Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
The Same Team Principle
The biggest conflicts in our lives often come from an error in identification: we mistake teammates for opponents and burn energy proving we’re right while moving away from what matters.
We unpack the Same Team Principle which is a clear, practical framework for seeing marriages, workplaces, schools, healthcare, and communities as interdependent systems built around shared outcomes. Notice when your brain flips into “me versus you,” then re-center on the outcome and choose a regulated, intentional response.
When you choose outcome over ego, you gain clarity, conserve energy, and invite collective intelligence to outperform any solo effort. We close with a three-part summary you can apply anywhere: confirm the shared outcome, allow multiple routes, and regulate your nervous system when difference feels like danger.
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Welcome to Islamic Life Code School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, Dr. Donald Abdur.
SPEAKER_00:Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you. Today we're going to be talking about the same team principle. This is something that I help my clients identify in their relationships and their daily lives because it has a huge impact. I'm going to start out explaining this concept by giving an analogy to the sports team because they're easy to identify. The outcome is obvious, you win the game. Everyone knows who's on what team. Everyone on the team knows what success looks like. If one player scores, the whole team benefits. If one player sabotages the team to look good individually, the entire team loses. The rules are visible. There are clear and distinct guidelines as to what a team entails. There is no confusion about what alignment towards the goal looks like. When it comes to the same team principle in real life, it's not quite clear and distinct like that. We need a real definition of what a team looks like in real life because most people are operating with the sports team version of this concept. A team in your life is a group of people aligned towards the same outcome, where individual success is strengthened by the success of others, and vice versa. That's it. That's the definition we're working with. Now teams in your life are going to be your marriage, the shared outcome here is safety, intimacy, future success of children. Work is a team. Whether you're employed, self-employed, or running a business, your outcome is tied to other people doing well and you exchanging money for value that you put in the world. Your colleagues, clients, managers, customers, they're all on your team, and your progress depends on shared momentum. They gain value from your work and they give you money for that work. The shared goal of success for both parties on the team. The schooling system is a team. Students, teachers, your classmates, all aligned towards learning and mastery. Grades in the schooling system create an illusion of a competition, but the real understanding is that from shared knowledge, collaboration, collective intelligence, working within the system to make itself more efficient, you gain the shared success of them teaching you and you learning. Parenting is a team. Parents, caregivers, teachers, therapists, all aligned towards the shared goal of raising an independent, regulated, secure child. If adults in this team carry the role of control towards the child or play the card of moral superiority, the child will carry the cost into the future. That's not conducive to successful team dynamics. Your community at large is a team. Leadership, volunteers, members, they are all aligned towards the shared goal of belonging, service, sustainability of the community. One person winning influence over others while others feel like they've lost is gonna create disengagement from the entire team. That's gonna erode the outcome. The reason I'm grounding you guys with so much language so carefully here is that once you see how many teams you're already on and how many people you're working towards a shared outcome with, it will become much easier for you to accomplish your goals. When you don't realize you're on a team, your brain always defaults to competition. Me versus you, even when the outcome is shared. This is where things start to break down. This is where it requires a lot of your mental and emotional energy to carry you towards the same goal. Most of the conflicts in your life while you're trying to accomplish something are not happening because you're surrounded by the wrong people and you're not failing because everyone else lacks skill, intelligence, or care. That's happening because your brain keeps misidentifying who's actually on your team. When this misidentification happens, the nervous system shifts from outcome focused to survival focused. The mind at that point offers you thoughts that sabotage the shared goal. You start to believe that you're protecting yourself, but in survival-based adversarial type of thinking, you're unknowingly working against the very outcomes that you want most. The same team principle is the framework that I created to correct this internal error. Listen to this carefully so that it brings awareness to you in the moment when the brain flips from a shared purpose to a perceived threat. And this process offers you a way to stay oriented towards what matters, eyes on the prize, so to say. Real life team, the ones that I'm talking about here, are invisible. In real life, shared outcomes remain unspoken, even assumed. There are hierarchical roles and power dynamics in this team. This is why it becomes very difficult for your brain to remember that you are on the same team, unlike sports teams where everyone's wearing the same jersey. Because of this, many women falsely assume that they are operating independently, when in reality you are embedded in a highly interdependent system. And there are many such interdependent system of teams, like I mentioned before, parents and children, co parenting, teachers, classmates. In a healthcare system, patients, physicians and nurses, caseworkers. In an employer employee business there are partners, solopreneurs, customers. In an organization there are board members, volunteers, leadership, people that make up the congregation. There's an unspoken team that's developed within your friend's circle, where the shared outcome is support, finding people that you can lean on, and they can lean on you. Siblings within a family create a team. Therapists with a client, coach and a client creates a team. Most of these systems that you're living inside of are going to look competitive from within, even when the outcome is shared, and it's in your mutual benefit to work together with other team members. Things that currently in the society are pitting team members against each other are things like grades, titles, authority, roles, pay scales, leadership hierarchies. Among all of this, the primal brain does not experience this structure as neutral. It reads this structure as threat. In each of these teams that you're a part of, your brain is trying to answer a single question. Your nervous system is constantly scanning for am I safe here? And the moment the brain starts asking that and things like where do I stand compared to others, in this stance your attention shifts away from the shared goal and towards self-preservation. In these case scenarios, energy moves from collaboration to hypervigilance, and instead of you contributing as a team member, your brain power goes into comparison. Now this internal shift is very subtle, but it is very decisive, and it's easy to spot if you practice it. The work being done here may look the same on the outside. On surface it's gonna look like you're going through the same motions, but internally your framework would have changed. What you once experienced as we're solving the same problem, if you shift into adversarial thinking is gonna become I need to protect myself from you. I need to prove myself correct here. And once the brain flips into me versus you mode, a very predictable chain reaction begins. You start to show up with defensiveness that feels reasonable and even responsible. Your focus shifts from working something out together to managing the situation to putting out fires, to managing and controlling the other person and micromanaging the situation. To your mind then, the other person on the team becomes the problem, and you forget all about the team dynamic. At this point, of course, like anything else that engages your survival brain, your higher intelligence goes offline, your curiosity, your flexibility disappears, and you lose the ability to hold multiple perspectives at once. What remains is a sense of self-righteousness and an internal conviction that you're doing what you need to do to protect yourself and protect the goal. And you become convinced that you're going to preserve the outcome all by yourself. And as Muslim women, we are very good at hyper performing towards the goal just because we don't like how other people are doing things. We become very proud of doing everything and doing multiple people's jobs to prove ourselves, just so that we don't have to deal with what now the mind calls adversaries. The most fascinating part to me here is that no matter how hard you work on these teams, no matter how many people's workload you take on, your actions are now working against the shared outcome that you originally cared about. You're alienating other team members, you're making yourself appear more efficient than them, an individual win that is a win in your eyes is a loss for the whole team. And this pattern repeats across many systems. In a team like a marriage or a family, for example, if you as a person wins this me versus you battle, let's say one spouse wins at the cost of the other, it will seem like a win. It seems like you've proven yourself. It seems like that your efficiency and your productivity is what's carrying the team forward. But what feels like a well earned win for you is a loss for others. What seems like a win for one person is a loss for everyone, including yourself because you are on the team. Cost in a marriage is intimacy and safety. Cost in parenting is grounded leadership for your child. Cost in healthcare is poor patient outcomes. Cost in a religious organization is that it might cost it members their spirituality. When one person wins, the whole team loses. And you will come to see that when that dopamine hit of the win fades away, you realize that you're farther away from your goal than you were before your individual win. So being on the same team and keeping your mind in check with this principle is very, very simple. It comes with just a few clarifications, and this is where your work becomes very precise. Being on the same team means that you're working towards the same outcome, and if one person on the team wins, everyone loses, including yourself. Alright, after having taught this to my clients many times, one of the obstacles that commonly comes up is that women tell me that what if other people don't agree with being on my team? And the most beautiful part of the same team principle is that it's not about their consensus. Meaning, and this is gonna sound very counterintuitive, but other people on your team don't have to agree that you are on the team with them. They don't even have to act like they're on your team. The same team principle is a stance that you take internally, that is an outlook that you provide to the situation. This is independent of whether others agree with you or even recognize this team. So let's make the same three examples we've been talking about very clear. The goal of the Nikah contract in Islam is that both spouses be able to drive mawadda, deep affection and fondness, rahma, mercy and compassion, sakina, tranquility. These are the shared outcomes that you're working with your spouse with while you're on this team. So now since we have clarified what we're working towards, the threat response in your marriage, if your brain is responding to one, can come from the hierarchical roles that are differentiating each person's role in the marriage. And through that, the language is going to be very different. It's going to be me versus him. He does this, he never does this, I have to do this, I never get to do this. When you have fallen into the trap of adversarial thinking, now it's very easy for your brain to lose the sight of the goal, the affection and the love and the tranquility. In threat response, your brain is saying, What are you talking about? Love and affection. I'm over here doing everything around the house and not even getting a speck of attention or relief. Me versus him, us versus them. Classic adversarial thinking. Then enters the belief that he should know that he is on the same team as me. We are working towards the same goal. That's also wrong. He does not have to know. He might know, he might not know. He might know on an intellectual level and regurgitate this goal to you verbally because that's what's been taught to him, just like it's been taught to you. But despite this knowing, he might not act on it. At least not the way you want him to. So, like I said, he does not have to know that he is on the same team as you. He doesn't even have to agree with this concept. He doesn't even have to have heard of this concept. His assignment to your team and your shared goal is your decision. When in the marriage things don't go as you expected, try and come out of adversarial thinking into the same team thinking. It might be hard in the beginning, but once you start to see everything as a shared goal, you can guide, you can direct, you can position yourself as a person who needs help. Okay, so let's take it out of the marriage context for a second and place it in a hospital setting where the stakes are clearer and the outcomes are not as abstract. Let's say if you're a nurse, the shared outcome is patient care, safety, healing. Everyone on your floor is there for that same reason. Whether it's named explicitly through outcomes or not, that's most likely you signed up for the healthcare field. This is the outcome as a team. This is what you're working towards every shift. Now, hierarchy enters the picture. There's difference in authority, scopes of practice, and your nervous system might start to react to that. The doctor might give you an order in a way that feels dismissive. You raise a concern that doesn't get acknowledged. A decision on the team level is made without your input. In this sense, the threat response kicks in and the frame is going to shift. For you it's going to become me versus them. They never listen. I'm actually the one with the patient. I'm catching what they're missing. I'm doing the real work and carrying the risk. Once this adversarial thinking sets in, it becomes very easy to lose the sight of the original outcome. The whole idea of patient care is going to fade into the background. In this threat state, your brain is not going to be thinking about healing or teamwork. It's going to be thinking about fairness, recognition, self-protection. The nervous system is not going to engage with anything about patient care. It's going to engage with how am I being ignored? Why am I being overridden? This is such a burden. And again, if you fall into the trap of how they should know that they're on the same team, they should behave like that they care for the patients, they might or might not know. They might intellectually agree, they might have gone into the field of medicine for the same reason. The whole point is that when you are in adversarial thinking, you cannot collaborate to come to a decision that's going to be mutually benefit to you and everyone else. In your threat based response in this adversarial thinking, you're gonna inadvertently add fuel to the fire. Their awareness, their agreement is not a requirement for your team stance to exist. The moment you decide that this person is on my team because the outcome is patient care, your whole frame is going to stabilize. And this is not happening because the hierarchy disappeared. It's not even happening because the doctor changed. It happens because you're not any longer outsourcing your regulation to their response. You are staying anchored to the outcome you share. And this can happen when the roles are unequal, especially when they're unequal. Your assignment on your team and how you get to behave and show up is not something everyone else votes on. It's something you decide. And that is based on the outcome you're committed to protecting. And this decision changes how you show up, how clearly you think, how much energy you conserve by not constantly ruminating and actually working towards a tangible solution, how effectively you serve the very goal that brought you into this space in the first place. Disagreements on the same team can still be present. People move with different speeds, bring different kinds of expertise, they take different routes towards the goal. That does not mean that it breaks your alignment. One person might prioritize the process while other person is going to focus on execution. One person may see the risks that the other one misses. One is going to move quicker than the other. All the differences are inevitable. None of this is a threat to the team. When the outcome remains intact as an organized principle, you have all the information you need to keep yourself regulated. So so far, they don't have to know or agree to be on this team. They don't have to agree with you on how to get to the goal and you don't have to agree with them. And the next one that makes this team principle extremely simple and effective is that you don't have to let go of your opinion to make everyone else comfortable. You can speak firmly, you can hold passionate boundaries, hold your position, especially if there is a blatant disregard of your opinion. When there's disrespect in the team dynamic that you're not gonna ignore, you can hold your ground. Just because you speak up for your rights, call someone out on their injustice does not mean that you are abandoning the team. Remember, the team is defined by the shared outcome. If a person on your team is not playing nice, but they are on your team, you don't have to go into self-erase mode. You don't have to ignore the mistreatment just for the sake of the team. You can call out the rude behavior of the team member and be on the same team as them. When someone dismisses your input, takes credit for your work, or speaks to you in a way that crosses the line, your brain will have the tendency to activate the threat response. And this is when the threat response is doing its job. This is what it's created for, for your safety, safety of your values. But you do not engage in your response from the place of threat. You engage in your response from a place of choice, where you choose how you want to show up, especially when it's standing firm in your boundaries. Many Muslim women believe that staying professional means staying quiet and just taking the mistreatment or keeping things smoothly going. This is not same team thinking. This is self-erasure. Being on the same team does not mean tolerating disrespect. It means staying anchored to the shared outcome while refusing to participate in any behavior that undermines it. You can name the issue, you can say clearly and firmly that when something is not acceptable, none of that removes you from the team, because the team is not defined by people's comfort. It's defined by the goal that you're collectively working towards. In all of these settings, the simplicity of this principle is what makes it powerful. The other people do not agree, they do not have to share your language or your framework, they may never consciously think in terms of the same team at all, and their awareness is not a requirement. Your disagreement, your strong stance on your values and boundaries does not eliminate you from the team. Your stance is the only requirement. You stay oriented towards the outcome. You hold your clarity, you refuse to abandon yourself, you refuse to hold only surface level harmony. All of this is going to make your teams extremely strong. One other thing that you have to contend with while you're on these teams is that being on the same team does not guarantee you'll get your way. You might intellectually know this, but when it comes to application, your need of control is going to want to dominate. And just keep that in check just for your simple awareness. Being on the same team does not promise your comfort, control, or creative authority over how things unfold. It just promises alignment around the outcome that matters. The outcome stays intact, but the journey looks nothing like what you might have imagined with your ego. And that can feel very uncomfortable, understandably, especially for high functioning, competent, multitasking Muslim women who are used to just being right and being effective and being productive. You would rather do things yourself than see someone else do them some other way. But your control is an illusion, a part of adversarial thinking. Thinking like I do it better than them, I'll do it faster than them. If you insist on your route over others, you are no longer committed to the outcome. You're committed to your identity. The identity is someone who knows best. And that's not team thinking. Because now you're not problem solving, you're preserving your control. The same team thinking asks one important question. Are you interested in the outcome or are you attached to how you got there? If you're attached to the how, any deviation is going to feel like a threat and you're gonna fall into micromanagement, and you're gonna get frustrated when others don't move at the pace you expected. And while you're in adversarial thinking, you're gonna start confusing this with incompetence. And when you treat other people as incompetent, even though you might never say it, people stop showing up as their best selves, they stop bringing their full intelligence into the room. If you're committed to the outcome, you will develop flexibility without losing standards, you will be discerning without becoming rigid. You will be able to allow multiple routes to coexist, knowing that the collective intelligence almost always outperforms individual performance. Successful outcomes are never born from one person's preferred path, they're built through collective adaptation. And when you choose the outcome over your ego's attachment to the route, initially it might seem like that you lost power, but you will gain influence over the whole situation. And above all you will arrive at the goal. And there's nothing more impactful than that. So just as a summary, same team principle, the first is shared outcome. If you don't share an outcome with somebody, you're not on their team. Second is it might take different routes. Same destination does not require the same path. Conflict begins when difference gets misread as danger. Third, you get to show up with regulated stance. Same team thinking works when you evolve your nervous system, when you tolerate the differences, when you recognize your ego's need of domination. When you're dysregulated, every shared goal is going to feel like a threat, and you won't arrive at the goal, and even if you do, the journey might break you. This same team thinking is a repeatable, transferable skill. It is a meta skill. It becomes a relational lens through which you interpret difference and tension within a relationship. For you as a Muslim woman, the same team principle exists so that you stop fighting the wrong battles. It preserves your nervous system, your relationships, your spiritual integrity all at the same time. With that I pray to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, Yallah, help us see clearly who we are meant to stand beside. Regulate our hearts when our egos want to win. Anchor us in the outcomes that carry Baraka in this life and success in the afterlife. Ya Allah, grant us the wisdom to choose alignment with the right people. Amin Yarabul Amin. Please keep me in your daras. I will talk to you guys next time.