Team motivation

After watching my beloved Browns lose again on Sunday 12/12/04, I needed to write something that outlined the source of a team’s downfall. I could write about 10 pages on the lack of leadership and no coach. I could write another 20 pages on draft picks, injuries, and play calling, but I won’t. My tears would ruin the ink. But in the end I could sympathize with the way the team must feel as they returned to the locker room after another defeat. All were battered and bruised, embarrassed as another loss creates more questions about the direction of their organization.

The past 6 weeks of the Browns season got me thinking about how team members may view their work when they are on a losing team. I know it sounds bad, “a losing team” But it is obvious the Browns are suffering from the inside out. From owner to GM - from coach to quarterback, something is broken in the chain of command. It goes back to the saying 99% mental, 1% physical. When teams win, injuries come less often. More outstanding work is accomplished especially under pressure. Winning breeds winning attitudes and nothing seems difficult. Team communication becomes physic as the offense and defense take hold of the game without fail. However, losing breeds all sorts of negative attitudes– dropped passes, finger pointing, overblown egos, and an overall lack of effort makes everything seem impossible. Each important element works out of sink with the other when the team fails to meld as a single unit.

I wanted to compare career situations that put me in the same category as the Browns players. I wanted to relate to how these players were feeling as workers within their jobs as professional players. There are so many factors that go into creating a winning team. I only say this because there is a very strong similarity between the world of sports and the world of my artistic career. They are both heavily reliant on talent, skill, personal motivation, and mental training. As an artist I do not suit up for heart pounding, physical confrontations, tackling and smashing helmet to helmet with opposing teams, I am an artist that is required to work in a team atmosphere while contributing 110%. I have to work with managers, programmers, sales teams, and other artists to help produce graphics, advertisements, web sites, and web applications. My confrontations only come when a deadline seems unfeasible. My heart pounds when I know my paycheck doesn’t match the hours I put in during a stressful week. How I wish I had a million dollar signing bonus. Unfortunately my motivation gets lower after the site of my lowly check. It leaves me crawling back home after another huge week of financial defeat.

I see this everyday within my “real” job, in all teams of my corporate world. We have our share of superstars, morale injuries, and negative feelings within our office. Organization from the top down is always criticized. The managers question the employees and the employees demand more of the managers. Salary differences create jealousy; work requirements vs. productivity and time have managers looking for better help for less money, or paying more money to get less work from padded resumes. It seems easy as both sides look for quick answers to complicated situations.

The solution is already there. Look at the comparisons. Obviously, the owner of my company is symbolic of the team owner. Money management is a sum of what the mangers provide in team production. The managers are comparative to coaches. They are in place to organize workflow and production by creating positive motivation or in the “real world” (scare tactics created by a fear of losing a low paying job with mediocre medical benefits).

If you are an artist or creative person in the corporate world, ask yourself this. Do your department heads motivate employees to be better? Do they create task assignments that are well planned for each project? Do they find the best methods possible to exploit the true talents of the individuals they have on the team? Do they understand the job you have? If the answer is no, then you are indeed on a team that may have far more losses than wins.

Like the Browns organization, I see many people that have simply given up. Slow on assignments – slow on blocking. Missed tackles – missed deadlines equaling a team frustration. The fault goes both ways. As a player, one could stay later or arrive earlier to work with other team members to get better. Coaches could stay to learn about the people they have on their team. Or in a career artist’s case - draw, read, or research more about a given job or task with managers learning how to better prepare for project timelines. It definitely requires more communication and effort from both sides. But who should make the first step? What happens when one side refuses to listen to the other? Where does employee motivation come from and how is it rewarded in today’s job market?

Like good coaches, managers should know how to take advantage of the best qualities of a team and build around that talent. But more importantly, have the leadership in place to make players, and fellow employees alike, eager to produce and win time and time and time again. But when morale is low, losing is a habit hard to break.

As I sit in my gray little cubicle working lines of code into place, adjusting graphics, and listening to my unhappy co-workers, I wonder where my work team would stack up in the NFL. Given the current situation, our win loss record may be pretty close to the guys in brown and orange this season. The slow moving bodies coming back from lunch look like a tired team unhappy to re-enter the game after the half time. The tired faces at the end of the day look beaten and sad about the day that repeats the long unforgiving task lists tomorrow.

As a fan of the Browns, I know they will pull through for Cleveland. As a fan of having a good art career, I know I will practice harder to pull my team through a painful season in my corporate world. …But I still wish I had that $1,000,000 signing bonus.