The Magic Ingredient of Winning Teams by Pat Williams, SVP of Orlando Magic (Guest Blogger)

Photo Credit: Norma Lopez Molina

In choosing players for your team, talent isn’t everything. I have worked with some of the legends of the game, from “Dr. J” and Charles Barkley to Shaquille O’Neal and Dwight Howard. Every one of these players is a unique individual with a unique style and personality. While each player was immensely talented, every coach I worked with without fail asked, “Can I coach this kid?  Will he listen? Does he have a teachable spirit?”  

Coachability is not only important in the highest levels of sport, it is important in every other endeavor of life. At work or at home, in the military or at school, you have got to have team players who want to keep learning, listening and growing in response to their leaders. 

Johnny Oats, former coach of the Texas Rangers said, “Some players come up fast, but they waste their talents no matter what you do. They’re just not coachable.” The character of the person is just as important as the talent. Coaching is what keeps a team harmonized, synchronized and continuously grow together. A team without coachable players is not a team; it’s merely a collection of flying egos.

Along with coachable players comes the idea of team chemistry. Talent sticks out but chemistry is harder to see. You can build a wild, entertaining, rambunctious team with talent alone, but to build a championship caliber team that works together and functions like a well-oiled machine you’ve got to have chemistry. 

Chemistry is more important than talent. In fact, team chemistry is the magic ingredient needed to complete the recipe of a winning team. What we call “chemistry” is a mixture of many factors: ability and skill levels, drive and ambition, personality, emotional makeup, values, communication, and people skills. 

Chemistry is not easy to assess until you actually put a team together under real-world circumstances and see how the individual members react to one another, play off one another, cooperate together and synergize. Often experimenting by adding this or subtracting that will help in achieving a level of chemistry that is just right.

Joe Axelson, longtime general manager in the NBA said, “Team chemistry is the most fragile of all mixtures. You never know how you get it, and you never know why you lose it. But when you’ve got it, you know you’ve got it – and when you don’t you know you that, too.”

Chemistry is mysterious, delicate and elusive. It can’t be turned on and off at will, but this doesn’t mean that nothing can be done to create good chemistry. The best way to create an environment where winning chemistry can strike your team is to seek a balance of personality types. You’re going to need some aggressive, high energy types, mixed in with some motivators and cheerleaders. You will need some leaders and you will need some followers. You need people who are confident enough to be risk-takers but you will also need some people who are unselfish enough to forgo the glory and move the ball around. 

When you’ve got a well-rounded, well-balanced blend of personalities who above all trust each other, you’ve got a team. You’ve got chemistry and a chance to win championships.

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Pat Williams is a basketball hall-of-famer, currently serving as founder and senior vice president of the NBA’s Orlando Magic. A father of 19 children (14 adopted), author of over 100 books and a cancer survivor, Pat is one of America’s most popular motivational speakers. Find out more at www.PatWilliams.com. 

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This blog post was curated and/or edited by The Ardent Reader, Esther Hofknecht Curtis, BSOL, MSM-HCA. The views expressed in this blog post are those of the guest blogger. Visit her page at www.parrotcontent.com for more information.

A Note from The Ardent Reader
I asked Pat Williams to contribute to this blog because he wrote a book called Read for Your Life which changed my life forever. His book was the catalyst I needed to identify some of my most strongly held convictions and inspired me to take steps to improve myself through reading.