Coaches emphasizes the value of
teamwork. Indeed, a large part of what coaches do in team sports is to instill how
being a great teammate is important to the success of that team. We ask the players to put the interest of the
whole, the team, ahead of their self-interest. This is especially difficult if
the players are at the ages where
self-involvement and what-is-in-it-for-me attitudes are a dominant part of
their maturation. I understand that selfishness is a natural part of human development
but knowing and acknowledging that fact certainly does not make teaching player
how to be a great teammate any easier.
I also believe that being a good teammate directly teaches
the players to be altruistic in their future lives, the lessons from playing on
a team and learning, to think in terms of us rather than me has direct
implications on the future behavior of the player. Indeed, this is a valuable
lesson that team sports impart on the players.
According to the Merriam Webster
Dictionary, the formal definition for altruism is:
1 : unselfish regard for or
devotion to the welfare of others.
2 : behavior by an animal that
is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of
its species
The first definition is generally the definition of altruism
that most will recognize: having regard for and devotion to the welfare of
others. This definition refers to the expected societal behavior of all
cultures: a devotion to this definition leads to the giving of ourselves —money
if we have it, time if we have it. This thought manifests itself externally,
things that we do — mostly giving materially — to demonstrate to others that we
are altruistic. The definition does not commit the person to anything drastic,
just to have concern for others.
The second definition is different, it calls for us to search
internally to find the motivation to do things that could potentially harm ourselves
for the greater good.
The first definition is more general, it invokes
selflessness without specifically asking for personal sacrifices, this is the
altruism that does not ask us to put skin in the game; whereas the second
definition not only ask for skin in the game, but it also calls for us to act
with a greater purpose as we make decisions that will likely hurt us. In fact,
it is asking for more than just putting skin in the game, it asks for us to
give our all.
I have told the story about the difference between involved
and being committed to my players every year. It can all be explained by our
breakfast: bacon and eggs. In this breakfast dish, the chicken is involved but
the pig is committed. The chicken had to make a painful decision, but it is the
pig that had skin in the game. The chicken is following the first definition of
altruism, the pig is following the second definition.
Good teammates will cheer for their teammates and team, they will carry water for the teammates and
team, they will shag balls for their teammates and team, they will volunteer to
officiate for their teammates and team, they
will hug a teammate when they need it and kick some butt when the teammate
needs it. In short, they are observing the tenets of the first definition of altruism:
unselfish regard for
or devotion to the welfare of others.
The real question is: are the players willing to be a great teammate?
Are they willing to subjugate their egos by sacrificing their own turn under the
spotlight? Are they willing to sacrifice personal recognition for the sake of
the team? Are they willing to give up their starting role because a teammate is
having a better day? Are they willing come in as a substitute rather than as a
starter? Are they willing to take the bench role even if it means harming their
own self-interests? Are they willing to make that sacrifice by giving up the
opportunities to be seen and recruited? Are they willing to work hard in
practice to make the team more successful and make the starting team better? Are
they willing to work hard only in practice and not play one second of a match?
Great teammates are willing to do all that if that is what
it takes: behavior
that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others.
Many
players excel at being a good teammate, not many are willing to do what it
takes to be a great teammate. Age plays a role in this discussion, it is
difficult to convince young people to sacrifice themselves for the team, yet it
is also rare to see adults sacrifice themselves for the good of the team.
I believe that altruism is a human trait that is the
greatest lesson that we can bestow on our students and players when we teach how
to be a great teammate so that a great team can emerge.
What precipitated this line of thinking is the reality of
our present society, I thought about the lack of apparent or even latent signs
of altruism around me. In the cold reality of today’s ethos, I was lamenting the
disappearance of altruism; but then I found this article from Vox: https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2022/2/17/22938873/covid-19-vaccines-skeptics-messaging
which restored my faith in humans and it gave me some hope.
The article describes the results
from a study conducted by Vincent Pons at the Harvard Business School and
Vincenzo Galasso and Paola Profeta at Bocconi University in Milan. It tracks
the evolving thoughts of people with
anti-vaccine sentiments and their opinions as the pandemic progressed; they found
that people can in fact be persuaded by the right message.
The researchers surveyed more than 6,000 people in the United States, United
Kingdom, European Union, Australia, and New Zealand, first in December 2020, to assess them before
the vaccines were widely available, and asked them to pick a number between 0
and 10 to represent their likelihood of getting vaccinated; then they returned
to them in the Summer of 2021 to find
out what they did.
Four messages were
presented to the test subjects in December to see how they would move people’s
intentions then and their actual behavior six months later:
- Self-Protection (If you get
vaccinated, you could avoid getting infected)
- Protecting Others (If you get vaccinated,
you could avoid passing the virus to others)
- Protecting Health (If you get
vaccinated, it can help protect the health of all the people in your
country)
- Protecting the Economy (If you get
vaccinated, it can help a return to economic activity and reduce
unemployment)
A control group heard
no messaging at all.
Interestingly, the most ardent vaccine refusers, one-third of the people who
had rated themselves 0 in December, had gotten vaccinated in the six months
between visits by the researchers.
What was amazing is that the information presented to the
sample population in the first wave affected not only vaccination intentions
expressed in the survey but also the actual vaccination rates six months later.
It even increased vaccination among those who had expressed
anti-vax attitudes in the first survey. Interestingly, altruistic messages had
the largest effect. Indeed message 2 and 3: protecting others and protecting
the health of the nation were the most effective messages.
We see this same altruism in
the world’s reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We were altruistic in
our response, in all the senses of the word. The economic sanctions have and
will damage the world economy, but the world sacrificed our own self-interest,
we were altruistic in our intentions when responding to the Ukrainian people.
It is these acts of
self-sacrifice on a global scale that let in the light through the crack of the
dark façade of my perspective on our society. Therefore, I feel that we must
reinforce the ideas of being great teammates to our future. It may not matter
much on a local scale in the short term, but it means a great deal on the
global scale in the long term. It will make us all better.
One last note. Ubuntu
is Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s favorite word; it is also a phrase that is oft
cited by Nelson Mandela. Ubuntu is a complicated philosophy of life which
encompasses many aspects of being connected as people and as a
society; a connectedness that should exist between people. My own favorite definition of Ubuntu is: I am
Because We are.
