Work Place Harmony? — August 2016

Lack of team work is the silent killer in busi­ness today, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Play­ing twelve sea­sons in the NBA taught me the inher­ent val­ue of work place har­mo­ny. This is not to say that inter­nal com­pe­ti­tion nev­er occurred on our team. It is, how­ev­er, some­thing that was short lived and not tol­er­at­ed. In pro­fes­sion­al sports there is no room for in-fight­ing. Period.
I can attest that there’s noth­ing worse than show­ing up to prac­tice and feel­ing ten­sion between team­mates. When our team had a los­ing streak, the ten­sion between play­ers was pal­pa­ble. Fans booed, tem­pers flared, and sports radio hosts called for every­one to be trad­ed! How did we solve this ten­sion? The answer is remark­ably sim­ple. We closed the lock­er room doors, shut out the exter­nal noise and talked it out amongst our­selves. We focused on who we were as a team. We com­mu­ni­cat­ed. We each aired our griev­ances. We were lis­tened to and heard.
When we walked out of the lock­er room we were a cohe­sive unit, pat­ting each oth­er on the back, with a new resolve and com­mit­ment to our team. And we did this con­tin­u­ous­ly, not just one time. And to a play­er, we looked at our­selves first when look­ing to make improve­ments or changes for the better.