Most of my coaching time involves helping organizations and build winning teams. They want to be number one. Doesn’t everyone? But how? Below is an account of a conversation between legendary football coach Vince Lombardi and Lee Iacocca as told by Mr. Iacocca in his autobiography: Once, at a private dinner with Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach and a friend of mine, I asked him about his formula for success. I wanted to know exactly what made a winning team. What he told me that evening applies as much to the business world as it does to sports.
“You have to start by teaching the fundamentals.” Lombardi said. “A player’s got to know the basics of the game and how to play his position. Next, you’ve got to keep him in line. That’s discipline. The men to have to play as a team, not as a bunch of individuals. There’s no room for prima donnas”
He continued: “But there have been a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the fundamentals and have plenty of discipline but still don’t win the game. Then you come to the third ingredient: If you’re going to play together as a team, you’ve got to care for one another. You’ve got to love each other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself: “If I don’t block that man, Paul is going to get his legs broken. I have to do my job well in order that he can do his”
“That’s the difference between mediocrity and greatness”, Lombardi said that night.
