I went to a conference this week for women who are college administrators.  The conference does an outstanding job of honoring pioneers in women's sports as well as those who are continuing to make a difference for our female athletes.  I found it very cool that many of these women got their start in the sport of basketball.

Whether they had been players or coaches or both.  Many of them lit up when they found out I was a coach and said "Basketball season is about to start"!  Even in the airport I heard one say, "Every October 15th I still get that feeling that I should be starting practice with my team".  

October 15th is our official start date.  We have 2 practices under our belt as I write this post.  Our team is excited and engaged.  Our leaders have done their best to prepare themselves and our team for the journey that is ahead of us.  We remind ourselves everyday to focus on the process.  It is in the process that we become a team, that we build the skills and chemistry that will lead to success.  In the process we will fail over and over and then learn what is takes to be successful.

Those outside of our team will judge us by the results on the scoreboard.  We will judge ourselves by a much higher standard.  Did we become 1% better everyday, did we stay in the bubble, did we learn to trust ourselves and each other?  Am I a good teammate, did I respond to failure productively, did we refuse to beat ourselves?

These are the questions we must answer during the process.  The results on the scoreboard will be what they may-but the answers to these questions are paramount to truly being successful on and off the court.

One of the many great things I learned at my conference is that 97% of top female executives across 5 different countries had ONE thing in common - they all played a sport when they were young!  



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