Be the defending striker
It is a tremendous moment, watching a striker sprinting the whole way to its own team’s box and taking a defensive tackle.
It is not only about appreciation.
It is actually bringing the emotions out of me.
Because the striker has a very specific dedicated role in the team — scoring goals.
But like many other things in life, football is a team game.
And when the striker decides to do that sprint to defend the team, I understand that he is committed.
He is committed to the team.
He is committed to the match.
He’ll do everything needed for the team’s success.
It doesn’t even matter if it’s the defender’s role to do the defensive job of the team.
In this kind of action, the striker is shouting to the world — “I’m responsible for everything on this pitch”.
And in my point of view, as professionals and as consultants, we all need to be like this defending striker.
It happens to us all the time. We are doing a task that has dependencies on other people’s tasks and it’s getting time to mark these tasks as ‘Done’. But even if we are strikers, and it’s not necessarily our job to complete the dependant task A, we must do that defensive tackle to help the team win here. Eventually, we are responsible for this task and it doesn’t matter what needs to be done to complete it. I don’t say that we need to do everyone’s job. I say that we need to do the connections, the communications, and all the efforts to ensure that the task will be completed.
And from a consultant’s point of view, to be honest, this is what is expected from us. When a customer needs task A to be done, we must do everything to make it happen. And it doesn’t matter if our task is dependent on others. Because:
- The customer needs this task to be done
- We are here as a team, not individuals
- We all have the same main target
- Helping others improves your skills & relationships
When I think about this kind of football player, this kind of defending striker, I think about Wayne Rooney, I think about Bruno Fernandes.
And what do these players have in common? These kinds of players have responsibility for the team. They have accountability and ownership for the team and for what is happening on the pitch. They are passionate about the game and when they play, the whole team looks so much better. They are making others better, and they make the fans get crazily emotional. They are leading the game script, they initiate the whole team’s moves.
They love the game, and they give their hurt on the pitch.
And this is exactly how we should act on our own pitch.
Wayne Rooney crazy defensive tackle & eventually assist a goal — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoOktcC-IVQ
Bruno Fernandes great defensive job on the opponent’s counter-attack — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pycv5CRo85Q
