By Ryan Walter /
Question:
Ryan I know that it’s summer but as us coaches start gearing up for next season, what are some of the soft-skill things that we should be prepping for? —Jimmy
Answer:
Jimmy, one of the soft-skill areas that I would start focusing on is your team’s culture. How will you intentionally create the culture you desire this season instead of wake-up one day in December not liking the culture you have. People and players very seldom focus on improving culture, often because culture is not easy to identify or change. This is a huge oversight, though, because culture is the key to the HEART side of our teams! I love to create clarity out of confusion, so let’s identify 3 simple pieces of a high-performance culture, which I call the Performance Power Triangle: performance, team, and leadership.
High Performance Triangle
I believe that assessing the health of the connective tissues of the Performance Power Triangle is a powerful indicator of how healthy and how hungry the team culture is. Players sense when the environment has soured, when engagement is waning, and when the collective energy is negative or receding. Leadership, Personal Performance and Team are interdependent; they cannot successfully survive without each other’s influence.
Leadership
Over a 25-year period, the Gallup organization has compiled interviews with more than a million workers. Using data from these interviews, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman demonstrated that the quality of the relationship between employees and their direct supervisors is the single most important variable in creating a healthy organizational culture. Buckingham and Coffman show that the quality of that relationship directly influences employee loyalty and productivity, for better or worse. They go on to say that workers seek internal and emotional satisfaction from their supervisors. They want to know clearly what is expected of them and that they are valued. They want a direct supervisor who encourages them to grow and develop. When such qualities are absent in a coach or manager, employees [players] begin to look elsewhere. In the words of Buckingham and Coffman, “People leave managers [coaches], not companies.”
The player’s relationship with the head coach and coaching staff is a direct measure of his or her engagement, or in my preferred language, hunger. It is, therefore, critical for leaders to stay focused on the people issues.
Team
The dictionary defines teamwork as, “cooperative effort by the members of a group or team to achieve a common goal.” This describes what teamwork does but doesn’t come close to describing what team is. The team uses the collective focus and energy of individuals to accomplish its goals, but this isn’t always an indicator of what the team is. The way that teams function together is critical to performance. When team is on, synergy is happening. When teams are off, individual energy is sucked away from the common goal.
Personal Performance
Individual performance is logically a huge contributor to the achievement of High Performance Team Culture. Hockey legend Bobby Orr says, “Forget about style; worry about results.” At the end of the day, personal performance drives everything. Teams must have multiple contributions with as many as possible at the high end of the performance scale.
Performance must also be measured through some of the softer issues such as personal confidence, preparation and mental toughness.
Team Culture
Most professional teams, organizations and companies understand the importance of keeping their players engaged. Doctors Kevin and Jackie Freiberg declare, “great companies with branded cultures aren’t filled with merely ‘satisfied’ employees. They are filled with people who are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about their work — people who are evangelistic about their companies [or teams]. Would you be content to create a culture in your workplace that simply satisfies people? We hope not. Employees need to be far more than satisfied… Are satisfied players likely to engage with their hearts and minds? Are satisfied players likely to be great ambassadors for your team?”
What will taking your culture beyond satisfied do to the way your team performs this season?
Ryan Walter played 15 NHL Seasons and has a Master’s Degree in Leadership/Business. Ryan has just been hired as an Assistant Coach for the Vancouver Canucks. Check out Ryan’s Blog at www.ryanwalter.com |