Tom Landry was an American football player and coach. He was the first head coach for the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL. A position he held for 29 seasons. He holds records for 29 years consecutively coaching one team along with 20 consecutive winning seasons. It is quite an accomplishment even compared to today’s standards.
Real Coaching Advice
Coach Landry said, “Really, coaching is simplicity. It’s getting players to play better than they think that they can.”
A business leader has a huge challenge in helping their teams perform much the same way Coach Landry did. Recruit talent and train them to be a high-performance team who performs consistently at a high level. Sounds easy when you read it.
Developing High Performance Teams Requires Strategy
In training individuals to become team members, and then to help them grow into leaders, perception exercises are a great tool. Many times, individuals don’t see themselves the same as others see them. Exercises like this help them to see what they don’t see or even better, to see themselves as they are vs. what they think they are. Now, all of that isn’t just a mix of words; there is a science with emotional intelligence factors.
There are different stages of employee mentality. A key for a coach is to know what stage the person or team is in. In using the Stages to Employee Mentality exercise, you might not subscribe to everything the way it’s written, and that’s ok. This is just a tool to help your team see things they don’t recognize now or it could reveal perceptions that need attention. Maybe you need all the team on the same page. This exercise is a part of a coach’s toolbox to help facilitate a team to start thinking differently.
Conduct the Exercise
Print out this document and have the person or team you want to affect read it. After they’ve read it, open up the discussions about what they’ve read. Ask them if they see any of those attitudes in your team. Ask several questions about each stage of thinking. Facilitate the group to stimulate open and honest discussions about how each person contributes to the success of the organization. Listen closely because you’ll discover insights to help them become more than they are today.
For the Coach to chart a path to grow accurately, you have to assess exactly where the team is at. Once the team knows where they are, then you can start painting the picture of where they can be and the milestones to more success. Make sure to provide them the tools or resources to achieve the new realities. It is amazing how people can rise to the challenge when a coach shows them a path to getting there.
Keep painting the picture of what you want them to become more than talking to them about what they are not.
Stages to Employee Mindset Exercise
Give me a call if you’d like to brainstorm ideas.
