He became so famous that he was ostracized in the Marine Corps. Colleagues decided he was too much of an individualist. His rallying cry, gung ho, became a cynical term applied to naive or overeager team members. In our consulting work we ve focused on helping companies develop teams that can be relied on to produce results in particularly challenging situations. Given the Inner Game s earliest focus on tennis and golf, it strikes us as odd that, while athletes practice all the time, businesses rarely do.
Businesses just play the game.
So, we re going to lay out the four main problems that we ve observed as teams work together. Teams usually have a leader, whether that person is appointed, is elected by the group, or simply emerges as the dominant force. What many people fail to notice is that when a team accepts a leader, it tacitly authorizes everyone else not to have leadership qualities. Those who aren t the leader may tune out. Predictably, we can count on three or four people in a group of 10 to not listen closely.