Heather here, from FamilyVolley.com. And today we are talking about successful teams. Not a basketball team, or your teammates in drama class. We are talking about our “family team.” The characteristics are the same, and it will serve our families well to take a few tips for the successful teams we have been associated with.
Here are 5 tips for unifying your family and turning them into a successful team.
1. Teammates accept each other’s differences.
Just like the players on any team, our family members are all different. We have different likes and dislikes. Different strengths and weaknesses. For our family to be successful, we have to accept that. Instead of making everyone exactly the same, we need to embrace the difference and celebrate them. We need to fill in the gaps when there are weaknesses and rejoice in the strengths.
The best way to do this is to remember the need to RESPECT everyone in our family. RESPECT is NOT trying to directly or indirectly change on another. The sooner we stop trying to change eachother, the more unified our families will become. Unified families WIN!
2. Successful teams have common goals.
Want your family to be a winning family? Get on the same page with your goals. Strong, successful teams share the same goals. From there, they are INTENTIONAL about the way they are going to acheive the goals. Intentional means that you and your family come up with a working plan, a “game plan” to accomplish those things you feel are important.
Once you have settled on your goals, be sure you visually represent them in your home, so everyone can be reminded what you are “playing” for. This could be through pictures, words, vision boards, objects, anything….
3. A successful team Practices.
Good teams practice. They spend time together. They run drills and plays. This allows them to play and fight, and work out kinks and learn to communicate. It is the same way for families. Families have to spend time together practicing. Engaged in things that will make their team stronger.
Famlies tend to spend most of their time in parallel activities. Things like watching TV and movies. And although these are not bad, they require little to no communication or cooperation. Greater benefits will come if we practice joint acitivites. Doing things together that require us to work together and communicate.
4. Successful teams don’t bad mouth their teammates.
The same needs to be true in our families. When we bad mouth each other to our friends, or talk about our spouses behind their backs to our girlfriends, we destroy trust. And if you can’t trust your teammate, who can you trust?
5. Successful teams ALWAYS watch film.
You know, watch film. We hear athletes talk about it all the time. After the games, the team and coaches watch the game all over again and talk about the strengths and weaknesses. What went well, and what they need to work on. We have to do this with our families also.
Our families need to continually evaluate how family life is going. We need to ask our children how they feel about the family, the realtionships, the communication, and even the activities. We need to be talking as parents about what we feel is working and what isn’t, as well as talking about what the needs of our family members are.
Then, when we identify weaknesses, we need to make a “game plan” to turn them into strengths. We we identify things that are going well, we need to celebrate those successes and do more of them.
Families are teams. And we want our team family to win!
How do you unify your family?
Have you ever been part of successful team? What made your team a success?
P.S. If you live in Northern Utah, mark your calendars for May 7th. The LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER Show is back and on May 7th we are going to “raise the roof” and celebrate Motherhood. The show is in its third year and has proven to be fantastic. Hope you will join us.
Have a question, or just want to say hello? You can find me at FamilyVolley.com. On Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. Or send me an email. I love making new friends.
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Heaven says
Great post! I’ll be checking out Heather’s site. Love yours too, Amy. :)
Amy says
Thank you so much! You will love Heather’s as well! She is amazing!