Last night, while watching the Buffalo Bills Football game, quarterback Josh Allen commented on how the team has been able to come together and play as well as they have—despite having lost as many experienced leaders as they had.
He said, “Coach McDermott talks about ‘Be you, with us,’ and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
He elaborated by saying he likes to joke around and be funny—that he enjoys doing things that’ll get the coaches and players to lighten up and laugh. But he also said, “…there’s times where there doesn’t need to be joking around. Time to get serious. Over the years, I’ve found when that is the most critical.”
What’s working well, it would seem, is an aligned energy with players and coaches where, between jokes and seriousness, one compliments the other and the other compliments the one. The jokes aren’t hindering the team energy or targeting/ostracizing anybody on it and the seriousness isn’t making the process miserable or becoming an unbearable weight on any one player’s shoulders.
Ultimately, those four words seem to capture the ideal recipe for engaging as an individual when you’re a part of a team. Be you—yes. To ask you to be anybody else would not only be cruel, but counterproductive. It wouldn’t be long before the person not allowed to be themself would start resenting the people around them. But also, and just as important, do so: with us. To be cruel, ostracize people, be overly critical, spread hate, or otherwise demean people around you—even jokingly—dismantles a team. Which, in effect, dismantles you—because you’re a part of it.