What’s Your 2020 Game Plan?

Plays that do and don’t transfer from sport

I’m not much of a sports fan. I feigned interest in my youth for recruitment purposes, eventually acquiring a husband who lives for SportNet highlights and listens to radio announcers talk about one player longer than my book club meets.  

So when the Toronto Maple Leafs fired their head coach at the end of last year, I heard about it.
 

When his players starting coming forward with bad boss stories, I listened.

When Toronto won their first three games alongside their new coach (after a six game losing street), it was validating. 

The public firing of a sports coach is newsworthy on its own but this situation had more layers. Talented, highly paid professionals struggled to perform because of a divisive leader who shamed, bullied and pitted players against each other (according to talk radio). These types of divisive leadership tactics don’t build high performing teams and frankly have no place in sport or the workplace.    

Pile on the Recognition

The game plan for the Leafs new coach seems to be building a winning attitude by heaping recognition on players as the reason for success. He’s also building confidence with promising, young new players, like Tyson Barrie. In 23 games under “divisive boss” he had seven assists. In three games with “new boss” he had 3 goals and two assists. Pretty good results from a little recognition!

Nick Nurse, Head Coach of the Toronto Raptors, 2019 NBA champions, spoke about the importance of recognizing what your players respond to at a recent Top Employers conference. Nurse shared two pieces of advice he received from 11-time NBA champion Phil Jackson; never underestimate the power of the basketball gods and imagine you’ve got a sword. 

“Use the sharp end to push BUT every once in a while look at the handle to understand where they’re coming from and what they’re going through”.

Everyone, including superstars need to be pushed, prodded AND treated with compassion to perform. Good leaders know what their players need, take the blame when things go wrong and recognize others when things go well. The result is a team that wants to work hard for them.   

Sports coaching has many useful lessons for business leaders aiming for success in today’s highly competitive, performance-oriented environments. But choose carefully! Sport differs from business activity in some key aspects, and not all coaching strategies apply successfully to business contexts.

3 Sports Plays to Use in 2020

1. Get people “performing” together sooner and for longer
Even highly-skilled, engaged individuals must learn to support one another and work together smoothly to achieve top performance. Sports coaches know that a group of all-star soloists who haven’t jelled into a team lose games. 

Successful sports coaches consciously (or unconsciously) follow the five-stage team development process developed by Bruce Tuckman, an educational psychologist;  forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.  Every year as they trade players and acquire new draft picks they invest time building norms and fostering cohesiveness. The faster you can move your players through the four cycles to the “performing” stage the more success you’ll see. How fast a team moves through each stage will depend on their understanding of what is expected and the type of leadership they receive.

2. Give people a game plan
Sports teams spend almost 90% of their time practicing and 10% competing. What’s the transferrable lesson here? Do more thinking and planning. Being busy doesn’t mean employees are performing to their potential. Leaders need to identify and stay laser-focused on the high-value initiatives that will achieve their team’s goals. A business leader’s role, more than anything else, is to make people feel they can achieve. That you believe in them. People want to be coached.  They want to be led. Leaders set the plan and their actions every day set the tone. 

3.  Use data  
The best sports coaches (like Nick Nurse), delegate trusted advisors to track and analyze their stats. They do this before and after each game to see where their team excelled and why they lost. Transferring this to the office, employee analytics from digital HR platforms can provide incredible insights. Leaders can see managers who excel in recognizing others and correlate this to their unit’s performance. HR can identify anomalies such as increased kudos or reward redemptions that may indicate an employee is thinking of leaving. Accomplishments and recognition are tracked saving time during performance reviews while making feedback more specific and meaningful. These are just a few examples of using employee data and analytics to up your game.

3 Sports Plays that Don’t Transfer Well

1.  “You’re fired” is only easy in pro sports and on TV
It’s really hard and expensive to fire someone. Just ask a labour lawyer. In sports, if a coach thinks a player is dogging it, he/she can drop them. In business, if you feel someone isn’t doing a good job, try firing them. It takes a lot of paperwork, conversations, courage and cash to cover yourself. In unionized environments, it’s virtually impossible to terminate Debbie Do Littles. Businesses can add to their bench strength but most can’t upgrade quite like sports teams. 
 

2. Sports is totally controlled, the office is not
In sports, every team plays by the same rules in a controlled environment. The players know the rules and those who break them get penalized 99% of the time. The minutia of each players’ individual performance is evaluated both on and off the field/ice/court. Unfortunately, in real life, many managers don’t have the aptitude for and experience in evaluating, coaching and motivating their people. And a lot of unpredictable things can happen in the office working 9 to 5 vs a 2-hour game.

3. Sports relies on extrinsic rewards. Business relies on intrinsic rewards. 
Sports organizations have jaw-dropping extrinsic rewards at their disposal to attract the best players. In the real-world, most jobs have standard pay bands and once paid fairly, top talent looks to intrinsic rewards such as training opportunities, company culture and their manager as deciding factors on whether to join your organization. This is not a bad thing. According to many research studies, people are more creative when they are intrinsically motivated. If employees find their work rewarding, interesting, and challenging, they will perform better. 

Extrinsic rewards still have an important role. Bonuses and other monetary rewards can boost productivity but work best when used alongside intrinsic practices. Points for performance platforms blend intrinsic and extrinsic rewards really well. Employees receive public recognition from peers and managers for demonstrating their company values AND points for behaviours that positively impact their team, unit or company. As points add up employees can choose the rewards they want. The recognition from peers and managers is personal AND the rewards chosen are personalized to their tastes, needs and desires. These and other tools can be used by leaders to ignite the discretionary effort needed to stay engaged and perform. 

Create Your Own TSN Turning Point

Encourage your managers to give lots of recognition, push with compassion, communicate a clear game plan, use data, and invest in their people… then watch as your teams jell and excel. 

Author Bio

Lori McKnight is the VP of Recognition for CSI STARS. As a VP of Recognition, everything I do is about promoting small acts of recognition inside and outside the workplace. Positive words, deeds and attitudes multiplied by many create a culture where people want to work, where they refer their friends and put in their best efforts.   Connect Lori McKnight Follow @LoriMcKnight2