Since my recent interview with the leader of a multi-million dollar pizza chain, I have had the pie on my mind.

I was thinking about the team I work with and how we have really come to appreciate our culture and chemistry since the pandemic hit because we had our normal routine of meeting in cool destinations once a quarter. We had to pivot and do things that we don't necessarily enjoy to make sure we held the line.

It brought us closer together even though we have remained many miles apart.

It was being thrown into the oven that helped us appreciate each others' strengths even more. To have each others' backs even more than we did before. A cohesive unit, melted together like cheese on the top of your favorite pizza!

Your team, any team (sports, business, church, family, little league) is actually very much like a PIZZA...

Teams must be put through the oven if they expect to have what it takes to be the best. Without that high temperature, discomfort, adversity, you are left with only "ingredients" that stand alone, bound by limitations and unable to achieve the end objective of feeding a family, or a client, or a consumer, or a company. 

Don't protect your teams from the hard times. Help them through it, make yourself one of the ingredients willing to go through the fire for greatness.