Takeaways from You Win In The Locker Room First

• You win by cultivating the right culture, leadership, expectations, beliefs, mindset, relationships, and habits before you even play the game. You win in the locker room first. Then, you win on the field.
• As a leader, it is so important that your words equal your actions. It is imperative that you make sure that you go through a self-evaluation process on an almost daily basis to make sure that your actions are in line with your words. 
•  Culture consists of the shared purpose, attitudes, values, goals, practices, behaviors, and habits that define a team or organization. Many coaches focus only on the culture shared by the players, but the fact is that everyone in an organization shapes the culture. To be successful, you need everyone in your organization thinking, believing, talking, and behaving in sync. You need everyone to be aligned with the same beliefs, expectations, behaviors, and habits.
• Every team in the league has the same goals so it's not your goals that will lead to your success but your commitment to the process, one game at a time, that will define your season.
• Strategy is important. Execution is imperative. However, the most overlooked aspect in team sports, and what most coaches and leaders fail to grasp, is the fact that it is your culture that will determine whether your strategy works and is sustainable. It is the culture you create that is going to determine whether your players perform and execute.
• You must spend more time on building your culture than on everything else. Culture is what produces wins over time.
• Culture drives expectations and beliefs; expectations and beliefs drive behavior; behavior drives habits; and habits create the future. It all starts with culture.
• If you are looking to build a new culture or transform the one you have, the first questions you should ask yourself are, “What do we stand for?” and “What do we want to be known for?”

The seven responsibilities everyone had were to: 

1. Have fun, work hard, and enjoy the journey. 
2. Show respect for every person you have contact with in the organization. 
3. Put the team first. Successful teams have teammates that are unselfish and willing to put their individual goals behind the team's goals. 
4. Do your job. It is defined, but you must always be prepared for it to change—especially if you're a player. 
5. Appropriately handle victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation. Do not get too high in victory or too low in defeat. Be the same person every day. 
6. Understand that all organizational decisions aim to make the team better, stronger, and more efficient. 
7. Have a positive attitude. Use positive language—both verbal and body language. 

• Culture is defined and created from the top down, but it comes to life from the bottom up. 
• To develop a strong culture on the team level, start to evaluate players on their character and attitudes in addition to their skills. Look very closely at the intangibles that each player would bring to the locker room. 

You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life