My sand volleyball team won our club's season championship this week. We weren't the most skilled team in the bracket. I'm confident of that. What we had instead showed up in the three seconds after somebody made a mistake.
Every team drops a ball. Shanks a pass. Serves into the net at the worst possible moment. That's not what separates good teams from great ones. What separates them is what happens in the three seconds right after.
On some teams, a mistake gets a sigh, a look, a comment under someone's breath. The player who made it tightens up. The next play gets worse, not because the skill changed, but because the confidence did. On the team I play on, a mistake gets "shake it off," "next ball," somebody clapping before the ball's even out of the net. Nobody pretends the mistake didn't happen. They just refuse to let it define the next point.
“Nobody pretends the mistake didn't happen. They just refuse to let it define the next point.
I've watched that same three seconds happen in a lot less playful settings. An escalation that just landed on your desk. A number that came in short. A mistake a teammate makes in front of a client. What you do in the very next moment, not the mistake itself, is what the people around you actually remember, and what they decide about whether it's safe to take a risk in front of you again.
Skill gets a team into the bracket. What happens in the three seconds after a mistake is what wins it.
Where have you seen a team's real character show up, not in how they win, but in how they respond to each other right after something goes wrong?
This is Part 2 of Lessons From the Court. Part 1, on the first touch that sets everything else up, is linked below.