Back in 2015, I was a member of Mexico’s National Volleyball Team.

We have had an overall

good year and we were all living and training together for the upcoming Pan American Cup
and the World Championship. In the world of sports, specially at a high-performance level,
being the captain of a team is a huge honor and personal achievement as well as an
enormous responsibility. When, it comes to National Teams, the recognition is much bigger
so competition for this role can become very fierce. However, competition for the role isn’t
very traditional as it is composed of a combination of being an overall good player,
responsible, disciplined and respected by your teammates.

As months pass by, it starts to become clear who are the leading candidates for a team
captaincy. In my situation, there were three possible candidates two of which had a parent
involved in the Mexican Volleyball Federation and me. Aside from being a great honor, the
team captain is also necessary to keep the team and motivated together, serve as a
connection link with the coach and to cool down heated situations or arguments within the
game. Within the last weeks prior to the competition, I realized that I had to be able to accept
another team member as captain even though I wouldn’t agree to it.

Given this realization, I started to function as a link between the other two candidates and
their sub-groups. In the end, the ability to pull our team members together in a genuine
noncompetitive way proved to be the game changer in our coach’s mind.

Conscientiousness proved to be a major quality to leadership for me, even though the three
candidates where performing well in the court, it wasn’t clear if the level of commitment was
going to be the same regardless of who was named the team leader. In the end, the team
started to perceive this relative lack of sincere commitment.

When I started to get along with the other candidates and their subgroups and also
integrating my own subgroup with theirs, my teammates pushed forward the decision
despite not having any relative in the Mexican Federation.

What I learned was that in order to be the leader of a group of extremely competent people
you also need to have the ability of recognizing another one of your teammates as your
leader. This may seem counterintuitive in the beginning, but I think that this attitude prevents
“forced” leaders and friction within the group. On the other hand, being able to step down
from an extremely competitive mindset is going to help you get along better with your
teammates and build relations of genuine friendship.