In today’s guest post Kyle Ohman shares his thoughts and experience in both business and in basketball coaching about:

Maximizing Team Ouput

by Kyle Ohman

As a leader or coach of a team one of your main responsibilities is to get the most out of each member of the group. If you can get every single person performing at their best and moving in the same direction there is no limit to what you can accomplish. This is easier said than done but if you can accomplish this then there is no telling what you are going to be able to accomplish.

My background is in sports but I have recently been fortunate enough to move into co-owning my own company BasketballHQ.com. The one thing that I quickly realized though is that there are so many parallels between a business and sports. A lot of the stuff that I have learned playing and coaching basketball I have been able to translate over into running a business. Here are 3 keys that every coach or boss can use to help maximize the output of their team.

Have a Clear Direction

You can’t expect everyone to be on the same page and moving to accomplish the team or companies goals if they don’t clearly know what they are. It is your job to make sure that each person knows what is trying to be accomplished and what is expected the group and of them individually. Only after this happens are you able to have accountability within your team.

To get your message across you need to have two levels of communication. You need to have group communication followed up with personal communication. If you have a large company then this means communicating with each department head to make sure that they clearly understand what is needed from them and the people under them. Only after you have done this can you hold people accountable.

Buying in is Key

It doesn’t matter how great the game plan is if you are not able to get everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction. If part of the group is trying to do it one way and the other part of the team is doing something different, you are just going to have conflict and never get anywhere.

In college my basketball coach Ritchie Mckay used the analogy of everyone being in a circle. He and stepped into the center circle at half court and then told each coach and player to give an honest evaluation of themselves on whether they were bought into what the team was trying to do. If you were all the way bought in you put both feet in, one foot in and one foot out represented partially bought in, and two feet out meant not at all. I am not saying that you should do this but it is an eye opener to see what people think of themselves.

Once you have figured out where everyone stands you can better assess what you need to do as far as individually getting people to buy in. Not everyone is going to agree with the way that you do things but it is important that you make it clear that they need to be bought in and doing their best to accomplish your plan. If they are unable to do this then you may need to let them go and bring someone else in.

Every Person is Important

We have all heard the analogy of a team only being as strong as its weakest link and it is so true. In your mind picture are really strong and sturdy chain. One end of the chain is securely wrapped around an old stump that needs to be pulled out of the ground. The other end is hooked up to a big powerful F-350 truck that will have no problem pulling the stump out of the ground.

Right before the truck begins to pull the stump out of the ground you look closely at the chain and one of the links in the chain has been replaced with a paper clip. The truck begins to move forward and as soon as the chain begins to get taught the paper clip snaps and the job is failed.

That one weak link compromised the whole thing. The rest of the chain couldn’t compensate for that one weak link and it is the same way with a team. If one person in your group doesn’t do their job on the presentation you aren’t going to get the client or if one player misses their defensive assignment at the end of the game the other team will score and you will lose the game. All that to say that you need to make sure that you maximizing each persons output. It is that important to make sure that every single person is firing on all cylinders.

“There is no measure or limit to what you can do when you get everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction.” – Ritchie McKay

About the author

Kyle Ohman has played basketball at both the collegiate and professional level and is now the co-owner of BasketballHQ.com. He has also coached high school basketball at the national level.

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