jeff jannsen 7 C's of Team Building

The Seven “C’s” of
Championship Team Building

By Jeff Janssen, M.S., Peak Performance Coach

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Former Boston Celtics basketball Coach Red Auerbach once remarked “Some people believe you win with the five best players, but I found out that you win with the five who fit together best.” Like championship sports teams, successful businesses must have employees who work well together to achieve a common goal. While talent is definitely important to be successful, the business with the most talent does not always make the most profits.

Talent without teamwork is trouble. I have seen too many businesses who had highly talented individuals, yet were unable to perform to their potential because of selfishness, jealousies, conflict, and people who were unable to accept their roles. Likewise I have seen teams with solid but not superior talent, rise to a championship level because of teamwork. Thus, teamwork becomes a sort of “wild card” factor whether you have great or average talent.

In working with many high level sports and business teams across the nation, I have discovered seven important factors that distinguish winning teams. It is these seven areas that I seek to improve when I consult with teams and that you as a leader must continually monitor. As you read the description of the Seven “C’s” of Championship Team Building, take a moment to assess how well your business team is doing on each of the characteristics.

Seven “C’s” of Championship Team Building

1. Common goal

Championship teams have a singular, common focus. Obviously, for many organizations the common goal is to serve the consumer, maximize profits, and become the dominant leader in the industry. These are the company’s primary, specified, overt goals and all other goals revolve around them. The goals are firmly embraced by all members of the team, from the CEO to the interns. Everyone understands the direction and destination that the company is moving toward. The employees understand that their individuals goals must fit within the framework and mission of the company.

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“A true vision gives the team more than just a target to shoot for; it gives the team a mission, a sense of purpose to get excited about.”

Pat Williams, Senior Executive Vice President,
Orlando Magic

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2. Commitment

While some seasons may start with the entire team focused on a common goal, rarely do they end up that way. Commitment is probably the single most important factor that differentiates championship teams, coaches, athletes, businesses, schools, marriages (you name it) from the mediocre. It’s much too easy to say you want to win the championship and its a whole other thing to put in the blood, sweat, and tears necessary to pursue a championship - especially when obstacles and adversity strike. Continual commitment to the team’s common goal is one of the toughest areas of team building.

Championship teams buy into the mission at every level and make the mission their own. The players and coaches work hard and pay their dues because they want to, not because they have to. In addition to their commitment, the team members feel a sense of personal and group accountability. The players have a clear understanding of how their individual choices and decisions influence the collective psyche and success of the team. There is a true sense that if an player is slacking off, she is not just hurting herself but her entire team. The players feel a sense of responsibility and obligation to give it their best.

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“Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

Vince Lombardi, Green Bay Packers

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3. Complementary Roles

Championship teams are comprised of several individuals who willingly take pride in a playing a variety of roles. These roles, when played in concert and harmony lead to team success. Thus, each player is assigned specific positions and responsibilities that help determine the entire team’s success. While individually they are not solely responsible for the team’s success or failure, collectively each role forms a synergistic whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The major difficulties in developing complementary roles is that some roles get more attention and praise thereby making them seem more important. Championship teams however realize that all roles are critical to the overall team’s success and willingly accept and value their individual roles.

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“I knew that the only way to win consistently was to give everybody - from the stars to the number 12 player on the bench - a vital role on the team.”

Phil Jackson, Los Angeles Lakers

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4. Clear Communication

A fourth characteristic of championship teams is clear communication. Successful teams communicate successfully both on and off the field. The on field communication helps them perform more efficiently and effectively. Players must communicate signs, the number of outs, where to throw the ball and call fly balls to perform successfully. Off the field, players need to continually monitor the team’s effectiveness, modify things when necessary, and celebrate successes.

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“You can only succeed when people are communicating, not just from the top down but in complete interchange.”

Bill Walsh, San Francisco 49ers

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5. Constructive Conflict

Along with effective communication, championship teams have the ability to keep conflict under control. Often, coaches and players are able to use conflict constructively to further develop and strengthen the team. It is not that championship teams never experience conflict, because this is impossible. Instead they are able to handle the conflict they experience and do not let it interfere with the team’s common goal. Championship coaches and players make sure that their common goal always takes precedence over any conflict.

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“My job is to avoid or resolve conflict if possible, because our mission is to win.”

Chuck Daly, USA Basketball

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6. Cohesion

A sixth characteristic shared by many championship teams is that they genuinely like and respect each other. The players like to spend time with each other outside of scheduled practice and game times. They find reasons to stay together like going to the movies, studying, hanging out, etc. This is not to say that every single player is a part of the group, but that a majority of players tend to socialize together. While it is not absolutely necessary, cohesion is a factor that often will help your team perform at a higher level.

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“Respect is essential to building group cohesion... You don’t have to like each other. But you do have to respect your colleagues’ opinions and decsions, because your personal success depends on commitment to the overall plan and doing your part to make it work.”

Pat Summitt, Tennessee Women’s Basketball

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7. Credible Coaching

Finally, it takes a credible coach to develop, orchestrate, and monitor all the other “C’s” of Championship Team Building. You as a coach play a critical role in helping the team arrive at a common goal, monitoring and maintaining your players’ commitment, assigning and appreciating roles, communicating with the team, keeping conflict under control, and promoting your team’s chemistry and cohesion. The team must have a leader who they believe in and has the skills necessary to get the most from the team. A credible coach creates an effective environment that allows the team to perform to their full potential.

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“It doesn’t matter whether you are in football, real estate, or electronics, the people who work for you will be happier and more productive if they feel they have value to you beyond what they can do for you on the job. They want to feel that they are important on a personal level.”

Marty Schottenheimer, San Diego Chargers

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Championship team building is a complex process which must be continually monitored and improved. Regardless of your talent level, invest some time and tap into the power of teamwork to help your team perform at a higher level. By recognizing and working on the Seven “C’s” of Championship Team Building you can create a more motivated, committed, and cohesive team.

Leadership Lessons from the Carolina Leadership Academy-Jeff Jannsen

The groundbreaking Carolina Leadership Academy has proven to be a tremendous win/win/win experience for student-athletes, coaches, and administrators. Here are some important lessons we have learned at Carolina that you can use as you look to build a program at your school.

1. Captains and Coaches Must Create a Leadership Team

If you want your leaders to be an extension of you, you must extend yourself to them. Coaches and captains must work together to forge a formidable leadership team to truly be effective. You must invest the time to teach your captains what it means to be a leader, help them understand your philosophy, and how to hold their teammates accountable. Invest the time on a regular basis to communicate with your captains so that you are all on the same page. The vast majority of captains in all sports want their coaches to invest more time with them.

2. Evaluation and Feedback are Critical for
    Development and Measurement

You must help your captains gain a better understanding of themselves as leaders. Invest the time to have them evaluate their leadership strengths and areas to improve using the Team Leadership Evaluation.

Most captains (74%) have an inflated view of their leadership skills. Thus, it is critical that you provide them with feedback from yourself as a coach as well as their teammates. By helping captains have a more objective view of their leadership, you can focus them on maximizing their strengths and shoring up their areas to improve.

With this systematic approach to leadership, we found that 96% of the student-athletes who graduated from the Carolina Leadership Academy rated themselves as better leaders following the program. Similarly, 88% of the coaches also rated their captains as better leaders following their training in the Academy.

3. Athletic Administrators Need to Champion and
    Model the Cause

Without question, one of the biggest keys to the Carolina Leadership Academy is that it was initiated, embraced, and reinforced from the top down. UNC athletic director Dick Baddour envisioned developing a state of the art leadership program and has been an active and visible champion of the program from day one. His strong support sends a clear message to everyone in the department how important the leadership initiative is for everyone. Further, by targeting all levels of the athletic department (student-athletes, coaches, and staff) a common language and understanding of leadership permeates the department. Leadership is now being discussed and modeled on all levels.

Accepting Roles--Jeff Janssen

I think one of the most overlooked aspect is the idea of assigning roles in a team setting.  You cannot have 5 guys that all think they are "THE GUY" and need to get shots.  Every successful team needs role players to be successful.  These are the guys that fill in the cracks: they rebound, screen, defend, etc... 
As a coach it can make or break a team if you do not define roles for your team.  I believe role definition can create buy in for your players, if rewarded properly. 

I found a great article by Jeff Janssen and really enjoyed it.

“Sometimes a player's greatest challenge is  coming to grips with his role on the team.”   

Scottie Pippen

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Championship teams have players who not only accept these roles, but understand their significance and value to the team and they actually take pride in playing them. As Miami Heat Coach Pat Riley says, “The key to teamwork is to learn a role, accept that role, and strive to become excellent playing it.”

Accepting Roles

Your goal as a coach is to have your players accept and embrace the role that they are given. When each player accepts his/her role and takes pride in playing it your team will have its best chance of being successful. How do you get your players to understand and accept their roles?

ACCEPTING ROLES = DEFINING ROLES + APPRECIATING ROLES

Defining Roles

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"Molding a team begins with a clear definition of each player's role."

Coach Jack Ramsey

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• A key aspect of role acceptance is helping to clearly define roles for each of the players.  
• Role definition means that each player knows what is expected of him/her both on the court and off the court. 
• It includes the responsibilities that they are expected to handle and fulfill. 
•   It's usually your superstars who have to take on additional roles (Jordan & Pippen). But the majority of the “role” players just need to play their role effectively and everything else takes care of itself. 
• Each player should have one or two primary responsibilities that when executed successfully, propel the team toward its ultimate goal.

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Two Ways To Define & Clarify Team Roles

1. Individual Meetings with Each Player

2. Teammates Clarifying Roles for Each Other

Role Appreciation

• Perhaps the biggest key leading to your players accepting their role is through role appreciation. 
• What you are trying to do is to create a sense of pride in playing a role. You want each player to understand the contribution that they make to the team and take pride in it, regardless of whether it is valued by the fans or media. ”

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 Awards

• Getting people to accept roles requires that you appreciate them. By appreciating them for playing roles, your players begin to understand that their role is valued and ultimately important to the team reaching its common goal. 
• As Boston Celtics Coach Rick Pitino says, “Recognize the people who get less attention in the group because they're not in the glamorous positions. Thank them publicly for their unselfishness and do it in front of their peers.”  
• While the fans and media may overlook some vital roles, you can appreciate them in a more effective way through team awards. 
• One such award that I have developed with teams is called the "Nails" award and the "Glue" award. We created the Nails award to acknowledge and appreciate the mental toughness of the player(s) who is “mentally tough as nails.” The award is given on a weekly basis and is voted on by the team. The players are not allowed to vote for themselves. The Glue award focuses on team aspects and is symbolized by the “glue that binds the team together.” The players vote for the teammate who had the best team attitude demonstrated by encouraging his/her teammates and/or making individual sacrifices. 
• You can create various awards for whatever roles you deem important to your team’s success - like recognizing the player with the most rebounds, assists, charges taken, or screens. 

10 questions that keep your captains up at Night-- Jeff Janssen

We all preach the importance of leadership but very few of us take the time to teach it. Too often we assume that our captains know how to be good leaders - rather than investing the time to teach them how to be effective leaders.

Here are the 10 questions:

1. How do I get my teammates to respect me and listen to me?

2. What do I say when someone is slacking off in practices, conditioning, and/or weights?

3. How do I keep my teammates in line when I know some of them party too much?

4. How do I deal with a teammate who defies and undermines the coach behind the scenes?

5. What do I say to a teammate whose negative and selfish attitude is distracting and demoralizing to the rest of the team?

6. What should I do when two of my teammates are in a major conflict?

7. How do I inspire my teammates and get them to believe that we really could achieve our goals this season?

8. What should I do when one of my teammates is thinking of quitting or transferring?

9. How do I step up and be a Vocal Leader when I am more comfortable being a Leader by Example?

10. How do I support and be loyal to my coach in front of my teammates when I sometimes disagree with his/her decisions?

Unfortunately, you’ve coached long enough to know that odds are at least half of these 10 situations will likely occur to your team this season. If not handled effectively, these common situations have the potential to distract, disrupt, derail, and destroy your team and season. Have you proactively prepared your leaders to handle these situations in a positive and productive way?

Invest the time on the front end to discuss these possible situations with your captains and team leaders. Talk about how you would like them to step up and productively handle them for the good of the team and program. Answer their questions, show them your compassion and support before, during, and after these difficult challenges, and coach them on what to do and say to best diffuse these potentially destructive and demoralizing situations. Ben Franklin couldn’t have been more right when he said...

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Seven Keys to Coaching Today's Millennial Generation Athlete--Jeff Janssen

You might be familiar with Beloit College's annual Mindset List linked below. The list shows how this year's incoming class of freshmen, most of them born in 1990, have a vastly different world experience than that of their 30, 40, 50, and 60 year old coaches.
http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2012.php

This article is designed to help you better understand what motivates today's Millennial generation of athletes (those born from roughly 1982 to the present), how they are different, and what you can do as a Gen Xer (born 1961 to 1981) or Boomer (born 1943-1960) coach to continually adapt and stay connected and relevant to your team.

Heres how this group differs from past groups:

1. Special 
-They have been taught they are special and vital to the success of the family, team, and community.
-They have recieved far more focus and attention from adults so they feel entitled.


2. Sheltered
-Most Millennials have been protected and sheltered from birth.
-They have always had laws and gadgets to protect them.
-This has prevented them from experiencing, learning from, adapting to, and overcoming the important and inevitable hard knocks of life.
-Because of this sheltering, many are crushed when they receive less than an "A" for a grade, get cut from teams, and receive negative feedback.

3. Confident
- Millennials tend to be a more confident generation when it comes to their ability to achieve the American dream.
-they sometimes forget that success is not going to come instantly but must be worked at consistently and is anything but a linear journey.

4. Team-oriented
-Millennials are the most interconnected generation yet.
-Between emailing, texting, and staying connected through Facebook, peer networks are a huge part of their daily experience.
-They have strong team instincts and like to stay connected with their social group on a regular basis.

5. Conventional
- Millennials tend to embrace the more traditional values of their parents.
-They are much less likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana than the generations before them.
-"Millennials describe closer ties with their parents than in teens in the history of postwar polling." Many are in continual contact with their parents and share tastes in clothes, music, and other entertainment.


6. Pressured
- Millennials are feeling much more pressure to succeed than generations before them. They believe the stakes are high and the price of mistakes and missteps are more consequential than in the past.
-Many are overscheduled and overwhelmed (Private lessons, camps, tutors)

7. Achieving
-With higher standards, Millennials are highly focused on achievement
-They "are on track to becoming the smartest, best-educated adults in U.S. history"

- Millennials are much more influenced by their parents. And many Millennials have extremely short-attention spans if you not physically or mentally engaging them in some type of activity.

ADVICE FOR COACHING MILLENNIALS

1. Help your Millennials understand that adversity is inevitable, temporary, and helpful in the long-term.
2. Help your Millennials understand that getting better is a long-term process.
3. Understand that there are dozens of things that compete for your Millennials' attention and time.
4. Don't lecture - Edu-tain.
5. Provide opportunities for young Millenials to engage in free athletic play.
6. Develop your parents into allies, not adversaries.
7. Help kids fight their own battles.
8. Remember that people are people.

7Strategies for building an elite and enduring Program--Jeff Janssen

1. Long term vision of Success
1. Program builders have a clear vision of what they want to be and stand for.
2. NO 1-Hit wonders
3. What do you want your program to stand for?
2. Committed to the long Run
1. Focus on establishing and maintaining a solid foundation of success that endures.
2. Avoid instant gratification through short cuts.
3. There is no "Quick Fix"
3. Dont judge success only by Wins/Losses.
1. Be successful and respected on and off the field.
1. How do you evaluate the success of your season?
4. Selectively bring in recruits  and staff members that share their vision and values
1. People are  the key to success
2. Invest time to recruit and select talented people
3. What criteria do you value when selecting and recruiting people?
5. See thier work as a platform for teaching people how to succeed in life
1. Be a teacher of life skills
6. Build life long relationships with their people.
1. Highly value your ongoing relationships
7. Provide their people with perspective.
1. See the big picture.
2. How can you educate and broaden your athletes perspective on the world?