TEAMWORK

Feb

2024

Leadership Lessons from the Gridiron Part II

In less than seven days many people will be watching the latest battle for the Lombardi Trophy during the Super Bowl. Last week I shared part one of a three-part series on leadership lessons from Super Bowl coaching legends.

Since we are approaching the Super Bowl I thought it would be appropriate to highlight leadership lessons from the one the trophy is named after. . . .Vince Lombardi. Coach Lombardi was the head coach of the Green Bay Packers in the 1960’s and won five National Championships in seven years including the first two Super Bowls.

In his book Run to Win Donald T. Phillips highlights many leadership lessons from Coach Lombardi’s career, but I will focus on just three in this post.

Teamwork

“People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses or the complex problems of modern society.”

Vince Lombardi

Building a team can be a challenging process. As a leader you must take a group of individuals with their own agendas and get them working together toward a common goal. Lombardi loved the idea of getting group of individuals to work together as a unit. What helps us do that?

Put the team in front of our own individual agendas. Human nature causes us to naturally consider our desires before others. As a leader the challenge is to provide a big enough “why” that everyone wants to align their agenda toward the teams. The job of the leader is to create a compelling vision that unifies the team and keeps them unified.

Desire Over Ability

“I’d rather have a player with fifty percent ability and one hundred percent desire, because the guy with one hundred percent desire, you know, is going to play every day, so you can make a system to fit into what he can do.”

Vince Lombardi

People need ability, but the challenge as a leader is to discern where their desire is. Hiring people can be one of the more challenging parts of leading. It may be tempting to hire the talented person even if you don’t know their desire level.

I have worked with individuals who are talented but lazy. Ultimately it ruins the culture and brings others down. On the other hand, an individual who is willing to learn, work, and grow can develop skills, and if they are on board with the vision, will continue to be an extremely valuable team member you will always find a place for. Your job as the leader is to find the best fit with what skills he or she has.

Culture of Discipline

“[Lombardi] established his authority by setting the rules, explaining them clearly, and enforcing them evenhandedly. . . creating a culture of discipline on his team.”

Donald T. Phillips

Culture will eat leadership for lunch. As a leader you mold the culture. Just as a football coach creates the culture on his team, so as a leader you can mold your team’s culture. Phillips gives us three keys: set, explain, and enforce the rules.

Within your organization or team are the expectations of how you do things clearly explained? Are they clearly enforced? If not, it may be a sign you need to get clear on what expectations you have for your team. Clearly explaining what you expect and holding people accountable to those expectations will create a culture of discipline and results.

How are you doing in these three areas? Which one do you need to work on in the next week? Need accountability or help thinking into your leadership? Contact me for a no-cost-powerful coaching experience. In the meantime, lead well.

Oct

2023

Break Down the Silos

Are you feeling the pressure to work faster and be more productive? Are you having difficulty getting your team to cooperate and collaborate? If so, you may be stuck in the land of silos.

You know the drill: each team works in its little bubble, rarely, if ever, communicating with the other teams. As a leader, you encourage autonomy and independence, but it can lead to wasted time, energy, and inefficiency.

There’s a better way: collaboration. Your teams can work together more effectively and efficiently by sharing information, resources, and ideas. You can develop a culture of collaboration by establishing clear objectives and expectations, fostering trust, and providing support to each team.

Clarify Expectations

Establishing clear objectives and expectations is the first step to developing a collaborative environment. Every team should know their roles and responsibilities and what is expected of them. This helps foster a sense of ownership and accountability among your team members.

Strengthen Trust

“Speed happens when people . . . truly trust each other.”

Edward Marshall

Trust is also important when it comes to collaborating. Your team should feel comfortable working together and sharing ideas. When team members respect each other’s opinions and everyone’s opinions and ideas are heard, you create a culture of trust.

Support the Team

Finally, you need to provide support to each team. As the leader, encourage them to work together and support each other. If they need resources from you, provide them. Take the time to give constructive feedback and ask questions to help them stay on track and reach their goals.

Leadership expert John C. Maxwell in his book The 17 Indisputable Laws of Leadership states “one is too small a number to achieve greatness.” When we or our teams work in silos, we cannot accomplish as great of things as we can with a team.

Collaboration can be a great way to increase productivity, efficiency, and achieve greater results. You can help your teams work together more effectively by establishing clear objectives and expectations, fostering trust, and providing support. You’ll be amazed at the results when your teams start working together instead of in silos.

When you look at these areas, which do you need to improve? Need help building teamwork on your team? Contact me to discuss using the Leadership Game to improve teamwork or a leadership roundtable on the topic. Keep helping your team come together and lead well.

Feb

2023

NFL Teamwork

I was sitting with a friend of mine and we were discussing how we have coached our kids in sports. He shared with me an idea that I thought was tremendous. . . . Ask the kids what it means to be a teammate and focus on that all season.

Effective leaders build strong and healthy teams. Since this is Super Bowl weekend I used our friend Google and stumbled upon thoughts from Hall of Fame NFL athletes on teamwork. The link to the video is below, but here is a summary of some of their thoughts.

Unselfishness

This one can be manifested in unique ways. As the leader, we may think our way is the best. Unfortunately, we then keep doing things we shouldn’t be out of a desire to control or get all the glory. When we wrap our identity in what we do or think our way is best, self-centered pride sneaks in. Just as the prima-donna athlete eventually hurts the team so will our selfish desire to have things done our way.

Sacrifice

As a leader, you understand sacrifice because you have sacrificed to get where you are, but this is a different kind of sacrifice. Athletes understand that when they take a play off or hold back in effort it hurts their team. They are willing to put in work and sacrifice their personal agenda for the good of the team. Healthy teammates will, within reason, sacrifice time, energy, and other resources to help the team succeed.

Understanding

One of the Hall of Fame athletes emphasized that a good teammate will understand his teammates’ strengths and weaknesses. When we understand others we are able to help the participants be in positions where they excel. Not only does this help the team’s performance, but it also is enjoyable for the individual. Understanding individual strengths enable everyone to excel.

Trust

Football players experience extreme highs and lows. There is great emotion and in order to openly share the emotion trust is essential. Healthy teams that move fast have trust at the foundation. Stephen M. R. Covey states it well when he says:

“The trust we have in people . . . comes, in part, from believing that they do care.”

With trust in your team, you will accomplish more, faster.

Family

A football team is a community. They suffer together, they train together, they fight together, and they support one another. They are like a family who realize they are all together in this. When a team not only says they are a family but acts like one and has one another’s support on or off the field great things happen. Some of the championship teams that have existed came together as a family and supported one another through adversity and celebrated victories.

Take a minute and look at your team. How healthy are they? Does your team live out these qualities? If not, where do you need to help them grow as a team? Want to dive deeper into this idea of teamwork? Contact me and let’s talk about how I can help you grow your team. Lead Well.

https://www.nfl.com/videos/the-inspiration-project-hall-of-famers-emphasize-importance-of-teamwork

Nov

2022

Teams That Are Healthy

Teams are everywhere. A team can consist of two people or two hundred. The larger the team the more challenging to get them to work together effectively. Let me illustrate.

55 vs. 15

Fifty-five is the number of players on an NFL team while fifteen is the number of players on an NBA team.

16 v 4

Sixteen coaches including the head coach and not including trainers, etc. lead NFL teams while the head coach and three assistants lead NBA teams. With the ratios I’ve just shared you would think it is easier to build a healthy NBA team than NFL team. We may think the same at work that a smaller team should become healthy and well-functioning easier than a larger team.

Three factors will decide which one is healthier. Each of these start with the leader and those around him or her.

“[T]hree conditions are essential to a group’s effectiveness: trust . . . , group identity, and . . . group efficacy.” Druskatt & Wolff

Emotional Intelligence

“[E]motional competencies were found to be twice as important in contributing to excellence as pure intellect and expertise.”

Daniel Goleman

The first piece to a healthy team is self-aware individuals. Emotional intelligence is simply awareness of one’s emotions in a manner that individuals can sense them and control them.

Maybe you have been in a situation where you feel your emotions rise and want to explode. You pause for a minute recognizing this explosion may make you feel better but will not positively impact the conversation so you pause and reset. Individuals with a lack of emotional intelligence fail to have the capacity to be aware of these feelings.

We are emotional individuals and failure to be in tune with our emotions hinders our ability to connect. If emotions are an area that is awkward for you then take time when you feel emotion to identify what the emotion is and then ask “what is making me . . . . frustrated, angry, etc.” This pause will help you show up in an emotionally healthier way with your team.

Social Intelligence

A team consists of individuals. These individuals work together to accomplish a common goal. Emotional intelligence is awareness of our emotions and having the capacity to respond appropriately. Social intelligence is awareness of others’ emotions and the capacity to respond in a manner that brings the group together.

Imagine you are leading a meeting and you sense tensions rising as you discuss an important issue. A leader with good social intelligence will be able to keep the conversation moving forward in a productive manner. Different perspectives are helpful to a team, but a socially intelligent leader must have the ability to lead the team through problem solving scenarios in a manner that brings unity and not division.

Trust

“Speed happens when people . . . truly trust each other.” Edward Marshall

In his book The Speed of Trust, Stephen M. R. Covey suggests trust is a function of character and competence. When each member of a team is competent in what they do the leader will be able to trust them to accomplish work correctly. A team member’s character is demonstrated by accomplishing the work accurately and on time. Both dramatically impact the health of a team.

As you evaluate your leadership how are you doing in each of these areas? How aware are you of your feelings and what is the cause of them in the moment, so you don’t explode and create an unhealthy environment? Do you need to be more aware of the emotions of the team so you can help them navigate problems more effectively? Where would you rate your team on trust on a scale of one to ten? We all have areas to grow. If you need help thinking into ways to break through any of these barriers with your team contact me and let’s discover how I can serve you. Keep building your team and growing as a leader. Lead Well.

Goleman, Daniel. Working With Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books: New York, 1998.

Druskat, V. and Wolff, S. “Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups.” Harvard Business Review, March 2001. https://hbr.org/2001/03/building-the-emotional-intelligence-of-groups retrieved 1/18/22

Covey, Stephen M. R. The Speed of Trust. Free Press: New York, 2006.

Feb

2022

Building Championship Teams

When I was in the sports performance industry, I came across an author who has great experience developing teams. In his book Championship Team Building performance coach and author Jeff Janssen describes seven characteristics of championship teams. He has helped build them in multiple NCAA sports.

I’m not going to highlight all of them as you can invest in his book yourself, but I will highlight a few that are common to all teams whether in sports or elsewhere.

Common Goal

As the leader you can have a vision or large team goal. Until that vision becomes something shared and committed to by everyone results will be limited. The first leadership challenge is they have the goal in mind, but the team may be slow to buy in. Let me suggest a way to improve buy in.

Take time to meet with your team and get feedback on what is important to them. Have them provide input as to what success looks like beyond just improving the bottom line. Bring together key influencers (who may not be in positions of leadership) to determine the steps to achieve the common goal. The more influencers involved in the process, the greater the buy in. Regardless of his personal challenges this thought by Rick Pitino is a great summary to this idea:

“Create significance for the group, whether it is an organization, a team, or a company . . . Each member must feel he or she is part of something important, and not just putting in time.”

Having team members actively contributing to the goal setting conversation will increase the sense of being a part of something important.

Clear Communication

“You can only succeed when people are communicating, not just from the top down but in complete interchange.”

Bill Walsh

I don’t have the time to go into all the depths of communication. I provide workshops on various elements of how to communicate and connect better. The key with this principle for teams is to communicate. I would take this a step further to suggest we OVERCOMMUNICATE. Within any organization communication and productivity correlate. If we communicate more than expected we will keep the vision and goals top of mind and keep everyone moving forward. Three of the ten tips Janssen gives on sending messages are:

Be consistent – a leader’s message may be stated different ways, but the expectations and goals behind them are consistent.
Be focused – stick to one message to prevent confusion
Be redundant – vision leaks so say it multiple times in multiple ways

Constructive Conflict

“Happiness is not the absence of conflict but the ability to deal with it effectively.”

Anonymous

Entire books have been written on this topic so we will only scratch the surface here. Healthy teams have conflict. Alan Mullaly former CEO of Ford during the 2008 economic crises created a system for conflict where everyone was expected to grade their department. If everyone was giving their area green (for all good) he knew they were not being honest. Without conflict we cannot address problems. Janssen provides some excellent tips on our attitude when handling conflict. Here are a few I will highlight:

Confront in a spirit of helping – create an environment where everyone is learning
Attack the problem, not the person – pause to be sure you have the real issue and are not making the individual feel they are the problem
Keep control of your emotions – this may be the most challenging one, especially when the issue is important, but maintain objectivity so you can find the best solution for everyone

These were just a few of his tips on building championship teams. Which one of these areas do you need to develop? Take a minute and write down one action step you will take so you can develop a healthier and more productive team. Need help thinking into this? Contact me for a no cost thinking partner session. Lead Well.

Feb

2022

Super Bowl Loss Leadership Lessons

Recently I was watching The Falls of Buffalo which is a documentary on the Buffalo Bills seasons from 1989 – 1993. If you aren’t a football fan you may not know they are the only team in the National Football League to go to four Super Bowls in a row . . . . and lose.

You may wonder what can we learn from a team that never could win the “big one.” Before I go any further may I suggest even though they came up short four times they accomplished something no other team in NFL history has. Going to the Super Bowl four times in a row! Other teams have gone four times or more, but to keep a team working together to get to that level of success multiple years is an accomplishment. Let’s look at a few teamwork principles that can be learned from their experience.

Storming

Football is a sport that can attract some strong personalities and egos. This was quite evident in the locker room during the 1989 season. Personalities were clashing both privately and even in the media as star running back Thurman Thomas at one point complained about their quarterback Jim Kelly. This experience is normal for all teams.

Teams go through four stages and the second stage is storming. During this stage people clash as the roles and expectations get clarified. Both the spoken and unspoken culture are forming. Teams come out of this stage either more divided or unified through healthy conflict. A leader’s job is to help the team navigate this stage in a manner that brings everyone together and their coach Marv Levy was able to do that.

Know and Fulfill Your Role

Leadership expert John Maxwell describes the Law of the Niche in his book The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork. This law states that “all players have a place where they add the most value.” Like I mentioned these Bills teams had strong personalities but they knew and fulfilled their roles. During the 1992 Wild Card playoff game starting quarterback Jim Kelly hurt his knee and Frank Reich stepped in to rally his team back from a 32-point deficit to beat the Houston Oilers.

He is one example of an individual fulfilling his role at a critical time to help the team. When team members embrace their role and fulfill their role to the best of their ability for the team great things happen. For this to happen team members must have clarity on their role, buy-in to the vision, and value the team more than their individual accomplishments.

Support

One of the most fascinating lessons from this era of the Bills is the support they had. After their first Super Bowl loss kicker Scott Norwood was miserable because he felt he lost the game for his team. While watching this documentary you heard the support of his teammates who recognized many mistakes factored into their loss and not just his missed kick.

Not only did he receive encouragement from his team, but upon return to Buffalo the crowd of community members chanted his name to hear from him. The community of Buffalo was still behind him and was not blaming him. When a team has this kind of support from one another and from the community around them it ignites a passion to keep persevering and fuels them for the type of success necessary to have a four-year record of 59 – 19 and reach four Super Bowls in a row.

Maybe your team has had some continual setbacks. You may have had to adjust personnel and strategy as the Bills did, but where is your team performing well? Is your team in a stage of storming? Do you need to give them clarity on their roles or are they fulfilling their roles to their highest ability? What kind of support do you need to provide them as a leader? Need help creating an environment to assess challenges you are facing? Contact me to discover how I can come alongside you and your team to help them continue to thrive.