Are you making plays for teammates?

LeBron gets it.

In the March 25, 2009 edition of Sports Illustrated, Dan Patrick’s “Just My Type” column featured a Q&A with NBA MVP LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Here is one of Patrick’s questions with James’ answer:

Dan Patrick: Which would mean more: making a game-winning shot or dishing off for a game-winning shot?

LeBron James: Passing to a teammate and him hitting the game-winner. That means I’ve drawn the defense or drawn a double team and gotten a guy open. And to see a teammate succeed is the ultimate for me.

The other best player on the planet – Kobe Bryant – displayed this same type of philosophy last night in the Lakers’ vital game five win over Denver. Bryant took just 13 shots while adding eight assists in a must-win game for Los Angeles.

No play was more crucial than Bryant’s highlight assist to Lamar Odom with a minute left in the fourth quarter which all but put the game away. With the shot clock winding down, Bryant rose for an apparent three-point attempt which drew defenders. However, at the last moment, Bryant zipped the ball to Odom under the basket for an easy bucket plus a foul.

LeBron and Kobe. Kobe and LeBron. However you stack it, they are the two best players in the world. But neither player can win on his own. Yes, there are times they both must carry their respective teams and more often than not, they will be the guys who take the shot at the buzzer. (If you were the coach, that’s who you would want shooting the ball too, right?)

But the best leaders – in sports, in business, in our communities, in our homes – understand the better they make their teammates look, the more they will succeed.

Do you live your life wanting to make those around you look good? Do you consciously make an effort to put those around you in a position to succeed? Or, do you focus on getting credit for everything good that happens?

Successful individuals come from successful teams.

Successful teams are not made up of individuals who are concentrating on individual success and accolades. Instead, these teams are made up of strong and secure individuals who are striving to make their teammates look good.

And in the end, these individuals will receive the due accolades.

Just like James said, “To see a teammate succeed is the ultimate for me.”

Can you say the same thing?

One Loss Cannot Lead to Another

Watching the Los Angeles Dodgers without suspended superstar Manny Ramirez is intriguing right now. Despite holding the best record in baseball, the young team is extremely fragile at the moment.

Immediately following news of Manny’s positive drug test – which will sideline him for 50 games – the Dodgers lost four of their next five games and it was evident the team’s confidence had been shaken. However, with two victories over the World Series champion Phillies in Philadelphia this week, the Dodgers captured a key series victory on the road.

The team will struggle at times without Manny – there is no doubt about that. But the series victory over the Phillies may have kept the Dodgers from falling into a deep tailspin caused by the difficult and embarrassing loss of their best player.

As Lesson #29 from The Xs & Os of Success addresses, “One Loss Cannot Lead to Another.” Many of our organizations have suffered losses recently. We have to make sure we are not allowing those losses to have bigger impacts than they should. Here are a few words from this lesson:

We have all had our bad days at work.

Lost a client. Failed to close a deal. Did not meet expectations on a project. Missed sales numbers.

Business is like sports. You will not win every game. The key to being successful, however, is how you react to failure.

As a leader, your responsibility is to help your team and team members recover from failure as quickly as possible and grow from the experience. Many of us tend to spend a great portion of our time after a failure rationalizing why we failed and harping upon variables that were out of our control. While there are times external variables do play major roles in our failure, it does not benefit us to focus on them and it definitely does not help us “play the next play.”

The first step in moving forward from failure is admitting fault and taking ownership of the unsuccessful results. Only from this point will you be able to identify which variables — those you do have control of — led to the negative situation. Once these have been identified, you can then create a plan that will allow you to positively address those areas and make improvement…

The biggest winners in sports and business all lose at times. What separates them from the rest is how quickly and proactively they move on from their losses. They never allow one loss to be the cause of another loss.