In last week’s column, I wrote about how this is one of my favorite times of the year because it means the start of football season. However, whether you play football at the high school, college, or professional level, this time of the year means training camp, which brings on a mix of anticipation and dread. While you are excited to get back to the game you love to play, you also dread the heat, physical demands, and grinding repetition of training camp. However, for football coaches, they understand that training camp will have a significant impact on their teams’ success for the season. In today’s column, I will discuss what football coaches want to accomplish in training camp and how business leaders can learn from football training camp to improve the performance of their organizations.
Football coaches realize that so many good things can come out of training camp. First and foremost, it is a time to build teamwork and collaboration. For college players, training camp takes place for the most part before classes start, so the players are all together all the time. For professional players, training camp is often held away from their stadium and in-season practice facility, at a location where they can all live together for the duration of camp. Therefore, training camp is a time for team and culture building. While players are often competing for positions, they are also bonding together and learning about each other personally.
You can emulate such an environment through organizational retreats and off-sites. If your “team” spends multiple days together away from the work site, it is an outstanding opportunity for team bonding and culture building. While such retreats can focus on work matters, such as corporate strategy and annual planning, they should also include fun activities, which will allow organizational members to get to know their co-workers in a non-work environment. This will typically allow people to care more for each other and gain empathy for each other, which will usually lead them to be more willing to work harder for one another.
Another important aspect of football training camp is its emphasis on the “fundamentals.” Players often dislike training camp because they spend so much time on drills on footwork, body position, and other techniques, which could include throwing, catching, running, blocking, and tackling, depending on their position. While players often see this as drudgery during the heat and humidity of training camp, coaches know that if the players master the fundamentals during training camp, they will become ingrained and automatic for the season, making good performance more likely. Business leaders sometimes forget that their employees often need reminders of fundamentals, such as the firm’s competitive strategy and value proposition, items that could be reviewed at retreats and off-sites. However, it is also a reminder to consistently train your workforce. For instance, be sure your salespeople are completely up to speed on your entire product portfolio and understand which products are meant for which target markets.
As I have mentioned previously, football training camps are held in difficult conditions. When these camps begin in July, it is typically the time of the year with the highest temperatures, and in many parts of the country, high humidity. Performing your best in these conditions is not easy, but players learn that if they can effectively compete in the most difficult conditions, they will do even better when the conditions are not difficult during the season. They learn to be resilient and persevere when things may not be going well. While it might not be practical for business leaders to create difficult conditions to make their workers more resilient, we all know that your business and your people will face difficult times along the way. Seeing how they respond and supporting their efforts in difficult times will pay off, as they will be more resilient and loyal to the organization over time.
Training camp is a great proving ground for football teams to identify who should be on the roster, what role each player should have, who the leaders are on your team, and what areas of development each player requires. These areas particularly stand out because training camp is a time of performing under difficult conditions (as noted above) and a time of great pressure as players are competing for jobs. Analogously, business leaders should be constantly observing their workers and see how they perform under pressure and difficult conditions. This will enable you to better determine people’s roles, identify who your future leaders are, and how you can develop your employees further to improve their future performance.
If you are a football fan like me, I hope the teams that you root for have a great season! If they do, it will likely have been positively impacted by what they did in training camp. However, whether your team wins or not, I hope you can take the lessons of training camp to help make your company a winner!
