As most often is said, Golf is an individual sport. Just you against the course. And the course is often enough to compete against, even under the best of conditions.
But what happens when you put a group of professional golfers together – the best in the world – to play in a high-pressure team competition? Can they rally around a single goal of playing to win the cup for their country and fellow players, those they compete against week after week?
And is this any different in some cases than you, as a business leader, getting your team to continue to rally around your business goals?
Ben Parr, co-editor of Mashable, posted a tweet this week with the qualities of a great entrepreneur. He included hustle, intelligence, being personable, have a laser focus, flexibility, motivated by passion and talented. Professional golfers exude many of the same qualities of both an entrepreneur as well as the great and talented people we have on our teams.
Fred Couples, being the Captain of the U.S. Presidents Cup team, has always been known for being extremely personable and that’s a great trait of a business owner and team leader. At one interview after the win, Jay Haas, Freddie’s assistant captain, alluded to the fact that since Fred is such an easy-going-no-problem kind of guy, he allowed Jay to feel like he could tell him anything, freely giving Fred his opinions and recommendations, and he said that freedom actually increased throughout the week. Jay added how Fred just had a way of reducing tension for all the players in this high-pressure competition.
As a successful business owner, we want to welcome ideas and the opinions of the people on the team at all times. That’s how we learn. That’s how we get better. And that’s how we get better performance from each and every person on the team. And that’s what Alex Miceli reiterated in the Golfweek PGA Tour podcast when he talked about how Fred simply created the atmosphere that would give the U.S. team the best opportunity to win, even bringing in Michael Jordan to help with the team influence – a great move on Fred’s part, Alex says. And he goes on in the podcast to say how impressed Jordan was of Phil Mickelson, who went above and beyond to mentor and assist other players.
For sure, each and every professional golfer wants to be the one to win the point that clutches the title – they almost all have the “give me the ball” mentality that is apparent in other sports including basketball. No lack of confidence to speak of from either the U.S. or European Presidents Cup team members, that’s for sure.
Tiger Woods, always being the consummate individual athlete that he is, has experienced mediocre performances in team competitions since first playing in 1997. But this year, playing with Steve Stricker, he found his stride and became one of only three players to achieve a 5-0 match record, joining Mark O’Meara and Shigeki Maruyama.
This is the kind of performance that a team captain would expect from a world class champion – and Fred was the one to get it from Tiger this year. Even European Ryder Cup Captain, Colin Montgomerie, took note of Tiger’s team perfection in an Associated Press story, conveying that it will make it even tougher for the European team to win the 2010 Ryder Cup being that Tiger seems to have figured out how to master team play.
While the 2009 Presidents Cup might not have had the most dramatic of finishes between the two teams, the competition certainly provided business owners with a few specific lessons in the areas of leadership and teamwork that are most definitely worth repetition. Whether its lessons learned from the Presidents Cup or lessons learned in the business world, we can all stay sharp by learning to be great leaders and benefit by working as a team.
If you’re a small business owner and would like help putting your team together — either mentors, an advisory team or hiring of staff — then call me, David Ingram, at 804.282.8788.
