I remember one of my football coaches would always say, “Inch by inch, everything is a cinch.” The focus wasn’t on needing to drive the ball 80 yards to score a touchdown, ensuring we had more points than the other team at the end of the game, or in winning the state championship.
The focus was on mastering every step, every position of your shoulders, hitting the hole you needed to run through or reading the defenders on every step of the play to find the open receiver. If we focused on mastering our individual steps and actions, then our plays, drives, quarters and games would lead to success.
The coach was focused on effort over results knowing that results come with mastery of effort from each and every player on the field. He focused on developing the individual players rather than the team as a whole. Each player practiced the details of their part of every play not with the whole team, but by their positions only (QBs with QBs, running backs with running backs, linebackers with linebackers, etc.).
The coaches would not put the players into a room and train them how to perform their positions and run the plays. They would coach the players real time as they were working on their steps and techniques. Working with each one on the importance of inch by inch. Once the individual players had practiced and mastered their individual steps, cadence, actions, etc., then the whole team would come together and practice the plays as a group.
The players didn’t receive annual performance reviews of how they did over the season, but instead had coaches engaging with them throughout practices and games asking the players what they saw, what they missed and how they can fix it next time they run that play.
What if the business world modeled these learnings?
Some companies are so focused on hitting all the metrics quarter-by-quarter, by any means necessary, just to temporarily make their stockholders happy. Some companies are so focused on everyone hitting their goals and objectives, that it doesn’t matter how you check the boxes off or who you hurt in the process as long as you checked the boxes. Some companies have annual employee reviews that focus less on the individual and more on if the employee reached their goals with a focus on everything the employee did wrong and need to improve on to reach next year’s goals.
Maybe a better business culture is with a focus on developing mastery to realize long-term success. Creating this type of culture requires:
- Focusing on effort over results
- Developing individuals
- Coaching in real time
- Conducting at least quarterly engaging performance conversations
Releasing human potential requires managers to be more than just managers. The manager needs to master their coaching craft to become true leaders. By creating a culture that embraces these four strategies, companies will increase employee engagement and unleash human talent to its highest potential.
These four strategies start with you whether you have a team today or not. Don’t wait for your CEO or President to decide to implement them.
Brandon Brazeel, MBA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
Chief People Officer
