Making A Good Team Great.

A real-life coach talks about how to get a group of people to play with passion.

I've just left one of those meetings--the kind that begin innocently and interestingly enough with the premise that the world of business is one big game. It's your company against the competition, the argument goes, and, as with all games, the outcome is based on talent, coaching, and which group of participants is the best team.

You know what I'm talking about. The lecture, seminar, or presentation is led by an extrovert with a high metabolic rate who has somehow discovered the secret to success and proceeds to prove it to you via charts, graphs, catchphrases, and team-building exercises.

I've sat through at least six of these meetings. They involved six different plans and six different secrets, but fundamentally they're all the same.

Bookstore shelves are filled with titles based on the same premise: Why Winners Win, Ten Steps to Success, and so on. Some of these are the product of super businessmen, but many are written by coaches of athletic teams whose sole experience in the real marketplace is as a customer ordering a Big Mac. And there are hundreds of them: not just books but videos, seminars, newsletters, articles. So do these people have anything to offer us? Maybe, but we expect too much of them.

I'm also a coach. I have coached 689 games in my life, 76 percent of which my team won, and have never had a losing season. Does that qualify me for a vice presidency at some Fortune 500 company? Probably not.

But after a dozen years of coaching, I have some understanding of what it takes to build a winner and remain a winner. And I know most businesses are doing it wrong. So if you're considering hiring a motivational speaker or sending your employees to a seminar, I'm about to save you a few bucks.

People do things for basically one of two reasons: promise of reward or fear of punishment. Your employees may find their work rewarding, love their fellow employees, or love the challenge, but the bottom line is that people work because they get paid and keep working because they fear losing their source of income.

In every relationship--husband/wife, father/son, player/coach, employer/employee--there is an agreement. I give you something, and you give me something back. I give you love, and you love me back. I give you respect, and you respect me. You work hard and follow the rules, and you can play. You work eight hours, and you get money.

Do some people give without regard for reward? I suppose. Do some people give more than they receive? Certainly. But there's always a balance: Is what I am receiving worth what I have to give to receive it? How long would you love someone who constantly belittled and mistreated you? If you hated your working conditions, your fellow employees, and the work itself, would you still show up every morning? Possibly. But what if they didn't pay you?

That is the deal. Membership on any kind of team is a contract, an exchange. And the degree to which all parties feel satisfied in that agreement is the degree to which they--and, in turn, the team--will excel.

There are different facets to such an agreement. For my players, these include playing time, how valued they feel, the success of the team, the attention they receive, and how much fun they're having. And all of those facets can be applied to business--to the building of a successful work team.

It's more than the game that makes my teams excel, just as it's more than money that makes businesses excel. The game might keep players playing for bad coaches, and the money might keep employees working for bad management. But that only keeps them showing up. Excellence requires more. For the team to excel, I need real commitment from the players; I need them to play with passion.

There's nothing more common than unrealized potential in sports. Every day there are games lost by superior teams. That, after all, is the basis of sport: the chance that on any given day, anyone can win. But is it logical? Shouldn't the team with the best facility and the best players always win?

As I explain to my teams, good teams beat the teams they should beat--great teams beat the teams they shouldn't beat. Put another way, a great team will succeed when it is not the better team. So why do better teams fail? Why is your company failing when it should be winning? Why is your department not excelling when you've done everything to prepare it--given it the best tools and put in place procedures to increase productivity? Almost always, it's because the members of the team are playing without passion. They're doing what is expected, what will keep them out of trouble, and no more.

The common denominator among successful people is their passion for what they do. Almost to the exclusion of everything else, they're committed and excited about their work. I remember having a conversation with a man who was a successful concrete contractor. As he spoke to me about his latest project, his face lit up with excitement. About concrete!

I have a passion for coaching softball. I read, think, and talk about it as much as possible. Just as I'm passionate about my sport, I know that there are other sports--I just don't happen to think they're as important as mine. And I'm passionate about what I believe are requirements for success in softball: off-season training, clinics, and conditioning. But my passion doesn't matter if I can't transfer it to my team. I never get to play. The success of every team begins with the coach and his ability to sell his plan and transfer his passion to his team. Problems begin when a coach is unable to make his team believe in the plan, and when levels of commitment don't match.

As I recognize my passion for softball, I understand that others may not share my passion. If my players believe that all they need to do is show up the first day of the season and leave after the last day, then our levels of commitment don't match and we will have problems. As the "coach" of a team, it is essential that you recognize what you expect from the team and choose players who expect the same things. You cannot excel unless you and your team members share the same passion.

What makes people play with passion? Some of the major reasons certain teams rise above the rest:

Every player feels valued: Get two people together, and there is a leader and the one led. Get three people together, and the