Like many of you, I was captivated by the recent FIFA World Cup, which had my TV featuring games and replays for hours on end, day after day.

Likewise, for some, the Tour de France can be must-see TV in July.

If you watched either of these events from the sidelines, you may have noticed some great teaching tools for those who work with enterprising families.

Wait, this Is a Team Sport?

Casual viewers of the Tour assume that it’s an individual sport, with the rider in the yellow jersey searching for individual glory.

But during a mountain stage, you’ll notice the teammates riding themselves into the ground for hours, fetching water bottles, blocking the wind, and setting the pace so their leader has enough left in the tank for the win at the end of the stage.

They’re called “domestiques”; they rarely get to wear the yellow jersey, and their entire job is to help someone else win.

When I think about some of the families I’ve been privileged to work with, I’ve seen many versions of the unsung contributor who helps the family succeed.

The sibling who steps back to let someone else take the lead, the in-law who rarely speaks but manages to smooth things over among rival siblings, the rising generation family member who accepts some less thrilling assignment because they know someone’s gotta do it.

Next time you’re with such a family (your own or a client’s), you may want to ask them how they’re doing in recognizing all these family members who don’t get to wear the yellow jersey.

Recognizing the domestiques is one thing, but knowing what to do with that recognition is another. It’s not enough to notice who’s quietly carrying the load; you have to make sure everyone, unsung or not, is actually in the right spot to begin with.

Eleven Jobs, One Game

A soccer team doesn’t succeed because they have eleven of the same type of player. It succeeds because it has eleven people doing their own different jobs, all at the same time.

The keeper who reads the danger and directs his teammates, defenders who absorb pressure put on by the opposition, midfielders who connect everyone together seamlessly, and forwards who can score goals.

If you put your best striker in goal or put others in the wrong role, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

I see families make mistakes like this when they assume that someone who’s good at sales will be great at running the family council, or when they leave the governance to the most senior person, who may be ill-suited to that role.

Good teams, whether on the pitch or around the family table, spend time figuring out who plays best where, based on strengths and temperament, not just birth order or who is the most like Dad.

These conversations aren’t always easy to have, but they do separate families who succeed from those who struggle.

Of course, even when everyone’s in the right position, that doesn’t mean they’ll always agree on how to play the game. And that’s fine because the next lesson from the pitch is that disagreement isn’t the enemy of a good team. It’s often a sign of one.

Learning to Argue Well, Together

Real teams argue constantly, but it doesn’t destroy them; it actually makes them better. Teammates disagree about tactics, who should take the last shot, and whether it’s too early to “park the bus.”

But deep down, they have the shared understanding that everyone’s on the same side, working towards the same result.

Families, unfortunately, sometimes get this wrong and treat any disagreement as a threat that needs to be avoided at all costs.

This just pushes the argument under the proverbial rug, which makes things worse in the long run and causes more damage.

A family that can have hard conversations and then still sit down to dinner together plays the game as a good sports team does. The disagreement doesn’t threaten the team; it’s part of how the team gets better.

Arguing well gets a team through a rough patch on any given day. But families, like the Tour, aren’t judged by a single day; they’re judged by whether they can keep doing this, together, for weeks, years, generations.

A Three-Week Marathon, Not One Stage

A huge takeaway from the Tour: it’s 21 stages long, not just one sprint. You can lose a stage or two and still win the overall race, but you need to keep your focus on the long game.

Staying patient, following the plan set by the team leadership, and supporting everyone through the inevitable grind are all important lessons for families.

A family can have a bad year, an aborted leadership experience, or a run of bad luck and feel like disaster is looming.

But it’s not what happens to you that matters; it’s how you react. A family that acts like a team, playing together through the tough stretches, will usually come out on top compared to those who pack it in.

Worth a Conversation this Summer?

These sporting events have millions of eyeballs on them and are useful to think about in the much smaller context of a family. Talking about sports is a low-stakes way to enter an interesting conversation that can otherwise be hard to broach.

When a family gathers and the topic moves to sports, why not slip in some questions about your “domestiques” and whether they’re being recognized?

Or whether each family member is in the best position for them (and the family) to succeed? Or is your family built to win just the next stage, or the overall race?

The biggest question most families can benefit from asking themselves is simple: “Do we think of ourselves as a team?”

Yes, you’re a family, and that’s good, but if you can make the effort to think and act like a team, you can take the benefits of being a family, loyalty and trust and add in the benefits of teamwork, like focusing on the long game and making sure you’re supporting everyone in all the important roles.

The families that make it through generations intact are usually the ones who made the quiet decision to start thinking of themselves as a team and kept showing up for each other like one.