Are you on an Elite Team

I am in year 11 of being a High School dance dad (20 years total now) and recently my wife and I were talking about how It’s been fun to see the team’s growth in that time. They have gone from always being good, to one constantly ranked in the top 10 of state.

This got me thinking about what has changed over the years. What has helped them become a consistently great team? I was fortunate enough to be on an elite team once, so I tried to remember what the 2d Ranger Battalion did to be elite. While there are many different aspects to being elite, I found two that stood out that my daughters dance team has been doing as well.

High Expectations and willingness to enforce them!

I have been on a lot of teams that had set really great expectations but when push came to shove, they didn’t enforce them. Enforcing expectations can be difficult and it’s easy to find a reason why you can relent just this time! Early in my Army career, one of my commanders told me “Any time you don’t maintain the standard, you just reset it lower”.

I learned this quickly in the Rangers as  I had to release one of my best Team Leaders for failing to report on time during a practice alert and another for stealing a can of SpaghettiOs!

Similarly, I see the dance team coaches expecting girls to do CrossFit and take Ballet classes that were not required in the past but are critical to the team’s development.

What expectations should you have? Do you relax those expectations because they might be hard to enforce?

Mastering of the Basics

This seems simple enough but mastering something can be boring! In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes “The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.”  This is so true when it comes to the things we consider basic because we quickly want to believe we are beyond that.

In the Rangers, we spent hours going over how to move under fire as a team. For those who have not practiced Individual Movement Techniques you can trust me when I say they suck! Also, before entering a live fire shoot house, we spend most of the morning firing roughly 1000 rounds in short controlled two round bursts to ensure full control of weapons. This was fun for maybe the first 60!!

In a similar way, the dance team has spent more time on the basics, turns and kicks, ensuring those fundamentals are practiced every day.

What are the basics of your organization? Do you have them mastered, can your teams do them without guidance? Are you bored of practicing them?

Everyone wants to be on an elite team, everyone wants to win the trophy at the end of the season, but very few are ready to do the work required to become one.  Are you ready to do the work?