By Michael Kanazawa

Believe it or not, Fall is almost upon us. And, once again, the USC Trojan football team is being ranked #1 in their conference and nationally in many polls. They have created a dynasty of championship teams and there is something for business leaders to learn from how they are run as a team. Similar to stock analysts having to divulge their holdings, I am a big USC football fan and therefore biased. However, whether you love, hate, or don’t know the USC Trojans, there is a great lesson to be learned from them about how to lead your team to greatness. For you, maybe Fall is the time to refocus on a push for the year-end results and maybe a good time to try out a new facet of leadership to get you there.

Too often in business, people fall into the trap of trying to drive results in ways that cause individuals on the team to play with fear. People end up working to avoid getting in trouble, to just keep their job, or to meet their minimal performance standards. Stories of bosses intimidating, dominating, and humiliating employees are unfortunately pretty common. For short spikes, you can yell and scream your way into getting more from people. But in the end that wears out and never gets the best out of each person. There is a better way to build a high performance team.

In an article in Marshall Magazine, head coach of the USC Trojans, Pete Carroll, put it well, Look, there are a lot of ways to lead,” (said) Carroll, summing up. “But tough guys, leaders who are oppressive, never get the best out of people. When people work for you to avoid getting yelled at, it’s not effective.” And Pete Carroll knows about effective leadership, under his coaching the Trojans went from being a losing team to winning two national championships, five top 4 finishes, five consecutive years as PAC-10 champions/co-champions and a national record 33 consecutive weeks as AP’s number 1 ranked team.

Leading without fear and intimidation is not about being soft and it’s not about trying to be popular and well liked by your team. It is about true leadership. As put by Carroll, “(Some people) fear that if you get close, and you get to understand a player well enough that you can talk on a serious basis with them, that you won’t be able to direct them and command what they need to do next. They think that you have to maintain this distance so that you can direct. I don’t see that. I think that is where the word ‘leadership’ comes in. You don’t have to oppressively direct and authoritatively direct. I think you can lead if they understand you and they respect you and they regard your information as respectable.”¹

People such as Alex Kjerulf, author of Happy Hour is 9-5, go as far as saying that any work environment no matter how demanding can still revolve around happy employees. This does seem to be true and it all depends on the approach of managers. As Fall comes into view and you are looking to motivate your team to meet the year-end performance standards, try going at it with no fear. Be honest and clear about any shortcomings, engage with them and know them well enough to know what will motivate them. Then, have the team make commitments on specific actions that each person will take. If you dictate and demand, you’ll get, at best, exactly what you asked for. It will be a half-hearted effort to avoid losing and getting in trouble. If you inspire and engage instead, you’ll create self-motivated people who are confident, well prepared and will do everything necessary to win because they know that is what is going to happen.

Try it, lead with no fear. And let me know how it works for you.

For more information on this article contact the author:Michael Kanazawa

mkanazawa@disseropartners.com

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Tips, Leadership, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.