If You Are On A Mission, You Need A TEAM That Has THIS Feat. Jon Gordon
Here are the top 10 key takeaways from Ed Mylett's conversation with Jon Gordon about building exceptional teams that can transform your business, family, and personal leadership approach.
1. Commitments drive success more than goals
Goals are dreams without execution. Everyone has goals and visions for their future. However, goals alone won't take you where you want to go. Your commitments will.
When you commit to daily actions that support your goals, you create the pathway to achievement. A professional baseball team might have goals written down, but without commitments to recovery, healthy eating, and film study, those goals remain unfulfilled. The commitment becomes the bridge between intention and reality.
This principle applies universally, whether building a business or improving personal health. If your goal is reaching a million dollars in sales, your commitments might include making a specific number of daily calls, providing exceptional customer service, and supporting teammates. These daily commitments, not the goal itself, determine your success.
2. Staying positive requires intentional commitment during adversity
Being positive during good times is easy. The real test comes when challenges, setbacks, and failures hit your team. This is when most teams start pointing fingers and blame each other instead of solving problems.
Collective belief and optimism stem from each person's individual commitment to positivity. When you make a conscious decision to stay positive for yourself and your team, you contribute to the overall team energy. Being positive won't guarantee success, but being negative will guarantee failure.
Great teams make explicit commitments to stay positive through adversity. They understand that what they believe often determines what they create. The key is responding to tests and challenges with maintained positivity rather than giving up when things get difficult.
3. Love and sacrifice form the foundation of great teams
Great teams love each other, and because of that love, they serve and sacrifice for each other. This isn't soft leadership. It's the strongest foundation possible for high performance.
Real love is sacrificial. It costs you something valuable like time, energy, effort, or personal desires. Team members must ask themselves what they're willing to give and what they're willing to give up for the team's success. Sometimes this means sacrificing ego, playing time, salary, or personal recognition.
Love also casts out fear. When team members focus on loving and serving each other, fear loses its power over them. This creates an environment where people are willing to go into battle together and fight for one another.
4. Getting better requires consistent daily commitment
No one operates at 100% all the time. Everyone deals with challenges and limitations. However, you can always give 100% of what you have in any given moment.
Great teams and individuals ask three essential questions daily: What are we doing well? What can we do better? What are we learning that will make us better? This creates a culture of continuous improvement and growth.
The commitment to getting better also requires teammates to challenge each other with truth spoken in love. Real teammates aren't afraid to have difficult conversations when they see someone not performing at their best. This accountability, delivered with care, helps everyone elevate their performance.
5. Energy is contagious and must be intentionally cultivated
Great leaders bring infectious energy that people can feel. This energy distinguishes exceptional leaders from average ones. When you're around leaders like Dabo Swinney or Sean McVay, you feel something special that you don't experience with typical leaders.
Leaders must be intentional about the energy they bring to their teams. It's not enough to have good strategies or clear tactics. People need to feel something when they're around you. This energy comes from caring about people and being there to serve and add value to them.
Energy often fades when leaders forget their "why" and lose their sense of purpose. Leaders carry the emotional burden of their organizations, which can lead to fatigue over time. Maintaining high energy requires constant connection to your deeper purpose and mission.
6. Devotion drives discipline more effectively than willpower
Many leaders try to force discipline through demands and commands. However, discipline without devotion feels like swimming upstream. It's exhausting and unsustainable.
When you're truly devoted to something you love, discipline becomes much easier. Tom Brady didn't need anyone to make him practice. His devotion to his craft naturally drove his disciplined approach to training and preparation.
If you want excellence from yourself or your team, there must be genuine devotion to the work and to each other. This devotion creates a current that carries you forward, making the hard work feel more natural and sustainable.
7. Connection is essential for commitment
You'll never have commitment without connection. The more connected your team becomes, the more committed they'll be to each other and the mission. Connection builds trust, creates bonds, and develops the love necessary for sacrifice.
Too many teams and families operate in disconnection, leading to disengagement and poor performance. Leaders must intentionally foster connection rather than letting it happen by accident. This requires dedicated time and purposeful activities.
Practical connection happens when leaders spend meaningful time with team members daily. A simple five to ten-minute conversation about how someone is doing personally can strengthen the relationship. The five H's exercise (hero, hardship, highlight, hilarious, hopeful) creates vulnerability that breaks down walls and builds genuine connection.
8. Finding your "why" prevents leadership burnout
Leaders carry the emotional burden of their organizations. This weight never leaves and can create leadership fatigue over time. Without a compelling purpose, the load eventually becomes too heavy to bear.
The crime isn't that passion runs out. The crime is staying around after it has. Leaders must continuously find new missions and visions that wake them up every day with excitement. These purposes are usually about impact and legacy rather than personal gain.
Three elements keep leaders energized: a mission that matters, a team that supports you, and a scoreboard to measure progress. When any of these elements disappear, leaders must intentionally rebuild them to maintain their effectiveness and passion.
9. Prayer and spiritual practices provide power and direction
Both speakers credit prayer walks as sources of inspiration and strength. Gordon received the idea for his book during a prayer walk, and credits this spiritual practice with providing clarity and creative downloads.
Prayer together strengthens relationships dramatically. Research shows that 99% of couples who pray together stay together. This practice creates healing, peace, and power in both personal and professional relationships.
The discipline of daily prayer walks combines physical movement with spiritual connection. This practice provides not just inspiration for creative work, but also emotional and mental strength to handle the challenges of leadership.
10. Character and belief define exceptional leadership
The greatest leaders share common traits: character, integrity, and massive belief in their vision. They possess infectious optimism and confidence that transfers to others, helping people accomplish more than they thought possible.
These leaders believe bigger than average people. They have the ability to see potential in others and inspire them to reach higher levels of performance. This isn't just about personal charisma; it's about genuine belief in people and possibilities.
Character forms the foundation that allows belief to flourish. Without strong character and integrity, even the most inspiring vision loses its power. The combination of unshakeable character and infectious belief creates the essence that people feel around truly great leaders.