Leadership Lessons from a Poker Trip
Last week I headed to Lake San Antonio, California for the annual charity Monterey Bay Equestrians Poker Ride. Each year over 200 horses and their two-legged friends show up for a weekend of fabulous horseback riding, poker, raffles, feasting and just plain fun! The money raised goes to support equestrian projects in the Bay Area.
From Friday night to Sunday morning, a small team feeds about 200 meals twice a day in a remote camp kitchen. Another team packs up and sets up a prize corral, with over 200 prizes for the two nights of Raffles and Poker. Another team handles registration and assists guests with all their needs. The trip takes months to plan, and on Wednesday afternoon we found nine of us unloading two trailers full of food and supplies. It’s a huge effort that makes me shake my head every year.
It’s some of the best teamwork I’ve ever seen. There are no discussions about the variety of options available as to how the dinner should proceed, no lengthy meetings where everyone gets a chance to vote. There is simply a manager (two of them actually) and followers. Followers are assigned tasks and act accordingly. Sure, there are discussions about what the ultimate goals are; what the food will look like, how the prizes will be displayed. And there is a lot of fun along the way.
But the bottom line is that everyone knows they are part of a larger team working toward a common goal: raising money for our horse friends. There is no gnashing of teeth over who does what, who leads. There are no power games, no infighting, no politics.
There’s just old-fashioned teamwork. Everyone is focused on the same goal, everyone is willing to do whatever it takes to get to that goal, and everyone leaves their egos at the door. The result is a finely oiled machine that just gets things done. Much done. I have never seen so much accomplished in such a short time.
Guests go home happy, workers go home exhausted, and everyone knows it was a weekend well spent, all for the love and funding of our fabulous equine friends.
If a passion for horses can create such a powerful sense of teamwork once a year, think what a passion for our businesses could do for our teams, every day of the year.
If we all focused solely on our business goal, with a passion that overwhelmed our professional schedules, imagine how strong our teams could become. Better yet, imagine how much time we’d save if we all focused on achieving our business goals instead of balancing team diversity.
Sometimes I think we forget our goals. We focus on who can do what, where we are in the team. As leaders, we care about how everyone feels about the team. A happy team becomes the goal. This weekend I was reminded that a happy team is a great thing, but it will not make our businesses successful.
What brings success is delivering a quality product or service. Ultimately, that’s what teamwork is all about and that’s exactly what I saw demonstrated this weekend. People checked their egos at the door to focus on a common goal. So my question to today’s leaders is, “How can we bring that same sense of selfless teamwork to our businesses, so we can focus on the bottom line?”