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(*If you read any of my blogs the whole way to the end, let this be the one. I promise it will be worth it. Hint: a  celebration giveaway is involved.)

This is my two hundredth blog entry. That I have written that many entries is almost unfathomable to me!!!

Four years ago, my friend Wendy suggested adding a blog to my website. She thought it would be a good way for me to add meaningful content to a site that was, at that the time, more barren that it should have been. I figured that I would write maybe five to ten entries and move on to something else. Obviously, things played out differently. And I am glad they did.

Sometimes readers will ask me which entry is my favorite, which is comparable to asking a parent to choose their favorite child. I am incapable of singling out one as my “favorite,” so we polled our subscribers.

We compiled a list of our top blogs, based on website hits, clicks, comments, mentions, likes, shares, forwards, interactions, etc., and asked subscribers which blog they liked best. After tabulating several thousand votes, the list was narrowed down to three finalists. Here is a brief synopsis, the key takeaway, and a link to the full article for each of the three:

Don’t Feed the Gators.

A Florida sign about feeding alligators translates into advice for dealing with toxic teammates. When you do anything but disagree with a toxic teammate’s malcontent, you are feeding their toxicity. Gators = haters, and good teammates don’t feed the “gators.”

You Gotta Read the Book

A high school football team uses Lance’s children book to create a team-first culture and win a state championship. Any coach can coach strategy. Good coaches coach players. Great coaches make coaching players to be good teammates part of their strategy.

The Pooh Bear Statue

A child’s thoughtful gesture reveals a good teammate insight. The essence of being a good teammate lies in the continued willingness to do kind, generous acts that may seem like nothing more than a small inconvenience to the doer, yet often mean the world to the recipient.

Watching my blog grow has been beyond enjoyable. Last month, I received an email from a reader who said that I make her “look forward to Tuesdays.” My heart smiled. I appreciate hearing from readers, whether it’s a story about how something I wrote had a positive impact on their team or just a simple message letting me know that an entry was a “good one.”

Two-hundred blogs has allowed me to create a helpful database of sorts of good teammate topics. If your team is struggling with a particular teamwork problem, you can use the search bar on my website to discover archived blogs that are relevant to that problem. For instance, a quick search for “listening” brings up nine results, including Ten Ways to Be a Better Listener.

If you’re interested in sharing past entries with others in bulk, you may want to check out my Teammate Tuesday books. The series currently has three volumes, with a fourth to be released later this spring. Each book contains a year’s worth of my blog in chronological order. Think of them as an easy way to binge-read past entries.

I try to write my blog with two objectives: 1) To inspire people to be better teammates and 2) To help people find ways to inspire those on their teams to be better teammates. Why? Because I believe the world needs more good teammates.

Nearly every affliction affecting our society (e.g., school bullying, the drug epidemic, broken families, political shenanigans, etc.) comes down to people not being good teammates. Several recent news headlines have reminded me of this fact.

Those same headlines have also reminded me of the significance of a quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world.

I love that quote and it has been a driving force behind many of my life’s decisions. But Gandhi never said those words. Be the change you want to see in the world is a condensed, bumper-sticker version of what he said. Gandhi’s actual words are much deeper:

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

To be a bona fide agent of change, you must look within yourself. You must ask yourself daily: Am I being a good teammate? Am I inspiring others to be good teammates? Affirmative answers to those questions are the key to discovering true happiness.

If you’ve read my Victory Cake blog, you know that good teammates celebrate their victories. Reaching two hundred blogs is a milestone worthy of celebration. To commemorate the occasion, we are doing the following:

  • We are giving away 200 copies of Be a Good Teammate for FREE to one lucky elementary school. Nominate any elementary school of your choosing to be entered into the drawing. This book giveaway is limited to schools in the United States and only one nomination per email address. But feel free to forward this information to your friends, families, and school PTOs. Anyone is welcome to nominate a school. The more nominations a school has, the better its chances are of winning. LEARN MORE
  • Our Good Teammate Factory online courses are marked down to just $200 this week. Spending a few hours doing the Good Teammate Factory will bond your team like no other experience! Not ready to do the course now? No problem. You can purchase a unique code at this discounted price that can be redeemed at a later date. LEARN MORE
  • All of our Kindle edition books are discounted to just $2.00 on Amazon.com this week. LEARN MORE
  • What would a victory celebration be without Victory Cake? Enter your name into a random drawing to receive a $20.00 gift certificate from The Cheesecake Factory by signing up a friend to receive our Teammate Tuesday newsletter. You can sign up as many friends as you would like. The more friends you sign up, the better your chances are of winning! LEARN MORE

*Deadlines for all the above have expired. Winners were announced on March 2, 2021. Thank you to all who participated.

Thank you for being a part of our good teammate family and for helping us make the world a better place. As always…Good teammates care. Good teammates share. Good teammates listen. Go be a good teammate.

Lance Loya is the founder and CEO of the Good Teammate Factory. He is a college basketball coach turned author, blogger, and professional speaker, who inspires TEAMBUSTERS to become TEAMMATES. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or through his weekly Teammate Tuesday blog.

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