Our Core Empowering Beliefs (Pt.2)
Steve Whytman UnitingCreatives Optimal Potentials Coach
Our Core Empowering Beliefs (Pt.2)
When I took over coaching a girl’s high school varsity basketball team several years ago they had never had a winning season. I knew I had to instill a winning attitude before I could change the culture of losing. I wanted to create a few empowering phrases that were simple, clear and full of meaning to guide our approach to creating a championship environment. One of these was, “touch the line”. Within that phrase lay an empowering belief system that the girl’s fully bought into. These girls set a new standard of greatness that in one season launched us into a perennial top ten ranked team, laying the foundation that eventually propelled them to the state championship.
If you have ever played basketball you’ll remember the pain of running “suicides”. This was a conditioning drill where you would start at the baseline of the basketball court, sprint all out to the free-throw line, back to the baseline then to the half-court line, back to the base-line then to the far free-throw line and back, finally to the opposite baseline and back…and the whole team had to complete each “suicide” within a limited time or the whole team had to do it over again. After about ten of those you were exhausted.
The winning attitude comes from understanding that you give your best through the whole drill. “Touch the line” taught them that you don’t cut corners (compromise) and stop short of the line to make it easier. You don’t compromise when you are tired but push through your tiredness. It teaches that you are in it together so you don’t let each other down because you are tired. You learn the value of excellence and a determined heart. You learn to trust the heart of each other…so many lessons from a simple phrase.
At UnitingCreatives we are building into our DNA empowering values that will lift creative thinkers to greatness by not leaving greatness to chance. We hope you will enter this conversation and add your own greatness to our world.
We have five empowering phrases that guide our approach:
In my next five articles you will see these phrases are deeply full of meaning. And they guide our approach as we seek to create an empowering legacy for our world. These are the essence of who Cultural Creatives are…and what we are at UnitingCreatives. What greater goal can we have than that?
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this is just awesomely written, Steve. Hurray to your capacity as a coach to see through to the creative leadership edge! Thank you for being such an amazing part of our team! Touching the line in my experience as a teammate, and as a coach teaching how to get it done…was fun! It actually was a really key thing…for it was a type of subtle pivot technique. The faster you could pivot the quicker your excellence came. And that took focus, intention, being present, holding and understanding the physics of nature and the excellence you were demanding. And it was fun! Looking forward to more…and more…and more from you!
I can see that Uniting Creatives has conscientious, caring leadership, and I am honored to be a member. I look forward to Steve’s next articles talking about:
1.Relentless Optimism
2.Bridge the Gap
3.Decent Up
4.Pivot on purpose
5.Champion the Heart