Team Chemistry

Here’s how you build it

 

Today, baseball’s 2019 season begins.

I found an article about team chemistry on the San Francisco Giants and I think with a few minor changes, it can be helpful to you and your station.

In the world of professional sports, there is no substitute for talent. But extraordinary talent never reaches its full potential without good chemistry, and good chemistry improves with great leadership.”

This requires a fundamental shift in how management sees players. Professional sports is big business. Athletes who put themselves on the bidding block for millions of dollars become the unofficial “property” of clubs who will program and hone them into winning revenue machines. Players become “our most important assets,” “our payroll” and our “acquisition costs.” They are treated like “commodities” traded in the open market.”

“Property. Products. Assets. Commodities. How can we create impassioned teams that do amazing work when we talk about people in such objectified, dehumanizing terms?”

“Bochy sees it like this: “For me it’s about who you see first. Do you see a player or a person? An opportunity or a human being? A statistical profile or someone with hopes, dreams, needs and a family? A person or an asset that can be leveraged in a trade?

Consolidated Radio tends to see “talent” as an expense rather than an “asset,” but even those managers who understand the value of talent often fail to spend the time (they may not have it now) to really know and understand the human being they’re paying for performance.

The San Francisco Giants don’t see people as a commodity to be managed to grow revenue; they see revenue as a commodity to be managed to grow people and grow the community. Bochy has figured out that chemistry is born from treating individuals as human beings, not units of production.”

Too often now, Radio GMS and PDS are so busy they barely interact with air talent, and when they do, they’re often multi-tasking, still watching their phone or computer screen, still clearly absent mentally even if they are sitting in front of us and looking directly at us.

It’s a great article, and if you’re hoping to become a better leader, and find better chemistry among your players, it’s worth your time today.

You can read the rest of the article HERE.

And since today is Opening Day, I thought you might enjoy seeing this: