Each of us is a member of one or more teams—business teams, sports teams, family teams. And teams work best when each person feels seen, understood, and valued. Yet most of us don’t practice actively supporting our teammates. But what if we did?
In his book Elevating Your Game, Jim Thompson describes a simple and meaningful practice called “filling emotional tanks”—offering sincere acknowledgment, encouragement, and support. Filling emotional tanks is even more powerful when done as a mindfulness practice, meaning intentionally with full, kind, and curious attention.
Beautiful examples include a coach acknowledging the backup goalie’s hustle, a boss recognizing an employee’s creative solution, or a parent appreciating a child’s effort (especially when the outcome may not be ideal).
Tips on Tank-Filling for Team Leaders
If you are truly committed to becoming a team leader, you can engage in advanced tank filling.
For the next couple of weeks, practice filling your teammates’ emotional tanks. Work your way through the “roster,” focusing on one person each day, or each week throughout the season. Filling tanks ensures that you maintain the magic ratio of at least five positive interactions to every negative interaction in your relationships with each other.
Just like certain physical skills can feel unnatural—such as dribbling and shooting with your nondominant hand or foot—it is human to have teammates with whom you find it harder and less natural to be generous. Yet, it is important to work on your teammates’ weaknesses, putting extra effort into filling the tanks of the teammates you tend to neglect or dislike.
With kindness and curiosity, simply notice any resistance you have to filling a particular teammate’s tank. Usually, stinginess and ass-kissing come from jealousy, insecurity, anger, and fear. So, can you practice having these feelings without your feelings having you? Can you commit to filling every teammate’s tank, especially the teammates you find most difficult? Keep in mind, sometimes you may need to have a mindful conversation and clear the air before you can find flow with filling the tanks of certain teammates.
The practice of tank-filling can also be formalized. You can create a simple rotation in which each player is assigned to fill the tank of one other player for one week of the season. Make sure you create a rotation that ensures that each teammate fills every other teammate’s tank. For large teams, you may want to create rotations within subteams (offense and defense, or marketing and sales).
Finally, don’t forget to fill your own tank. Offer yourself words of appreciation and encouragement.
The Impact of a Positive Attitude
Remember, no team can perform at its best when jealousy, insecurity, fear, and anger are bubbling under the surface. Pat Summitt, former University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach, eight-time NCAA champion, and the winningest basketball coach in NCAA history, wrote, “With attitude, you can determine your own performance. But more than that, you can help determine the performance of others. A single individual with a strong positive attitude can lift those around her. She can change the course of events.”
This post is adapted from my book, A Still Quiet Place for Athletes: Mindfulness Skills for Achieving Peak Performance and Finding Flow in Sports and in Life. While it uses language for athletes, everyone can benefit from learning to fill their “teammates’” emotional tanks.
