1- Personal Performance
2- Team
3- Leadership

I believe that assessing the health of the connective tissues of the Performance Power Triangle is a powerful indicator of how healthy and how hungry the team culture is. Players sense when the environment has soured, when engagement is waning, and when the collective energy is negative or receding. Leadership, Personal Performance and Team are interdependent; they cannot successfully survive without each other's influence. Understanding and implementing the Performance Power Triangle leads us on a journey to better understand and upgrade the HEART side of our team.

Leadership

When I returned to school at age 45 my first professor said, "Everything rises and falls on LEADERSHIP!" The dictionary defines a leader as "a person who leads, a guide, or a conductor." Leadership is "the set of characteristics that make a good leader. Mike Krzyzewski, coach of the Duke University Men's Basketball program, believes that "Leadership is Plural." Rosabeth Moss Kanter says, "Winning streaks are associated with not just one but many leaders - a nested series of Leaders, like the Russian dolls in which each doll opens to reveal another identical but smaller doll inside" Within the context of understanding the personal and cultural hungry spirit I view healthy Leadership as plural and shared.

Over a 25 year period, the Gallup organization has compiled interviews with more than a million workers. Using data from these interviews, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman demonstrated that the quality of the relationship between employees and their direct supervisors is the single most important variable in creating a healthy organizational culture. Buckingham and Coffman show that the quality of that relationship directly influences employee loyalty and productivity, for better or worse. They go on to say that workers seek internal and emotional satisfaction from their supervisors. They want to know clearly what is expected of them and that they are valued. They want a direct supervisor who encourages them to grow and develop. When such qualities are absent in a coach or manager, employees [players] begin to look elsewhere. In the words of Buckingham and Coffman, "People leave managers [coaches], not companies."

The player's relationship with the head coach and coaching staff is a direct measure of his or her engagement, or in my preferred language, hunger. It is, therefore, critical for leaders to stay focused on the people issues. In his last speech before he died, Vince Lombardi shared the key to success: "The secret, in a word is ... ‘heart-power.' Capture the heart and you've captured the person ... Get people to fall in love with your company."

Team

The dictionary defines teamwork as: "Cooperative effort by the members of a group or team to achieve a common goal." This describes what teamwork does but doesn't come close to describing what team is. The team uses the collective focus and energy of individuals to accomplish its goals, but this isn't always an indicator of what the team is. The way that teams function together is critical to performance. When team is on synergy is happening. When teams are off individual energy is sucked away from the common goal.

Personal Performance

Individual performance is logically a huge contributor to the achievement of High Performance Team Culture. Hockey legend Bobby Orr says, "Forget about style, worry about results." At the end of the day personal performance drives everything. Teams must have multiple contributions with as many as possible at the high end of the performance scale.

Performance must also be measured through some of the softer issues such as personal confidence, preparation and mental toughness. Vince Lombardi said, "Inches make Champions." I believe that little environmental tweaks create an opportunity for high Personal Performance.

These 3 create your Team Culture

Most professional teams, organizations and companies understand the importance of keeping their players engaged. Drs. Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, declare that, "Great companies with branded cultures aren't filled with merely ‘satisfied' employees. They are filled with people who are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about their work - people who are evangelistic about their companies [or teams]. Would you be content to create a culture in your workplace that simply satisfies people? We hope not! Gone are the days when employee or player "satisfaction" was the target to hit. It's time to get rid of those surveys that measure player satisfaction - or, at the very least, rename them. Employees need to be far more than satisfied... Are satisfied players likely to engage with their hearts and minds? Are satisfied employees likely to be great ambassadors for your team?"

What will taking your culture beyond satisfied do to the way your team performs this season?