Coach’s Commonplace

Good day Leaders,

Today I will start my first entry with one of my all-time favourites - The Score Takes Care of Itself by Steve Jamison, Bill Walsh, and Craig Walsh.

As mentioned before, I know some coaches feel they do not have a great deal of time to read so I have created key words for you to find, depending on your interest and need, throughout this post. So hit Command+f on a Mac or control+f on a PC to find something specific within one or more of the themes I have created. The themes are as follows:

Quotes
Communication
Connection
Decision Making
Feedback
Practice and Drill Development
Personnel
Predictability
Preparation
Pressure
Process of Improvement
Psychological Safety
Reflection
Respect Within the Organization
Standard of Performance
Teaching
Lists:

Five Dos For Getting Back into the Game
Lessons of the Bill Walsh Offense
Twelve Habits Plus One of a Leader
Ten Things Leaders Should Not Do
Twelve Principles to Bring out the Best in People
Three "L"s
Eleven Traits of a Leader who is a Great Teacher
Checklist of Personal Qualities - assets - in Potential Staff Members
Checklist for Keeping Good Staff Members on the Same Page
Lessons to Help Work Through Success Disease
Dozen Daily Reminders to Keep you on the Right Track
Nine Steps to Having a Healthy Heart in Your Organization

Quotes

"If you aim for perfection and miss, you're still pretty good." (Pg. xiv)
Your job is not civil services or even big corporate business. We exist to support and field a football team. In other words, we don't 'exist for the sake of existing'. We are not maintaining." (Pg. xxvi)
"A resolute and resourceful leader understands that there is a multitude of means to increase the probability of success. And that's what it all comes down to, namely, intelligently and relentlessly seeking solutions that will increase your chance of prevailing in a competitive environment. When you do that, the score will take care of itself." (Pg. 1)
"The ability to help the people around me self-actualize their goals underlines the single aspect of my abilities and the label that I value most - teacher." (Pg. 3)
"If you're up at 3 A.M. every night talking into a tape recorder and writing notes on scraps of paper, have a knot in your stomach and a rash on your skin, are losing sleep and losing touch with your wife and kids, have no appetite or sense of humour, and feel that everything might turn out wrong, then you're probably doing your job." (Pg. 6)
"Victory is produced by and belongs to all. Likewise, failure belongs to everyone." (Pg. 23)
"Champions behave like champions before they're champions; they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners." (Pg. 25)
"Before you can win the fight, you've got to be in the fight." (Pg. 26)
"Consistent effort is a consistent challenge." (Pg. 27)
"Creating gold from dross is alchemy; making lemonade when you're given lemons is leadership; making lemonade when you don't have any lemons is great leadership." (Pg. 39)
"Others follow you based on the quality of your actions rather than the magnitude of your declarations." (Pg. 75)
"There'll be plenty of time for pencils, parties, and socializing when I lose my job because that's what's going to happen if I continue to avoid the hard and harsh realities of doing my job." (Pg. 88)
"Every single one of you guys will have at least once chance to win a game for us. I ask you to prepare for that opportunity with the attitude that it's a certainty, not a possibility. Prepare and ready when you e time comes, because it will come. Can you do that for me?" (Pg. 155)
"Some of you may think we have already lost this game. You might be right. We may lose this afternoon, and if we do, I can live with it. This is only a football game. However, if we go down, you must decide how you want it to happen. How do you want to go down? Nobody would blame you for coasting the rest of the game, for throwing in the towel. And in fact, when you back here in sixty minutes, only you will know if you did; only you will know if let New Orleans continue this assault or if you stood your ground and fought back. Frankly, I care a lot more about how we lose than if we lose. Gentlemen, in the second half you're going to find out something important; you're about to find out who you are. And you may not like what you find." (Pg. 158)

Themes

Communication

Bill prized communication and understood that all the knowledge in the world meant little if you couldn't communicate effectively. So, and this may be hard to believe, he had his coaches practice our coaching on one another. (Pg. 71)

He would ask me to get up and "teach" my offensive techniques to a defensive coach, who would play the part of a student - a player. Bill would critique us, teach us how to communicate better and better so that the players would be more fully informed. (Pg. 71)

Our information had to be very well thought out, totally defined in our minds. To that end, he encouraged us to go out and give speeches to local groups like Rotary or Kiwanis, knowing it would make us think even harder about what we were saying and how we were saying it. (Pg. 71)
Bill enforced us to think at a higher level, which was the starting point for getting players to play at a higher level and the organization to operate at a higher level. (Pg. 71)
The bottom 20% of a team (role players, players who do not play very often)

I was conscientious in repeating that message (they would have the chance to win a game for us) privately through the season and acknowledging them publicly; talking about their roles and their potential impact in the future; working to keep them feeling that their contribution to the team was important (because it was very important); working hard to ensure that they were integrated and assimilated into everything we did so they didn't feel left out or part of a second-tier on the team. (Pg. 156)
During team meetings, I would often give a one-hundred-dollar bill as a reward to a role player who had made a big contribution in the previous game. It was another chance to be recognized by me in front of the whole squad, for me to give them ownership of the organization's results. (Pg. 156)

Turning the Team Around

I felt I could turn things around, but I needed to buy time. I did it - in part - by keeping Eddie Jr. (owner) in the loop; fully informed - perhaps overly informed - on every single phase of the operation. This included providing him with a budget manual (thick), an operations manual (thick), a personnel manual (thick), an overall set of job descriptions that included the job of each player and my evaluation of that individual (thick), a detailed listing of my performance goals and expectations (even thicker). The information was not frivolous "filler", but substantive and sizable. (Pg. 171)
Positive results - winning - count most. But until those results come through the door, a heavy dose of documentation relating to what you've done and what you're doing, planning to do, and hoping to do may buy you just enough extra time to actually do it. (Pg. 171)

Connection

A team at it's best is all about connection and extension. (Pg. 23)
The leader's job is to facilitate a battlefield-like sense of camaraderie among his or her personnel, an environment for people to find a way to bond together, to care about one another and the work they do, to feel the connection and extension so necessary for great results. (Pg. 24)

Decision Making

A leader must be keen and alert to what drives a decision, a plan of action. If it was based on good logic, sound principles, and strong belief, I felt comfortable in being unswerving in moving toward my goal. Any other reason (or reasons) for persisting was examined carefully. Among the most common faulty reasons are (1) trying to prove you are right and (2) trying to prove someone else is wrong. Of course, they amount to about the same thing and often lead to the same place: defeat. (Pg. 82)

Feedback

Few things offer a greater return on less investment than praise - offering credit to someone in your organization who has stepped up and done the job. (Pg. 48-49)

Practice and Drill Development

After careful analysis, 49ers coaches identified thirty specific and separate physical skills - actions -that every offensive lineman needed to master in order to do his job at the highest level, everything from tackling to evasion, footwork to arm movement. Our coaches then created multiple drills for each one of those individual skills, which were then practiced relentlessly until their execution at the highest level was automatic - routine "perfection" (Pg. 18)
On paper, my diagrams of plays resembled detailed architectural drawings. And they required the same exactness in construction - execution - that a good contractor brings to building a skyscraper. If he's slopping in follow the architectural schematic, the building falls down during the first stuff wind. (Pg. 18)

Personnel

I hired personnel with four characteristics I value most highly (Pg. 21):

Talent
Character
Functional Intelligence
Eagerness to adopt my ways of doing things

Emotional intelligence - A fundamental element in hiring is not only the ability of the person to understand his own role and how it fits in the organization's goal but knowledge or understanding of other people's lives (Pg. 21).

Predictability

Effective leaders often have this quality. They understand that if you're predictably difficult or predictably easygoing, others become predictably comfortable. In a highly competitive environment, feeling comfortable is the first cousin to being complacent. (Pg. 118)

Preparation

Contingency planning is a primary responsibility of leadership. You must continually be anticipating and preparing to deal with "foul weather". (Pg. 49)
Having a well-thought-out plan ready to go in advance of a change in the weather is the key to success. I came to understand this when I realized that making decisions off the top of my head was a recipe for a bad decision - especially under pressure. (Pg. 49)
Keep asking and answering the question: "What do I do if...?" (Pg. 49)
Far-reaching contingency planning gave me a tremendous advantage against the competition because I was no different from anyone else; it was almost impossible for me to make quick and correct decisions in the extreme emotional and mental upheaval that accompanied many situations during a game. (Pg. 51)
Planning even one day ahead was usually much better than trying to make a decision in the heat of the contest amid the clatter and chaos. In doing so, I reduced the possibility of panic-driven, ill-conceived decisions. (Pg. 52)
Of course, there's always something you can't anticipate, but you strive to greatly reduce the number of those unforeseeable moments. (Pg. 52)
There was tremendous flexibility, creativity, and adaptability applied to what I had on the clipboard in front of me, just as there should be for you and your organization. (Pg. 53)
By analyzing, planning, and rehearing in advance you can make a rational decision, the best choice for the situation at hand. (Pg. 53)
Intense pressure and confusion of the game could could my mind. Contingency planning brought clarity to what could be a confusing situation. (Pg. 54)
You must not only have a plan but also prepare for what happens if the plan works of fails or if an unexpected situation suddenly requires a completely different approach. (Pg. 54)
The more thorough, the more extensive, the more rehearsed, the better you perform under the pressure of any situation that calls for an immediate decision. (Pg. 54)
Example contingencies (Pg. 54):

"What if we fall behind by two or more touchdowns in the first quarter?"
"What if the offense starts to sputter in the second half?"
"What if specific key players are injured?"
"What if we are ahead by two touchdowns early in the fourth quarter?"
"What precautions can be taken to ensure effective communications amid the noise of hostile spectators?"

Turn "unforseeables" into "forseeables". (Pg. 55)
Planning for the future shouldn't be postponed until the future arrives.
When you're thorough in your preparation you can almost go on automatic pilot and reduce the chance of making emotional and ill-considered decisions. (Pg. 55)
I wanted out focus directed at one thing only; going about our business in an intensely efficient and professional manner - first on the practice field, later on the playing field. (Pg. 92-93)
After years of coaching, I know that by the time our players went through the tunnel and under the goalposts onto the field, my inspirational words were history - forgotten. On the field, the 49ers depended totally on the regimen and skills they had learned. My teaching and the great teaching of the 49er assistant coaches were the decisive factors in competition, not halftime speeches or homilies delivered standing on a chair in the locker room. Furthermore, once the game started, the players responded to me not on the basis of my sideline shouting (seldom done), but because I could function under stress. I was clearheaded and made sound decisions. They saw it and knew it and responded like professionals. (Pg. 100)

Pressure

The key to performing under pressure at the highest possible level, regardless of circumstances, is preparation. (Pg. 30)

With that comes the knowledge that you - and they - can step into that high-pressure arena and go about your work while the score works itself out. (Pg. 30)

I might do even less strategizing for a Super Bowl game because in the midst of the extreme pressure I placed a premium on fundamentals. (Pg. 30)

Process of improvement

I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving - obsessions, perhaps, about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking; that is, our actions and attitude. I know if I did that, winning would take care of itself, and when it didn't I would seek ways to raise our Standard of Performance (Pg. 21)

Psychological Safety

I wanted a democratic-style organization with input and communication and freedom of expression, even opinions that were at great variance with my ideas. But only up to a point. (Pg. 79)
Once I had accumulated and evaluated the available information, I did it my way. (Pg. 79)

Reflection

Every leader does year-end reviews and comes to conclusions of one sort or another. My observation is that two leaders - coaches - looking at the same information will not see the same thing. The one who's a more skilled analyst, who digs deeper and wider, will benefit more. It is an endeavour to which I allocated as much energy as my preparation for every game and opponent. (Pg. 67)
In planning for a successful future, the past can show you how to get there. Too often we avert our gaze when that past is unpleasant. We don't want to go there again, even though it contains the road map to a bright future. (Pg. 67)

Respect within the organization

It was similar to saluting the American Flag; Show it (the logo) respect, because it represents who you are and what you value. (Pg. 19)
Respect for the emblem was important because it represented something very significant, namely, respect within the organization for one another. (Pg. 19)

Standard of Performance.

It was a way of doing things, a leadership philosophy that has as much to do with core values, principles, and ideals as with blocking, tackling, and passing; more to do with the mental than with the physical. (Pg. 12-13)
49ers Standard of Performance (Pg. 16):

Exhibit a ferocious and intelligently applied work ethic directed at continual improvement.
Demonstrate respect for each person in the organization and the work he or she does.
Be deeply committed to learning and teaching, which means increasing personal expertise.
Be fair.
Demonstrate character.
Honour the direct connection between details and improvement and relentlessly seek the latter.
Show self-control, especially where it counts most - under pressure.
Demonstrate and prize loyalty.
Use positive language and have a positive attitude.
Take pride in the personal effort as an entity separate from the result of that effort.
Be willing to go the extra distance for the organization.
Deal appropriately with victory and defeat.
Adulation and humiliation. Not crazy with victory nor dysfunctional with loss.
Promote internal communication that is open and substantive.
Seek poise in yourself.
Put the team's welfare and priorities ahead of my own.
Maintain an ongoing level of concentration and focus that is abnormally high.
Make sacrifice and commitment to the organization's trademark.

Specifics of the 49ers Standard of Performance (Pg. 17):

No shirttails out
Positive attitude
Promptness
Good sportsmanship
Never sit down while on the practice field
No tank tops in the dining area
Control of profanity
No fighting
Treat fans with respect and exhibit a professional demeanour
No smoking on-premises

The intense focus on those pertinent details cements the foundation that establishes excellence in performance.
Establishing your Standard of Performance (Pg. 28-29):

Start with a comprehensive recognition of, reverence for, and identification of the specific actions and attitudes relevant to your team's performance and production.
Be clarion clear in communications your expectation of high effort and execution of your Standard of Performance. Like water, many decent individuals will seek lower ground if left to their own inclinations. In most cases, you are the one who inspires and demands they go upward rather than settle for the comfort of doing what comes easily. Push them beyond their comfort zone; expect them to give extra effort.
Let all know that you expect them to possess the highest level of expertise in their area of responsibility.
Beyond standards and methodology, teach your beliefs, values, and philosophy. An organization is not an inanimate object. It is a living organism that you must nurture, guide, and strengthen.
Teach "connection and extension." An organization filled with individuals who are "independent contractors" unattached to one another is a team with little interior cohesion and strength.
Make the expectations and metrics of competence that you demand in action and attitudes from personnel the new reality of your organization. You must provide the model for that new standard in your own actions and attitude.

He did not allow for the casual execution of your job. There were intensity and urgency, a focus all the time, a tight ship. (Pg. 34)
The trademark of a well-led organization in sports or business is that it's virtually self-sustaining and self-directed - almost autonomous. (Pg. 90)
Ideally, you want your Standard or Performance, your philosophy and methodology, to be so strong and solidly ingrained that in your absence the team performs as if you were present, on-site. (Pg. 90)
An organization is crippled if it needs to ask the leader what to do every time a question arises. (Pg. 90)
The responsible leader of any company or corporation aggressively seeks to endure its continued prosperity. It's the mark of forward-thinking leadership. A strong company that goes south after the CEO retires is a company who recently departed CEO didn't finish the job. (Pg. 92)
Great teams in business, in sports, or elsewhere have a conscience. At its best, an organization bespeaks values and a way of doing things that emanate from a source; that source is you - the leader. Thus, the dictates of your personal beliefs should ultimately become the characteristics of your team. (Pg. 15)
Philosophy is the aggregate of your attitudes toward fundamental matters and is derived from a process of consciously thinking about critical issues and developing rational reasons for holding on a particular belief or position rather than another. (Pg. 15)

It is a conceptual blueprint for action; that is, a perception of what should be done when it should be done, and why it should be done. Your philosophy is the single most important navigational point on your leadership compass. (Pg. 16)

Teaching

Joe Montana on Bill Walsh:

His primary leadership asset was his ability to teach people how to think and play at a different and much higher, and at times, perfect level. He accomplished this in three ways:

He had a tremendous knowledge of all aspects of the game and visionary approach to offense.
He brought in a great staff and coaches who knew how to coach, how to complement his own teaching of what we needed to know to rise to his standard of performance.
He taught us to hate mistakes.

I would take out a calendar and plan when I would talk about different subjects with individual players, with a squad, with the entire team, with position coaches, staff members, and others. I would discuss a topic from every angle, every approach, never repeating it the same way, such a when I spoke on the subject of communication and interdependence - trying to keep the idea fresh and not become rote (Pg. 22)
On the field (and elsewhere) the assistant coaches and I were conscientious about educating players so they appreciated that when Jerry Rice caught a touchdown pass he was not solely responsible, but an extension of others - including those who blocked the pass rushers, receivers who meticulously coordinated their routes to draw defenders away from him, and the quarterback who risked being knocked unconscious attempting to throw the perfect pass. (Pg. 22)

Lists:

Five Dos For Getting Back into the Game (Pg. 11-12)

Do expect defeat. It's a given when the stakes are high and the competition is working ferociously to beat you. If you're surprised when it happens, you're dreaming; dreamers don't last long.
Do force yourself to stop looking backward and dwelling on the professional "train wreck" you have just been in. It's mental quicksand.
Do allow yourself appropriate recovery - grieving - time. You been knocked senseless; give yourself a little time to recuperate. a keyword here is "little". Don't let it drag on.
Do tell yourself, "I am going to stand and fight again," with the knowledge that often when things are at their worst you're closer than you can imagine to success.
Do begin planning for your next serious encounter.

Lessons of the Bill Walsh Offense (Pg. 46)

Success doesn't care which road you take to get to its doorstep.
Be bold. Remove fear of the unknown - that is, change - from your mind.
Desperation should not drive innovation. Ask yourself "What asset do we have right now that we're not taking advantage of?"
Be obsessive in looking for the upside in the downside. Instead of looking for reasons we couldn't make it work, seek solutions that would make it succeed.

Twelve Habits Plus One of a Leader (Pg. 85-87)

Be yourself. You must be the best version of yourself that you can be; stay within the framework of your own personality and be authentic.
Be committed to excellence. At all times, in all ways, your focus must be on doing things at the highest possible level.
Be positive. Maintain and affirmative, constructive, positive environment.
Be prepared. (Good luck is a product of good planning). No leader can control the outcome of the contest or competition, but you can control how you prepare for it.
Be detail-oriented. Organizational excellence evolves from the perfection of details relevant to performance and production. Address all aspects of your team's efforts to prepare mentally, physically, fundamentally, and strategically in as thorough a manner as is humanly possible.
Be organized. Great organization is the trademark of a great organization. You must think clearly with a disciplined mind, especially in regard to the most efficient and productive use of time and resources.
Be accountable. Excuse making is contagious. Answerability starts with you.
Be near-sighted and far-sighted. All efforts and plans should be considered not only in terms of short-run effect, but also in terms of how they impact the organization long term.
Be fair. Ethically sound values engender respect from those you lead and give your team strength and resilience.
Be firm. I would not budge an inch on my core values, standards, and principles.
Be flexible. Consistency is crucial, but you must be quick to adjust to new challenges that defy the old solutions.
Believe in yourself.
Be a leader.

Ten Things Leaders Should Not Do (Pg. 89)

Exhibit patience, paralyzing patience.
Engage in delegating - massive delegating - or conversely, engage in too little delegating.
Act in a tedious, overly cautious manner.
Become best buddies with certain employees.
Spend excessive amounts of time socializing with superiors or subordinates.
Fail to continue hard-nosed performance evaluations of longtime - "tenured" - staff members, the ones most likely to go on cruise control, to relax.
Fail to actively participate in efforts to appraise and acquire new hires.
Trust others to carry our your fundamental duties.
Find ways to get out from under the responsibilities of your position, to move accountability from yourself to others - the blame game.
Promote an organizational environment that is comfortable and laid-back in the misbelief that the workplace should be fun, lighthearted, and free from appropriate levels of tension and urgency.

Twelve Principles to Bring out the Best in People (Pg. 103-105)

Treat people like people.
Seek positive relationships through encouragement, support, and critical evaluation.
Afford everyone equal dignity, respect, and treatment.
Blend honesty wand "diplomacy".
Allow for a wide range of moods, from serious to very relaxed, in the workplace depending on the circumstances.
Avoid pleading with players to "Get going" or trying to relate to them by adopting their vernacular.
Make each person in your employ very aware that his or her well-being has a high priority with the organization.
Give no VIP treatment.
Speak in positive terms about former members of your organization.
Demonstrate interest in and support for the extended families of members of the organization.
Communicate on a first-name basis without allowing relationships to become buddy-buddy.
Don't let differences or animosity linger.

Three "L"s (Pg. 117)

Listen
Learn
Lead

Eleven Traits of a Leader who is a Great Teacher (Pg. 126-127)

Use straightforward language.
Be concise.
Account for a wide range of differences in knowledge, experience, and comprehension among members of your organization.
Account for some members of the group being more receptive and ready to learn than others.
Be observant during your comments.
Strongly encourage note-taking.
Employ a somewhat predictable presentation style.
Organize with logical, sequential building blocks in your communication.
Encourage appropriate audience participation.
Use visual aids.
Remember Sun-tzu: "With more sophistication comes more control".

Checklist of Personal Qualities - assets - in Potential Staff Members (Pg. 140-141)

Fundamental knowledge of the area he or she has been hired to manage. Often we are tempted to hire simply on the basis of friendship or other user-friendly characteristics. Expertise is more important.
Relatively high - but not manic - level of energy and enthusiasm and a personality that is upbeat, motivated, and animated.
The ability to discern talent in potential employees whom he or she will recommend to you.
An ability to communicate in a relaxed yet authoritative - but not authoritarian - manner.
Unconditional loyalty to both you and other staff members.

Checklist for Keeping Good Staff Members on the Same Page (Pg. 141-142)

You must establish clear parameters for your staff regarding the overall method by which you expect things to be done.
Any philosophical differences that crop up must be identified and addressed by you in private meetings with the individual(s).
You must recognize that staff members may work in different ways, using approaches that are at variance with yours.
To ensure unanimity throughout the staff, make unannounced visits to various department meetings.
Don't cede inordinate power or control to a staff member simply because you are relieved to have an experienced and proven performer come on board.
Sometimes a staff member may intentionally teach a philosophy that is at odds with your code of conduct, in the belief that it conforms to your philosophy.
Be alert for those staff members who seek to use their position to teach and express their personal beliefs.
Remember Mike Ditka's comment on leadership after his Bears won a Super Bowl championship: "Personal contact is part of hands-on management. Go to the other guy's office; tell him what you have in mind so there is no misunderstanding."

Lessons to Help Work Through Success Disease (Pg. 144-146)

Formally celebrate and observe the momentous achievement - the victory - and make sure that everyone feels ownership in it.
Allow pats on the back for a limited time. Then formally return to business as usual by letting everyone the party is over. Because victory can produce enormous energy make sure the power of your victory propels you forward in a controlled manner.
Be apprehensive about applause. Instruct your team that listening to praise can become a hindrance to buckling down to the hard sacrifice that will be required ahead.
Develop a plan for your staff that gets them back into the mode of operation that produced success in the first place. Hold meetings to explain what steps must be taken to sustain momentum; refocus personnel by covering in detail why success was achieved; review with them why they prevailed.
Address specific situations that need shoring up; focus on the mistakes that were made and things that were not up to snuff in the success.
Be demanding.
Don't fall prey to overconfidence so that you feel you can or should make a change for the sake of change.
Use the time immediately following success as an opportunity to make hard decisions. This includes the elevation or demotion of individuals who contributed, or didn't, to the victory. This window is brief. Use it.
Never fall prey to the belief that getting tp the top makes everything easy.
Recognize that mastery is a process, not a destination.

Dozen Daily Reminders to Keep you on the Right Track (Pg. 172-173)

Concentrate on what will produce results rather than on the results, the process rather than the prize.
Exhibit an inner toughness emanating from four of the most effective survival tools a leader can possess; expertise, composure, patience, and common sense.
Maintain your level of professional ethics and all details of your own Standard of Performance.
Don't isolate yourself.
Don't let the magnitude of the challenge take you away from the incremental steps necessary to effect change.
Exude an upbeat and determined attitude.
Hold meetings with staff educating them on what to expect.
Don't label some concept or new plan the thing that will "get us back on track". Simple remedies seldom solve a complex problem.
Ensure that an appropriate level of courtesy and respect is extended to all members of the organization.
Don't plead with employees to "do better".
Avoid continual threatening or chastising.
Deal with your immediate superior(s) on a one-to-one ongoing basis.

Nine Steps to Having a Healthy Heart in Your Organization (Pg. 202-203)

Afford each person the same respect, support, and fair treatment you would expect if your roles were reversed. Work with people individually, not as objects who are part of a herd.
Leadership involves many people, each with their own need for role identity within the organization. Find what a person does best, utilize and emphasize it, and steer clear of his or her weaknesses.
Demonstrate a pronounced commitment to employees by providing a work environment that enables them to achieve their maximum potential and productivity.
Acknowledge the uniqueness of each employee.
The most talented personnel often are very independent-minded. This requires that you carefully consider how you relate to and communicate with this type of individual, Creative people usually bring a passion for seeing their ideas put into play as quickly as possible. They must be helped to understand that not every idea is appropriate and that coming up with anew concept is just the start of a process that includes evaluation, comparisons, practicability, and more.
While at times a divergence may exist between the good of the group and the good of the individual, in a best-case scenario the group's and the individual's "good" should be the same. When this is not the case, you are well served to explain the reasons behind the divergence to the person who feels badly treated - for example, when he or she is passed over for a promotion.
People are most comfortable with how they are being treated when their duties are laid out in specific detail and their performance can be gauged by specific metrics. The key is to document - clarify - those expectations.
It is critical that employee expectation levels be reasonable, attainable, and high. While you should exhibit flexibility in the work environment to accommodate the needs of employees, you be should be inflexible with regard to your expectations of their performance.
Establish a protocol for how members of the organization interact with one another. Let them know their first priority is to do their job; their second priority is to facilitate others in doing their jobs.

Coach’s Commonplace

Sunday, 8 March 2020

"A fo ben, bid bont"

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