Watch your back sucka!

Make sure everyone you choose to be on your team is really committed to you.  Don’t let someone who appears to take sides with you and/or who seems to be friendly with you be on your team.  You must go beyond mere appearances—you must know whether someone truly deserves to be on your team in this game of life.  Too many people lose in the game of life because they have decided to put people on their team who are not true comrades.  You’re going to face situations in your life where you’re going to need only those who are truly your friends.

You can lose battles you confront in your life when you allow those who are secretly your enemies to be on your team.  The people you allow on your team can be the very people who are secretly defeating you.  While it’s okay to be friendly to people, this does not mean you should include all of these people on your team.  You have a choice about the individuals you select to be on your team.  Therefore, you have to take responsibility for the decisions you make in the formation of your team.

Your enemies will send people to join your team and disguise them as people who support you and who want to be your friend.  When you’re facing great battles, you need to think about the people who have always been there for you—the ones you’ve always been able to count on delivering for you.  Those are the people who you need to have on your team.  For those “friends” who have been lukewarm towards you throughout your “friendship,” then you need to discard them immediately.  Unfortunately, many people are unwilling to muster the courage to rid themselves of those who are truly undeserving of being on their team.  A failure to remove these folks from your team guarantees your failure.

If we’re to build winning teams, we have to make sure we have the right people on our teams.

People who are constantly a burden for you are not the right members to have on your team.  Individuals who take your focus off of what’s important are not the right members to have on your team.  If you have individuals on your team who are always begging for something, those individuals should be removed from your team immediately.  You need to have people on your team who can genuinely contribute something to the team.

Individuals who lack a true understanding of the team concept need to be eliminated from your team.  On a team, you don’t need someone who is only going to be thinking about himself or herself.  If you have people on your team who use “I” all of the time or most of the time, then you need to remove those people from your team.  If you have people who never want the conversation to focus on you much, then you need to eliminate those individuals immediately.  Additionally, if you have people on your team who think your problems and concerns are not as important as their problems and concerns, then eliminate them from your team as soon as possible.

If you think a conversation is boring unless it’s about you, then you’re not worthy of being on anyone’s team.

Try to identify those individuals on your team who are only interested in the perks of being on and associated with your team.  Don’t be afraid to let former team members know why you severed ties with them—your explanation can be just what they need to become better people.

Don’t let anyone keep you from winning the battles and wars you are facing and will confront! You must remember that your greatest enemies may be the individuals you call your “friends.”  Your “friends” may be the ingredients in your life and on your team causing you to experience failure.  Without question, you must discover those secret enemies who need to be removed from your team.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison