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Shame On Coach Who Shames Team
Effective leader encourages top performance

BY: MICHAEL STERN Dec. 8, 2004

“Somewhere we've got to find some men who want to play basketball ... And for the ones who don't want to play, do everyone a favour and quit.”

Most executives keep a low profile for the first few months of a new job, but not Sam Mitchell, rookie coach of the struggling Toronto Raptors. After losing big games on a recent road trip, the first-time NBA coach ripped into his team, questioning its commitment and naming names.

The invitation, above, for some of his players to quit came late last month, after the Raptors were trounced by the Washington Wizards. “The ones I'm talking about – they know who they are because I've told them – they need to quit,” Mitchell said. “It's embarrassing.”

Last week, after the Raptors gave up 129 points in losing to the Orlando Magic, Mitchell stepped up his diatribe by pointing the finger at backup centre Jerome Moiso. Mitchell said he'd wanted to play the 6-foot-10 Moiso to add size and strength to the Toronto offence. But based on Moiso's lack of effort in practice, he said, he couldn't justify the move.

Sportswriters questioned why a coach would berate a second-string centre who had played only six minutes of the game. As a consultant specializing in executive search, however, I have to wonder why any coach – in sports or in business – would ever undermine his team and publicly chastise individuals, whether they had played six, 16 or 60 minutes. Where I come from, managers have one job: to motivate their charges to perform at their highest possible level, day in and day out. If their players aren't performing, that says as much about the coach as the team. I still believe in the mantra, “Praise in public, correct in private,” as the best way to correct problems and change attitudes – without demoralizing troubled performers and making bad situations worse.

It's much easier to encourage people to do better than to shame them into it.

I don't for a minute underestimate the pressures of major-league coaching, especially in the high-stakes world of professional basketball. Nor do I believe it is easy to stay rational when the media are always hounding you for controversial quotes.

Still, is it that much more difficult than the job of the sales director who has to meet monthly targets while managing a competitive group of sales reps, or the chief executive who leads a cabal of executive VPs all jockeying for power and recognition?

There's an art to motivating superstars (and most other people). Here are a few hints.

- If there's a problem, assume your share of the blame. If your star players aren't working as a team, it means you haven't built one. The coach who always blames his players sounds like the egotistical salesperson who says, “I'm doing a great job of selling, but these customers just aren't buying.”

- Don't tear people apart in public. If you have to be critical, save it for a private meeting. Shaming players or employees in front of their peers is no way to encourage performance. Sustained performance comes from commitment and trust, and floggings tend to crush such feelings. I have known employers who enjoy singling out staff members, but it always backfires. All it does is anger employees and reduce their loyalty to the group as they start looking for better positions (and more respect) someplace else.

- Abandon the notion that you are “in charge,” the all-knowing, all-powerful boss. On a professional sports team, most players have greater skills than the coach does. In your business, many sales reps are better at selling than the sales manager sells. The leader's job is to motivate, not pontificate.

- Create a culture in which the greater pressure to perform comes from other team members, not from your own instructions (or intemperate outbursts). Encourage veteran players to act as mentors. When weak performers are letting the team down, their peers should be the ones exerting pressure to improve.

- Establish common values and objectives. Ask your team members what success means to them. Sure, you want to win every game, but your group may also want to have fun and support each other. Or it may want to be a more positive contributor to the community. Develop activities and initiatives that support those objectives.

- Use shared incentives to build team spirit. Enlightened organizations offer commissions and/or bonuses based on three tiers of performance: individual, department and corporate. Just talking about teamwork isn't enough: You have to give people concrete reasons to pass the ball, or share sales leads, or co-operate between silos, or simply expect more of each other.

When you look back on the coaches, leaders or teachers that have made a difference in your life, chances are you remember the belief they had in you, and the confidence that gave you to dig deep and accomplish more. Blaming and finger-pointing may make the daily news, but inspiration lasts a lifetime.