Winning Teams and Learning Teams

When I was teaching effective thinking skills to executives or pro and collegiate athletes, I often ran up against the belief with these groups and individuals that errors were wrong and that mistakes were to be avoided at all costs.  The members stopped bringing their bright ideas to the leadership for fear of failure.  The risk was just too great.  The old adage was that there was "winning teams and loosing teams".  And losing had little value except to provide humiliation in that weak culture.

How did these businesses and teams grow and thrive?  Most didn't.  They remained status quo; stuck in their current situation while the competition passed them by.  Some learned how to fail and changed.  They realized there were "Winning Teams and Learning Teams".  Yesterday, I was on the Learning Team.

Somewhere I had picked up a habit--a belief, maybe...definitely a limiting belief as in one that was not serving me. The challenge, however, much like the organizations and professionals I worked with, I didn't know I had this limiting belief, this scotoma (Greek for blindness; a blind spot in a field of vision).

Here's the story: Saturday I lined up to race at the University of Arizona Crit with about 25 competitive women in a CAT 3/4 race.  Many of these women I had time-trialed against the day prior and beat by 2 or more minutes in a 20K.  I had a chance at a podium placement.


After a few laps I was dropped.  I continued to race hard, teaming with others, taking more than my share of the pulls in the small grupetto in an attempt to reconnect and get back on the lead train.  But that was not to be the case.  As I rode hard I kept wondering what was going on?  Maybe I need more training?  Maybe I should only race CAT 4 races.  Was I too old (56) to be racing with these women?  Should I lose a few more pounds?  And then I realized it.  SMACK!  As I dove into each turn I had stopped pedaling.  I stopped pedaling!   Later Randall and my power file would confirm my epiphany.

Somewhere I had acquired a belief that if I pedaled in the turns I would crash.  I didn't always do this and I had no idea that this belief existed until that epiphany moment about halfway through the race when I realized I lost ground on each and every turn and had to work like the devil to get back on with the grupetto.

Ricardo Hincapie, George's dad, once told me that he was not as fit or fast as the riders he races against on Tuesday evenings at SCTAC in Greenville, SC.  But, he said, my skills are better than most and so often, I win.

The best lessons are those we experience.  Humiliated as I was.  As P#&&%@-off, as I was, I realized the lesson was invaluable and so I share it with you.  What limiting beliefs do you hold that are holding you back?