As an athlete, I can’t count how many times I’ve heard the word accountability in team settings. It’s always a crucial part of building positive team culture because when you have a group of people holding each other accountable as they move towards a common goal, you get the best results.
You show your level of accountability through how hard you work out, how hard you play in practice, the attitude you show up with, your commitment to improving yourself every day. In team sports, this is the accountability most clearly observed. What’s not so obviously seen is the accountability that occurs within the athlete.
Accountability to the self is possibly the most important type of accountability, especially in individual sports. However, teams are often referred to as a sum of all its’ parts or only as strong as their weakest link.
With this in mind, accountability to the self is just as important in team sports as it is in individual sports because if teams experience breakdowns at the individual level, the entire team begins to crumble, lose its chemistry, or even develop poor culture.
Accountability to self can include many things like practicing self-awareness, setting personal goals, and self-care. This level of accountability is so crucial—and if you’ve been following Elite you’ve heard this before—the best results happen when we start doing the work internally first.
We have to show up for ourselves before we can start showing up for others. If we don’t look out for ourselves and our own needs and goals it becomes a lot more difficult to accomplish team goals.
So, ask yourself the question, “How can I show up for myself so that I may better help those around me?”
-Coach Lauren
