discovered that you could do without much struggle? What can you do beyond the ordinary?

After discovering your abilities, it is also your duty to take the pain of improving them. You’ve discovered that you have a voice for singing. Good! But may I inform you that your voice is not going to get better until you involve yourself in exercises that will help improve it. You have to develop your abilities, they don’t develop themselves. Many fail to sharpen their abilities and as a result these abilities have gone under. If only you have the minutest idea of what your abilities could earn you, you would take time to build or sharpen them. David, for the first time, was needed in the palace because of his skill.

Your ability becomes a skill when you are able to use beyond the ordinary. Not until your ability is well-developed and ready to effectively meet a need is it fit to be called a skill. David could not have been the only one who knew how to play a harp in that milieu, how come he was the one chosen. Well, I’d say that save for the testimony of the palace messenger; he was a skilful harp player. And I want to believe he didn’t arrive at this level all of a sudden; he must have paid the price of lengthy hours of rehearsals. The difference between those who reached stardom and those who didn’t lies in the development of abilities.

Your ability is meant to fill a need. Though David could have been enjoying himself when playing and this probably, satisfying his own personal need for fun and happiness but yet there was a greater need in the palace. Here is the troubled Saul and David, a skilful harp player playing to bring relief to Saul. That ability of yours should not be kept to yourself; there is someone who needs you in your environment. It is not what you don’t have that limits you but what you have and don’t know how to use. Use your abilities to better a life. Martina Navratilova once said, ‘Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you’re needed by someone.’

Your ability is like the gift which the bible talks about that a man’s gift makes room for him. Your skill has the capability of taking you to great height, if well-directed and well-utilized. The great and popularly known talented individuals wouldn’t have being if they had failed to discover, develop and use their abilities/skills to provide solutions to problems. Discover it, stir it up and direct it to solving problems around you. It is in filling other people’s needs that you’ll find greatness.

Thanks for your time and I’m sure you’ve picked one or two lessons. See you next time!

Start Early

From the last post, it’s been made known to you that one can’t start climbing a tree from the top but one has to begin the climbing from the bottom. There is no trace of doubt in me that the last post left you thinking about many issues- like how you can start taking responsibility, how you can be best at that little you do, to mention a few. Wonderful! Yet there are still some people who wish they were at a higher level but never considered it wise to start with an immediate and quick step. You see, the realm of greatness is neither for wishers nor dreamers who have refused to take immediate and necessary actions. The earlier you begin your journey the earlier you reach your destination. My writing today will border on this line.

Early Beginning: Setting out early on your journey matters a lot. It determines when you will get to your destination. Can you compare someone who set out early in the morning on a journey to Lagos with another who set out at noon? Of course not, the former would get to the destination before the latter, assuming they are going to the same destination. So in like manner is the case of A & B who are in the same line of business. ‘A’ started the business in his teens and ‘B’ in his thirties. All things being equal, who between the two would be better in terms of experience, knowledge, customers and so on? Starting something early (an idea, a concept, product line, etc.) gives you an edge over those who did not.

Larry McMurtry said, ‘if you wait, all that happens is you get older’. Getting older without having achieved things that should have achieved? No! That unique business idea you have, start it now. Don’t wait until you increase in age or stature. Now is the time, don’t procrastinate.

You might not know the value of starting early until you miss the opportunity. Don’t lose any minute of your life. Someone once wrote about the value of time and it goes thus:

To realize the value of one year: – Ask a student who has failed a final exam.

To realize the value of one month: – Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week: – Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper

To realize the value of one hour: – Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute: – Ask a person who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize the value of one second: – Ask a person who has survived an accident.

To realize the value of one millisecond: – Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Since you know your destination, start something (if it’s drawing a plan, getting knowledge or whatever that will help) along that line- not tomorrow but today (now). The time is now. You can decide to use it or lose it. Like it’s usually said, time waits for no man; it’s like a snowflake, which disappears while we’re trying to decide what to do with it. Save yourself the cry of tomorrow by taking the pain today. It is not the thing you do; it is the thing you leave undone that later gives you a cause for alarm.

Don’t forget that the earlier you begin to take conscious steps to attain greatness the earlier you reach your great destination. Thank you for your time. I want to believe you’ll take the right step today. You are on your way to the top.