Developing a winning culture is critical to achieving consistent success. It will never happen by accident and requires commitment from everyone on the team. Let’s look at a couple contrasting examples from Cleveland area sports teams.

The first example is: the Cleveland Browns who just announced recently they are willing to consider trading many of their top players to other teams. This no doubt, is relative to the fact that they only won two games this year and have a history of losing. Many years ago they fired Bill Belichick as coach of the Cleveland Browns, because he didn’t speak well to the press. Turns out he is a pretty good coach! They drafted players at the top of the selections only to have them never live up to their expectations. This is obviously a wonderful example of what not having a culture of winning can accomplish for you.

An example of a winning culture exists in the Cleveland Cavaliers. The owner Dan Gilbert has committed to present the finest team possible regardless of the financial commitment. General Manager, David Griffin is constantly seeking ways to improve the roster in a positive way and this effort has produced an incredible result. LeBron James is personally recruiting top talent players and plays an essential part in the team developing a winning culture in the locker room and on the court. This is truly a fantastic example of a winning culture that involves the entire team from owner, manager, and team players.

Invest in Your Teams Talent

Commitment should always be given to invest in your teams talent by providing them the best training available. They should have state-of-the-art tools with the latest computers and software that will assist them in performing their duties. Never be afraid to compensate your team financially, because if you don’t pay them well, another team looking for top talent will.

Recognize Individual Achievements

It’s important to recognize the accomplishments of your team often and in front of others whenever possible. This is a critical part of developing the winning culture we all desire to have and must be habit.

Coach for Improvement

Accepting poor results will never be a part of any winning culture. Team leadership must address quickly every area of opportunity for improvement. Coaching should always be done in a private setting with the ultimate goal benefiting the individual and team result together. Great leaders understand recognizing achievements of a team member five times for every one area of opportunity for improvement is a great ratio for success in coaching.

A great rule for leadership to follow is to spend the most time with the bottom 10% performers. This will always bring the largest gain for a team result. Acknowledging the top performers will fire the fuel they need to succeed. If a poor performer shows no effort to comply with the team needs or improve, they cannot be happy and must be considered to be cut from the team. These individuals will become like a cancer to a winning culture and cannot be tolerated.

​Sincerely,
Rob Gehring, President
Fixed Performance Inc.
rgehring@fixedperformance.com
1-888-205-8718

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