5 Qualities of a Championship Team

Hey, my friend Kenny Chapman here, the blue collar coach, coming to you with a message about building a championship team. Now, if you're not a sports fan, don't cut me off yet, because this is about you and your business, more importantly. So here's the deal. Over the weekend, they played the afc, the NFC Championship, and it's been decided the Broncos and the Panthers are going to the Super bowl in 2016. Okay, that's great. Well, I always want to learn what I can from championship teams at every level. It doesn't matter what I studied. Peak performance. So I want to share a few things with you of how you take what they do at that level and instill it into your organization. Okay, so the first thing that we want to talk about is the ownership level. If an owner doesn't desire to have a championship team, it's never going to happen. I don't care what type of coaches they hire, what type of players they put on the team or on the field, whatever it is, you have got to desire to win. That means you've got to invest. You've got to invest in the training, you've got to invest in the opportunities. You've got to invest in everything necessary in order to build a championship team. If you don't want to win as an owner, it's never going to happen. Trust me. I'm a lifelong San Diego Charger fan. We don't necessarily want to build a championship team, but that's a whole nother story. So starts with the owner, then we drop down a level and we go, okay, general manager, head coach, right? Sometimes that could be the same person as the owner in many instances in our organizations, but that person has a little more daily interaction with the front line and more importantly, has a lot of interaction with the assistant coach, with the people that are really executing the plan. The head coach has to completely believe in the owner's desire. The strategy, the goals, the plan, those all types of things has to be executed from the head coach or else nothing else is going to happen because the owner can only do so much once the head coach really has everything in place. You've got some assistant coaches in our world that could be team leaders, field supervisors, the people really helping our front line with the, you know, the strategies, the execution, reinforcing the training, coaching when necessary. Those are all the things have to be in alignment. Then we go to the players or our frontline team members, our CSRs, DSRs, warehouse, our salespeople, our technicians, everybody having that touch with the client, making it Happen, right? That's where the rubber meets the road. If you don't have those executing, we can't all execute as owners, managers, leaders. They have to be willing to execute the training and coaching that they've been given. Right? And the last thing, and possibly the most important thing, is simply an overall culture of winning, the culture of the organization. When you walk into a building, when you walk into, you know, I walk into so many companies in our industry. I'm on the road for two and a half months right now doing coaching and training on my way to our Sammy event in Florida here in a couple weeks. And one of the things that I'll know, as soon as I walk in, I'll have a sense of what it is, what that company is doing, how profitable they are, how successful they are, simply because there's a culture present, there's a feel present. And what happens then is you get to your team members, start policing people, maybe you draft the wrong person, meaning we got somebody, all of us need help, right? You get somebody on the team. Negative Nancy, don't want to play, who cares? I don't care if I lose. I'll just do the bare minimum. Really, your team's going to go, hey, coach, hey, owner, hey, general manager. This person is not for us because they're not wanting to win. They're not part of who we are. Right. That's ultimately what it's all about. So owners can only do so much, but they've got to put the tools in the coach's hands in order for each level of coaching, however big your company is. And if you're a smaller company, then you're wearing maybe all three, four of these hats, you might even be running calls yourself. I want you to think about it, though, so take a moment, just step back, honestly, answer these questions for yourself, and then make some decisions and go build your championship team. I'm Kenny Chapman, the blue collar coach. Until we talk again. Have a better than fantastic day and I'll see you real soon.