You Win in the Locker Room First Quotes

“Often the difference between success and failure is belief.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“As a leader, it is so important that your words equal your actions. It is imperative that you make sure that you go through a self-evaluation process on an almost daily basis to make sure that your actions are in line with your words. You must do what you say and say what you do.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“The character you possess during the drought is what your team will remember during the harvest.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“it's not your goals that will lead to your success but your commitment to the process,”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Culture drives expectations and beliefs. Expectations and beliefs drive behaviors. Behaviors drive habits and habits create the future.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“It is the culture you create that is going to determine whether your players perform and execute.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Culture consists of the shared purpose, attitudes, values, goals, practices, behaviors, and habits that define a team or organization.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Research from the HeartMath Institute (heartmath.org) shows that when you have a feeling in your heart, it goes to every cell in the body, then outward—and other people up to 10 feet away can sense feelings transmitted by your heart. This means that each day you are broadcasting to your team how you feel. You are either broadcasting positive energy or negative energy, apathy or passion, indifference or purpose.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“If you are looking to build a new culture or transform the one you have, the first questions you should ask yourself are, “What do we stand for?” and “What do we want to be known for?”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“In the face of all this, it is your culture that will be the driving force to create the resiliency, toughness, passion, and attitude to overcome the obstacles in your way.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Strategy is important. Execution is imperative. However, the most overlooked aspect in team sports, and what most coaches and leaders fail to grasp, is the fact that it is your culture that will determine whether your strategy works and is sustainable. It is the culture you create that is going to determine whether your players perform and execute.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“The past has to be viewed as a springboard to the future.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“To build a winning team, you must help your players and staff have amnesia about past outcomes and remember all the little things they did to get better.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“You want to be a passionate leader who makes decisions that are based on belief and principle over those that are based on feeling.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“To build a winning team you must create a positive culture where negativity can't breed and grow, and the sooner you start weeding it from your team the stronger and more positively contagious your culture and team will be.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“one negative teammate can sabotage a team. One person can't make a team but one person can break a team.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Make sure you have the right team members to strengthen your culture instead of people who suck the energy out of it. You can do everything right as a leader and coach, but if you don't have positive mentors and team members in the locker room your culture and team will fall apart.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“When leaders become focused on the fruit instead of the root and worry about the outcome instead of the process of developing team members, they may survive in the short run, but they will not thrive in the long run.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“I knew the kind of culture we needed to create and I defined it for the team. The seven responsibilities everyone had were to: Have fun, work hard, and enjoy the journey. Show respect for every person you have contact with in the organization. Put the team first. Successful teams have teammates that are unselfish and willing to put their individual goals behind the team's goals. Do your job. It is defined, but you must always be prepared for it to change (especially if you're a player). Appropriately handle victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation. Do not get too high in victory or too low in defeat. Be the same person every day. Understand that all organizational decisions aim to make the team better, stronger, and more efficient. Have a positive attitude. Use positive language (both verbal and body language).”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Jeff built a culture that was defined by a blue-collar work ethic (symbolized by a hard hat), as well as selflessness, teamwork, relentless effort, and continuous improvement.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“You must spend more time on building your culture than on everything else. Culture is what produces wins over time.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Culture consists of the shared purpose, attitudes, values, goals, practices, behaviors, and habits that define a team or organization. Many coaches focus only on the culture shared by the players, but the fact is that everyone in an organization shapes the culture. To be successful, you need everyone in your organization thinking, believing, talking, and behaving in sync. You need everyone to be aligned with the same beliefs, expectations, behaviors, and habits. Thomas and I learned quickly that the beliefs and behaviors of the past had to go and we needed to instill new ways of thinking and acting that everyone could follow.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“I've always believed that culture is defined and created from the top down, but it comes to life from the bottom up. This meant that I had to build our culture by working with the leadership group (i.e., the owner, general manager, and executives), the coaching staff, and the football team. To strengthen the culture among the leadership group, it was important to reiterate to the owner, team president, and general manager the shared beliefs, values, and expectations that we had discussed in depth when I was interviewing for the head coaching position. It was important to have collaborative conversations on a regular basis to discuss the changes we were making and why we were making them.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“I knew the biggest priority was to create a winning culture in which every member could thrive and excel. This meant we would not only have to create the right culture for the team but also for the rest of the organization.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Jon and I talked several times on the phone about the state of the Falcons' organization and it became very clear that if I was going to turn this team around, the first step would be to focus on transforming the culture.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“You win by cultivating the right culture, leadership, expectations, beliefs, mindset, relationships, and habits before you even play the game. You win in the locker room first. Then, you win on the field.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“After all, every team in the league has the same goals so it's not your goals that will lead to your success but your commitment to the process, one game at a time, that will define your season.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Culture drives expectations and beliefs; expectations and beliefs drive behavior; behavior drives habits; and habits create the future. It all starts with culture.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Have fun, work hard, and enjoy the journey. Show respect for every person you have contact with in the organization. Put the team first. Successful teams have teammates that are unselfish and willing to put their individual goals behind the team's goals. Do your job. It is defined, but you must always be prepared for it to change (especially if you're a player). Appropriately handle victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation. Do not get too high in victory or too low in defeat. Be the same person every day. Understand that all organizational decisions aim to make the team better, stronger, and more efficient. Have a positive attitude. Use positive language (both verbal and body language).”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life

“Jon had often told me that if you focus on the fruit and ignore the root, the tree will die, but if you continue to care for the root and focus on your culture, process, people, and purpose, then you'll always have a great supply of fruit.”
― Jon Gordon, You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life