A Great Story Is Worth a Smaller Role

Recently, I was visiting with a player on a team I work with, and he was disappointed.

There was a particular leadership role he had worked toward and hoped to receive. He had invested in the team, believed he had earned the opportunity, and then learned that someone else had been selected.

I understood why it hurt.

Titles and recognition matter. And most of us want some evidence that the work we’ve put in has been noticed.

But as I listened, I kept thinking about something I learned the hard way a long time ago:

A great story is worth a smaller role.

My junior year of high school, I played on what was, at the time, our school’s best basketball team in roughly fifty years.

I wasn’t a starter. I was more of the sixth or seventh man, and if I’m telling the truth, I didn’t handle that particularly well.

I wanted a bigger role. I thought I deserved one. And I allowed that disappointment to affect the way I communicated and interacted with some of my teammates.

Looking back, that’s the part I regret.

I was inside one of the best experiences available to me, surrounded by friends, winning games and doing something our school hadn’t done in decades.

And I didn’t fully enjoy it.

I was too busy measuring my part in the story.

The following year, I got what I wanted. I had the role, the recognition, and the accolades.

And we were mediocre.

I learned something that year I’ve never forgotten:

Being the lead character doesn’t make it a better story.

About ten years later, I was given the opportunity to return to that area as a head basketball coach.

This time, I got to experience another special team.

What I remember most wasn’t my title or even our record. It was the locker room.

There was joy in it.

Good players. Good relationships. People enjoying what they were building together.

It felt like the experience I had been too immature to fully appreciate as a junior.

In some ways, I felt like God had graciously given me another opportunity to see what I had missed the first time.

And I’ve been chasing that feeling in my work ever since.

We’re living in a time when it seems easier than ever to leave when the role doesn’t match our expectations.

We change teams.

We change organizations.

We opt out.

Now, sometimes leaving is absolutely the right decision. There are places that don’t value people well, and there are seasons when it’s time to move on.

But I worry we can also leave something great because we’re disappointed with our billing in the credits.

Maybe the better question isn’t always:

What’s my role?

Maybe it’s:

What’s the story we’re trying to tell - and is it worth being part of?

I still want people to be recognized for meaningful contributions. Great organizations should be good at that.

But recognition is secondary to the privilege of doing meaningful things with people you respect.

Take a look at one of the teams you’re part of right now.

Are you evaluating the experience primarily by the role you’ve been given, or by the mission you’ve been invited into?

Can you contribute without being featured?

Can you celebrate someone whose role is larger than yours?

Can you become so valuable to the mission that the title matters less?

There will be seasons when you’re asked to lead from the front.

There will be others when your name is farther down the credits.

Don’t miss a great story because you were disappointed with your part.

I got to experience both.

A smaller role on a great team.

And a starring role on a mediocre one.

I know which one I’d choose now.

One of life’s great blessings is finding something worth doing with people worth doing it with.

When you find that, don’t spend too much time worrying about where your name appears in the credits.

Stay in the story.

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