Once upon a time I was on a sunny vacation.
I was leisurely strolling through a lush green park with beautiful palm trees and an open view of mountains and the sea.
As I was walking, a crowd was playing volleyball in the middle of a neatly trimmed green field with a beautiful volleyball court.
A woman with a body that could be seen on the front of Sports Illustrated yelled at me if I wanted to join them.
Well, being a straight guy, when a girl with a Sports Illustrated body asks you if you want to play volleyball, you want to play volleyball.
And so, giving up my plans to go reading and swimming in the ocean, I went to join them.
Now, two teams had to be created.
And so a middle-aged French guy was selected as one team-captain, and... Yours truly, was selected as the second team-captain.
"Wonderful" I thought, as I was just trying to coast a bit on the side and was not planning on leading a volleyball team that day.
I was just vacationing after all.
We had to choose our teammates the regular elementary school way where people awkwardly stands in a crowd and hope to get picked.
And so we started picking teammates.
My opposing French team-captain seemed to be an intensely competitive person and very carefully selected the most athletic looking people for his team.
Me, on the other hand, wanted a fun family-friendly game and simply picked randomly.
Further, I hate the elementary school feeling of not being picked, so I wanted everyone to feel included.
We started playing and while my team did not possess the athletic abilities of Olympians, they showed great enthusiasm.
Actually we looked more like a disorganised family than a volleyball team.
But I digress.
Every time they made a great serve or showed great teamwork, I was super ecstatic and lavishly praised them.
And I meant it, their great effort excited me greatly.
Meanwhile in the camp of Napoleon (no offence), the mood was intense and competitive.
And mistakes was focused on, rather than effort.
On this side, fear dominated.
A lot happened during the game and at one point I had to pick up the ball in a briar without a shirt on.
Needless to say, the thorns on the briar ripped my back with marks.
This meant the rest of the vacation, it looked like room 1101 could have been called The Love Room.
But I will spare you the details and skip to the end of our game.
As stated my team was not the most athletic.
But we had great teamwork, good morale and a culture of praise was established.
The opposing team had a lot of athletic figures, and their culture was based on fear, competition and intensity.
Who won?
We did, of course.
For 5 or 7 games in a row, I can't remember.
What is the morale of the story?
Praise, enthusiasm and celebrating the effort of each other creates a culture of winners.
Whereas a culture of competition, intensity and fear of making mistakes, creates the opposite.
Luckily the woman who had asked me to join was on my team.
I was happy about that, as the game got rather... One-sided.
See you in the next one.
/ Mads