Seth Wickersham has worked as a sportswriter for ESPN for 18 years, mostly covering the NFL.

Football is a sport he has loved all his life. He told a story about trying his hand at it when he was young.

"When I played quarterback, I had this one chance to lead a game-winning drive. 

We moved to midfield.  I took a snap and dropped back, and started moving to my left.  I had one receiver there and he was well-covered. He was so well-covered my coach even came to the sideline and he was waving at me to throw him the ball out of bounds. A pass that needed to be low and outside was high and inside, and it was intercepted. I was just distraught.

You become a quarterback in some ways because you want to stand out. In that moment I just wanted to blend in and disappear. I remember my center was next to me and he put his hand on my helmet when I had my head down.  

[NB: Wickersham never played QB after HS and went on to earn a journalism degree, writing deep exposés about the NFL and most recently American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback.] 

"I met up with that center later in life. I've been to countless [Bruce] Springsteen concerts and I understand the irony but I had to go there...to the high School Glory Days.  Out of nowhere i blurted out, "Why do you think I didn't make it?

He said, "Because we couldn't block for you."

That.

If you are ever asked to give a speech and are only allowed one story to try to convey to the audience the meaning of 'team,' that one would serve you well.

In my view, it illustrates a couple important points about teams and teamwork.  First, overall success, but, importantly, even the apparent individual successes members of a team achieve, requires everyone to do their parts at a high level.

Second, on high-functioning teams, even when the outputs are not yet where they need to be, people take accountability for their part of the problem, rather than look for someone else to blame.

But Wickersham's story went on, and the continuation illustrates an even deeper experience that is possible on a high functioning team: how joining together with others in shared accountability to something larger can partially remove the burden of Self.

They cried when Doug told them 'it wasn't your fault.'

Stories of Grace

"Whether what my center said to me was true or not, it just meant so much.

As you know, you beat yourself up quite a bit because even though you can intellectually understand that this is a team game and that there are other factors at play, you're constantly wondering what you could have done differently.

My center's comments allowed me to forgive that 16-year-old boy who just couldn't forgive himself."

The opportunity for shared accountability and the relief from Self that can accompany it is not limited to sports.

In the same podcast linked previously, Ravi Gupta, former COO and CFO at Instacart, added his own story about accountability and grace.

"Doug Leone used to run Sequoia and was known to be a very tough leader. Sequoia had tried to start some different businesses at different points early on.  Some people involved in those efforts didn't deliver. Doug was the one who'd asked them to leave.

Many years later, on his own, he just decided to go and see a couple of them.  He said, 'I just want you to know that it wasn't your fault. We didn't really know what we wanted, and we weren't ready to do what we were trying to do. So, the lack of success of that effort...it wasn't you.'

Now, keep in mind, this was 1) decades later and 2) these were real business leaders who had gone on to do other great things with their careers.

They cried when Doug told them 'it wasn't your fault.'

They had just not been able to let go of the thought, 'Oh, I failed at this thing.' Someone who was there, the leader, saying to them years later, 'No, there wasn't something you could have done' was something that allowed them to let go of that judgment about themselves."

Two Invitations

Here's the first invitation: Is there anyone in your life you could do that for?

Is there someone that worked for you or that you were on a team with that might be carrying a failure story that you could help them release?

Is the potential to release a burden someone might be carrying worth the effort to look them up and reach out?

I have a second invitation, but before I extend it, a very slight digression might prove helpful.

Metta, or loving-kindness meditation, is a fundamental practice in Buddhism that promotes unconditional love, compassion, and goodwill toward all beings.

At its core, it is simply extending well-wishes to others...wishes for peace, freedom from suffering, happiness.

There are many ways to do this and you can find guided meditations online.  Here is one from a teacher of mine, Jack Kornfield.

With metta practice, it is often suggested you proceed in stages.  Start with someone you love or already hold in high regard because it is easy to extend love and goodwill to someone you hold in high regard.

Then, proceed to someone neutral. 

Then when you are ready, try to extend the same well-wishes to someone whom you have more difficulties with.

Finally, when you are really ready, you are invited to extend those same well-wishes to yourself. 

I say "finally" and "when you are really ready" because believe it or not, this is often the hardest phase of the practice for many.  The Inner Critic is so strong in many of us that the simple act of extending kindness...to ourselves...can be a real challenge.

You probably see where this is going.

Could the time be right to release some of your own failure stories?

Yes, it is so much more powerful when it comes from someone else, who was there and witnessed what really happened. 

Yes, when the full, complicated, interconnected truth about the moment of what you are framing as failure is finally seen...when you are finally seen...real healing and forgiveness gets magnified.

But we don't know if they will ever show up. 

And even if they do, letting go rarely happens at once.

The release of each gripping finger...one at a time...adds up.

After you have connected with a few others who might be carrying failure stories and extended the unique grace that can come from a fellow team member, as with the final stage of metta practice, my second invitation is to extend some to yourself:

'I was there. I played a role. I could have done things differently. I learned from the experience. The final outcome, that wasn't all on me.'

Dennis Adsit, Ph.D. is an executive coach, organization consultant, and designer of The First 100 Days and Beyond, a consulting service for individuals and organizations who can't afford faulty starts on mission critical assignments.