Categories
One Team-One Number

Be Part of the Whole

Be part of the whole. Phillip Kanes’s andwin.net blog
Image credit: Pierre Bamin | Unsplash.com

Friday, January 13, 2023

This week, on the plane to Thailand, I watched a movie called, The Duke. It’s a true story about a man named, Kempton Bunton, who, in 1961, was accused of stealing Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. 

Late in the film, on trial for the theft, Bunton rests his entire defense on the notion that his actions were rooted in what we learn is a near life-long sense of duty to his fellow man. 

In what is the movie’s most pointed moment, Bunton tells the defense barrister, “It’s you that makes me, me, and it’s me that makes you, you.” What he was saying, I think, is that human beings aren’t meant to be or do things alone. Without others, we, the lives we lead, and that which we endeavor to do in them will be incomplete. True fulfillment requires that we are part of a whole. 

And that’s the point for the week. 



Creation of anything valuable – indeed of life itself – requires more than one of us. 

Achievement, happiness and self-realization are not individual pursuits. They never have been. They never will be. In all of human history, banishment, confinement and isolation have been regarded as punishment, not as something to be sought out. Since ever, those that separate themselves from others have been conspicuous. We have not-so-complimentary terms for them. We look at them funny and wish they’d start thinking about someone other than themselves. 

See, challenging convention is one thing. Breaking away from it entirely is a thing altogether different. One says, “let’s go to a different place together.” The other says, “I’m leaving without you.” One is healthy. The other is not. 

What Kempton Bunton understood implicitly is that for any of us to reach a height greater than our own requires more than one of us. There is no other way. No one ever stood taller by cutting those around them down. For us to accomplish anything in this business will require the combined efforts of the people in it – not individuals in it for themselves.  It’s you that makes me, me, and it’s me that makes you, you, means that together we accomplish something that apart we never could. There’s no room in that for those who have it in their mind to blaze a different path than the one the rest of us are on, or for anyone that wants to play on a team of one. 

See, it’s not about any one of us. It’s about all of us and the dreams we have for this place, dreams that come true only because I make you, you and you make me, me and because each of us wakes up every day secure in the knowledge that the whole will always be greater than any one of its parts.

So, be part of the whole. 

And win. 

To learn more about the author, please click HERE.

To purchase a copy of Phillip’s new book from B&N, please follow this LINK.

PK

Categories
Caring One Team-One Number Pick Each Other Up

Pick Each Other Up

Pick each other up
Credit: Boston.com

December 17, 2010

This weekend ESPN ran a segment on one of the most enduring traditions in college sports. It wasn’t about touching the sign at Notre Dame or the rock at Clemson. It wasn’t about spearing the fifty at Florida State or dotting the “i” in script Ohio. It was about Butch Varno at little Middlebury College in Vermont. 

Butch has Cerebral Palsy. Now 63, he’s been in a wheelchair since he was a youngster.

For 50 years, students have been “Picking Up Butch” a tradition that started in 1960 when a then sophomore football player literally picked up and loaded thirteen-year-old Butch into his own car after seeing his mother struggling to push his wheelchair down a snow covered road following a Middlebury game. 

Since then, for every football contest at Middlebury, members of the basketball team pick up Butch. Then during gridiron season, football players pick up Butch.  They use their own vehicles, lifting Butch in and out of the car just as on that very first day.  Doing so, these students not only develop life-long bonds to Butch, they learn a thing or two about life. 

They learn that it isn’t about them. 

They learn that the golden rule is both.  

They learn that an entire team is elevated when it picks up one among them. 

And that’s the point for the week. 



On any team, ours included, not everyone will be “up” every minute, day, month or year.  When someone is down, it is up to others to carry them.  

The notion of “one team, one number” is rooted in this fact.  The team wins when the sum of its parts exceeds what is required.  Not every part will win every time. That’s OK, as long as the team prevails.  

The success of the team matters more than individual wins.  Personal success counts for little if the team falls short. 

When we approach every day with a fundamental belief that the team is more important than we are, we’ll act differently. We’ll look out for each other more. The failures of our teammates will bother us more. Their achievements will delight us more.  Together, we’ll win more. 

Put simply, when we give more, we get more.       

Doing so, we’ll build trust by the wheelbarrow-load. We’ll create personal bonds that last forever.  We’ll experience the joy that comes from being a part of something far bigger than we are.   

So, pick each other up. 

And win.

If you like the blog, you’ll love the book. To purchase a copy of Phillip’s book, The Not So Subtle Art of Caring: Letters on Leadership, from John Hunt Publishing, London, please follow this LINK. “Letters” is based on 85 story-backed lessons Phillip used while leading actual teams to accomplish extraordinary things. It is an outstanding resource for those who wish to commit to becoming the sort of leader that people WANT to follow.

To learn more about Phillip, please click HERE.

Categories
Caring One Team-One Number

Make it Personal

True, caring leaders make it personal. Phillip Kane

May 21, 2010

Last Friday, the Philadelphia Flyers did something that hadn’t been done in 35 years. They clawed back from a 3 game deficit to defeat the Boston Bruins to win the Stanley Cup Championship 4-3 in the best of seven game series. Winning 4 straight games in hockey is a big deal. To take 4 in a row from the Bruins, well that’s an even bigger deal. To run the table in a Stanley Cup Final, that’s a breathtaking achievement, particularly when you consider that the Flyers were down 3-1 at then end of the first period in deciding game 7. 

Many credit Coach Peter Laviolette’s talk with the team between the first two periods as having made the difference. After a rough start to the speech that included a disagreement with forward Scott Hartnell about pride, Laviolette told the squad a story about losing with dignity. He told the team that “No matter what people say or do, we have to be ourselves.” He then started around the room asking players who they were and where they were from. Every player said their name and their hometown. Laviolette finished, “Peter Laviolette, Norwood, Massachusetts.”  As he finished, the team roared. In that moment, Laviolette had done something magical. He had made it deeply personal. It stopped being a game. It stopped being a Flyer thing. It became something personal, something those 20 players and 1 coach would go on to do for each other. And they did. They won because it became personal. When it becomes personal, incredible things become possible. 

And that’s the point for the week.



When teammates become personally connected, bonds begin to form that once cemented are not easily broken. The ideals of One Team, One Number naturally take hold as personally connected teammates almost instinctively have each other’s backs, look out for each other and pick each other up.

When leaders make things personal, those they lead feel more valued because their leader says without saying a word that they care, that they are interested in them as an individual, that they are significantly more than just a nameless face in a crowd.  As a result, the lengths that associates are willing to go for their leaders becomes far greater, the amount of change people are willing to endure increases.  And the time that each will spend in the ring fighting for their leader and what matters to him or her rises exponentially – all because their leader cared enough to care about them.

So, make it personal.

And win.

If you like the blog, you’ll love the book. To purchase a copy of Phillip’s book, The Not So Subtle Art of Caring: Letters on Leadership, from John Hunt Publishing, London, please follow this LINK. “Letters” is based on 85 story-backed lessons Phillip used while leading actual teams to accomplish extraordinary things. It is an outstanding resource for those who wish to commit to becoming the sort of leader that people WANT to follow.

To learn more about Phillip, please click HERE.